An Impossible Job: ILX's 40 Favorite Documentaries

I was going to post the results on the thread that was in progress, but a couple of people suggested a new one. The top 40 looks like a sensible cutoff point: everything from 40 up got at least 20 points, and only one film got in there with a single vote. I'll go up to #26 today, do 15 more on Monday, then the top 10 on Tuesday. Whatever links I can find for clips will be found just under the ranking/still/vote totals; I won't embed them, though. I'll start making note of first-place votes as soon as that applies. Thanks a lot to everyone who sent in a ballot--I think the results are a good mix of obvious inclusions and quirkier surprises.

#40: Salesman (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1968)

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/protectedimage.php?image=NoelMegahey/salesman5.jpg_30042007

20 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdQPtcX9Y8

#40: The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000)

http://images.greencine.com/images/article/filth-fury.jpg

20 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-kdhRoAEQY

I haven't seen this but I remember mark s was very critical of it.

salesman is on the watch list.

#40: The Gleaners & I (Agnes Varda, 2000)

http://ethiopia.limbo13.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/the-gleaners.jpg

20 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKgjjEJvMbM

i found salesman incredibly mundane & get that that is sorta the point but idk. also just the concept of paying for a bible in installments blows my ever lovin mind

I just remembered forgetting to vote for Love & Diane, but then again hardly anyone else has seen it.

#40: The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984)

http://www.miketidmus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/times_milk_400.jpg

20 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkN8OZQ0EK8

Had to get those ties out of the way--28 Up, 7 Up, Chronicle of a Summer, The Heart of the Game, and Seventeen also received 20 points, but with fewer voters. I'm so sloppy on this board when it comes to mistakes...If a moderator gets a minute to fix those missing end brackets on the first two films, that would be appreciated. I'll try to be careful.

#39: Être et Avoir (Nicolas Philibert, 2002)

http://cdn-premiere.ladmedia.fr/var/premiere/storage/images/tele/news-videos/video-etre-et-avoir-plongez-avec-emotion-dans-le-quotidien-d-une-ecole-communale-ce-soir-sur-arte/36878335-1-fre-FR/VIDEO-Etre-et-avoir-plongez-avec-emotion-dans-le-quotidien-d-une-ecole-communale-ce-soir-sur-Arte_image_article_paysage_new.jpg

21 points/2 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gHuxjtsp38

#38: Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)

http://cdn.mos.totalfilm.com/images/i/inside-job-00-470-75.jpg

22 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzhWodFE7E0&feature=relmfu

If anyone's taking the time to look at the clips, try this one instead for Être et Avoir: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDcqQuoWnFI. I don't think the one I posted above is even from the film!

#36: Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1970)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DTMUexn4UAo/Sr5H9BMhyhI/AAAAAAAAAYI/g5EoHaew7PU/s400/gimmeshelter.jpg

24 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=keh2paoGIrM

Just saw Inside Job a couple of days ago. It was good, though it seems to oversimplify things a bit, I think. It makes want to read a good book about what exactly happened. I still don't understand how derivatives are supposed to work.

#36: Winged Migration (Jacques Perrin/Jacques Cluzaud, 2001)

http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ae/Le_Peuple_Migrateur.jpg/275px-Le_Peuple_Migrateur.jpg

24 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40h8dPmgwQ

Love that Gimme Shelter still.

Man, I hate Winged Migration. One of my old gfs made me watch it with her because she was fweakin cwazy about birds, and I feel like it had nothing to offer to anyone who wasn't already a bird fanatic. Aside from a surprisingly cool soundtrack (Robert Wyatt & Nick Cave iirc)

#34: Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2002)

http://www.movie-film-review.com/files/images/filmimages/spellbounddocu.jpg

25 points/2 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5n_nMqH7CU

^nothing to offer to anyone who wasn't already a nerd fanatic

Winged Migration looks great, come on. Plus who doesn't like birds?!

