This 'Kiki' Clip Picks Up Where 'Paris Is Burning' Left Off

Maya Angelou’s literature and civil-rights activism were so influential that, two years after her death, it still feels like she’s alive. It’s also hard to believe no one has made a documentary about her until now. This Kickstarter-funded film started rolling when Angelou was still alive, so we’ll see fresh footage coupled with archives of her ever-reaching impact.

Festival fixture Liz Garbus opened last year’s Sundance with “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” which is now fresh off an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Let’s see if she’ll repeat that course with “Nothing Left Unsaid,” a portrait of the life of wealthy designer, actress and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, as interviewed by her son Anderson Cooper.

Deadly shootings have reached alarming highs in America, making gun rights the most contentious discourse in contemporary American politics. Right as the debate boils over to the presidential election, the director of 2014’s “Fed Up” has stitched together a movie that examines both sides of the dispute.

Three years after a gunman fatally shot 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, “Newtown” checks in on the families and school officials who were victims of the senseless tragedy. Like “Under the Gun,” this documentary is a vital step toward processing American’s violence epidemic.

Shortly after college, Will Allen joined a spiritual community — read: a cult — in Los Angeles. He stuck around for 20 years, documenting the entire experience on camera. Now he’s used that footage, along with interviews with former members, to craft what sounds like one of the most intimate portraits of life inside a cult ever committed to film.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Robert Mapplethorpe photographed Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, BDSM culture, erections and a lot of flowers. His art still feels progressive 27 years after his death, and this doc chronicles Mapplethorpe’s life and work.

At 3 years old, Owen Suskind seemed like he would never speak again, gripped by autism and stimulated only by Disney movies. A few years later, his father imitated Iago, the parrot from “Aladdin,” and Oliver spoke once more, using dialogue from the film. After that, Disney movies became Oliver’s way of rebuilding his communication skills — and years later, he is the subject of a documentary made by the Oscar-winning director of “God Loves Uganda” and “Music by Prudence.”

Wener Herzog — the multihyphenate who has directed operas, made dozens of feature films and documentaries, and once guest-starred on “Parks and Recreation” — gives us his take on the 21st century’s defining social and technological apparatus: the Internet. In “Lo and Behold,” Herzog turns a meditative eye to the online world’s history and future, as well as its contributions to society and its ramifications.

Anthony Weiner granted a film crew unrestricted license to document what he hoped would be a triumphant New York mayoral bid and political comeback. As we now know, a second sexting scandal exploded and his candidacy erupted — all while cameras continued to roll. As far as “Weiner” goes, it was for the best: The New York Times promises the movie “overflows with juicy moments.”

Spike Lee’s previous documentary celebrated the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s “Bad.” But Lee wasn’t done investigating the King of Pop’s meteoric fame, so here he is tracing Jackson’s transition from Jackson 5 standout to solo superstar.

Two and a half decades ago, “Paris is Burning” won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and, along with Madonna’s hit song, put voguing and the queer community’s ball culture on the mainstream map. “Kiki” revisits that world, this time zeroing in on youth whose resilience is fostered through this eclectic art scene.

Howard Brookner, who made a well-received William S. Burroughs doc in 1983, was the cusp of his Hollywood breakthrough when he succumbed to AIDS at the end of the decade. His nephew has now examined Brookner’s extensive archive and culled together this documentary that doubles as an exploration of New York’s bohemian creative scene of the ’70s and ’80s, including appearances from Burroughs, Jim Jarmusch (who produced this film), Madonna, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and others.

D.A. Pennebaker is undoubtably one of the most influential American documentarians alive thanks to such films as “Don’t Look Back,” “Monterey Pop” and “The War Room.” His latest is a reteaming with “War Room” co-director Chris Hegedus. Together they chronicle the work of animal-rights activist Steven Wise, who has been fighting to secure legal personhood for certain intelligent mammals.

Armed with a Kubrickian title and urgent subject matter, “How to Let Go of the World” finds Oscar-nominated documentarian Josh Fox (“Gasland”) visiting regions of the world where communities are contending with the devastating effects of climate change.

Television history would be nothing without Norman Lear, who produced some of America’s most influential, boundary-shattering sitcoms: “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” “Maude,” “Sanford and Son,” the list goes on. Now 93, Lear is the subject of Sundance’s opening-night documentary, from the directors who made “Jesus Camp” and “12th & Delaware.”

This New Zealand doc pulls back the curtian on an odd community: an endurance competition where men are paid to be tied up and tickled. Enticed already? Add this to the movie’s credentials: When the directors first expressed interest, the organization threatened legal action. So, of course, he dug deeper, and the results are now the subject of what sounds like one of the year’s strangest stories.

Director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee were South Korea’s most glamorous couple in the 1970s. Then future North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il kidnapped them for eight years and forced them to make propaganda films, until the pair escaped. Their stranger-than-fiction history was the subject of a 2015 biography and an episode of “This American Life,” and now it gets the film treatment it deserves.

John Romulus Brinkley is one innovator you probably never studied in school. He was a radio pioneer and small-town doctor who discovered that implanting goat testicles can cure impotence in men. This documentary, from the director of “Our Nixon,” pairs animation with Brinkley’s writings for a look at an important early 20th-century oddball.

Global awareness of ISIS’ threats can be linked to a single video that circulated in 2014, depicting kidnapped American journalist James Foley as the terrorist group threatened his life. In his directorial debut, Brian Oakes — a childhood friend of Foley — traces Foley’s story using testimony from his family, who couldn’t pay his ransom for fear of prosecution from the U.S. government, as well as fellow journalists and hostages. The movie also airs on HBO in February.