Documentaries I have loved

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.