#34: The World at War (Hugh Raggett/John Pett/David Elstein/Ted Childs/Michael Darlow/Martin Smith, 1973/74)

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/07_01/WWIIL_468x313.jpg

25 points/2 votes

This is interesting (and good work, clemenza)...but weird

i like birds, but i dont like watching nothing but birds flying from point A to point B for 100 minutes

Oops - I voted for World At War even though I haven't seen it, I just read about it and thought it looked amazing. Didn't think I'd be influencing things.

already hate ILX for not repping for seventeen & actively punishing agnes varda. etre et avoir a good one. i think i found spellbound a lil frothy?, but i forget.

It makes want to read a good book about what exactly happened. I still don't understand how derivatives are supposed to work.

apparently the john lanchester one's good; i read the start and was only distracted by other books, not by it being boring or impenetrable etc.

hahaaaaa

xp

Couldn't find a clip for World at War. Spellbound was my #1--I wanted to find a useable still for someone other than Harry (ideally, the Chateaubriand girl), but no luck.

sb'd you ismael

don't wanna interrupt your countdown, but do enthuse about spellbound when you've a sec, clemenza -- would be curious to hear someone zealous about how good it is, i remember it fairly plainly

yeah, sb'ed myself too

#33: Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rLhnrqgHqhw/SlKnb26rjzI/AAAAAAAAAEw/UkxZZm65-Xg/s400/Los+Angeles+Plays+Itself+%282003%29+4.JPG

25 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hYg01uqz9U

writing a draft list of shitty novels to submit to any future books polls you run
xp

I've written about Spellbound a few times--I'll post some thoughts when I get a second. (I'm finding commenting difficult as I search for stills and clips.)

already havent heard of a few of these!

you have to disable safe search to find stills for 'HATED: the gg allin story', fyi
xp

#32: Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1986)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nOqp-9qvh9g/S7K_zRqjkpI/AAAAAAAAABc/cDPtExaU6Y8/s1600/ross+pat.jpg

25 points/4 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZC2_FAcYlU

Yay, thanks for doing this, clemenza.

Did I miss discussion of The Gleaners & I somewhere? Looks really interesting to me.

You'll be glad to know that Hated finished 214th among 214--dead last (but ahead of many, many documentaries that got no votes).

#31: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, 2008)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C9klPY5snd0/TWWtv-e_TII/AAAAAAAAA0s/5BgsRY5BMCY/s1600/anvil2.jpg

26 points/2 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYxZBTgi-gI&feature=fvst

I haven't seen this, but obviously the greatest title ever.

#30: The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)

http://bobmccurdy.com/JoniMitchell.jpg

26 points/4 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BREYCGWOouw

If there's zero Fred Wiseman on this, including Anvil! makes perfect sense

i don't know that there was any real dedicated gleaners discussion, emil.y; furthermore she's threadless, here, but i think there's quite a lot of discussion of it in a chris marker thread, iirc. it's v charmingly made and very interesting, if you've not seen it.

i actually wouldn't go near hated but i can see why someone'd vote it.

#29: WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/177/1182304636_1.jpg

27 points/2 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FNha0znnnA

i can see how anvil! is not for everyone. for instance, if you hate life.

Sherman's March.. jakldsfjklsdf

what does that mean, Jeff

#28: The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_m47RlRiYoAg/S9qSW4OYzAI/AAAAAAAAHnc/hEemo1InSAA/s1600/The.Fog.of.War.20031.jpg

27 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfPwR00HXM0

I voted for Anvil - it's another of those modern docs that have a real way with a good narrative yarn and emotional connection without seeming obscenely fake.

Finally remembered the name of a doc that gareth told me about that I was trying to find before voting: The Moon and the Sledgehammer. This looks awesome.

And my friend just got this for his birthday yesterday: Here's a Health to the Barley Mow: A Century of Folk Customs and Ancient Rural Games

And, you know what, I just realised that B.S. Johnson's short on the making of The Unfortunates may well have counted. This is what happens when you rush voting.

