The Record Dealer

The explosive trajectory and tragic demise of iconic music retailer Tower Records, and the legacy of its rebellious founder Russ Solomon. Two hundred stores in thirty countries on five continents. In 1999 it made $1 billion. In 2006 it filed for bankruptcy. What went wrong?

Sandi Hardingm, the manager of the world's last remaining Blockbuster - located in Bend, OR, reflects on the store's vibrant past and navigates the difficult task of keeping a video rental store open in the era of streaming.

A portrait of Keith Richards that takes us on a journey to discover the genesis of his sound as a songwriter, guitarist and performer.

Over 35 years after Bob Lazar's revelations, this documentary exposes secrets of a facility the government still denies. Featuring Lazar's testimony, recreations, and new evidence, it reopens a case that continues to spark global curiosity

Follow 30 Seconds to Mars as they record their latest album, This Is War, and their battle against record label EMI.

Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.

A sexual wellness company gains fame and followers, then members come forward with shocking allegations.

In the last five years of his life, David Bowie ended nearly a decade of silence to engage in an extraordinary burst of activity, producing two groundbreaking albums and a musical. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unexpected end to a remarkable career. Made with remarkable access, Francis Whately’s documentary is a revelatory follow-up to his acclaimed 2013 documentary David Bowie: Five Years, which chronicled Bowie’s golden ‘70s and early-‘80s period.

Jonas Mekas weaves an elegiac diary film from his 1971–72 return to Lithuania, chronicling a visit to his birthplace of Semeniškiai after decades in exile. Blending personal memory with documentary observation, the film becomes both a portrait of homecoming and a meditation on displacement, family, and the passage of time.

A personal and intimate look into Demi Lovato's life as not only a regular 25 year old, but also one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

Daft Punk Unchained is the first film about the pop culture phenomenon that is Daft Punk, the duo with 12 million albums sold worldwide and seven Grammy Awards. Throughout their career Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have always resisted compromise and the established codes of show business. They have remained determined to maintain control of every link in the chain of their creative process. In the era of globalisation and social networks, they rarely speak in public and neither do they show their faces on TV. This documentary explores this unprecedented cultural revolution revealing a duo of artists on a permanent quest for creativity, independence and freedom.

Documentary about legendary Paramount producer Robert Evans, based on his famous 1994 autobiography.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

A years-in-the-making documentary on the legendary punk band the Ramones. Through a mixture of archival footage, archival and new interviews with all members of the band's various lineups, and new interviews with a number of their contemporaries, the film traces the peaks and valleys the band experienced over the course of its 20-plus year career before disbanding in 1995.

For decades, a nice Jewish couple ran Circus of Books, a porn shop and epicenter for gay LA. Their director daughter documents their life and times.

Supermensch documents the astounding career of Hollywood insider, the loveable Shep Gordon, who fell into music management by chance after moving to LA straight out of college, and befriending Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Shep managed rock stars such as Pink Floyd, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass and Alice Cooper, and later went on to manage chefs such as Emeril Lagasse, ushering in the era of celebrity chefs on television.

Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.

Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman discuss their characters Mera and Atlanna.

From his days of testifying at the Watergate hearings to advising recent presidential candidate Donald Trump, Roger Stone has long offended people on both sides of the political fence as a force in conservative America. Outspoken author, pundit, ahead of his time election strategist, this is his story.

This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.

The film is about the vinyl record culture and presents a panel of stories, searches, collecting, in various locations in Rio de Janeiro.

RPM music is a small shop in the centre of Newcastle selling vinyl records. Founded by former students, the shop has become a place for people with love of music to come, browse, chat and share their stories. These are some of them.

Chris Wilcha helped adapt This American Life to television. His new documentary embodies the spirit of that show as he tries to save a New Jersey record store, in this comic yet deeply moving reflection on opportunities lost and gained.

A documentary film in which a rock fan shows off his obsession and his memorabilia.

A documentary feature examining why over 3000 independent record stores have closed across the U.S. in the past decade. Many sources all pose threats on the very well being of our favorite record stores. Will these stores die or will they survive?

A symbol of nostalgia for some, authentic object of art for others, the 33 rpm record is gaining in popularity. Even if it was pushed aside in 1990 by the compact disc, it’s now attracting a new generation of music lovers.

In the conservative city of Munich, a local punk starts a record store. Inspiringly, the shop becomes a cultural hub for the worldwide punk community. BLACK WAVE is an intimate look at a resilient music scene set against the backdrop of today’s explosive politics.

