My pick of the week is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson declared: "There's no question that it belongs in the canon of greatest American movies." As he pointed out, though, the film "has perhaps been more written about and appreciated than actually seen." Now we can all see it. The two-disk special edition DVD from New Yorker Video includes an audio commentary by Burnett and Richard Peña, two versions of Burnett's feature film My Brother's Wedding, four shorts (three rediscovered and one new) and cast reunion video.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse , directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, stirred up controversy when Hickenlooper said that neither he nor Bahr were consulted on the DVD version of their documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere calls it "one of the best making-of-a-famous-movie docs ever made," but also says that the new DVD from Paramount Home Video "looks like a VHS tape. ... No remastering, tweaking or upgrading ... brilliant!" Sounds like a rental to me. The DVD includes Eleanor Coppola's doc Coda: Thirty Years Later, which will also be screening on cable next month -- see Monika Bartyzel's story for more on that.

Cinematical's James Rocchi saw Gary Hustwit's Helvetica at SXSW and described it as "one of the most intellectually exciting, stimulating, warm-hearted and best-made independent documentaries I've seen in a long time." The DVD includes 95 additional minutes of interviews. Another festival favorite, So Yong Kim's In Between Days (pictured), about a teenage girl dealing with first-time romantic feelings for her "best and only" friend, hits DVD with a stills gallery and a conversation with the director and co-writer/producer Bradley Rust.

In her review Jette Kernion said she was "not a rabid [Werner] Herzog fan, which may actually be the reason why I liked his latest film, Rescue Dawn, as much as I did." The DVD includes commentary by Herzog, deleted scenes, and a "making of" featurette. Luc Besson's Angel-A did not cause much stir when it was released theatrically earlier this year, but I've always been fascinated by the director. The DVD has a "making of" feature.

With plans to screen 100 documentaries in just six days, SilverDocs 2007 gets under way Tuesday, June 12 with Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, directed by Jim Brown (no, not that one; this one), which promises to interweave folk music, social upheaval and Seeger's life and music. Among the six films competing for the Music Documentary Award will be Hip Hop Revolution (history of hip hop in South Africa), Kurt Cobain About a Son (the late musician narrating his own journey) and Nomadak Tx (from Spain, about two musicians and a "magical instrument"). The Beyond Belief program explores "faith, fanaticism, spirituality and ethics in civil society," according to the press notes, and includes the world premieres of Living Goddess (a young girl worshipped as the incarnation of a Hindu goddess lives peacefully in traumatic times) and Orthodox Stance (love that title: a young immigrant in New York City must balance his Hasidic beliefs with his rising career as a boxer).

Politically-charged movies are certainly on the agenda. Just three higher-profile titles that caught my eye: 14 Women (Mary Lambert examines the lives of female US Senators), Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye on abortion; the press notes say it's "carefully balanced," but this is Tony Kaye, whose insane career Erik just wrote about) and State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman spends 217 minutes on "the inner workings of the democratic process," specifically in Idaho). And then there's the latest by Liz Garbus (Coma relates the stories of four victims), Mike Mills (Does Your Soul Have a Cold?, in which Japanese marketers tackle antidepressants), Helvetica (which James reviewed at South by Southwest) and the local premiere of the controversial Nanking (which Kim reviewed at Sundance). Artic Tale is the closing night presentation. My head is swimming with the possibilities. Even if you aren't planning to attend, the film guide is well worth checking out to see the wide range of material that's screening this week in and around Silver Spring, Maryland.

The line-up for Helvetica at South by Southwest this year became its own joke. It's a documentary about a font; what better place for its debut than an audience of computer nerds (for SXSW Interactive) who dig visual design and film nerds (for SXSW Film) needing a break from torrents of either earnestness or blood? But you don't have to be a nerd to like Helvetica -- well, scratch that; you do, a little bit, but you are, so it's okay. And frankly, by the standards of film-festival documentary (which can often be wrenchingly grim or navel-gazingly narcissistic), Helvetica's the feel-good, high-concept movie of the year.

Written and directed by Gary Hustwit, Helvetica seems like a pretty narrow-focus idea; but, then again, you could also argue that one of the best things documentary film can do is go from the micro to the macro -- looking at one story to see where it connects with all stories. And with Helvetica, thanks to Hustwit's clean lines of narrative and intellectually playful style, we get a great look at the universality of Helvetica as a typeface and how, after it was unveiled in 1957 and hailed as a miracle of modernism, it became the unofficial font of official activities. Hustwit's camera noses through a variety of urban landscapes and shows you just how omnipresent Helvetica is -- traffic signs, logos, official notices, storefronts.