Share Your Favorite Documentaries Thread!

I used to have the Ivor Cutler doc Looking For Truth With a Pin on DVD then loaned it to someone and never got it back (and forgot who). The dvd is now out of print ;- ;

Just discovered UBUWEB has it, God Bless Them

Super Size Me
Shadow Company (actually features a µ-Ziq track)
Iraq For Sale

Meant to see Do Not Resist late last year, but never got around to it.
 

The Shock of the New, 1980 documentary by Robert Hughes on the development of modern art.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFtSvldL7Mh4ismj4BgH33pBR9hbtBkxz

A follow-up to SotN

A couple of Caravaggio documentaries.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8040C60C7AC9D6AD

The Mona Lisa Curse, on the commercialised/profiteering art market.

https://vimeo.com/62973616

the one about the tiffany fans/stalkers

and

"Waldemar Januszczak challenges the traditional notion of the Renaissance having fixed origins in Italy and showcases the ingenuity in both technique and ideas behind great artists such as Van Eyck, Memling, Van der Weyden, Cranach, Riemenschneider and Durer".

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4d3tkf

Januszczak is the art critic for the Sunday Times, he's a documentary natural, funny, insightful, entertaining & a really good educator, wish he was given more scope & air time

Bobby Sands - 66 Days ....one of the finest documentaries on Northern Ireland & The Troubles. As much as men of blood can never wash their hands fully clean, the civil rights foundations of so many problems inherent in NI is deconstructed as well as anything that has been produced on the subject. 90mins gives you a historiography of the evolution of sectarian violence, the main players, the effects of Loyalist escalation, the true extent of Provisional IRA killings, a raft of interviews & period footage all edited together so parts of it look & sound like a Burroughs cut-up. But it works. You get images of endless bombings you wouldnt normally see inter-cut with home movie footage of 70's shindigs, which adds to the ambiguity, anxiety & tension. A bit like The Vietnam War by Ken Burns, but boiled down so any fat is rendered out and edited to just the right stylistic juxtapositions. Should be shown in every school to show just how fuckin ruthless our politicians really are/were. Also available by alternative means. Twelfty/10, but the imdb rating underscores it by a significant margin of difference

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5931144/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096msfr

  On 10/3/2016 at 3:41 AM, LimpyLoo said:

Anybody seen Documentary Now on Netflix?

Some good satire of docs from different eras

YES

I think the Blue Jean Committee one is my favorite. They nail the aesthetic and editing of so many though, the chef one is excellent and very endearing despite being so silly at first.

Long Shot on Netflix is great  and less than an hour

This is one of my favs

Not sure whether this deserves a thread on its own, but here's a short doc about J Dilla on the MPC3000. 

Carcass bio in 4 or 5 parts, all involved seem like very humble, funny, witty blokes who've managed to stay grounded & genuine mates thru various tribulations, although Mike Amott keeps preening his quaffed dyed hair

story of their drummer's strength of character in the face of monumental health adversity is staggering, just add Bill Steer talking guitar techniques/tuning, differences in band styles between 1986-1988, the converging & diverging scenes at the time, the influence of Death & Repulsion on Carcass's's''ss early guitar sound evolution, plus how they conjured those classic first few lp covers

insane documentary about so-called christians accusing children of being witches, and then trying to exorcise them for large sums of money. NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED

https://youtu.be/ooXBMU_06vg

The Secret Life of Machines (1988-93)

Great series about the functioning and histories of everyday devices.

Playlist

http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/

A look at the life and works of the Post-Impressionist artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ay4sf

  Quote

 

The Sound of Belgium explores the rich but untold story of Belgian dance music. From the dance halls with Decap organs to the golden days of Popcorn; from EBM and New Beat to Belgian house and techno.

 

At the end of the 80s, Belgium was taken by surprise by the New Beat, a once immensely popular, almost surreal type of dance music. Its unexpected but short lived success didn’t only leave a mark on a new generation of musicians in Belgium in the years to come; its eclectic mix of sounds and styles actually had its seeds in earlier decades.

 

A story that has been widely ignored by ‘serious’ music critics and the mainstream media in general, 'The Sound of Belgium' goes in search of the spirit of a nation and the people that danced to it.

https://boilerroom.tv/recording/sound-belgium

Nice Channel 4 documentary on stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen (Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, Sinbad).

Just rewatched King of Kong... so good. And now with Billy Mitchell being called out for cheating here a couple of weeks ago only makes the documentary that much better. You can't write a better character than Billy Mitchell.

I saw a abc doc on the stolen Van Goghs, Spoiler alert. ...

Mobsters steal them to hold as ransom to get shorter prison sentences

Brian Sewell reflects on his time spent with Dali.

  On 2/20/2018 at 12:29 AM, Squee said:

Just rewatched King of Kong... so good. And now with Billy Mitchell being called out for cheating here a couple of weeks ago only makes the documentary that much better. You can't write a better character than Billy Mitchell.

*hi 5*

I rewatched it for the first time in years recently too. It never gets old. Billy Mitchell is America's irl Alan Partridge

Humorous and informative talk by Dr. John Hinds, road racing anaesthetist and paramedic. Not necessarily a doco, but the slide pictures are very helpful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinds_(doctor)

"So for some reason, if you're about to have a crash on a motorbike, your brain reverts to back when you were 8 years old riding a bmx, and you try to put your foot down. I've no idea why this is, but everyone does it. If you put your foot down at 180mph, your foot will point backwards within about half a second. So, the only way for a motorcycle boot to get torn off, is if the foot faces backwards, and that's the only way for the boot to come off. So if you find a boot in the middle of the road it means that that leg has faced backwards. And the only way for that leg to face backwards at 100mph, is for the foot to rotate, the tib and fib to break, the femur to break, and probably the pelvis as well".

  Quote

Reclusive janitor by day, visionary artist by night, outsider artist Henry Darger moved through life virtually unnoticed. But after his death, a treasure trove was discovered in his one-room Chicago apartment: a staggering 15,000-page novel and hundreds of illustrations that continue to inspire artists around the world. In the Realms of the Unreal immerses us in Darger's startling universe of innocence and pain, showing how he forged magic out of the bleakest of lives.

  On 12/6/2017 at 6:52 PM, goDel said:

Not sure whether this deserves a thread on its own, but here's a short doc about J Dilla on the MPC3000. 

 

Excellent. Sometimes the Vox stuff is ripe for parody but they do really do their homework. This is the best MPC and Dilla primer I've seen.

Also, this has truly become a goldmine of doc recs, especially the art ones from the last page.

Has Wild Wild Country been mentioned here yet? Incredible story, highly recommend checking it out, esp if you're into cult history / documentaries