AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Thrills

Behind the Planet of the Apes

1998

Roddy McDowall takes you, film by film, from production meetings to make-up sessions, then right onto the movie set to see the actual filming of the science fiction masterpiece. The most comprehensive history of Planet of the Apes ever created, this fascinating 127-minute documentary explores one of the most imaginative and influential series in movie history.

Encounter in the Third Dimension

1999

The Professor, helped by his flying robot M.A.X., tries to show us the history of 3-D film, and his newest innovation, Real-O-Vision (ride films). But his hardware keeps breaking down, particularly when he's trying to introduce a music video of Elvira. Written by Jon Reeves

Lezioni di Cinema di Paolo Mereghetti

2023

The Great Dictator: The Clown Turns Prophet

2011

In this visual essay, Charles Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance, author of "Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema", draws upon a wealth of photography as well as a wide range of interviews (Paulette Goddard, Sydney Chaplin, Chuck Jones, Leni Riefenstahl, Mel Brooks, Joan Collins et al.) to examine the production history of "The Great Dictator", the film's importance as a satire, and legacy.

Boom! Hollywood's Greatest Disaster Movies

2000

Narrated by Bill Mumy (Will Robinson from TV's "Lost in Space"), this documentary spotlights some of the most thrilling scenes the disaster genre has ever produced. From 1970s classics such as Airport and The Towering Inferno to James Cameron's Oscar-winning epic Titanic, no celluloid disaster flick is omitted. Interviews with directors and actors (including Will Smith) and newsreels of real historical disasters are also included.

Song of My City

2025

A city symphony of '70s New York as it exists in the movies that mythologized it.

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes & Villains

2003

The American Film Institute celebrates 100 years of film by recognizing the top 50 film heroes and top 50 film villains of all time.

Twentieth Century Fox: The First 50 Years

1997

The first half century of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation from its beginnings under Hungarian immigrant William Fox to it emergence as a major studio.

Indie Origins

2012

Filmmaker Craig Brewer highlights a number of independent Memphis filmmakers, and shows the full short films Broke on a Saturday, You Better Behave, Blown, Two Hundred Dollars on E-Bay, Clean Up in Booth B, The Morning Ritual and Eso-Phagas.

Himala Ngayon

2012

A 2012 documentary about the making and the legacy of the 1982 drama masterpiece directed by Ishmael Bernal that ended up being one of the greatest Asian films of all time. The revelations about the theory of "Who killed Elsa?" will be answered and also, the impact of the film to the Filipino culture and society.

No Magic for Socialists

2025

Artist Htoo Lwin Myo excavates the lesser-known and wildly joyful history of Myanmar’s horror and genre film industry in the 1950s that has persisted through political turmoil and archival neglect, told directly by the people who made it.

Black Zombie

2026

From the flickering screens of Hollywood horror, to the haunted cane fields of colonial Haiti, Black Zombie unearths the buried origins of the zombie, reclaiming it as a symbol of survival and spiritual resistance.

Cinema Againts Power

2017

There was an undeclared war for nearly half a century in Bulgaria between the then government and the majority of democratic-minded filmmakers during the Communist regime. Paradoxically, most of the banned or censored out movies were made by members of the Communist Party, believers in their party's ideas and justice. The Communist Party aesthetics against the freedom to tell truth.

Cinéma L’Amour

2005

A brief documentary of Cinéma L’Amour, one of North America's last major adult theaters.

Searching For Kurosawa

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Searching for Kurosawa chronicles Kawamura Mitsuhiko’s journey from the set of Kurosawa’s Ran in 1985 to its final release three decades later. Now, with the rediscovered clips and Mitsuhiko’s own recollections, the film pieces together an intimate portrait of cinema’s “Emperor,” revealing how a young cinephile’s passion helped preserve invaluable fragments of film history. In the course of unearthing lost footage, Kawamura’s life takes an ironic course; he loved movies so much that his life became a movie.