The Documentary Discussion Thread

[balmakboor]

I was recently asked to put together a Top 50 films list for some guy’s blog (1linereview.blogspot.com) and – never one to turn down such an opportunity – dutifully set to work on a fresh new list.

I started typing out films I love as they came to me. I got ten films in and paused for a moment:

Decasia
Sonic Outlaws
The Thin Blue Line
Gimme Shelter
Sans Soleil
F for Fake
Scorio Rising
Sherman's March
Nanook of the North
Dear Zachary

I found it interesting that everything I’d come up with either is – or could be argued to be – a documentary. I thought, “I watch a lot of documentaries. I’d like one place where I could share my thoughts on them – either quick blurbs or full-ass reviews. I wonder if others watch many.”

So, here it is. Anything goes, as long as it pertains in some way to documentaries, including, hopefully, discussion on, “What exactly is a documentary anyway?”

[balmakboor]

I was home sick the other day, so I re-watched Sonic Outlaws and then wrote this:

The best place to begin with the films of Craig Baldwin is in the middle. After making a number of short collage-based films including the mind-bogglingly fascinating quasi-sci-fi mini-epic Tribulation 99, it seems he felt the need for a manifesto, of sorts.

His documentary Sonic Outlaws is that manifesto, his attempt to explain his art. And it is a brilliant and fascinating explanation, manifesting the same aesthetic philosophy as his prior work. It is as mind-bogglingly rich as any of his films before, and after.

Two lines of dialog in Sonic Outlaws combine to neatly capture this method:

“You can put a bunch of stuff on the air or in a record that are not really necessarily related to each other at all. Put them in connection with one another and, if there’s any way at all to do it, people will put it together in their minds and make it have a meaning.”

“… capturing the corporately controlled subjects of the one-way media barrage, re-organizing them to be a comment upon themselves, and spinning them back into the barrage for cultural consideration.”

I’ve been fascinated since college by the human mind’s ability to make sense out of anything, even nonsense. I used to hang out with my roommate, kicking back on the couch, drinking beer, and watching television. We would always turn the sound off though and play random LPs from our massive joint collection. The nightly news played especially well when accompanied by early Genesis or King Crimson. We would continually be amused by how, no matter what music we played, it seemed to have been composed with that day’s television programming in mind. Kind of made the entire Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon synchronicity seem all the nuttier.

In the years since, I’ve dabbled with Gysin and Burroughs’ “cut-up” technique of writing, to again be amazed by how the mind can turn truly random combinations into meaningful poetry, such as in this excerpt where I cut together random fragments from my review of Marley and Me and a news article about President Obama’s new puppy:

“The President did with happy, puppy times. Ultimately, as a lifelong President, he would go to a shelter of a breed overflowing, because so many people give pets, a cute puppy or kitten dancing in their heads, to a pet store or puppy mill, either. It’s a gray conscious response to these tough economic forgiving.”

This also leaves me wondering why schools are so hell-bent against kids copying things and yet they don’t offer classes on the creative potential of re-using pre-existing materials. But I seriously digress…

Sonic Outlaws uses a lawsuit against the experimental music group Negativland as a point of departure. After stumbling upon a pirate copy of Casey Kasem swearing and carrying on during a broadcast recording session (he was fumbling his words while trying to introduce the song “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” by U2 and getting frustrated), the group got an idea, creatively juxtapose bits and pieces of the tape with fragments of U2 songs. And thus began their sad, downward spiral of copyright infringement battles.

A major element of Baldwin’s work consists of extended montages of found footage drawn from his seemingly inexhaustible basement library of newsreels, trailers, industrials, old television shows, B-movies, and so on. And Sonic Outlaws is ripe with such extended virtuoso sequences.

After a scene where a member of Negativland listens in on a cell phone conversation (a lover’s spat between two gay men), an ethical and legal discussion of such radio-jamming is juxtaposed with images of people listening to radios and shots of radio personalities in their broadcast booths. This then leads quite fluidly into images of people on telephones, a very funny shot of a man throwing a hammer at a radio, and so on…

Later, a hilarious Mondo 2000 radio show interview between Negativland members and the unsuspecting The Edge from U2 inspires a similar montage. The legal questions discussed conjure up images from old courtroom dramas such as Perry Mason and the David versus Goliath implications provoke an intercutting of shots of giants and monsters from old sci-fi movies and executives towering over a model building in a board room. The Edge calls it “the most surreal interview I’ve ever had in my life.” Baldwin’s treatment turns the surreal into the inspired.

And that’s just the beginning. The film is like a snowball rolling down a hill. It gains speed and energy as it accumulates more and more illustrations of its thesis.

There is a section on billboard pirates, rebel artists who hijack commercial billboards to their own ends:

“…forget about the rest. Invest in Greed. Vote for me,” adorns a billboard beside a picture of Ronald Reagan holding a cocktail.

