4 Little Girls
Spike Lee's documentary investigates the bombing of a Sunday school basement in Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 15, 1963. On that day, four African-American girls were killed. The film uses photographs, home movies, and interviews to re-create the event and its aftermath.

Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
Using a mix of interviews with previously exiled activists and musicians and archival footage of organized protests, this documentary underscores the importance of freedom songs in the struggle to end Apartheid in South Africa.

Biggie and Tupac
Nick Broomfield's documentary investigates the still-unsolved shooting deaths of rap superstars and former friends Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G.).

Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary
This documentary tells the story of Traudl Junge, who worked as Adolf Hitler's personal secretary from 1942 until his suicide in 1945. Breaking a 60-year silence, Junge talks about her experiences working for the Nazi regime and being one of the few witnesses to Hitler's final days in a fortified bunker.

Bowling for Columbine
This documentary from Michael Moore (Roger & Me) examines gun culture in the United States.

The Buena Vista Social Club
This musical documentary acts as a cinematic follow up to the 1997 Ry Cooder-produced Buena Vista Social Club album, which reunited Cuban jazz artists from the 1960s and 1970s.

Capturing the Friedmans
An interesting aspect of this Sundance-winning documentary — which looks at the fallout within a Great Neck, N.Y., family after the father (a respected teacher) and his 18-year-old son are accused of sexually abusing young boys in their home — is that the most captivating and damning footage was recorded on camera by the Friedmans themselves.

Comedian
Filmed with a digital camera over the course of 18 months, from 1999 to 2001, this documentary follows comedian Jerry Seinfeld as he heads out on the road, testing new material he wrote after his marriage, the end of his eponymous TV show, and the birth of his first child. It's not a traditional concert film; most of the footage is filmed behind the scenes and traces the creative process.

The Corporation
This documentary examines the nature of the corporation and how it affects our economy and society.

Crumb
This Sundance Film Festival award-winner examines the odd, darkly comical life of revolutionary underground cartoonist-writer R. Crumb, his abuse-filled childhood, and his two troubled brothers.

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
This sequel to Penelope Spheeris' punk documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization, focuses on the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of the late 1980s.

The Decline of Western Civilization
This documentary about punk's adolescent years features performances from and interviews with late-'70s/early '80s bands like Black Flag, X, the Circle Jerks, the Germs, and Fear.

Dogtown and Z-Boys
This documentary is the real story of how kids in Santa Monica, Calif., in the '70s brought their surfing styles into skateboarding, revolutionizing the sport. The film contains footage with the Zephyr Skateboard Team, a k a the Z-Boys.

Fahrenheit 9/11
Documentarian Michael Moore sets his sights on President George W. Bush's response to the terrorist attacks masterminded by Osama Bin Laden.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time) creates another acclaimed documentary. This time Morris interviews four men with interesting occupations — there's a lion tamer, a topiary gardener, a mole rat specialist, and a robot expert. Morris manages to build connections between these seemingly disparate careers.

Festival Express
This documentary covers an epic 1970 Canadian tour by some of the biggest bands and musicians of the time, including The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy, The Band, and many more. The show traveled from stop to stop on a chartered Canadian Railways train.

The Fog of War
The Fog of War is an Errol Morris documentary that covers political events in U.S. history as seen through the eyes of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Gimme Shelter
Often called the greatest rock documentary of all time, Gimme Shelter follows the Rolling Stones on the tail end of their 1969 world tour, culminating at a now-infamous show at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco.

Harlan County, U.S.A.
Director Barbara Kopple's documentary follows events surrounding a 1974 strike of Kentucky mine workers.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
This documentary presents an intimate portrait of the remarkably difficult production of Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam drama Apocalypse Now.

Hoop Dreams
This documentary tells the story of two young African-American basketball players with aspirations of using their on-court skills to leave their poor backgrounds behind and make it in the National Basketball Association. The two are followed through their high-school years, as they cope with myriad problems and eventually get recruited to play in college.

Koyaanisqatsi
Essentially a collage of slow- and fast-motion images set to the music of Phillip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi explores the relationship of human society and nature.

Kurt & Courtney
Allegedly an exposé on the troubled relationship between Nirvana frontman and godfather of the grunge music movement, Kurt Cobain, and his wife, Courtney Love, Nick Broomfield's documentary is instead an intriguing look at the vagaries of fame. Interviewing some of the more bizarre characters associated with the punk rock couple, fact and fiction begin to blur as some of these hangers-on are revealed to have had no association with the two at all or are greedily trying to capitalize on the lovers' tragic tale, including Love's own father who peddles the conspiracy theory that his daughter had her husband killed.

The Last Waltz
Hailed as one of the greatest concert documentaries of all time, the film captures the final performance (on Thanksgiving Day, 1976) of The Band, (Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and Robbie Robertson), a group later inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese shot the concert (held at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom), which includes musical guests Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Van Morrison, among others.