(I'm guessing the Barley Mow vid wouldn't count as 'a documentary', I think it's more of a collection, but still looks relevant to the interests of the thread)

#27: My Best Fiend (Werner Herzog, 1999)

http://thecinemaguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/500my_best_fiend.jpg

29 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4sg459P8m4

the weirdest thing about Hated to me is that it was directed by todd phillips.

fog of war was the top erroll morris contender for me, though i ended up not voting for it. spectacular movie

now that I see how low the point threshold was for a movie to rank, I wish I'd spread my points around to some more unconventional pictures. I was coming right off the U2 poll, where my top songs didn't rank at all, so i guess i thought i'd be wasting points.

#26: Brother's Keeper (Joe Berlinger/Bruce Sinofsky, 1992)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FY2687dO59c/S734xQnJpgI/AAAAAAAABLU/cktxCalNJ4U/s1600/brothers-keeper_592x299.jpg

30 points/1 vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDSGMAyUrE

urgh, i never sent in a ballot

of what's been posted so far, 'spellbound' (for admittedly personal reasons) and 'los angeles plays itself' would def have been on it

huh, brother's keeper looks great. i'll have to watch for it.

I'll stop there for today. Brother's Keeper was the only film to get in on the maximum support from one voter--which is fine. One of things I love about documentaries is that a film like Anvil! The Story of Anvil can end up being every bit as compelling as The Fog of War--I had a film about bowling on my list, but not The Sorrow and the Pity. That's just the way it goes. Schlump asked earlier for some thoughts on Spellbound--just so I don't repeat myself, I'll be really lazy and link to some stuff I wrote when I listed it as my favourite film of the '00s (where I see I link to something I'd written on the film even earlier).

yea i didnt vote for it, but i ttly love brother's keeper

Fog of War is my least fave Morris. McNamara's confessional spin doesn't interest me.

brother's keeper is great

I had mixed feelings on The Fog of War too, but I found it better the second time. I think the whole point of the film is watching McNamara spin--except I wouldn't reduce it to spinning, he does seem to agonize his way through whatever it is he's trying to say.

I still don't understand how derivatives are supposed to work.

I think I've seen about six documentaries that try to explain this, and I'm still lost.

Since they came out around the same time, I always compare FoW to Capturing the Freidmans, even though they are so different. Love CtF so so so much more.

i always liked amateurist's posts on fog of war:

the film is perhaps most interesting for excavating, in part and not wholly convincingly--more on that later--the milieu out of which this guy and others who shaped cold war foreign policy came. he was a kind of technocrat, perfectly embodying the spillover between industry academia and the military.

what bugs me most--and i don't mean this as a criticism of the fil necessarily--is how much he claims innocence of the historical and political phenomena he was encountering in vietnam. when he said that he didn't understand the vietnamese hostility toward the chinese; or the fact that th e north vietnamese saw it as a liberation struggle...why not? books had been written, editorials published, etc. well before america's involvement in the region. were his circumstances and intellectual horizons really so circumscribed that mcnamara missed this completely? or is his claiming innocence--and by extrapolation the innocence rumsfeld et al may claim 30 years hence--just a way of bucking responsibility?

the film lacked a thorough enough feel for the period to throw these questions out--it remains mcnamara's story. which i believe was morris's intention and it might be a worthwhile one. why bother to make another film castigating our vietnam policy when so many exist already (or do they?)?

etc

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, January 19, 2004 7:14 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

I left Spellbound off my list and I feel terrible about it now. Sorry, clemenza.

WR: Mysteries of the Organism

is this a documentary? imo this is like 'any film that isn't a straightahead fictional narrative or an abstract/art/___ film'

well, The Last Waltz isn't a doc either; it's a staged event.

Just went and read up on it (so thanks for mentioning it as I now desperately want to see it) and it sounds like it counts: all the reviews suggest there is a documentary element mixed up with collage/artyshit, which seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way of shaping one's work without discounting it. I don't see why a documentary can't be arty.