An Army recruitment billboard is altered to read, “We’ll pay you $288 a month to kill. Today’s Army wants to join you.”

And Sonic Outlaws continues to gain momentum by considering copyright infringement issues in relation to artists like Andy Warhol (Campbell Soup cans), the Mellotron (used to musically manipulate taped recording of symphony orchestras), and Daffy Duck’s rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Legal battles over Too Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbinson’s “Pretty Woman” (“Big hairy woman, you need to shave that stuff…”), a Mad Magazine issue with Irving Berlin song lyric parodies, and some mad fool who thought he could get away with cartoons showing Mickey and Minnie Mouse having sex are all drawn into the vortex as well.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, we get glimpses into the history of Dadaist art, Marshall McCluhan, William S. Burroughs, a kid making a cut-and-paste animated film, children copying and stretching Sunday comics using Silly Putty, and a group called Barbie’s Liberation Organization which surgically altered talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, swapping their voices, and placing them back on store shelves.

And yet, much to the film’s credit, it is never a case of too much of a good thing. Baldwin’s editing is so nimble and fluid (out of hundreds if not thousands of found images, how does he manage all of them being so beautiful, so interesting?) that he pulls it off. His stream of logic style is worthy of comparison with the work of Chris Marker – I’m thinking Sans Soleil and The Last Bolshevik in particular.

Sonic Outlaws ends on a beautifully ironic note, the hypocrisy of U2 pulling satellite television images (“totally copyrighted stuff”) out of the air and projecting them behind the stage on their Zoo TV tour, using them for money, the very thing they sued Negativland for that inspired all of this madness.

I guess if you’re big enough you can get away with anything. All others beware.

[balmakboor]

As a huge This is Spinal Tap fan, I can't wait to see this:

http://www.anvilmovie.com/

And it's hard to believe I haven't seen Metallica: Some Kind of Monster yet.

[balmakboor]

Documentaries have such a way of showing you things that fiction films just can't -- or that will seem silly or contrived if they try.

I've never been as mesmerized as while watching Mick Jagger try to keep his composure while a man is on a seriously bad trip just barely off-stage.

Nothing gave me the willys like watching Zachary's parents' visits with the woman who killed their son.

Nothing made me worry more about my own teenage daughter and how hung up she is on her boyfriend than watching Hannah fall apart after the "love of her life" dumped her in American Teen.

If the image of a female soldier smoking a cigarette and winking while forcing a prisoner to masturbate while naked and blindfolded was placed in a fictional film, the filmmaker would be called out for heavy-handed exaggeration. No such accusations fly -- how can they? -- from Taxi to the Dark Side.

[megladon8]

Documentaries are an area of film I've left all but unexplored, and I don't know why. I can probably count the number I've seen on my fingers without doubling up, yet just about every time I've seen one I've found it fascinating.

I suppose I find the breadth of topics daunting. And back home they're not something you often find readily available in DVD rental/stores. They don't have their own section, they are just kind of sprinkled throughout the drama section and it's all the "typical" ones (Michael Moore stuff, An Inconvenient Truth, that sort of thing).

I would really like to see Man on Wire.

[balmakboor]

Documentaries are an area of film I've left all but unexplored, and I don't know why. I can probably count the number I've seen on my fingers without doubling up, yet just about every time I've seen one I've found it fascinating.

I suppose I find the breadth of topics daunting. And back home they're not something you often find readily available in DVD rental/stores. They don't have their own section, they are just kind of sprinkled throughout the drama section and it's all the "typical" ones (Michael Moore stuff, An Inconvenient Truth, that sort of thing).

I would really like to see Man on Wire.

A lot of people avoid them for some reason, probably expecting them to be boring. Our film society plays a series of five films every October, for the past five years. Our first two series were all documentaries. Since then, we've tried other things and we always get comments saying they wished we'd go back to documentaries. Next October, we will. People love them, when they get a chance to see them.

I've become a bit addicted to Netflix instant watch lately, and almost everything in my queue is a doc. They just seem perfect for watching in bed on my laptop.

Man on Wire is terrific, by the way. Here is my review:

http://www.cinema100.com/2009/03/man-on-wire.html

[Russ]

I love documentaries and I would love to see tons more. Would like to hear you elaborate more on what you feel can be classified as a documentary (I wouldn't have even thought of Scorpio Rising). Ten of my favorites would probably include:

American Movie
Ashes and Snow
Burden of Dreams
Crumb
For all Mankind
Microcosmos
My Best Fiend
Rivers and Tides
The Thin Blue Line
Vernon, Florida

Of course, I love the 'Qatsi films, Baraka, Häxan (if it can even be considered a documentary), etc. If there are any I've listed that you're not familiar with, let me know and I'll tell you why I think they're pretty great.

