Film (1980): Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s Docu (Hollywood about Hollywood)

British film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill delivered a nearly definitive history of Hollywood in this 11-hour series.

Dozens of retrospective interviews were conducted to capture the memories of such legends as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, George Cukor, and William Wyler.

Director Mark Cousins delivers a 14-hour master class, where every example hails from a movie helmed by a woman. The approach is incredibly empowering, underscoring the medium’s possibilities via clips that film schools so often overlook. — P.D.

Morgan Neville uses Orson Welles’ unfinished last movie, “The Other Side of the Wind,” as a chance to explore what became of the “Citizen Kane” director. Welles was the ultimate Hollywood wunderkind and a maverick who battled the system till the bitter end.

Barry Avrich’s deeply researched look at one of Hollywood’s most influential leaders of the 20th century neither canonizes nor demonizes its complex subject. Wasserman, whose MCA Inc. was a forerunner of the modern media conglomerate, is brought to life in a warts-and-all portrait that details how his business acumen and vision changed the industry. — C.L.

A bracing look at a production gone horribly wrong, this doc is blunt about the inability of United Artists execs to control “Heaven’s Gate” director Michael Cimino from the start. Now synonymous with artistic folly and Hollywood’s indulgence of enfant terrible directors, the costly Western bankrupted the studio.

Kent Jones’ look at Francois Truffaut’s landmark 1960s interviews with Alfred Hitchcock blends reflections from contemporary directors on Hitchcock with Truffaut’s original recordings of his conversations with filmdom’s master of suspense.

This taut look at the Hollywood blacklist interweaves footage from congressional hearings in the late 1940s with then-contemporary interviews, including with Dalton Trumbo after he spent 10 months in prison for contempt of Congress. John Huston, a critic of the political witch hunt against anyone suspected of communism, adds propulsive narration to this harsh look at an ugly chapter of American history. — D.G.

Few would accuse Werner Herzog’s 1982 drama, “Fitzcarraldo,” of being dull. But director Les Blank managed to top Herzog’s classic tale of obsession with this jaw-dropping look at that lunatic production, which called for its crew to transport a boat over a mountain in the Amazon. — P.D.

We form our identities around how we see ourselves represented in pop culture: That’s the thesis of this damning film from Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The doc took the ball from Vito Russo’s revolutionary 1981 book of the same name, about how LGBTQ people are misrepresented in movies, and ran with it. — K.A.

Seductively narrated by Robert Evans, this lush documentary traces his unlikely career from poolside discovery to Paramount executive during the studio’s “Godfather” and “Chinatown” glory days. Alas, the good times — and his marriage to “Love Story” star Ali MacGraw — would not last, but Evans is disarmingly frank about his unconventional life and later career struggles. — D.G.