Ron opens a vinyl record shop in his hometown, attracting a community of music lovers and collectors. As the shop grows, he plans to expand and compete with bigger businesses, he discovers there's more to selling records than just retail.

A portrait of the last surviving vinyl record shop in Teesside, North East England, at a time when independent record shops were closing in the UK at a rate of one every three days. A distinctive, funny and intimate film about men, the North and the irreplaceable role music plays in our lives. High Fidelity with a Northern Accent.

For the past year or so, brothers Jim and Steve Peters, both ordained ministers, have been traveling around the nation on a mission from God. Convinced that rock and roll is "one of the largest satanic forces in the country," they have been exhorting American kids to build bonfires of albums in public places.

A documentary that follows a middle-aged Azorean record obsessive who has lost the vinyl collection of his youth, and so seeks to reconnect with it through talking with the fellow island collectors he grew up with about the music scene of their wilder years.

The vinyl record renaissance over the past decade has brought new fans to a classic format and transformed our idea of a record collector: younger, both male and female, multicultural. This same revival has made buying music more expensive, benefited established bands over independent artists and muddled the question of whether vinyl actually sounds better than other formats. Vinyl Nation digs into the crates of the record resurgence in search of truths set in deep wax: Has the return of vinyl made music fandom more inclusive or divided? What does vinyl say about our past here in the present? How has the second life of vinyl changed how we hear music and how we listen to each other?

Cold War Leningrad: In a culture where the recording industry was ruthlessly controlled by the state, music lovers discovered an extraordinary alternative means of reproduction: they repurposed used x-ray film as the base for records of forbidden songs. Giving blood every week to earn enough money to buy a recording lathe, one bootlegger Rudy Fuchs cuts banned music onto such discarded x-rays to be sold on street corners by shady dealers. It was ultimate act of punk resistance, a two-fingered salute to the repressive regime that gave a generation of young Soviets access to forbidden Western and Russian music, an act for which Rudy and his fellow bootleggers would pay a heavy price.

Ahto, armed with encyclopaedic knowledge and unbound love for obscure music, embarks on a journey to find the rarest vinyl records of the Soviet era.

“Saigon on Wax" is a vibrant and engaging community documentary that pulls back the curtain on Saigon's burgeoning and often overlooked vinyl culture. Moving beyond the city's well-known culinary and shopping attractions, the film delves into a passionate community of collectors, musicians, DJs, and record store owners who are shaping a unique sonic landscape. The film incorporates rich archival photos and videos, breathing life into the history of vinyl in Saigon while also showcasing its dynamic present.

IT CAME FROM AQUARIUS RECORDS tells the story about the San Francisco based independent record store, Aquarius Records. Having closed in 2016 after 47 years, this small apartment-sized store championed local, underground, independent, and challenging music to the masses - most memorably with their infamous bi-weekly, college essay-length, new-release lists. Six years in the making, interviewing collectors, musicians, and store owners, the film has a very personal angle, with lots of behind-the-scenes footage (and drama) that shows both the joy and excruciating stress that comes with running — and closing — a store like this, helped in no part by the changing city around them.

Finding the Funk is a road trip in search of the past, present and future of Funk music. Starting with Funk's roots in Jazz and the James Brown bands of the '60s we travel to the Bay Area to celebrate Sly & the Family Stone, then to Dayton the birthplace of so many of Funk's originators, then onto Detroit where from the ashes of Motown, P-Funk's Mothership arose, and then to LA where a new crop of musicians are creating their own Funk history. On our journey into Funk, we talk to legends Sly Stone, Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, Nona Hendryx, Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, and Steve Arrington and their descendants Mike D, D'Angelo, Sheila E, Shock G and Sade's Stuart Matthewman. Narrated by Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson of the Roots.

A look into the world of a record shop

Brick and Mortar and Love follows the story of ear X-tacy Records, the legendary record store in Louisville, Kentucky, as it struggles to survive in the changing music retail industry. In-depth interviews include owner John Timmons, staff at ear X-tacy, leaders in the record store industry and scores of independent record store owners from all over the US. These interviews look into the state of the independent record store, what services they provide and what is at stake if they disappear. Independent record stores are not just the place to buy a CD, they are cultural centers where music is learned, art is cultivated and they are vitally important to the communities that they serve.