Surely you should have psychically divined that I wanted Spellbound to win, Emily...It's such a great film. I assume Morbius's nerd comment upthread was directed at Spellbound (maybe Winged Migration, I'm not sure). If so, I think that's so far off the mark.

As I said numerous times in the previous thread, I didn't set guidelines as to what counted as documentary (not that I have any idea where I'd set them if I were to try). People who voted decided that WR and The Last Waltz are documentaries, and that's fine with me.

Uh. I also voted for brothers keeper. Did my ballot go missing?

WR is mostly documentary - apart from a couple of short fictional scenes set in (then) Yugoslavia.
Also I mentioned this on the other thread, but I first saw WR when I was 16, and it blew my mind. Well worth checking out.

i actually wouldn't go near hated but i can see why someone'd vote it.

I voted for Hated - the main thing for me is the massive gulf between what GG thought he was doing and what other people, even his fans, were getting out of it.

Jjjusten--I'm so glad you caught that, and many apologies. I'm going to make the adjustments right now. It's an easy fix; I'm just got to move Brother's Keeper up, and retabulate points for a film that hasn't come up yet. Let me do that, and I'll be back in a few minutes to post the proper #26 (and will re-post Brother's Keeper again on Monday).

I almost voted for hated as well

Oh and no apologies needed obv

well, The Last Waltz isn't a doc either; it's a staged event.

o_0

oh boy

just ignore him

it's hard!

#26: Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/Shoah-two_opt.jpg

(30 points/2 votes)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W0WcZu9O74

Bravo

although on second thoughts a lot of that is so clearly staged, it has no place here. I find it hard to believe those guys are still walking around the camps so many years later and the camera crew just found them there

^^^ set up for a really edgy joke

That's the real #26--Brother's Keeper has moved up. As I'm sure everybody says when they mess up a countdown, I'm not sure how that happened--I'd acknowldged jjjusten' ballot when it came in. Anyway, most of jjjusten's votes were solitary, so it was as easy a fix as I could've hoped for in such a situation.

You can't find a Shoah clip on YouTube. Just the trailer, or the whole film in 59 parts.

I definitely enjoyed most of these, I think, aside from Spellbound and Brother's Keeper. Winged Migration is the one so far I haven't seen. Looks hard to get excited about, tbh.

Sad realization about what that means about the rest of my ballot slowly sinking in

d00d you're intense

Sorry to people who voted for them but IMO anvil was sorta bland who cares rock doc and inside job was just awful in every way

the Anvil doc barely made an impact on me, and I *like* '80s metal.

it's no 'night mail'

Man now I am also wishing I had 30 pointed my top 2 and gotten them in here - something tells me impaler isn't going to make it

voters should have seen at least 20 documentaries total.

I was kind of touched by Anvil. Not a big metal guy.

did you even vote Morbius?

I did, Tammy Tam Tam, and since Shoah is my #1, ah'm dreading the rest.

There are going to be about 10 decent eps of "Behind the Music" in this

I didn't vote, btw.

i considered a few metal docs, but i settled on... i guess we'll see if it places. i'm betting not

another opinion 4 u: talking about what is/isn't a documentary is pretty much the most boring insufferable thing ever. n.b. i got a year of that bullshit in school. IT DOES NOT MATTER, AT ALL.

dr morbius seriously? go fuck yourself

easy now

another opinion 4 u: talking about what is/isn't a documentary is pretty much the most boring insufferable thing ever. n.b. i got a year of that bullshit in school. IT DOES NOT MATTER, AT ALL.

ehhhh it kind of matters

I don't know why you make these crazy assumptions, Morbius.

