Great Documentaries

This popped up in my youtube recommendations. I'd already seen it some time ago. The time a supercarrier almost blew up and sank with John McCain on board..

Searching for Sugarman

Czech Dream

I watch all kinds of documentaries. I like the ones that are more like podcasts and you don't need to look at the screen. There is a wiki just about documentaries. DocuWiki.net that lists documentaries on file sharing networks.

Now I am watching an enjoyable and fascinating one called Ancients Behaving Badly. Its 10 years old and has cheesy music and a pulpy narrator and the stories are good. Its about madmen leaders - narcissists and psychopaths from ancient history. It's good food for thought, nowadays and always, really.

I love all of Joanna Lumleys overseas travel docos, eg. Japan, Greece, India, Silk Road.

Simon Schama's Power of Art

Journey to the Edge of the Universe

The Salt of the Earth

The Story of Film

Indie Game: The Movie

Tickled

....

The minimalists and free solo

The Man Who Skied Down Everest

Touching the Void

I am eager to hear more docs on this thread. I love them. My vote for one of the best is an old one but oddly relevant these days: Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Although old now, the statement on media and its power is valid even today.

Something's the Matter with Aunt Diane

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

Crumb

Grey Gardens

Really enjoyed RBG.

The Sorrow and the Pity

Epic account of Vichy France.

Team Foxcatcher was a very odd haunting documentary that I actually found to be more gripping than the feature film. Blackfish , Roman Polanski :Wanted and Desired, Man on Wire, and The Rachel Divide were all pretty interesting.

There was one about the Beslan school massacre but can't find the video anymore. Harrowing, heartbreaking and horrific.

Oh, and any animal ones. Blue planet, Nat Geo, etc. Tons of clips on YT.

Obviously just google documentaries and watch to your liking. Everyone has a specific taste or wanting too see and learn from.

Truth or Dare

The Imposter

Stevie

In the Realms Of the Unreal

Hell House

Eyes of Tammy Faye

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Helvetica, a documentary about typeface.

I second The Sorrow and the Pity.

Yes, Helvetica was interesting.

Winged Migration.

Grey Gardens

Gimme Shelter

Grizzly Man

The act of killing

Alone in the Wilderness

Salesman

"Paris Is Burning" is an old documentary that I recently saw for the first time. I think it holds up. I later found out that Dorian Corey (one of the characters) had a dead body in his apartment (discovered after Corey died).

20+ years ago, R25, I’d just smoked a bowl and began flipping through the channels. I stopped on PBS where an old looking film had just started. It was Alone in the Wilderness. I enjoyed it so much! It’s still one of my most memorable TV watching experiences.

The everlasting "friendship" of Kinski and Herzog : the contrast between the two main chatacters makes it comic. A great laugh (sometimes).

Harlan County USA

Three Identical Strangers

Thirty Feet From Stardom

Shoah

In The Year Of The Pig

Jesus Camp

Dark Star: Inside H.R. Giger’s World

Marwencol (the original documentary, not the stupid Steve Carrell film based on it.)

I love whores glory and love at the twilight motel

Herb and Dorothy.

This documentary is great for anyone, but especially art lovers.

Byzantium: A Tale of Three Cities

THe World at War series

Most films by Frederick Wiseman.

all docs start and end with Shoah...

Dear Zachary

Friends of God and The Trials of Ted Haggard

2018 BBC Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema

This 5 parter is a very enjoyable and informative review of 5 movie genres in cinema history. I've been a movie fan and film scholar for decades and I learned insights. He's very straightforward and it's non-stop clips from a very wide range of movies, old favs to ones you've never heard of, including very recent movies.

You can use this documentary as your own good film survey class, he does all the work, and very little theory - it's for the general population but by my no means dumbed down.

Steven Johnson's How We Got To Now.

Clean, cold, light, time, sound, glass.

It's semiotics of engineering and science in economic and social history, though he never uses any theory. Charming, pleasant and interesting discussion of developing human civilization.

Adam Curtis - very whacked out British documentary maker. Try his last, Hypernormalisation. In my opinion it takes Althusser Marxist theories - our inescapable interpellation by ideological state apparatuses - and then does a sort of Baudrillard look at today's "simulation" of "society" (fake world) run by international capital (real world). It's all silly and conspiratorial but his movies build up a wonderful trance like feeling with surreal images and music and droning narration. Somewhere along the way, you'll think a few times, "but it's all horrible true!" "what a nightmare!"

