Documentaries I have loved

Note as well that the Jon Ronson Jonathon King docco is on tonight at 10pm Channel Four.

Ah yes, the library scene was comic genius. Without that documentary there would have been no Fast Show, Bob Phlegming et al.

My fave documentary = any about spontaneous combustion, in fact I found out just before Xmas that Magnus's godfather was in my very fave one. What a claim to fame!

What abt any of Nick Broomfield's early docs - up to and including 'The Leader, The Driver, And The Driver's Wife'? Godard's 'History of Cinema' series. The long Arena int. w/Orson Welles; also the Burroughs one. Superb Australian doc I once saw abt a charming cad named Mayor Larry Hand. 'The Life And Times of Harvey Milk'. Any of Herzog recentish documentary films. etc etc

Channel 4 Pull Jonathon King documentary At Last Minute. I'll just have to treat our guests to endless playings of Tarkus.

Vegetarians should bring their own dinner round instead of expecting us (well, Pete) to cook it for them as it invariably involves more hassle (soaking pulses etc.) than anything else ever.

this is the band my band is touring with, mind. There is a lot of vomiting and bodily humor ahead of me.

My favorite Documentaries: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Brother's Keeper, and most of all, HANDS ON A HARDBODY.

I'm a big Broomfield fan; also any of the Waco docos made by...Mike...shit, fogto his name, the guy who did Waco - Rules of Engagement.

Hm, favorite documentaries? Don't take this the wrong way, but Triumph of the Will -- talk about an exercise in manipulation that makes *no* apologies. You're astounded by the brazenness and then reflect about why they could be so brazen, and you shudder.

I enjoyed Carol Morley's The Alcohol Years.

Yeah, Neil Diamond Parking Lot is spinoff of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, filmed at the same arena a few years later. It's warm and fuzzy, not nearly as good as Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It's hard to top the Judas Priest crowd.

The commander of the unit involved, and the man who ordered the massacre, was on Lt. Col. William Calley. He served one day in prison for his crimes, before Nixon commuted his sentence (or pardoned him, or something). He declined to be interviewed for the programme. One of the most eerie pieces of footage in the whole thing was some long range shots of him walking down some ordinary American high street.

If it is, I've never heard it before.

Perhaps I should point out here that Nick wasn't referring to the documentary you mention, but the British TV coverage of the same type of event. It was held in some big shopping centre, broadcast live at various points throughout the day on channel 5 and hosted by Dale Winton.

Of course, Hands On A Hardbody might also be the name of the competition in the US, in which case forget everything I just said.

BBC2 had a repeat of "Challenger - Go for Launch" a documentary about the Challenger disaster. The way it followed the countdown to the launch was chilling. Some amazing quotes: "My wife asked how my day went. I sighed and said, "Well, it was fine. We had a meeting, and we're going to launch tomorrow and kill all the astronauts, but appart from that it was okay."" Most painful fact - post-crash investigations revealed that some of the astronauts would have been conscious on descent, and all were probably alive until the moment of impact with the sea.

Then Channel 4 had "Changing Sex" on the history of transsexual surgery which, while not for the squeamish, gave a fascinating insight into the subject. I had no idea, for instance, that female=>male transexuals would be able to have sex post-op. Although interestingly, the guy who seemed to be in the most stable relationship had opted not to have phallic construction, which raised quite a few more questions I wished the programme had investigated.

Better than "Foorballers Wives" anyway.

Does Fat Club count as a documentary?

I'd go with Architecture Of Doom over Triumph Of The Will for the obligatory Nazi documentary, but that's just the cultural art sociologist in me.

I'd also go with East Side Story (about the Soviet-era musicals) for fave film documentary and a toss up between Theremin and Another State Of Mind for best music documentary. Shotgun Freeway for best Los Angeles documentary.

Anyhow, I loved 'Dirk Bogarde: The Name Above The Title' and 'Imagine', which is more a docu-film I suppose.