[balmakboor]

I love documentaries and I would and to see tons more. Would like to hear you elaborate more on what you feel can be classified as a documentary (I wouldn't have even thought of Scorpio Rising). Ten of my favorites would probably include:

American Movie
Ashes and Snow
Burden of Dreams
Crumb
For all Mankind
Microcosmos
My Best Fiend
Rivers and Tides
The Thin Blue Line
Vernon, Florida

Of course, I love the 'Qatsi films, Baraka, Häxan (if it can be considered a documentary, of course), etc. If there are any I've listed that you're not familiar with, let me know and I'll tell you why I think they're pretty great.

I've seen everything in your list except:

Ashes and Snow
For all Mankind
Microcosmos

although I certainly know about the last two. What is Ashes and Snow?

I agree that the ones I've seen are all compelling. While it got a bit repetitive, Rivers and Tides was truly fascinating. The thought of artists working that hard to create something that they know will be gone soon after is so intriguing.

I could consider Scorpio Rising a documentary -- although it truly lives in a gray area, a huge gray area -- because everything in the film really happened in the world Anger was exploring and he just filmed it. That really was a guy messing with his bike in his actual garage as he does any other day. That really was a guy in his actual, unaltered bedroom getting ready to go out and party. The was a real party. That was a real race and that guy really did crash and die at the end.

What do I think defines a doc? Well, that's a huge and fuzzy gray area. I once, long ago, wrote a piece titled "All Films Are Documentaries." I should dig it up. I'm sure it reads pretty sillily now, but I still agree with many of its ideas, as I remember them.

[soitgoes...]

10 docs I love:

In the Shadow of the Moon
When the Levees Broke
Planet Earth
The Agronomist
Hoop Dreams
The Atomic Cafe
Harlan County U.S.A.
General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait
LBJ
Meat

One short and two mini-series, all great.

I love documentaries. I used to not pay much attention to them, but now I actively seek them out.

[soitgoes...]

Documentaries are an area of film I've left all but unexplored, and I don't know why. I can probably count the number I've seen on my fingers without doubling up, yet just about every time I've seen one I've found it fascinating.

I suppose I find the breadth of topics daunting. And back home they're not something you often find readily available in DVD rental/stores. They don't have their own section, they are just kind of sprinkled throughout the drama section and it's all the "typical" ones (Michael Moore stuff, An Inconvenient Truth, that sort of thing).

I would really like to see Man on Wire.
Netflix would be the obvious answer, but in Canada that wouldn't be any help. Libraries have a good selection of documentaries usually. Also cable stations like IFC (not sure about the Canada thing, but maybe something comparable?) show a number of docs.

[balmakboor]

10 docs I love:

In the Shadow of the Moon
When the Levees Broke
Planet Earth
The Agronomist
Hoop Dreams
The Atomic Cafe
Harlan County U.S.A.
General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait
LBJ
Meat

One short and two mini-series, all great.

I love documentaries. I used to not pay much attention to them, but now I actively seek them out.

I'm really looking forward to the Idi Amin doc. It's in my Netflix queue. I saw Levees Broke and it's very good. Since you liked it, I'll suggest Trouble the Water, also about the Katrina. It is the small and personal version of what Spike Lee did on an epic scale.

Jonathan Demme's Agronomist is also terrific. His Jimmy Carter Man of Plains is up next in my instant queue.

Spike Lee, Jonathan Demme, Barbet Schroeder, and don't forget Martin Scorsese. All major fictional directors who also make docs. It almost seems as if they need to cleanse the palate with a bit of truth every now and then.

[Russ]

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/4656/colbertswimmingwithelep.jpg



I've seen everything in your list except:

Ashes and Snow
For all Mankind
Microcosmos

although I certainly know about the last two. What is Ashes and Snow?
It's the filmed journal of acclaimed Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert's touring art installation. Another one that stretches the definition of documentary, since there is obviously much posing and staging to capture the "shots" (which in the film, are recorded beautifully as slo-mo, sepia-tinged ambience, with inobtrusive musical accomaniment and occasionally pretentious "narration" (read: incessantly repeated mantra) courtesy of Laurence Fishburne. However, the staged shots are staggeringly gorgeous. Some have even been copped by filmmakers (Tarsem, I'm looking at you).


http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/1254/gregorycolbertashesands.jpg


http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/2807/ge12.jpg


http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/7475/07yu3.jpg



A part of me wonders if there's any credence to charges of exploitation; at the very least, I have to wonder about the potential danger (to the animals or models) and/or trauma for all the species involved. However, such thoughts only exist outside the moment. Regardless, I think it's a pretty brilliant work of art. Any fans of Baraka or the Qatsi trilogy owe it to themselves to track this one down.

[Qrazy]

Just off the top of my head one that hasn't been mentioned that most would probably like is Amandla!