Mi Vida Loca - My Crazy Life
MI VIDA LOCA is a compelling look at a microcosm of East L.A.'s Echo Park. Writer and director Allison Anders (GAS FOOD LODGING) lived in the neighborhood for many years with her daughter, inspiring her to make this film about life in a Latina girl gang. The film is sympathetic to these young women, presenting their stories honestly and with a visual flair that the subjects themselves would probably appreciate. The stories are told as a series of vignettes with different narrators, each with his or her perspective on the events portrayed. This approach allows the characters the opportunity to explain their actions, giving the audience a better understanding of behavior they might otherwise easily condemn. The key players are Mousie (Seidy Lopez) and Sad Girl (Angel Aviles), best friends who let local drug dealer Ernesto (Jacob Vargas) come between them. The film is a wonderfully realized slice-of-life: sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, and, despite its seemingly incongruously elegeiac tone, with a strong ring of truth.

Microcosmos
This documentary from French entomologists Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou is a magnified look at the remarkable drama in the lives of insects.

One Day in September
ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER is a unique and powerful documentary that tells an important story in an exciting and dramatic style that one doesn't typically associate with the genre. The film is about the Black September terrorist action at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It relies on interviews and archival news footage of the actual events, which personalize the story of the doomed Israeli athletes and the Palestinian terrorists who held them captive while the world held its collective breath. Also documented, in painful detail, is the astonishing ineptitude and indifference of the West German police and the insensitivity of the International Olympic Committee. Director Kevin MacDonald makes excellent use of news footage, promotional films, and the music of the early 1970s. He also uses interviews with many of those involved, including an on-camera interview with surviving terrorist Jamal Al Gashey and an in-depth interview with Ankie Spitzer, the widow of one of the Israeli coaches who was killed. But what makes the film so compelling is the shrewd way MacDonald brings these elements together to make a suspenseful, heartbreaking record of this tragic event. MacDonald sought to make a "documentary thriller" with this film, and he succeeded.

The Original Kings of Comedy
Based on a hugely successful tour called the Kings of Comedy, Spike Lee's documentary features Steve Harvey, Cedric The Entertainer, Bernie Mac, and D.L. Hughley, four comedians best known for their TV appearances on such shows as Moesha, The Steve Harvey Show, and The Hughleys.

Roger and Me
Michael Moore's acclaimed 1989 documentary focuses on Flint, Mich., a booming industrial town until General Motors decided to close its factories and move out. Moore contrasts the poverty forced upon the blue-collar inhabitants of Flint by unemployment with the snooty, condescending attitudes of GM's super-wealthy execs. The titular Roger is GM Chairman Roger Smith, whom Moore spends the film trying unsuccessfully to interview.

The Sorrow and the Pity
This landmark documentary covers the years France spent under Nazi occupation and tells the story using interviews and newsreel clips, as well as propaganda films shot by the Nazis.

Spellbound
This documentary follows eight boys and girls of various ages, backgrounds, and social classes as they chase the same dream: winning the 1999 National Spelling Bee.

Stevie
Ten years after director Steve James met a troubled, abused 11-year-old Illinois boy named Stephen "Stevie" Franklin and became his Big Brother, James checked up on the dysfunctional, still-troubled Stevie and asked him whether he could make a documentary of his life. The movie examines, over a nearly five-year period, what led to Stevie's frequent arrests, including the serious recent charge of sexually fondling an 8-year-old girl, and questions whether society's systems are at least partially to blame.

Super Size Me
Writer-director Morgan Spurlock puts his money where his mouth is to document the physical and emotional effects of eating nothing but fast food, specifically McDonald's, for one month.

The Thin Blue Line
In The Thin Blue Line, director Errol Morris weaves together actual events and re-enactments of real situations in order to investigate the themes of responsibility and justice in the wake of a murder of a Dallas police officer.

Touching the Void
Based on mountain climber Joe Simpson's memoir, Touching the Void is a documentary that uses interviews and re-enactments to tell the story of Simpson and Simon Yates. In 1985, the two young British mountaineers attempted to scale the treacherous Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes, but disaster struck (more than once). How both survived, particularly Simpson, is nothing short of miraculous.

Wattstax
This documentary covers the events surrounding the Wattstax concert, as well as the concert itself, including appearances by Jesse Jackson and Richard Pryor.

When We Were Kings
When We Were Kings follows the weeks leading up to Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's legendary 1974 boxing match, known as "The Rumble in the Jungle."

Wild Man Blues
As though opening a door into a life that the press had been trying to bang down during his tumultuous breakup from Mia Farrow, comedian-filmmaker-clarinetist Woody Allen decided to allow documentary filmmmaker Barbara Kopple to follow him with a camera on a 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans jazz band. He's also joined by his sister Letty and, of course, his new wife, Soon-Yi Previn, who seems, on the evidence of the film, to be as serene as her husband is anxious. Indeed, the autobiographical nature of Allen's films becomes clear after a couple of hours of watching a man who seems to believe that the inanimate objects of the world are waging war on him: An omelet seems "vulcanized," he fears that his hotel room sheets will be breaded. The animate world is no improvement. In Venice, Allen fears that a gondolier could easily cut his throat, and the crowds and paparazzi that pursure him inspire a revulsion that's ironic in so public a figure. Yet the amused, pragmatic Soon-Yi takes it all in stride, calming her husband's fears, albeit occasionally with a hint of condescension. The director is clearly happiest in the film when playing the clarinet, and, as anyone who has seen him at Michael's Pub can vouch, his dedication to the music is wholehearted. In an amusing and revealing visit to his parents' home upon his return, the underwhelmed response of his parents to Allen's achievements may suggest the source of his fabled anxiety. WILD MAN BLUES is a must for Allen fans.