Anything by David Attenborough.

The Jinx

Eyes on the Prize - great PBS series on the Civil Rights Movement

The Civil War - one of the few Ken Burns documentaries I enjoyed

Ditto for The Vietnam War series by Ken Burns

These are documentaries for people interested in American History.

R43 Eyes on the Prize is fabulous.

I also love Muscle Shoals - a must if you’re even a little interested in music.

Trinity and Beyond, about nuclear weapons, narrated by William Shatner in a very subdued way. Great footage, beautiful original soundtrack.

Two of Werner Herzog's very best Land of Silence and Darkness & Grizzly Man

Two great PBS series about art, The Shock of the New and American Visions, written and hosted by Robert Hughes.

The American Nightmare, an original documentary shown on IFC about 20 years ago, great analysis of classic 70s horror films and the cultural/political climate which spawned them, featuring interviews with Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter among others.

The Loss of Nameless Things, about avant-garde theater director Oakley Hall III, who was on track to to become one of the big name directors of the 1970s, when a fall from a bridge (probably a drunken accident but maybe an attempted murder) left him brain damaged.

The Woodmans, about a family of artists, and how the parent's coped with the suicide at age 22 of their daughter Francesca, who has bén posthumously recognized as one of the greatest photographers of her generation.

Be Here to Love Me, about the life and times of the hugely influential and famously self destructive singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

grey gardens is my altime fave

I have to watch the edies once a year, to make me belive in the lord

The King in the Car Park, about the discovery of Richard III’s remains.

Food Evolution. Great documentary on GMOs. You may not come away supporting GMOs, but you might be more skeptical of the antis claims.

For film lovers:

Scorsese's Il mio viaggio in Italia and his A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies; also The Story of Film; and Hitchcock/Truffaut; and The Celluloid Closet

Gay documentaries:

Word Is Out; The Times of Harvey Milk

Ken Burns' The Central Park Five; and his The Vietnam War

Josh Fox's How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change; also his two GasLand films

Bleed Out

Meet the Patels

Putin's Revenge (a PBS Frontline documentary)

Capturing the Friedmans

People Like Us: Social Class In America

The Clinton Affair

Hot Coffee

Food, Inc.

God in America

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy

Completely agree with the previously mentions of Shoah, Eyes on the Prize (and Eyes on the Prize II), Grey Gardens, and Grizzly Man

You'll laugh at this one but I don't care: Sister Wendy's The Story of Painting

"Finding Fela" by Alex Gibney

Any of the Up series, Agnelli on HBO,

The Thin Blue Line

HBO - Death on A Factory Farm

Hoop Dreams

Zoo -- despite its subject matter, I thought it was well-executed.

"The Keepers"--on Netflix

"Spellbound"--about kids who go to the national spelling bee

"7 Up" and all the Up Series docs to follow---about British class system and child development into adulthood

"Prohibition" and "Jazz" ---Ken Burns

"My Kid Could Paint That"--Art, children, hype

"Exit Through the Gift Shop"--more art & hype

"Dreams of a Life"--about a woman in London who died in her apartment and wasn't found for 2+ years.

Crash Reel

Free Solo

LaLee's Kin, now available on youtube. Albert Maisles made the film. That guy was an asshole, but he made a great movie here.

Alexie and the Spring, which i have on VHS (yes, from 2005), and which i cannot find anywhere. About a small Siberian village called Budische, 100km from Chernobyl. One young man (Alexei) stays behind along with all the old people of the village, rejecting a government offer to relocate them to Minsk. The most beautiful and profound film i have ever seen. Made by a Japanese documentarian. Amazing.

Agree with R36 about Frederick Wiseman. One of the greatest documentary filmmakers...one of the greatest filmmakers, period.

The Academy recently gave him an Honorary Oscar...but the fact that his films can't get through the Best Documentary nominating process just shows how meaningless and middlebrow the Best Documentary Oscar is. Instead, they continue to reward absolute shit like "20 Feet from Stardom" -- a film made with a complete lack of vision, artistry and craft.

