Scenic Wonders of America: American West

Ancient Sunshine

2019

A reflection on anarchism and labor, ANCIENT SUNSHINE marks a path through the struggles of climate activism and coal extractions in the American West.

Killing the Colorado

2016

The drought in the American West is predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years. Join five Academy Award-winning filmmakers as they explore the environmental crisis of our time and how to fix it before it's too late.

Cowboys: A Documentary Portrait

2019

Told in the cinematic tradition of classic westerns, “COWBOYS - A Documentary Portrait” is a feature-length film that gives viewers the opportunity to ride alongside modern working cowboys on some of America's largest and most remote cattle ranches. The movie documents the lives of the men and women working on these "big outfit" ranches - some of which are over one million acres - and still require full crews of horseback mounted workers to tend large herds of cattle. Narrated through first-hand accounts from the cowboys themselves, the story is steeped in authenticity and explores the rewards and hardships of a celebrated but misunderstood way of life, including the challenges that lie ahead for the cowboys critical to providing the world's supply of beef. “COWBOYS” was filmed on eight of the nation’s largest cattle ranches across ten states in the American West.

Black Far West

2022

Did you know that the first cowboys were black? Using magnificent archives and testimonies from historians, Cécile Denjean restores justice to African-Americans in the story of the conquest of the West.

Reel Injun

2010

The evolution of the depiction of the various Native American peoples in cinema, from the silent era to the present day: how their image on the screen has changed the way to understand their history and culture.

Motorcycle Moment

2025

In 1964, Les Blank filmed 45 minutes of motorcycles for a documentary film that was never completed. Before his death in 2013, he asked his son Harrod Blank to cut the footage to the music of The 13th Floor Elevators. Edited by Ben Abrams, this film captures the vastness of the American West at a time when the motorcycle was the ultimate in highway adventure.

La grande prairie, le pacte du bison

2025

Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature

1997

Documentary on water usage, money, politics, the transformation of nature, and the growth of the American west, shown on PBS as a four-part miniseries.

Poison in the Rockies

1990

Acid rain, economic development, and a century of mining pollute Rocky Mountain waters.

Sanderson to Brackettville

2018

Inspired by films like Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas and David Byrne's True Stories, photographer Jason Lee set out to document residual American landscapes across Texas in early 2017 with large format color films for his recently released book A PLAIN VIEW. This short documentary follows Jason on the road during a four-day stretch in West Texas.

The Sky on Location

1983

A personal meditation on the landscape of the American West that tracks the ruling conception in nature in the 19th and 20th centuries from the pioneers through the instamatic tourists, at the same time that it obsessively follows the four seasons. The elemental vicissitudes of the weather, the exact moment of the day, the colour of the light and the soil and the trees form an acute visual record of the constantly changing mood of the landscape. The film successfully attempts, with quiet, passionate, almost single-minded firmness, to confront us as nakedly as possible with our cultural inability to see nature whole, without preconceptions.

Thunder at the Border

1966

Firehand and his Apache friend Winnetou are determined to get justice for the murder of four young braves. They set off to track down the gang responsible for the horrendous act.