From the dawn of man to the Battle of Jutland, the Ambrose family tree has always maintained its ability to create a long line of distinguished naval officers… until now. Captain William Horatio Ambrose has tried hard to preserve his family’s tradition, but unfortunately suffers from chronic seasickness; just the mere mention of anything slightly nautical or aquatic sends him overboard. Once again, screen great Alec Guinness manages to create another unforgettable comic creation for the last film he made with the legendary Ealing Studios.

Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film Ganja & Hess is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity.

The last of the independent features made in the prime of Buster Keaton's career, STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. is a large-scale follow-up to The General, substituting a Mississippi paddlewheel for the locomotive, and replacing the spectacle of the Civil War with a catastrophic hurricane. Keaton stars as William Canfield, Jr., a Boston collegian who returns to his deep-southern roots to reunite with his father, a crusty riverboat captain (Ernest Torrence) who is engaged in a bitter rivalry with a riverboat king, coincidentally, the father of Willie's sweetheart (Marion Byron).  New restoration from Lobster Films coming soon to DCP!

“We all get dressed for Bill,” says Vogue editrix Anna Wintour. The “Bill” in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours.” Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller—who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham’s enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

This illuminating documentary tells the incredible story of Bill Traylor, a former slave who turned to drawing at age 85, creating colorful, strikingly modernist work that eventually led him to be recognized as one of America’s greatest self-taught artists and the subject of a Smithsonian retrospective.

Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters traces the powerful story of how one of the most celebrated works of art to come out of the AIDS epidemic revitalized two disparate communities, 30 years apart, both struggling to make sense of the plagues of their generations.

After the shocking death of a disturbed patient, psychiatrist Dr. Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens) comes into possession of the ancient tribal mask that supposedly drove the young man to his doom. When Barnes puts on the mask, he is assailed with nightmarish visions of monsters, occultists, and ritual torture. Believing that the mask has opened a portal to the deepest recesses of his mind, the doctor continues to explore this terrifying new psychic world; even as the mask reveals a latent violence in Barnes' nature that threatens those closest to him.

After Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s marathon “Rising Tour” came to an end in 2003, Clarence Clemons felt like he needed a break. So he packed up his saxophone and voyaged to China, where he could be more-or-less a nameless traveler in a foreign land. Who Do I Think I Am continued to follow Clarence after China and document his transcendent awakening and then tragedy struck. While in Florida Clarence suffered a stroke and passed away. Featuring interviews with President Bill Clinton, Joe Walsh, Nils Lofgren, Jake Clemons, former bandmates, friends, and close family members, Who Do I Think I Am highlights Clarence’s life as musician and member of the E Street band while also presenting another side of Clarence not many saw when he was away from bright stage lights. It’s an intimate portrait of a man who searched for enlightenment and meaning at the unknowingly final years of his life.

Taught adaptation of David Storey's emotionally-charged family drama.

Using archival photographs and rare footage and interviews with friends and colleagues, Oscar® winner Brigitte Berman's acclaimed documentary paints a vivid portrait of a vanished era and brings to life the only cornetist Louis Armstrong regarded as an equal.

A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real “corporate wars” and the manipulation of politicians.

This documentary argues for the importance of film preservation through the voices of archivists, curators, technicians, and filmmakers who have contributed to making sure moving images survive and remain accessible.

At the height of the frontier era, a locomotive races through the Rocky Mountains on a classified mission. But one by one, the passengers are murdered! Their only hope is John Deakin (Charles Bronson), a mysterious prisoner-in-transit who must fight for his life, and the lives of everyone on the train.

This meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Discovered buried under the permafrost in a former Canadian Gold Rush town, their story reveals the links between the movie business and Manifest Destiny in North America.

Four reels of water-damaged 35mm film recovered by an Icelandic fishing boat serve as inspiration for Bill Morrison’s latest meditation on cinema’s past—this time centered on popular Russian actor Mihail Žarov and offering a journey into Soviet history and film accompanied by a gorgeous score by Pulitzer and Grammy-winning composer David Lang.

THE TRIALS OF MUHAMMAD ALI investigates its extraordinary and often complex subject's life outside the boxing ring. From joining the controversial Nation of Islam and changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, to his refusal to serve in the Vietnam War in the name of protesting racial inequality, to his global humanitarian work, Muhammad Ali remains an inspiring and controversial figure.

This entirely African American-conceived and produced ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration of a pair of pioneering Black artists: writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess and wrote the screenplay for Hal Ashby's The Landlord.