Ha ha. This reminds me of the opening line of my friend Jason's first philosophy essay at Trinity: 'Rene Descartes is a dead famous French philosopher.'

Do the Qatsi's count?

the most haunting:
silverlake life: the view from here

My favorites are probably Frederick Wiseman's, or at least the two I've seen. His technique is to shoot a lot of footage, edit it, and not really add any background music or provide any explanatory context, just "let the scenes speak for themselves", so to speak. It's fairly different from, say, the Errol Morris style. "High School" is about a late 60s Philadelphia high school, and is scary and fascinating in exactly the ways you'd expect: The faculty come up with all these petty ways to show how much more powerful and important they are than the students, and it's all very sad. "Meat" is a detailed look at the meat industry, following some cows as they go from the farm (where they're fattened) to the slaughterhouse (with a very long and detailed and disgusting at times disturbingly beautiful sequence of the entire slaughtering process) to the market.

In fact, I'm still trying to lay my hands on a copy of it.

I saw some of Wisconsin Death Trip. I didn't really get into it.

Here's what it has to say:

Plot Summary for
Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)

Wisconsin Death Trip is an intimate, shocking and sometimes hilarious account of the disasters that befell one small town in Wisconsin during the final decade of the 19th century. The film is inspired by Michael Lesy's book of the same name which was first published in 1973. Lesy discovered a striking archive of black and white photographs in the town of Black River Falls dating from the 1890s and married a selection of these images to extracts from the town's newspaper from the same decade. The effect was surprising and disturbing. The town of Black River Falls seems gripped by some peculiar malaise and the weekly news is dominated by bizarre tales of madness, eccentricity and violence amongst the local population. Suicide and murder are commonplace. People in the town are haunted by ghosts, possessed by devils and terrorized by teenage outlaws and arsonists. Like the book, the film is constructed entirely from authentic news reports from the Black River Falls' newspaper with occasional excerpts from the records of the nearby Mendota Asylum for the Insane. The film also makes use of the haunting black and white photographs taken by the resident portrait photographer of Black River Falls at the end of the 19th century. Contemporary color documentary footage of the town today is also included at the end of each section of the film that take place over the course of four seasons.

Bless your heart.

Also worth mention: Roger & Me, Gates of Heaven, Crumb

Has anyone seen "Heart of Darkness: A filmmaker's Apocalypse"? I never see it at my video store

As for dark days this was so scary a docu as lerts face it could you live like that - and when they all got moved out it was like ...what now, it certainly woke me up to what people go through in life - and i thought i new some stuff.

Hoop dreams i love, just love - "immma keep on and on, and ima never stop"

oooh Jon Ronson's them was fantastic and the holidays in the axis of evil was an eye opener. Man utd are gonna sell so many shirts in iraq now sadd@ms gone

I had been really curious about Capturing the Friedmans, ever since I first heard about it, but at the time it only seemed to last a couple of weeks in the local theaters, so I had to wait until HBO aired it to actually see it, and what I saw was quite haunting. You don't really know whether the two accused people were actually guilty or if they were fully innocent, and it does seem to say a lot not only about mass hysteria but also about dysfunctional family dynamics wrapped up in a seemingly perfect package.

I've gotten to see Garden a few times and I find it quite sad. It's the documentary about two teenaged runaways in Israel, one Jewish and the other Palestinian, who are both best friends and male prostitutes, who live out on the streets and do quite a lot just to survive. I first stumbled across this documentary while flipping channels and it drew me in. You do get to caring about the two boys featured in the documentary.

I wish there was some documentary out there about the New Romantic scene. I would love to see its origins, not only in London but throughout England, its rise, and how things were like at the clubs at the point where the scene was at its zenith. I would adore the opportunity to see my favorite musical genre covered in such historical terms. (But realistically, the chances of that happening are as good as, oh, say, the Boston Red Sox going to the World Series. Oh. Wait. *wink*)

All of a sudden been catching the odd one:

- Did anyone see the last doc Jon Ronson Made for C4 a few weeks ago? About the unitarian priest who provides er, 'comfort' to people who are about to die. Didn't quite know what to make of Jon concluding by saying he liked him!

