Movies Similar to Television Without Frontiers

Boy George & Culture Club(2025)

Set against the backdrop of 1980s Britain, four young men – Boy George, Roy Hay, Mikey Craig, and Jon Moss – formed a multi-racial, ethnically diverse, and sexually liberated band with a style and sound that challenged the status quo during the era of New Romantics and Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

This Ain't California(2012)

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.

Imagine… Pet Shop Boys: Then and Now(2024)

Featuring exclusive access to their recent tour and their new album, this documentary reveals the fascinating world of Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.

Dancing Auschwitz: Old Family Footage

The animate body as a medium for the celebration of life is on display as a young Jane Korman dances with her parents and their friends, all of whom are Holocaust survivors, in an Australian forest.

You'll Never Walk Alone: 30 Years After the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster(2019)

It is April 15th, 1989. Thousands of fans are rushing into Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield to watch the FA-Cup semi-final between Liverpool FC and Nottingham Forrest. The day ends with one of the greatest tragedies in football: 96 people do not survive the catastrophe of Hillsborough. 766 get injured. The 30-minute-long documentary especially gives a voice to the survivors.

Contemporary Photography in America(1982)

The film of Michael Engler from the year 1982 showing the different methods of operation of photgraphers Harry Callahan, Mark Cohen, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Garry Winogrand and others

The Discreet Françoise Hardy(2016)

Sensitive lookback on Françoise Hardy's career and life.

Pacific Club(2023)

In 1979, the Pacific Club was opened in the basement of La Défense - the business district of Paris. It was the first nightclub for Arabs from the suburbs; a parallel world of dance, sweat, young loves, and one-night utopias. Azedine, 17 years old at the time, tells us the forgotten story of this club and of this generation who dreamed of integrating into France but who soon came face to face with racism, the AIDS epidemic, and heroin.

Quand la télé dérape, 40 ans de scandales(2024)

CircleSpeak(2005)

Shot in Southern England over the course of six weeks by a crew of three American filmmakers, CircleSpeak offers a nuanced look at the passions and beliefs of the people immersed in the crop circle phenomenon during the season of 2001. This feature-length documentary presents interviews with serious “researchers”, self-proclaimed “hoaxers”, local farmers and villagers who are all, in one way or another, involved in this strange and compelling summer spectacle taking place year after year.

Campingplads(1989)

Report from life at a campsite on Samsø. The campsite is seen as an introduction to Denmark, as a Danish microcosm.

The Spirit Of Witkacy(1989)

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, better known as Witkacy, enivsages the future horrors of the Polish nation, as embodied by Stalin and Hitler, and the world collapsing into chaos.

United in Anger: A History of ACT UP(2012)

United in Anger: A History of ACT UP is an inspiring documentary about the birth and life of the AIDS activist movement from the perspective of the people in the trenches fighting the epidemic. Utilizing oral histories of members of ACT UP, as well as rare archival footage, the film depicts the efforts of ACT UP as it battles corporate greed, social indifference, and government negligence.

Notes on Blindness(2016)

After losing sight in 1983, John Hull began keeping an audio diary, a unique testimony of loss, rebirth and renewal, excavating the interior world of blindness. Following on from the Emmy Award-winning short film of the same name, Notes on Blindness is an ambitious and groundbreaking work, both affecting and innovative.

Jim Bridwell, The Yosemite Living Legend(2005)

Jim Bridwell was one of the best climbers in the world in the 70s, 80s. The documentary chronicles Bridwell's career from those early days to his final ascents in 2001. The film traces Jim Bridwell's journey through numerous interviews with other legendary free climbing personalities such as Leo Houlding and Ron Kauk. See him climb some of Yosemite's historic routes with today's young climbers paying homage to this true legend of free climbing. In an unpublished document from 1981, he is seen in one of his famous Zodiac ascents in El Capitan with and Fred East.

Down and Out in America(1986)

The recession of the 1980s split the country into the haves and have-nots, from family farmers to factory workers and homeless people forced to live in decrepit welfare hotels. On the verge of losing everything, courageous Americans discover the power of community organizing to fight injustice.

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt(1989)

On the eve of 1987's Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be added to a large-scale memorial quilt project. Drawing from the sea of names memorialized, director Robert Epstein focuses on the lives of six people. Alongside the intimate profiles offered, through news footage and interviews, Epstein puts the AIDS crisis in the larger context of social and government response to the disease.

Milli Vanilli: From Fame to Shame(2016)

The crazy story of two fancy boys, a French and a German, models and dancers, who won a Grammy award in 1990 just by moving their lips: the rise and fall of the Milli Vanilli duo. Playback singers, lies and video clips.

Operation Teak

On the 10th anniversary of his band Rall Tide’s debut album, artist Peter Kotas takes you on a flowering multimedia tour of Detroit musicians trying to survive in a world where you can’t even enjoy a baseball game without supporting The Bay of Pigs. Along the way he shows you how the band’s abrupt break-up led to his career as a political journalist peeking behind the curtains of Kansas to find diplomatic wizard Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA Director and Secretary of State, wears no clothes. Iowa Writer’s Workshop hero Kurt Vonnegut (or some entity that knows all about his life) hosts this documentary as the ideal human from his 1985 novel Galapagos: a penguin with flippers unable to pull triggers or press buttons to bomb and kill people.

The Lovers and the Despot(2016)

Hong Kong, 1978. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee is kidnapped by North Korean operatives following orders from dictator Kim Jong-il.