Also Kieslowski's short docs and Herzog's are great as well.

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner FTW.

[lovejuice]

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/4656/colbertswimmingwithelep.jpg

truth be told, what i find even cooler than his photograph is his "nomadic museum." which, i think, is how he exhibit his work. he constructs his own gallery from containers. the museum came to santa monica beach two years ago. it's among one of the amazing constructing i've ever seen.

http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/nomadic_museum_mar_05.jpg

http://www.inhabitat.com/images/nomadic2.jpg

http://constructionblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/nomadic_museum_mexico_city_6.j pg

http://www.globalgraphica.com/main/archives/nomadic_museum_04.jpg

[lovejuice]

on a related note, my close friend is a documentary film-maker. he's now shooting something. i can't tell you what it is, but he shows me a five minutes clip of it, and i bet it's going to be amazing.

[Russ]

Another pretty amazing documentary is Geoffrey O'Conner and Louis Theroux's film The Most Hated Family in America, a fascinating profile of Reverend Fred Phelps and his hatemongering family, who make up virtually the entire congregation of the Westboro Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas. They're the ones who picket U.S. soldiers' funerals all because they choose to defend a "fag-loving" country. It's like the proverbial car wreck -- can't look directly at it, but you sure can't look away either.

You can view it here (http://www.atheistnation.net/video/?video/00260/atheist/the-most-hated-family-in-america).

[balmakboor]

Another pretty amazing documentary is Geoffrey O'Conner and Louis Theroux's film The Most Hated Family in America, a fascinating profile of Reverend Fred Phelps and his hatemongering family, who make up virtually the entire congregation of the Westboro Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas. They're the ones who picket U.S. soldiers' funerals all because they choose to defend a "fag-loving" country. It's like the proverbial car wreck -- can't look directly at it, but you sure can't look away either.

You can view it here (http://www.atheistnation.net/video/?video/00260/atheist/the-most-hated-family-in-america).

I'll definitely check this out. Thanks.

A doc that really surprised me was The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I went into it with strong feelings on the matter and a great deal of dislike for her. I came out with the same strong feelings, but a great deal of like for her. She seemed so much more complex and interesting to me after the experience.

Jesus Camp, on the other hand, wasn't very well made and just left me feeling kinda sad and depressed.

[balmakboor]

I'm going to go off, flip a coin, and either watch Cthulhu or Zardoz right now, but here is what I've instant watched so far and quick comments:

Jupiter's Wife - amiable but slight portrait of a Central Park street woman who believes she's married to the god Jupiter

John Waters: This Filthy World - 90 min standup performance, fun if you're a fan

In the Realms of the Unreal - I loved this. A reclusive Chicago janitor dies and his room is found to contain hundreds of paintings illustrating a 15,000 page fantasy novel as well as an autobiography also running 1000s of pages.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price - gets the job done, gets in, gets you mad, gives you a bit of activist hope at the end, and then gets out again - much like Outfoxed

Tales of the Rat Fink - slight, entertaining, cleverly animated (at times) look at the pioneer of custom cars

I Like Killing Flies - a very interesting portrait of a man who runs a Greenwich Village diner, concocting strange, never quite the same thing twice meals, spouting philosophical musings, and giving his customers all sorts of crap

The Business of Being Born - basically a pro-natural birth movie, it covers much the same territory as Sicko, possibly better (my wife loved it and found it filled with truth - and she should know, she's given birth twice)

King Corn - two guys decide to grow an acre of corn in Iowa and see how it ends up in our bodies - covers a lot of the same territory as Super Size Me, only better, definitely better, I learned a lot

Crumb - a brilliant portrait of the artist and his disfunctional family - a friend saw this just after her son moved to New York City to be an artist - it scared her to death

Sick - an unforgettable and sometimes hard to watch portrait of a man who deals with his loss of control of his body due to cystic fibrosis by engaging in S&M with it lovingly sadistc wife - you won't forget some of the images - Roger Ebert said he even turned away at times

[Qrazy]

I'm going to go off, flip a coin, and either watch Cthulhu or Zardoz right now, but here is what I've instant watched so far and quick comments:

Have you seen Amandla? I'd be interested to hear what you think.

[balmakboor]

Have you seen Amandla? I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Cthulhu won the flip. Well made movie with a crazy-cool ending, but ultimately not really my cup of horror tea. But that's for another thread, another day...

No, I haven't seen Amandla yet. It's on my radar now though. And now I know where to post my thoughts when I do. :)

[balmakboor]

I think the first challenge in defining a documentary is coming up with a term for "not a documentary." Maybe "documentary" is an unfortunate name. It is related to the noun "document" (as in a record of something) and the verb "to document" (as in the process of creating a document).

Olympia Part II is a document of what happened at the Berlin Olympic Games, true events, and Riefenstahl's aim was to tell "a truth" about the event.

