Documentaries I have loved

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.