- Terror's Advocate was also pretty amazing, first time I've been to see a doc in the cinema. Verges proved to be actually fascinating, but he was only the starting point for a history of mid and late 20th century terrorism.

- The Sorrow and the Pity hasn't been mentioned so I will now.

Does A Decade Under The Influence count? I loved those. Recently I've seen a few that I liked but didn't love: Helvetica and 51 Birch Street. I love a few that were mentioned earlier, Grey Gardens, Crumb, Gates of Heaven and of course the Up series. Most recent doc I recall loving is Mad Hot Ballroom.

Oh I forgot about Z Channel! I love love love that one.

Iraq In Fragments, Devil and Daniel Johnston, Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King, The Mother, Forbidden Lie$, Summercamp!, Crumb, Salesmen, Darwin's Nightmare, Manda Bala, American Teen, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, The Falling Man, The Monastery, Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa , Hoop Dreams...

I think one reason I love documentary film so much is that the genre keeps getting better and better each year as films start to experiment more with the form.

I saw 'Encounters at the End of the World' this weekend, it was quite moving and funny.

I think one reason I love documentary film so much is that the genre keeps getting better and better each year as films start to experiment more with the form.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. If anything documentary has gotten more conservative in the last 10-20 years. And when does your timeline start? Flahrety? Lumiere?

I like documentaries (a lot)

Documentaries I have seen in the past year or so and would recommend to others (in no particular order): Grey Gardens; King of Kong; Jesus Camp; Capturing the Friedmans; Vernon, Florida; Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe; The Devil and Daniel Johnston; Who the @#$% is Jackson Pollack; Gimme Shelter; Born Into Brothels; How to Draw a Bunny; Wordplay; Tarnation; When the Levees Broke;

Documentaries I plan to see: Lake of Fire; Jonestown; My Kid Could Paint That; Standard Operating Procedure; Hoop Dreams; No Direction Home; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control; Mr. Death; Cocksucker Blues; Why We Fight

All time favorites: American Movie, The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line; Winged Migration; Crumb; The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years

It is worth mentioning that my girlfriend and I recently had the bright idea to watch the entirety of Ken Burns' The War in an all-day marathon. I highly recommend the series, but do not do as I did unless you're OK with a night of really fucked up dreams.

Question: Do I have an Errol Morris fetish? Answer: Yes.

Question #2: I can't remember the name of a film I saw earlier this year. It was about a reclusive artist with a mental illness who lived alone in a boarding house and, upon dying, bestowed upon the world a secret pile of drawings and writings that depicted a painstakingly detailed and brilliantly illustrated fantasy world involving a group of nubile teenage girls who were being preyed upon by some evil monsters or something. This movie was actually really great. Could someone please remind me what it is called?

Nice to see the Borchardt love on this thread. The man is a personal hero of mine.

In The Realms of the Unreal?

Yeah that's the one. And fast! Thank you sir.

Lake of Fire wasn't as brutal as I thought it would be. In fact, the only part that bothered me was when it turned into Chomsky & co. talking head party at the end. Not that I disagreed with what they said, but it lost any sense of narrative. Really good movie, tho.

I liked "This Film Is Not Yet Rated"...tons of surprising facts I didn't know about the MPAA, and pretty entertaining to boot.

SOund and Fury, which is about a deaf family whose five year old daughter wants a cochlear implant, is way hardcore and fascinating, too.

This Film is Not Yet Rated - O yeah. I forgot about that one. I'll add it to ye olde Netflix queue..

Century of the Self is fantastic, too, not available on Netflix bu you can download it from archive.org

I've watched so many documentaries in the past three years that I feel like I'm starting to burn out on them, or run out of them, or both.

Inside Deep Throat is a really good one, too.

