Documentary Strut (movie related)
SouthCrackalack
3,853 Posts
Who's got the ill documentary suggestions? Cable or DVD joints..doesnt matter. I just got Sundance and IFC(again finally,thank god) on my cable box and caught:The CorporationSlasherNotes From the Underground- The Weathermen (not the rap group)all were pretty dope, but who has some more titles I should be checking for?
Comments
My mom put me on this one and I mean, Im no bird fan..but it was seriously interesting. Mark Bittner who moved to SF to become a musician turned homeless and somehow befriends the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco--20 years later or so, he is shown now living free of charge in a guest house on Telegraph Hill where he eventually get's kicked out. I won't ruin the rest............made me shed a tear at the end.
Chuck Webster
Martin Mazorra
Sasu
Kami
Madsaki
Che Jen
Jose Parla
Chris Mendoza
Mike Houston
Alex Lebedev
Mike Ming
Swoon
Daikon
South
Maya Hayuk[/b]
Kiku Yamaguchi
David Ellis
Yuri Shimojo
Kenji Hirata
Rostarr
Follows the Barnstormers around doing their work on barns/old buildings as well as indoor installations. I liked it.
Barn Stormers site
Dope documentaries you might not have seen:
Voice of a Nation - DOPE early 90s hip-hop documentray directed by Nick Quested
Stations of the Elevated - Classic 80's NY graffitti doc.
yeah Stations of the Elevated is definately a classic, but I have never seen Voice of a Nation one. I wonder if I have the Discovery Times channel on my box..i'll have to check.
Frank Zappa's Baby Snakes... not a real documentary
but well worth a looksie into his strange world.
Capturing the Friedmans-worth seeing the double DVD ish 'cos theirs a ton of extra background on it that's good if the main feature captures your interest.
March of the Penguins - if you like nature docs. This really ain't fucking with any Attenborough shit, but it's nicely shot and crafted into a watchable narrative.
Guerrilla, the taking of Patty Hearst - I really knew fuck all about this, so I found it an engaging watch
7 days in September - 'bout the Munich Olympics. This is incredibly well made, powerful, tense and compelling stuff. Probably well worth checking if you're going to check Spielbitch's new flick.
Touching the Void - you'll never hear Bony M in the same light again
When we were kings - hardcroe fer sure
The Kid Stays in the picture - tidy look at how Hollywood works, albeit heavily tinted by the ego of Robert Evans
Microcosmos - another dope nature joint, crazy photography
American Movie - I just loved this, such hilarious characters. Kind of like Napoleon Dynamite for real
American Pimp - dumb kids should see this and recognise that although pimpin ain't easy, it sure ain't so fucking cool and glamorous either.
Spellbound - pretty funny and just a bit sad too
The boy whose skin fell off - UK TV doc about the last couple of months in the life of this guy who had a horrendous rare skin problem - really touching stuff.
the book was better, but the documentary provides a decent overview
VINYL
weird canadian documentary about obsessive compulsive record collectors. it's more about the directors weird personal issues than it is about records, so be forewarned.
CONTROL ROOM "A documentary on perception of the United States's war with Iraq, with an emphasis on Al Jazeera's coverage."
Bruce Lee-A Warriors Journey
Sun Ra- Brother from Another Planet
END OF SUBURBIA (recommended) The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream
plus all of the "Classic Albums" DVD's (Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, Nirvana (production parts are interesting), etc)
& all of Diamante's choices..
Barnstormers looks great..
Some up & comers i'm interested in are..
Looks interesting. A commentary-free look at food production.
Anything but an assembly line picture, ???Unser t??glich Brot???[/b] offers us 90 minutes of well-edited footage showing how and where our food is grown, prepared and processed without a single word of commentary throughout. The film opens with the sight of a man cleaning the floor in what turns out to be a slaughterhouse, which is followed by shot of an unmanned vehicle transporting boxes filled with perfectly red and round tomatoes through a greenhouse.
In the end, the film???s procession of production plants leaves it up to the audience to draw its own conclusions about the food we eat every day; coaxing open-minded viewers into their own dedicated session of food philosophy for the duration of the film.