But, isn't The Wizard of Oz also a document of what happened to Dorothy after a tornado hit her farm house? Fleming's aim was to tell "a fiction" about the event.

(Or, is it key that Jesse Owens is a real life person while Dorothy Gale is a created person? Can't real life persons serve "a fiction" as in Forrest Gump? Can't created persons serve "a truth" as in Nanook of the North?)

So, for the moment, my working definitions are:

Documentary: a film that documents an event with the aim of telling "a truth" about the event.

Not a Documentary: a film that documents an event with the aim of telling "a fiction" about the event.

I'll leave it at that for now, but, as one begins trying to drop individual films into one box or the other, the slope becomes quite slippery running in both directions.

Riefenstahl flirts with telling "a fiction" about the games for Hitler's benefit. Fleming flirts with telling "a truth" about Dorothy's need for home.

One could easily go out and shoot nothing but the truth and create "a fiction" from the results. Chris Marker toyed with this often.

One could go out and stage everything and create "a truth" as with Nanook of the North.

I'm a computer programmer and my work is governed by "Yes" and "No." But programming languages are always trying to cheat boolean logic by creating ways to handle situations of "Yes" or "Somewhat Yes" or Neither "Yes" or "No" or "Somewhat No" to, finally, "No."

I found a book in a used book pile once titled "Fuzzy Thinking." It's all about re-thinking matters away from their having to be 100% "Yes" or 100% "No." They can be, say, 34% "Yes" and 66% "No" for instance.

I think a definition of documentary would ultimately, for me, be quite a fuzzy thing. Very few, if any, films would be 100% one way or the other.

(Note: after writing this, I came across this interesting discussion of Nanook on the Criterion boards. It's all about the "slippage" into documentary of all films: http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1406)

[balmakboor]

This was my review of American Teen btw:

An awkwardly shy “band nerd” named Jake sits at a cafeteria table with his about-to-be ex-girlfriend. They are breaking up — or rather she is breaking up as he helplessly sits and listens. In despair, he rests his head on the table. When she’s had her say and he has to finally say something, anything, he wipes his hand across the table top and remarks, “It’s greasy. I just laid my face there.” She stares at him in disbelief. Tellingly, he’s not really sure why.

Hannah is a wreck. Her boyfriend has broken up with her. It seems he got what he wanted - sex - and now he’s out of there. She’s so shattered that she can’t face going back to school. She has been absent for almost three weeks. The vice principal has warned her that one or two more days and she won’t get credit for the year. Her dad drives her up to the school, pleading with her to go in. She can’t. She’s in tears, shaking, about to throw up. He holds the car door open for her for a long pause and then closes it again.

Colin is big man in a basketball-obsessed school, goofy, popular, likable, and under more pressure than he can bear. He’s a senior, the go-to man in the offense, and always under the unforgiving scrutiny of college recruiters and his father – once a basketball player, now an Elvis impersonator. His father tells him, “You need 14 rebounds tonight. It’s either that or the Army.” He doesn’t get those rebounds. His shots repeatedly clank off the rim. His team loses. He cries like a baby in a teammate’s arms in the locker room. “I can’t go into the Army. I can’t kill people,” he says later.

Megan rules the school. While not quite as sadistic, she is all of the Heathers rolled into one – if you’ve seen Heathers, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? (For those in the dark, she is rich and privileged, beautiful and desired, selfish and just plain mean. The type who manages to be prom queen even though nobody really likes her, they just fear her.) Over disapproval of a fellow student council member’s theme for the prom – and rejection of her own theme – she vandalizes the student’s home, spray painting a penis and “fag” on the front window. When Megan is scolded and punished by the principal, her face goes through an amazing series of expressions of hurt, fear, shock, anger, nausea, vengeance, acceptance, and then worries about how this will affect her plans to go to Notre Dame. She, being who she is, doesn’t get the maximum penalty, of course.

These are all emotionally painful, private moments. I’ve always been amazed by how documentary filmmakers can so completely gain the confidence of their subjects. In this movie, American Teen, director Nanette Burstein captures moments that would be difficult for a fly on the wall. Martin Bell once commented that he struggled for months to gain the trust of the street kids while shooting Streetwise – and he finally won them over at a moment when all seemed lost. He had shot an exchange between two kids that embarrassed and angered them. They were walking away, for good, and he ripped the film out of his camera and handed it to them. He was on the inside from that moment on. I wonder if Burstein has similar stories.

American Teen follows four teens during their senior year at an Indiana high school, capturing their happy times and their devastating times. It is truly an emotional roller coaster and Burstein’s elliptical editing is carefully designed to maximize and emphasize the turbulence. Hannah goes from hopelessly in love – “I can’t imagine ever being apart” – to broken up and shattered to on her feet again – “I’m just painting and taking pictures and staying away from relationships” – to dating again with hardly a pause for breath. Was it really this turbulent? We’ll never know.

