If you love Documentary Films . . .

[kenny]

I saw a doc about docs called, "Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary".
If you share this specialized interest you will enjoy this film.
It's streaming on Netflix.

They interview several leading international directors and mention their most notable docs.
I took the time to make a list of the films so I can find them.
I am curious about everything and I've found documentaries, particularly those made outside the Hollywood Factory and outside the USA are fresh, fascinating and illuminating.

Interesting, they criticize Michael Moore as "committing crimes towards the art form of the Documentary".

I'll post the 63 docs since they are likely some of the best of the art form.

 

[kenny]

A House in Prague
A Place Called Chiapas
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
Aleria, Unspoken Stories
Algearian Chronicles
An American Love Story
Battle for Haditha
Biggie & Tupac
Bones of the Forest
Breathing Lessons
Chile: Obstinate Memory
Chronicle of a Summer
Darwin's Nightmare
Don't Ask Why
Driven by Dreams
Et La Vie
Fatherland
Fierce Light
Final Solution
First Person, "Smiling in a Jar"
Flag Wars
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
For a Place Under the Heavens
Gates of Heaven
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
Grey Gardens
Grizzly Man
Hold Me Tight, Let me Go
In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
Lessons of Darkness
Life is Boundless and Full of Danger
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Manufactured Landscapes
Manufacturing Consent
Metal and Melancholy
Murder on a Sunday Morning
My Country My Country
Offspring
One Day in September
Oscar Thiffault
Paris 1919
Playing
Rough Aunties
Salesman
Seeing is Believing
Standard Operating Procedure
Th River Where We Live
The Battle of Chile
The Bomber's Dream
The Day I Will Never Forget
The Fog of War
The Heart of an Angel
The Holier it Gets
The Language Doesn't Lie
The Lie of the Land
The Peacekeepers
The Pinochet Case
The Scavangers
The Staircase
The Thin Blue Line
The Underground Orchestra
Touching the Void

 

[Miss Sparkly]

Thank you! I documentary films! Just saw Freakanomics and while it was good it really ended with a fizzle. Hopefully the book is better. One of my favorites is "A Wink and a Smile: The art of Burlesque" It was wonderful to see the confidence in these average women just blossom through their Burlesque classes.

 

[CJ2008]

Thank you for this list, Kenny, and for adding to it Sparkly! I love documentaries. I'll have to check some of these out.

 

[vc10um]

Kenny, my FI really loves documentaries...I'll have to look into some of those.

One we both really enjoyed that's surprisingly not on the list (though it is more recent and I don't know when the list was compiled) is "Man on Wire." It's about a high-wire walker who strung a wire between the World Trade Center towers while they were still being completed and walked between them.

Spectacularly interesting, and the visuals of him on the wire take your breath away.

 

[kenny]

Oh yes yes yes. Man on the Wire was superb!!!
These 63 were just what was mentioned in that documentary about documentaries.

I just saw "Grey Gardens", the original from 1975.

OMG!

Jackie O had some fricking flipped out cousins.
The aunt and middle-aged cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lived as lunatic recluses in filth and squalor in a rotten, decaying, cat and raccoon-infested multi-million dollar 28-room mansion in East Hampton.

In the early 70s the city sent inspectors in and threatened to evict them if they didn't install running water and do other minimum repairs.
After the scandal hit the newspapers Jackie Onasiss footed the bill.

Astonishingly, in 1975 they let a pair of documentary film makers in to record their day to day life, if you could call it that.
It's a little more watchable than Eraserhead, mostly because you are seeing two people's real lives, yet how they live makes little more sense than Eraserhead.

The film is described as dark and mind-bending.
Indeed.

It brings to mind the sick relationships of mothers and daughters in Tennessee Williams plays like The Glass Menagerie, or the relationship between Betty Davis and Joan Crawford's characters in, What ever Happened to Baby Jane.
They live half in the co-dependent present and half the opulent past, tragically mourning over the wealth and beaus of their past.

OMG

Then in 2009 a commercial film was made about it staring Drew Barrymore and Jesica Lange.
I have not seen this one.

 

[JewelFreak]

Grey Gardens was something else, huh, Kenny? I saw it about 10 yrs ago & flipped out myself. Sally Quinn & Ben Bradlee bought the house & renovated it when the Edies died. I was glad somebody cared for it, what a beauty (in the rough!).

A doc that's getting a lot of notice & awards is Kimjongilia & I can't recommend it enough. It's about North Korea, done through interviews with escapees, very affecting. Woven among the stories of horror are N. Korean propaganda clips portraying an idyllic heaven, which is powerful indeed. A good friend of mine made it, in fact, went through hell for about 4 years to get it done & raise the money to fund the project. It's been shown all over the world, including to the EU parliament & is receiving much recognition, which is a thrill to see and well deserved.

--- Laurie

 

[kenny]

Thanks JF, I'll add Kimjongilia to my list.
You must be psychic as I'm very curious about North Korea.
Just last week I saw a doc called, "Crosssing the Line".
I was about 4 US service members who defected into NK in the 1960s.

They became propaganda goldmines and were even turned into movie stars.
It reports NK even kidnapped a young Japanese woman to supply a wife to one of the defectors.

One of the four, James J. Dresnok, still lives there and claims to be very happy and is the main focus of this doc.
They interviewed his grown kids too who live as N Koreans and are sent to the most prestigious NK university.

Such a bizarre story about a bizarre and secretive place.
Like one doc director said, you can't make this stuff up; reality is stranger than fiction.
A fascinating and rare look into NK.