And the oft-referred to one about exceptionally gifted autistic children. Especially the child who could draw the entire skyline of London from memory, with pinpoint accuracy. I could watch a whole hour documentary just of him drawing. Absolutely extraordinary.
-- Trevor, Sunday, January 6, 2002 8:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

Does anyone know the title of this film?

tape store so u dug forbidden lies??

I thought a lot of the shots of Khoury like walking along posing and stuff were pretty O_o, but i generally found it entertaining.

Maybe these Oliver sacks TV shows, "The Mind Traveler"? I haven't seen them, but I read about that artist kid in one of his books, and it looks like something similar is featured here:

The Mind Traveler (US broadcast). Four-part PBS series by Rosetta Pictures. Christopher Rawlence, producer and director; Emma Crichton-Miller, co-producer. Episodes on "The Ragin' Cajun" (on a deaf-blind community in Seattle); "Island of the Colorblind" (on color and colorblindness in a small Pacific atoll); "Rage for Order" (on an autistic artist, Jessy Park); and "Don't be Shy, Mr. Sacks" (on Williams syndrome), September 1998.

The Mind Traveler (U.K. Broadcast). Six-part BBC series by Rosetta Pictures. Christopher Rawlence, producer and director; Emma Crichton-Miller, co-producer. September 1996. In addition to the episodes listed above, the U.K. broadcast included "Poison in Paradise" (a mysterious neurological disease on the island of Guam) and "Shane" (an artist with Tourette Syndrome).

These sound really awesome!

Nice suggestions, Abbot. I haven't seen any of those.

Re: I'm starting to burn out on them, or run out of them, or both. - If you find that it's the latter, you could always turn to the PBS archives - an impossible wealth of hour-long, feature-length and serial documentaries on pretty much everything under the sun. Infotainment at its finest! Chances are your local library has an enormous cache of these gathering dust and just waiting for you to check them out (for free!).

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. If anything documentary has gotten more conservative in the last 10-20 years. And when does your timeline start? Flahrety? Lumiere?

I was typing a long response to this, but I guess this sums up my views:

I have watched many documentaries from many time periods. I have yet to see anything reach FORBIDDEN LIE$' level of mindfuck. I have yet to see a documentary told as poetically as THE MOTHER (including, yes, the holy fucking Nanook). More and more hybrids are popping up, and they keep getting more and more interesting.

I was watching this one documentary a few months ago that wasn't very good, but I didn't feel like I was wasting any time because, while it sucked, it had all these interesting ideas about form...splicing together all sorts of unrelated stories and shots of abandoned mental clinics and weird youtube clips...The whole thing made me excited about different sorts of craft...An Altman-esque doc with fiction-like camerawork, for instance. I didn't like CHICAGO 10 as much as everyone else, but the fact that Morgen decided to tell the story that way rather than using talking heads...I found it exciting. I guess that explains why i think documentary is getting better.

Also, the number of entertaining docs seems to have gone up tremendously in recent years (entertainment obv. goes hand-in-hand with craft)...I'm thinking of AMERICAN TEEN, MURDERBALL, SPELLBOUND, THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON, et al.

I was typing a long response to this...

tape store so u dug forbidden lies??

I thought a lot of the shots of Khoury like walking along posing and stuff were pretty O_o, but i generally found it entertaining.

I thought it was completely genius...SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED so it's about a director being conned by a con-artist and yet, all along, that director is actually conning the audience...incredible

Pillbox, you were asking about this:

> And the oft-referred to one about exceptionally gifted autistic
> children. Especially the child who could draw the entire skyline of
> London from memory, with pinpoint accuracy.

there've been a couple, for the BBC - one episode of QED and another called Fragments of Genius.

this is him:
http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/

the recent Imagine show on Oliver Sacks had a bloke on there who was the same with music.

and has anybody mentioned Etre et Avoir?

abbott you should see yangtze

faves of the last yaer

american teen
who is this nilsson (and why is everybody talkin' about him?)
encounters at the end of the world
chris & don: a love story

actually, SW lists all his documentary appearances on that website and it runes to over 40 in various countries...

