although there’s already a film thread, i’ve been itching to make a thread specific for documentaries for actual years but never got around to it.
today the great musician hermeto pascoal died, which reminded me of the fantastic “hermeto campeão”, directed by thomaz farkas. i watched this movie in college and was blown away by how sweet and warm it is. it’s like sleeping soundly on a beach, the salty breeze and all.
so yeah, let’s talk about documentaries we like or dislike maybe! i love this genre / format / whatever, its my favorite when thinking of Cinema. so many possibilities! i’ve made two small documentaries in my life – both atrociously bad and which no record remains anywhere (…i think). still take pride to have worked on them to completion.
for the next couple days i’ll try making individual posts praising some of my favs
I watched this last year. It’s a 5+ hour documentary on the making of Robocop. They cover every aspect of the production and talk to everyone involved, director, actors, special effects people, stunt men, crew etc. It was amazing and brought my love of the movie Robocop to a whole new level I didn’t even know was possible because I already loved it so much.
I like artsy documentaries that sort of rotate around a theme and hit it from different angles, like Chris Marker’s work (especially Sans Soleil). I like documentaries that sort of profile a place or a scene or a group of people, like Agnes Varda’s doc Daguerréotypes where she went and interviewed her favorite people living and working on her street, or the recent Jasper Mall about daily life in a dying shopping mall. I like deep character studies like Grizzly Man and Salesman and Kazuhiro Soda’s Campaign and Peace. I like city symphonies like Man With a Movie Camera and My Winnipeg. I like essay films where the director talks about their own life, like The Gleaners and I and Sherman’s March. I like portraits of institutions and their workings (Wiseman, baby, this is the Wiseman category).
I’ve never been a huge fan of didactic “issue films”. I respect them and the way they can sometimes help make change, but I just don’t get excited about them in the same way as the more abstract and exploratory stuff. I’ll make an exception for more radically participatory films like The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On and The Act of Killing though, I can really get into that stuff.
There’s also the ever-popular “documentary about a thing people like.” Kind of hacky much of the time IMO but hey, if I like the thing I’ll probably enjoy the doc. And there are a few of these that are good enough to rise above the genre to become interesting to people beyond just the fanbase, like that recent King Crimson doc.
I love nature documentaries too, though they do vary widely in quality and it’s hard to predict what’ll be good… Night on Earth was a recent standout series where they used new low-light cameras with great skill to capture night time sights in nature that previously couldn’t be filmed clearly.
I recently stumbled upon this 1979 BBC documentary Fred Dibnah - Steeplejack that’s available in full on youtube:
A character study of this wild guy who demolishes buildings in the way it used to be done before heavy machinery became available… But keeps putting off jobs to go work on his goofy hobby building the perfect antique steamroller to giddily ride around town. This doc has the juice… The subject is a weird and charismatic guy (who went on to become a minor celebrity), the editing is occasionally riotously funny, there’s some interesting class stuff going on, and you get to see some real death defying stunts. The BBC in the 70’s really made space for artsy programming with a perspective.
i like this one it has a lot of pretty incredible photography and is mostly this like pure sensory experience unmediated by words. yes the snails mate in slow motion its incredibly shot
It really funny to see this here because like montha ago, I fell down the hole of watching all sorts of stuff about this guy including this doc and it was great. And I totally forgot about it until right now.
Always loved The Corporation by Mark Ackbar and Jennifer Abbott. Has a fun gimmick of diagnosing corporations with psychopathy if they are to be considered legal persons which kicks off a good range of case studies.
watched this a couple months ago. although i was aware of the socialist republic of south yemen, the existence of a similar movement that was able to hold and govern territory in current-day oman was new to me.
the stories from the people who joined the liberation army to learn how to read, to gain rights as women for the first time, to overcome the artificial tribal divisions created by the comprador elite of the emirs . . . it’s all so beautiful. the documentary was filmed during what would become a final stand of a free oman agiant the onslaught of british and (imperial-) iranian aggression.
the details of how they managed to build the first public road in dhofar makes me teary just to imagine. hopefully one day i’ll be even a fraction as strong, brave, resilient and upright as them and all the other millions who fought for a better world.
I first saw this when I would browse the documentary category on Amazon cuz if you went far enough right you’d get into where every documentary cover either looked like an alien blowing up the white house while Jesus looks on in horror or not have a cover at all cuz anyone can upload. it rocked. I watched a great original flavor Texas Dr pepper documentary and one about chickens and one about dying I can link some letterboxd when I have real signal. I love documentaries I might watch them more than regular movies (i am paraphrasing Vincent toups old title but also it’s true). I am just very zooted at the moment and want to go to bed instead of continue to post
pretty interesting telling from the life of a fighter in the national liberation front of algeria, who led the algerians into victory against the french, many years into his retirement as a nice old man.
it focuses on a few key missions he was tasked to do by front, mostly inside france. the characterization is very intimate, and i appreciate the film for not falling into the moralist trap of trying to paint the difficulties and contradictions within the anti-colonial with some mealy-mouthed message of “but we were all monsters in the end…“. the framing being this close to the former fighters, to their telling of the story, doesn’t allow it. very dignified.