WHY WE FIGHT[/b]
An inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.
How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)[/b]
Part icon, part iconoclast, Melvin Van Peebles is a filmmaker with an autobiography that???s as fascinating as any of his motion pictures. This playful documentary (full of rare archival footage and unforgettable backstage stories) does a great job explaining how the father of blaxploitation got from military service in Korea to driving cable cars in San Francisco to life as a trader at the New York Stock Exchange???with some of these same circuitous journeys helping to explain just where Sweet Sweetback actually got his song. This is a carefully crafted tale of how a young black kid from Chicago ended up making one of the most controversial independent films in American history???and about what happened to him after his quick rise to cinematic stardom.
CROSSING THE BRIDGE: The Sound of Istanbul[/b]
Poised between East and West, Istanbul???s music is a reflection of its geographical location par excellence and makes people homesick for that special place whenever they hear it. Early on in the film, Hacke meets a Turkish grunge band singer who perfectly illustrates this point: he lived in Seattle for several years to completely soak up the grunge way of life but eventually became homesick and started to sing his lyrics in Turkish; before long he had moved backto the city of his birth. A father of a Turkish rapper has a similar story: ???First I thought, is this music? Instead of singing they talk,??? he says about his son???s rapping. ???Now I have realised that what they do will remain and Turkey needs them???.
Apparently this French doco was changed for the US market.
"After seeing the film at Sundance, an exec at Warner Bros. initated a change in the film to ready it for American viewer. Warner Bros. president Mark Gill saw the film at Sundance, called writer-director Jordan Roberts and asked if something could be done to make it more appealing to American audiences. Jordan wrote a narration, performed by Morgan Freeman, and hired composer Alex Wurman to create a new score."
Man, that sucks really, cos that's why it's not fucking with Attenborough shit. The 'story' is pretty clearly contrived. I can sort of see why they did it though, it's beautiful to look at and if they wanted to maximise the number of folks who would actually want to watch it (i.e. not just nature doc nerds like me), so they bit the bullet and disney'ed it up a bit. I'd be interested to see that Sundance cut if that ever makes it out though.
This should be pretty good too. I've got a dope doc about the making of Sweet Sweetbacks on tape, from when they showed the film on telly. Haven't watched that in a few years, but from memory that was pretty good too. I might have to dig that out and watch it again some time.
http://cgi.ebay.com/In-the-Realms-of-the-Unreal-DVD-NEW-Jessica-Yu_W0QQitemZ6474441437QQcategoryZ617QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
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I just saw this. It's very good. Apart from the visual brilliance - very symetric with beautiful colors - the movie does make you think about some aspects of the way in which you consume food. Made me happy that I have been a vegetarian for years. It's not a film about the horrors of bio industry, but some sequences in this film... you would have a hard time explaining them to visiting aliens. There's some footage from salt mines that is mind blowing.
I saw "G.i.t.m.o.- the new rules of war" recently too. It's not that good. Very ambitious, but it fails to tell you anything you don't know yet or what you can't google in 5 minutes. Most interesting about the film is actually how they find out so little. The Pentagon's PR people spinning ridiculous stories, guards and officials who are totally in denial about what they are doing - actually or seemingly believing the twisted logic of Gitmo and the war in Iraq. That would have been a better topic on it's own for this movie.
It's by the guys who did "Surplus" earlier. That one was ambitious too but not that good either IMHO.
The following doc actually told me stuff I really didn't know about enough:
Well made and very well researched. I saw the raw edit of about three hours at a festival.
Another one that's pretty good is "China Blue":
Not that well made perhaps, but it offers a rare insight in how the global market works. It's filmed inside a Chinese jeans factory that produces for western markets. Circumstances are not much better than they were in the 19th century.
Any of the Dutch guys on this board watched "Lomax - songhunter" last week? Opinions? I didn't feel it at all. The director looked up people who sang for Lomax at the time. Some of it was so bleak, I was actually glad al this "grassroot culture" is disapearing fast. That couldn't have been the purpose of this film! But nice to see some of that old footage.
very meditative doco on one of my favorite sculptors and his life and work
I also enjoyed dig[/b] a doco about the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre even though I am not a fan of either it was just a well made doco
Soul to Soul - Ike Tina turner,santana, willie bobo etc. Amazing footage and well worth owning.