Actually most of the docos I thought I loved turned out to be films in disguise so that was upsetting because I realised I'm not so cultured.

films in disguise???

I love old public television documentaries ... PBS, BBC, all of em. Don't know what it is about them

Anyway, some other great documentaries that maybe haven't been mentioned (apologies if they have) - Seventeen, Handsworth Songs, How To Live In The German Federal Republic, Route One (or is Route One USA?), El Cielo Gira, Get Rid Of Yourself. Someone already mentioned Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, but that's good (some problems though). The best documentary I've seen recently is Grant Gee's film about Joy Division, and I don't even really like Joy Division.

films in disguise???

http://www.impawards.com/1997/posters/waiting_for_guffman.jpg?

http://www.filmfodder.com/movies/reviews/master_of_disguise/images/master_of_disguise.jpg?

Impawards!

this is a good documentary that played on the television:

http://xhgc18.blogspot.com/2008/01/dont-get-high-on-your-own-supply.html

at the last ATP saw most of "Fearless Freaks", the Flaming Lips documentary. Great stuff, early histories, crazy family antics, further confirms Coyne's status as total dude and Nicest Guy in Rock; and one o_O and heartbreaking scene of one band member talking frankly about his heroin addiction while preparing to shoot up.

ledge, you should check out Summercamp! It's directed by the same guy + Sarah Price (The Yes Men, American Movie) and features a score by the Flaming Lips.

Uta Hagen's Acting Class was fun, other than a handful of bum scenes. she was a character wow.

*sigh* @ 18yo me

lol.
you're doing what you said you wouldn't!

I'll be seeing the Phil Spector documentary sometime in the next few weeks. Anyone seen it? Is there lots of cool Spector to go along with freak-show Spector? Is it the most egregious bad-hair film since Joe Pesci in JFK?.

I really liked the Louis Malle documentaries that the Criterion Collection reissued, like Phantom India, Calcutta, God's Country, Human too Human, Place de Republique, and Vive le Tour... especially Phantom India and God's Country.

Hoop Dreams -- I'm drunk and teary eyed watching this right now

Kings of Pastry was pretty enjoyable.

hoops dreams was very great don't get me wrong but i almost thought it was juuuust lacking on both the basketball and personal lives fronts

basically my criticism is i wanted it to be 8 hours instead of what, 3?

I kind of agree in that respect. saw hoop dreams while recovering from surgery in 95 and wanted more. Like more versions of hoop drams w/ different kids and stuff

haven't seen in it years but that was my reaction too

Yeah it does feel like it could use maybe two or three more players followed.

OTOH watched Gunnin For That #1 Spot and though it was totally superficial.

I haven't read the whole thread, but KING OF KONG MUTHAFUCKERS!

If you watch Hoop Dreams, you gotta watch "Recruiters" from Mr. Show. Unless you don't have a sense of humor.

Also, King of Kong was pretty amazing. And I Like Killing Flies.

There were some recent lists posted on the ILF thread for favourite documentaries. I've got a month till I go back to school, so I'd be very interested in running a Favourite Documentary poll if a) there'd be enough voters (25 at least?), and b) the people running music polls don't object. I wouldn't do nominations or campaigning: just send me your list of 10, I'll tabulate the votes and count down the list. Please post any thoughts here--if there's enough interest, I'll proceed.

sounds cool, id participate

maybe allow unranked ballots also if ppl just want to put in for 10 they generally like a lot

sounds like a great idea.

Unranked would be fine. I'd keep it to 10 because, even though I see a lot of documentaries myself, and know that there are other people on the board who do also, I realize that generally people don't. But I think a list of 10 would be relatively easy for most anyone.

yeah that'd be great! always nice to have an excuse to watch lots of documentaries.

I thought this was going to be bumped for Britain Through A Lens: The Documentary Film Mob which was shown on BBC4 tonight. It was pretty good, though didn't really tell me anything I hadn't learned in my A Level Film class.

