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Screen Time: Week of May 1

By Akiva Gottlieb


From 'Anvil! The Story of Anvil.'

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.

On May 1 at 10:00 p.m., Independent Lens premieres Sonia Kennebeck's National Bird, which The New York Times called "an elegantly unsettling documentary." The film tells the story of the whistleblowers determined to break the silence around the controversial, secret US drone war.

Streaming on Netflix starting May 1, it's Sacha Gervasi's Anvil! The Story of Anvil. The hilarious, poignant, unforgettable story of an influential but commercially unsuccessful Canadian heavy metal band won the 2009 IDA Documentary Award for Best Feature. 

Fandor is now streaming two films from China's master of large-scale social documentary, Wang Bing. 'Til Madness Do Us Part takes place in an isolated mental institution in southwest China's Yunnan province, and Three Sisters tells an intimate story set in a tiny mountain village.

Streaming for free on Vimeo is the 2009 debut film from Bill and Turner Ross, 45365, a portrait of a small Midwestern town that Roger Ebert called "achingly beautiful."