The Breakfast Club is American Teen’s obvious template. We get “the nerd,” “the jock” (two actually), “the prom queen,” and “the odd outsider” (or whatever one would call the Ali Sheedy/Hannah characters). (Apparently, this high school didn't have a Judd Nelson counterpart – or at least a “druggie bad boy” who would agree to be filmed.) Each teen is introduced as a stereotype to subsequently be shown as actually just a different face of the same insecurity. American Teen accomplishes this most effectively during a montage of their worried faces, contemplating their futures.

American Teen goes by very quickly, too quickly. All of its characters are truly memorable and I deeply felt for each. It is to the movie’s credit that I even liked the borderline “Heathers” girls – they being precisely what I hated most when going to school. This enjoyment makes the movie’s two flaws all the more unfortunate. They both cut one’s time with these teens far too short.

First, and most damaging, are misguided animation sequences that are intended to give us creative and clever little glimpses into the teens’ fantasies, hopes, and fears. All they actually manage to be is annoying bits of filler that take us away from what we want to see — the teens.

The other flaw is the length of American Teen – it is too short. It ends up feeling slight and superficial when there is enough potential and pathos here for two or three movies. Maybe it should’ve been a miniseries. American Teen could have and should have held the scope and richness of Hoop Dreams, times two. These characters needed and deserved more room to breathe.

[Lasse]

I really like documetaries, but I don't watch enough of them. And they're hard to find here in Denmark. I'll use this thread as a sort of download queue. ;)

Among the ones that I look forward to watching is Waltz With Bashir, Anvil and Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden.

[balmakboor]

I'll use this thread as a sort of download queue. ;)

I plan to do the same.

Something else just came to me. Documentaries rarely make much money. Because of this, people don't tend to make them for fame and fortune. They make them out of commitment to the subject. Because of this, documentaries seem to me much more consistently passionate than, well, "not documentaries."

[Russ]

Something else just came to me. Documentaries rarely make much money. Because of this, people don't tend to make them for fame and fortune. They make them out of commitment to the subject. Because of this, documentaries seem to me much more consistently passionate than, well, "not documentaries."
Great point, and I tend to agree. It's a bit of a two-edged sword, tho, as passion can also be used to a film's detriment, especially when too much passion can blur the line between objective filmmaking and propaganda (even if it is propaganda with which I may agree; ie, the films of Michael Moore).

Oh, and thanks for your thoughts on both Sonic Outlaws and In the Realms of the Unreal, two docs that I've been wanting to see for quite a while. I'm a big fan of Negativland and audio collage/cutups as well (especially Vicki Bennett, aka People Like Us (http://www.peoplelikeus.org/)). Vicki has collaborated with Don Joyce in the past and, true to her philosophy that "past [archived] works should be readily available for reference both in theory and practice for present and future practitioners", has put pretty much her entire discography (both audio and video) up on her website. She also does great radio shows on WFMU (http://wfmu.org/). Check out both links if you're not familiar with them.(Also, clicking on WFMU's blog (http://blog.wfmu.org/) link will take you to a wealth of amazing and rare downloads. Hours and hours of fun.)

[balmakboor]

Great point, and I tend to agree. It's a bit of a two-edged sword, tho, as passion can also be used to a film's detriment, especially when too much passion can blur the line between objective filmmaking and propaganda (even if it is propaganda with which I may agree; ie, the films of Michael Moore).

Oh, and thanks for your thoughts on both Sonic Outlaws and In the Realms of the Unreal, two docs that I've been wanting to see for quite a while. I'm a big fan of Negativland and audio collage/cutups as well (especially Vicki Bennett, aka People Like Us (http://www.peoplelikeus.org/)). Vicki has collaborated with Don Joyce in the past and, true to her philosophy that "past [archived] works should be readily available for reference both in theory and practice for present and future practitioners", has put pretty much her entire discography (both audio and video) up on her website. She also does great radio shows on WFMU (http://wfmu.org/). Check out both links if you're not familiar with them.(Also, clicking on WFMU's blog (http://blog.wfmu.org/) link will take you to a wealth of amazing and rare downloads. Hours and hours of fun.)

Thanks for the heads up. You know I'll check them out.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Tales of the Rat Fink - slight, entertaining, cleverly animated (at times) look at the pioneer of custom cars

Cool beans. I worked on this film.

[Ezee E]

Couple sports documentaries coming out that I'm interested in. Tyson and Spike Lee's doc about Kobe.

[Boner M]

Just noticed that the Aussie doco Forbidden Lie$ has a limited US run at the moment, and a well-deserved 85 on metacritic. Y'all should try and catch this one, but it's best to know as little as possible about it going in, which should only add to the fun - it's one of the most entertaining and fascinating docos I've seen.