His most accessible films might be the recent "National Gallery" or "EX LIBRIS" but if you want to jump right in...his late 60s masterpieces "High School", "Hospital" and especially "Titicut Follies" would be the place to start.

R53 Second the Agnelli doc! Really fascinating. I also recommend:

Icarus

They shall not grow old

Jiro dreams of sushi

Scrum (about a gay rugby team)

Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Thin Blue Line are fantastic. Sonis Ken Burns Vietnam War.

Will check out the Agnelli doc and have bookmarked Secrets of Cinema.

Faces Places, an Agnes Varda doc that's just really life affirming

The Coronation (BBC documentary on Queen Elizabeth)

Manolo: the boy who made shoes for lizards

Maddman: the Steve Madden story

McQueen ( documentary on fashion designer Alexander McQueen)

I am Heath Ledger

Medieval lives: birth, marriage and death. A truly fascinating 3 part documentary! It's on Youtube somewhere.

Adam Curtis - 'The Century of the Self', 'Bitter Lake', 'The Power of Nightmares' ......explains the disaster that is American clearly

RIC Burns' NEW YORK.

An absolutely awesome achievement. All Episodes are great, but last three are the best:

Finding Vivian Maier.

Grey Gardens

R69 Surprise, she is a cunt

Hotel Terminus the Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.

I don't even know how many times I've seen it, maybe 20. Brilliant.

Thx all. Great thread

Thank you, R47. I loved 'The Woodmans'.

Jaco

I just finished "Jane Fonda in Five Acts" from HBO. Youtube has it for free. I enjoyed it.

"Bus 174", about the Brazilian hostage crisis on a city bus in 2000. Though what he did was wrong, the documentary shows the perpetrator to be a sympathetic figure who left home after his mother was murdered and had been the victim of police brutality along with many other teens in the slums of Rio.

More recommendations please! Also, Amazon can suck my dick. Hardly anything is available for free with a Prime subscription, and now they are charging another subscription on top of your fucking Prime subscription to watch most films. Cunts.

R51 - - I went to the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth specifically because Sister Wendy had featured it.

I loved Simon Schama's History of Britain series.

Robert Hughes did an outstanding series called American Visions.

The Secret World of Richard Nixon - BBC Documentary

Harlan County USA

The World at War

Vernon, Florida is one of my all time favorite documentaries. It was the cripple capital of America because so many people committed insurance fraud by chopping off a hand or foot to claim insurance. He went there to make a documentary about it and people got wind of it and threatened to kill him.

So he was stuck there with a film crew and nothing to do. Then he just began to talk to the eccentric (non-amputee) denizens of the town and got something extraordinary. My favorite is the turkey hunting enthusiast. He’s the heart and soul of the doc.

I was so taken by this lovely old fellow and his incredible enthusiasm I began googling him and was very sad to learn his daughter is a meth addict who’s been in and out of prison for that and prostitution. He’s dead now, perhaps fortunately.

Sorry, “he” = Errol Morris

The recent documentary Evil Genius is also fantastic.

Roger and Me is still, IMO, Michael Moore’s best doc.

O.J.: Made in America was gripping.

My favorite Errol Morris doc is Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.

Then there's this. Watch just the beginning and you'll watch the whole thing.

Director Nick Broomfield's two docs. on Aileen Wuornos: "Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer: and "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer". They really led to an understanding of what led to her bitter end.

Paris is Burning is being rereleased on the big screen for its anniversary shortly. Mostly in NYC but hoping it makes it out to LA.

If you like wine, Somm is a good one. It’s about sommeliers studying for the insanely difficult Master Sommelier exam.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is fun. She was a living caricature and not a bad person.

The doc that’s stayed with me most is Dr. Death. I don’t want to spoil the crazy twist it takes, but it starts as a film about a man who designs instruments of execution like gallows. Stranger than fiction and infuriating.

Anyone else have CuriosityStream? I got a couple of months ago but I’ve only watched shows about space/astronomy so far.

Anything by Frederick Wiseman. The first one I saw in 1971 was High School (1968).

The Queen of Versailles, about deplorable businessman David Siegel and his aging trophy wife trying to build the BIGGEST (and tackiest) house in the world.

"Daughter from Đà Nẵng" was nominated for, and in my opinion deserved to win, the Oscar for Best Documentary, but it was the year that "Bowling for Columbine" won.