TOM DOWD-THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC
"Plot Outline: A documentary about Tom Dowd, who was an innovative recording engineer and producer of noted albums with John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers and many others."
also...
GRIZZLY MAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yeah i just saw the cover and thought "this HAS to be great" , a shame i didn't hear about this earlier, there was a exhibition with his work here in Stockholm and i missed it
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man this looks real interesting but what are the chances it has been/will be released in america? it's not even listed on imdb.
also vinyl. someone on here told me they had it on disc but never got to see it. anyone know where i can get it ?
here are some documentaries i've been feeling in the last couple years:
the corporation (probably the most effective documentary i have ever seen)
bush's brain
stevie
manufacturing consent
born into brothels (really i was dissapointed super size me didn't win the oscar but this was really strong)
super size me
hearts and minds (probably the second best documentary i have ever seen)
outfoxed
Koyaanisqatsi see the whole trilogy not really a documentary but unique cinematic experience, not for everyone though
baraka very similiar to the above
american dream (the best documentary i have ever seen)
harlan county usa (not seen it It's not available on dvd but heard it's great)
life and debt
7 up series (great stuff)
dave
/L
best documentary ever, if only for the sheer lenght of the project
'Overnight' is quite a good documentary on the rise and fall of Troy Duffy, a bartender/filmmaker who was swept up by Miramax's Harvey Weinstein to turn his script for The Boondock Saints into a feature film.
'??tre Et Avoir' is a really charming documentary of a one-room school in rural France, where the students ranging in age from 4 to 11 are educated by a single dedicated teacher.
'Murder On A Sunday Morning' documentary that documents a murder trial in which a 15-year-old African-American is wrongfully accused of a 2000 murder in Jacksonville, Florida.
I love most documentaries by Nick Broomfield also.
Loads more really just a few I could think of right now.
Play the first one w/ 3 FT. HIGH AND RISING on top..........................
Ps.....maryjane helps
check for these!
regen/rain. joris ivens. dude got all socialist political and shit in his later years, but this is one of his earlier joints about, you guessed it, rain. prolly one of my top 5 films ever ever EVER! beautiful. i think ive seen it on a dvd comp maybe the avant garde one, which by the way should be picked up.
titticut follies. frederick wiseman. its a doc on a Massachussetts mental institution that im pretty sure led to a massive restructuring of the mental health field. it is RAW. real hard to find though. maybe at your school
louisiana story. robert flaherty. yeah, the dude was a homophobe. he worked with murnau on a doc and flipped out on the dude. anyways, i always liked his shit. i know the post-colonial feminists hate this guy cuz he basically exploited indigenous cultures and cemented the male authoritative "voice" that most documentaries have. but still, watch louisiana story. sure it uses "actors" but its beautiful.
on the flip side, check for trinh t. minh ha's reassemblage. its more of a film essay (which btw, look out for c. markers "sans soleil" another film essay). anyways, reassemblage is a documentary about the documentary. super next level shit.
man with a movie camera. dziga vertov. i think they call this newsreel doc. but i still think it falls under the city symphony category (also check for berlin:symphony of a city by w. ruttman and/or manhatta by paul strand (yes, that paul strand), a propos de nice (jean vigo)). but man w/movie camera is my favorite. it has these sick ass elements of modernism and futurism and all them fin de siecle turn of the century isms. but its dazzling to watch. dare i say "beautiful"?
ok. there's 5. oldies but goodies!
Herzog - La Soufriere
evacuated volcanic islands and the people who love them
Running Fence (1978)
Grey Gardens (1975)
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Salesman (1969)
Rock-u-mentaries
D.A. Pennebaker:
Monterey Pop (1968)
Dont Look Back (1967)
Doug Pray:
Scratch (2001/II)
Hype! (1996)
Julian Temple:
The Filth and the Fury