[balmakboor]

Cool beans. I worked on this film.

That's awesome. I forget sometimes that some of the people here are lucky enough to actually do something for a living involving film.

Btw, I just re-read this: "cleverly animated (at times) look at the pioneer of custom cars." I should clarify what I meant (in case you were an animator on the film or something) because I phrased it poorly.

All of the animation is clever. It is only animated part of the time.

[balmakboor]

I would imagine most here have seen it already, given its subject, but Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was terrific. It went way beyond the usual look-at-a-celebrity-documentary to create a truly fascinating and quite complex look at Polanski and what happened to him especially during the trial and sentencing for his statutory rape. I builds sympathy for him without letting him off the hook in the slightest.

I've been fascinated by Polanski both in terms of his work and his life story ever since picking up and reading a random book about him in a library almost 30 years ago, yet much of this film felt fresh and startling. And that was a pleasant surprise.

[balmakboor]

I don't know fully what to say about it yet, but Zoo sure is fascinating and beautifully filmed.

I've never seen a documentary quite like it. It's almost entirely staged and re-enacted and it's as carefully composed and gorgeously photographed as any movie you'll come across. It's moody and poetic and strange. It's unexpectedly far from disturbing given its subject matter of a secret society of men near Seattle who have sex with horses -- and one Boeing engineer who died from injuries sustained while doing so.

And yet it doesn't give us all that much information about these people or show us their activities or explain the physical attraction of men to animals. It is a very aloof and mysterious and lyrical film. Ultimately, I found it to be a meditation on loneliness in the human condition and how desperately people need to connect with people who share their proclivities, whatever they are.

And how the Internet has made it possible for people, no matter what or how forbidden or how idiosynchratic their obsessions are, to find each other. You could say that Zoo is, in a perverse sort of way, about Match-cut and all other ways in which the Internet allows like-minded people to find each other.

It is also a film about the right to privacy. We all have dark things going on inside our heads, things best kept inside our heads -- or at most only shared with others harboring the same dark things.

By the way, I used to be a Boeing engineer in Seattle. I wonder if I ever crossed paths with the victim.

[Ezee E]

Watched [i]9/11[/b], and its strange how the best documentary about that day came by as a mistake. Originally setting out to document the probationary year of a firefighter, two French filmmakers filmed the day that was 9/11. The confusion, stress, and sadness that all occurred during and after the day are included, and never overplayed.

The Brothers also give a proper look at firefighters. Most films overplay their heroics, but here, it's done as it should. It shows what gets people interested and why they love the job, but certainly shows the possible consequences. It doesn't end happy.

Very good.

[balmakboor]

Why hadn't I heard of this guy Santiago Alvarez? Cuba has an annual documentary film festival in his honor. Taking up fimmaking at the age of 40, he would make over 600 films before dying of Parkinson's disease at age 79. These served to revolutionize the Latin American newsreels made by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficas (ICAIC).

He had no formal training, never went to film school. And says he learned by running millions of feet of footage through his hands, caressing the film. He also said, "Give me two photographs, some music, and a moviola and I'll give you a movie."

His work is an exhilarating example of making due with what's available (often little more than copies of American magazines, Cuban newspapers, and scraps of stock footage) and letting the material dictate an often quite radical and always very inventive and playful style.

At one point, he and another member of the ICAIC were shipped off to Vietnam with nothing but a couple of "wind-up silent cameras" (I don't know what they were specifically) and short-ends and told to shoot what they saw. What they captured are some of the most amazing images I've seen from the war. They found their way into a number of his films, the best being Hanoi, martes 13 and 79 primaveras.

In his film LBJ (probably my favorite of the six I've seen), he played around with the idea of revealing JFK's assassin (sort of) that would reoccur 41 years later in Watchmen. And always a believer in sound being 50% of cinema, he put Surfin Bird to use long before Kubrick thought to.

His soundtracks are as exciting as his images. Lena Horne, radio advertising, sound clips from Hitchcock's Vertigo, and even complete silence are use to sometimes startling effect.

So far I've seen:

79 primaveras (1969)
LBJ (1968)
Hasta la Victoria Siempre (1967)
Hanoi, martes 13 (1967)
Cerro Pelado (1966)
Now (1965)

Still to see on the fantastic He Who Hits First, Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Alverez DVD are:

El Sueno del Pongo (1970)
El Tigre Salto y Mato ... Morira ... Morira (1973)

[soitgoes...]

Why hadn't I heard of this guy Santiago Alvarez? Cuba has an annual documentary film festival in his honor. Taking up fimmaking at the age of 40, he would make over 600 films before dying of Parkinson's disease at age 79. These served to revolutionize the Latin American newsreels made by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficas (ICAIC).

