Pull Back The Curtain With These Films About Films
Movies have always been about more than what happens when the lights go down. From intimate portraits of iconic performers to deep dives into the industry’s hidden histories, films about cinema offer a rare look behind the curtain at the people who shape the art form. Whether celebrating creative triumphs or exposing the raw forces that dictate what actually makes it to the screen, these stories prove that what happens behind the camera is often just as compelling as the film itself.
This collection brings together essential documentaries and dramas that turn the camera back on Hollywood and beyond—now featuring the touching, hilarious retrospective Remembering Gene Wilder. Alongside stories of visionary directors, industry outsiders, and trailblazing innovators, these films explore the true power of the movies. Stream the collection on Kino Film Collection now.
Remembering Gene Wilder (2024)
This loving tribute to Gene Wilder celebrates his life and legacy as the comic genius behind an extraordinary string of film roles, from his first collaboration with Mel Brooks in The Producers, to the enigmatic title role in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, to his inspired on-screen partnership with Richard Pryor in movies like Silver Streak. It is illustrated by a bevy of touching and hilarious clips and outtakes, never-before-seen home movies, narration from Wilder’s audiobook memoir, and interviews with a roster of brilliant friends and collaborators like Mel Brooks, Alan Alda, and Carol Kane. Remembering Gene Wilder shines a light on an essential performer, writer, director, and all-around mensch.
Chained For Life (2019)
In Aaron Schimberg’s brilliantly oddball tragicomedy, Jess Weixler plays a movie star “slumming it” in an outré art-horror film being shot in a semi-abandoned hospital. Cast opposite her is a gentle-natured man with a severe facial deformity (Adam Pearson, A Different Man). As their relationship evolves, questions arise around cinematic notions of beauty, representation, and exploitation.
A Paris Education (1974)
A serious and impressionable shaggy-haired young cinephile leaves behind his steady girlfriend in Lyon to study film in Paris. Settling into a dingy flat with a rotating cast of roommates, he immerses himself in a bohemian world of artists, intellectuals, and fellow film geeks. Shooting in timeless black and white, director Jean-Paul Civeyrac conjures a bittersweet ode to student life that evokes the films of the French New Wave.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022)
This eye-opening documentary from the Sundance Film Festival explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design and its connections to the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and discrimination, drawing on clips and interviews with women and non-binary film industry professionals. The result is an electrifying call-to-action that will fundamentally change the way you see, and watch, movies.
Churchill and the Movie Mogul (2019)
Winston Churchill was mad about movies, but the full extent of his use of film as a wartime weapon has never been told. Before WWII, producer Alexander Korda enlisted Churchill as a writer and advisor. When war came, Churchill sent Korda to Hollywood on a covert mission to sway America. Using newly uncovered documents, this film reveals their extraordinary alliance.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)
What do the most ravishingly beautiful actress of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and bluetooth technology have in common? They are both Hedy Lamarr, the glamor icon whose ravishing visage was the inspiration for Snow White and Cat Woman and a technological trailblazer who perfected a secure radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes during WWII.
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story (2025)
This exhilarating film explores the dazzling and complex Liza Minnelli, as she rose to stardom in the 1970s, just after the death of her mother Judy Garland. Battling personal and professional obstacles, the film illuminates the contradictions of Liza: privilege and struggle, unreal expectations and towering talent. Liza, Joel Grey, Mia Farrow, Ben Vereen are among the many who tell the story.
Godard Cinema (2022)
Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. He arose in the 1960s as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive youth. Six decades and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time. This documentary offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.
Being Maria (2025)
When promising young actress Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei) gets the lead in Last Tango in Paris alongside Marlon Brando (Matt Dillon), it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Until one day, when Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci conspire to shoot a crucial sex scene as a harrowing assault. Lauded as a brave artistic breakthrough, it’s the beginning of a living hell for Maria.
Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking (2021)
Oscar Micheaux was the most influential African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century, a self-taught artist who funded, produced, and released more than 40 films, completely excluded from Hollywood. Micheaux’s provocative films served as a powerful rebuke to the ubiquitous racism of the times. A chorus of experts and fans weigh in on his incredible artistic journey and legacy.
Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (2023)
This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about a humane and groundbreaking masterpiece and the flawed but gifted people who made it. It is about a troubled era of cultural ferment, social and political change, about broken dreams and strivers, then and now. It is about an era that made a movie and a movie that made an era.