Would definitely be up for the poll - a film poll would be a nice change of pace from all the music ones going on, too. Though I'm still sore over the fact that the 1930s one never happened.

i love documentaries but lately (past couple of years) have really not felt compelled to watch them. because so many of them are so damn depressing tbh.
i do want to see the New York Times doc (also likely depressing)

i watched this doc the other day (it came up on netflix) called "Dear Zachary" and i feel like i cried through most it? i wasn't even in a crying mood; it was just incredibly sad and, at the same time felt like it was just one of many stories of a similar vein that could be told, and so, in a weird way was mundane in its almost unbearable sadness. so sadder still! eegh

because so many of them are so damn depressing tbh.

lol, i feel like this says something pretty bad about fiction as escapism and real life as just terribleness from which we should escape.

i would vote in this i guess? i am not v orderly. do we need definitions? are essay films documentaries?, etc?

haha i was going to follow up what i said there with something along the lines of "tbf i find most hollywood comedies depressing too"

There seems to be some interest, so I'll start a thread tomorrow. I think enough people will drift in with votes for 25+.

By essay film (xpost), I guess you mean something like Letter to Jane. I don't know if I'd count that as a documentary myself, but if a couple of people decided that it was and voted for it, fine by me. I found a site with an overview of 100 documentaries that's very good (http://movies.sky.com/gallery-100-best-documentaries), but I notice they list Altman's Tanner '88. Excellent film, but that's just wrong.

Do we get a few weeks or etc. to watch some docs we've been meaning to see?

My only qualifier is that I'd have to have the whole thing finished by the third week of August. I was thinking a two-week window for sending in ballots.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Monde_silence.jpg

my fav documentary

also possibly the least educational one i have ever seen :/

Oof, yes, that list is very inclusive. I mean, if we were to count The War Game and Haxan as documentaries I'd have to put them at the top of my list, but I'm really not convinced that they should count.

Flopson: see Rushmore! No, from what I remember of The War Game and Punishment Park, I wouldn't count them either.

ah, i've never found a copy of the silent world w/subtitles, which mightn't matter greatly but leaves me hanging on. it would be nice to catch a cinema viewing also.

what happens, with these things, do we discuss in the thread & lobby for our choices or do we just dispassionately direct a sealed, sealed e-mail to clemenza

I'm going to start a new thread in a few minutes.

Documentary I thought was okay: One Bright Shining Moment, about George McGovern. It's worshipful, which is never good, even when dealing with someone who inevitably does look like a saint next to Nixon, and the chronology's scrambled up in a way that seemed unnecessary to me. The Eagleton episode is fascinating; if that were to happen today, the media fallout would be incomprehensible. If I could go back and sit glued to the TV for any convention, the Democrats in '72 would be my next choice after '68. Watching the interviewees struggle to understand how they allowed it to happen that McGovern gave his acceptance speech at 1:30 a.m.--a great speech, they all say--is also weirdly compelling. Frank Mankiewicz is funny, and Jim Bouton smokes 'em inside.

Just watched Born Rich, which is about heirs/heiresses in NYC, made by a Johnson & Johnson heir. A perfectly fine and well-meaning film but not especially good or insightful. If being born rich is a compelling topic, this guy failed to tap into whatever makes it so.

oh my god this is so incredible. i haven't seen anything this incredible in a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfX7XKg71i0

wow! so cool. and so NSFW, so wait until you get home...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJpq7klu_Pc&feature=share

hbo summer doc series has been p good

watched the 1 on marilyn monroe - lots of cool footage; it's dumb 2 have actors read/act her journals but i understand it & it's otherwise well put together

this 1 on public defenders is really good! harbl shd watch it

then gasland 2 is on next week i think? & then theres one on the home invasion murder in ct which took place in the town i grew up in~

just tryna get your "i was in all night watching tv" alibi down huh

otm

I tried to watch the Marilyn one but it made me cringe

The Pussy Riot doc was good tho

oh yea i forgot abt that 1 yea p good

i am in deep love w/ this girlhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Nadezhda_Tolokonnikova_%28Pussy_Riot%29_at_the_Moscow_Tagansky_District_Court_%28crop%29.jpg

she's p rad

There is an excellent '04 Martin Rees science/cosmology series called What We Still Don't Know (all 3 eps on youtube) that are way better than the average Cox type dross.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newburgh_Sting

^this was v good

The Queen of Versailles is near genius imo

Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self

anyone for Cousin Jules? Quietly devastating, as they say.