He had no formal training, never went to film school. And says he learned by running millions of feet of footage through his hands, caressing the film. He also said, "Give me two photographs, some music, and a moviola and I'll give you a movie."

His work is an exhilarating example of making due with what's available (often little more than copies of American magazines, Cuban newspapers, and scraps of stock footage) and letting the material dictate an often quite radical and always very inventive and playful style.

At one point, he and another member of the ICAIC were shipped off to Vietnam with nothing but a couple of "wind-up silent cameras" (I don't know what they were specifically) and short-ends and told to shoot what they saw. What they captured are some of the most amazing images I've seen from the war. They found their way into a number of his films, the best being Hanoi, martes 13 and 79 primaveras.

In his film LBJ (probably my favorite of the six I've seen), he played around with the idea of revealing JFK's assassin (sort of) that would reoccur 41 years later in Watchmen. And always a believer in sound being 50% of cinema, he put Surfin Bird to use long before Kubrick thought to.

His soundtracks are as exciting as his images. Lena Horne, radio advertising, sound clips from Hitchcock's Vertigo, and even complete silence are use to sometimes startling effect.

So far I've seen:

79 primaveras (1969)
LBJ (1968)
Hasta la Victoria Siempre (1967)
Hanoi, martes 13 (1967)
Cerro Pelado (1966)
Now (1965)

Still to see on the fantastic He Who Hits First, Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Alverez DVD are:

El Sueno del Pongo (1970)
El Tigre Salto y Mato ... Morira ... Morira (1973)
I saw a bunch of his a couple months ago, and was blown away by LBJ too. Best film I've seen all year. I even sported the LBJ avatar for awhile.

[Pop Trash]

I would imagine most here have seen it already, given its subject, but Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was terrific. It went way beyond the usual look-at-a-celebrity-documentary to create a truly fascinating and quite complex look at Polanski and what happened to him especially during the trial and sentencing for his statutory rape. I builds sympathy for him without letting him off the hook in the slightest.

I've been fascinated by Polanski both in terms of his work and his life story ever since picking up and reading a random book about him in a library almost 30 years ago, yet much of this film felt fresh and startling. And that was a pleasant surprise.

I've been trying to rent this since it came out but no one in my town has the DVD. I'm a huge Polanski fan and am facinated by his life. Escaped the Holocaust, made major films in Poland, the UK, and America, had a pregnant wife viciously murdered by the Manson family, commited statutory rape in Jack Nicholson's jacuzzi, fled America and lives in France. I think he's lived the most interesting life of any living director.

[balmakboor]

My favorite documentaries are

Titicut Follies,
Crumb,
and Capturing the Friedmans.


For me, it's The Atomic Cafe, Gates of Heaven, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I'll toss in:

Time Indefinite
Streetwise
Dogtown and Z Boys

[Spun Lepton]

I really like American Movie, Crumb, and Jesus Camp. I would include Super-Size Me, but that seems to fall somewhere between documentary and entertainment as far as I'm concerned. Docutainment.


Are you saying documentaries can't be entertaining?

I'm not sure how to explain what I meant, documentaries should definitely be entertaining. But, I typically prefer them to teach me something new or illuminate some new information that I hadn't previously known about the subject. I should learn something from documentaries. I didn't really learn anything new from Super-Size Me, despite the fact that it was very entertaining. Spurlock is a terrific host. :)

I'm partial to documentaries about people, too.

[balmakboor]

I'm not sure how to explain what I meant, documentaries should definitely be entertaining. But, I typically prefer them to teach me something new or illuminate some new information that I hadn't previously known about the subject. I should learn something from documentaries. I didn't really learn anything new from Super-Size Me, despite the fact that it was very entertaining. Spurlock is a terrific host. :)

I'm partial to documentaries about people, too.

Nice explanation. I agree with all of it. I too love documentaries about people. By that, I primarily mean that they've proven to me once and for all that the most powerful images in cinema are people's faces, especially those almost heart-stopping moments when they look directly through the camera lens and into your eyes.

[Dukefrukem]

I don't usually post documetnary trailers but I found this one to be particular powerful.

_HJzyIJLPlg

[Yxklyx]

Hey, the "kids" from Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills were released this year after 18 years in prison.

[EyesWideOpen]

I watched Beyond the Myth: A Film about Pit Bulls and Breed Discrimination last night. The actual filmmaking part of it was a little rough and amateurish but the information presented was fascinating. It definitely opened my mind about pitbull misconceptions. Any animal lovers or more specifically dog lovers should give it a look. It's available on hulu.

[Skitch]

I still love Riding Giants. Wonderful film. Quite a bit lighter subject than most mentioned here, but its nice to take a breather from the heavy stuff ocassionally. :)

[Dukefrukem]

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxZLq3IpYAU

[Skitch]

Good stuff.

[Dukefrukem]

This looks gorgeous!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=112&v=3Co8Z8BQgWc