The Institute (streaming on netflix)

xxp

I found Century Of Self quite mindblowing. I'd never heard of Edward Bernays and all that engineering of consent stuff before watching it.

i watched "avenge but one of my two eyes" over the weekend. excellent.

finally saw Harlan County, USA

one of the all-timers obv

morbs otm

harlan county usa is so great, saw it for first time today & cannot stop thinking about it

also thank you to this movie for introducing me to hazel dickens <3

saw Sherpa last night after my brother recommended it a few weeks ago. Quite moving and also quite disgusting how little regard teh sherpas are treated with by the streams of people wanting to get to the top of Everest. Photos of the amount of people trying to climb resembled those of the lines trying to get into the Yukon for the goldrush.

Story of Plastics
saw this last summer and it hasa really scathing view of the continued cosntruction of single use plastics as well as the overly complex mixture of different plastics that go into packaging which make them very difficult to recycle.
Also goes into the whole idea of recycling overseas and what the reality is. They go to some place in Asia to see the effects and the actual process of recycling which is only used on a very small percentage of what is shipped because too much stuf can't be recycled as is. plus things get corrupted with dirt, foodstuffs etc and are therefore not able to be recycled even if they could be when pristine. Mouldy paper attached to plastic also a negative.
& plastic is still pushed by teh fossil fuels concerns. Time for a rethink.
I had seen a different doc on the effects of plastics on wildlife around the Atlantic how birds were flying thousands of miles on food runs only to come back with loads of plastic that wouldn't nourish their kids, how snails were building shells out of plastics and how the salination process of the oceans was being screwed up as plankton were processing plastics instead of their old process. So may have bits of that doc mixed up with bits of this.
BUt one takeaway I had , though possibly something I'd arrived at before, was plastic has been marketed asa disposable material since it was introduced only there is no easy way of disposing of it. Hope that changes soon, I am hearing some indications that there are ways of disposing of plastic underway but not fully established as yet.

I saw several green docs last year about the ecosystem and how things grow in good soil I think these included Soil, Dirt and Growth.
All of which seem to be really good indications of how things should be looked at and why one should move away from the monoculture that has been a farming method during mass production. Because it is detrimental to teh state of the soil that one needs to grow things in.

Tomorrow an English language version of a documentary originally released as Demain
A look into various aspects of systems theory and the work of Joanna Macy.
Has some really interesting things turning up Finland Education system, local area currency, biodiversity and several other things. Worth a watch.

I put off watching Collective on Hulu for weeks, thinking an expose of corruption in Romania couldn't be all that shocking. But it's great as cinema, and pretty appalling as well.

oh, that was on BBC4 recently as part of the Storyville strand, so the pvr picked it up on my season pass. but i've not watched it yet.

it's still available on iplayer here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tpzn

other recent things on the same season pass, the one about the 80 year old mole undercover in the rest home, which was great.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000th7v

and the one about Goebbels's 103 year old secretary which i thought was really short on details but she had such a striking face.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00052bf

just watched Collective. started with a literal sparkler, went big places. but the end was gutting. still 7 months left to watch on iplayer.

(actually, both the ones i mentioned above were up for the documentary oscar, both lost out to the octopus teacher thing)

(both = collective and mole agent, i didn't notice i'd also mentioned Goebbels' secretary)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kxl0/storyville-united-skates

"When America's last standing roller rinks are threatened with closure, a community of thousands battles in a racially charged environment to save an underground subculture - one that has remained undiscovered by the mainstream for generations, yet has given rise to some of the world's greatest musical talent."