Here's the list so far:

#40: Salesman (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1968) -- 20 points/3 votes
#40: The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000) -- 20 points/3 votes
#40: The Gleaners & I (Agnes Varda, 2000) -- 20 points/3 votes
#40: The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984) -- 20 points/3 votes
#39: Être et Avoir (Nicolas Philibert, 2002) -- 21 points/2 votes
#38: Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010) -- 22 points/3 votes
#36: Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1970) -- 24 points/3 votes
#36: Winged Migration (Jacques Perrin/Jacques Cluzaud, 2001) -- 24 points/3 votes
#34: Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2002) -- 25 points/2 votes
#34: The World at War (Hugh Raggett/John Pett/David Elstein/Ted Childs/Michael Darlow/Martin Smith, 1973/74) -- 25 points/2 votes
#33: Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003) -- 26 points/2 votes
#32: Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1986) -- 25 points/4 votes
#31: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, 2008) -- 26 points/2 votes
#30: The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978) -- 26 points/4 votes
#29: WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971) -- 27 points/2 votes
#28: The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003) -- 27 points/3 votes
#27: My Best Fiend (Werner Herzog, 1999) -- 29 points/3 votes
#26: Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) -- 30 points/2 votes

Sorry (again!) for delivering preemptive bad news about your favourites, jjjusten.

I don't think that it does matter, but not in the way this fellow means it.

xp

jeez, I'm kinda semi-joking. If I'd included 'concert films' my list woulda changed. (Gimme Shelter is different)

xxxxp

it kind of matters bc there's a question of comparing like with like. i like 'the world at war', but it's a compilation of clips from various sources. that's absolutely unlike 'shoah', which in turn is absolutely unlike 'primary', which in turn is absolutely unlike 'north sea'...

Love Makavejev's The Switchboard Operator

a lot of movies are unlike other movies; i dont really understand the complaint

Morbs speaks the truth. Too loudly, but still ...

Yes ok but that's why I don't really get polls like this, much as I respect the efforts of everyone involved in voting and compiling it, it's nice to have stuff to talk about.

xxxp

Out of 40, already 9 are from the last 10 years, et al.

a lot of movies are unlike other movies; i dont really understand the complaint

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, August 12, 2011 6:38 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark

this is like doing a poll of 'books that aren't novels' or something.

No argument that there's no consistency as to how people interpreted the concept of "documentary," but would it be possible to set definitive guidelines that would please everyone? That's why I'd rather let voters decide, and, as it worked out, for a film to place in the top 40 at least two different people would have had to agree that it belonged.

As Alfred Hitchcock famously said, "It's just a poll."

no that seems fair enough.

xp

ok sorry dr m. i think what something claims to be and what it might/might not be matters a lot, but trying to slot things along the lines of documentary/not-documentary is a fool's game and can be misleading.

Love Makavejev's The Switchboard Operator

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 12 August 2011 18:37 (2 minutes ago)

yeah, lotta fun, immediate like the french '60s stuff. makes me feel i ought to be watching WR.

'is this a documentary' is not so much 'not important' as it is 'a really interesting referendum on cinema', imo, just a pretty challenging thing to define + discuss + consider. understand how a year of school can kill this joy for you though.

We never discussed this in my school, fwiw

Eric H.: surely you knew that there'd be a pronounced tilt towards stuff from the last 10-15 years. I plead guilty myself--as I said before, I didn't start watching documentaries regularly till the mid-'90s, and I imagine many people would be in the same boat. Because of Moore and Morris and Hoop Dreams and some other things, they just started to get a much higher profile around then.

h8 sherman's march

That one seems to be a polarizing film, my wife hates it too

The World At War (#34) was my #1. It's one of the earliest docs on WW2 (with Laurence Olivier narrating in full-on gravely sincere mode) and still the best. It's largely shot by soldiers on the front lines, and even at 34 hours feels like it just scratches the surface. Pretty essential stuff for anyone with even a vague interest in history.

It's one of the earliest docs on WW2

errrrrr no, what???

it came out in about 1973. they made docs about the war as it happened. and used clips from them to make... 'the world at war'.

i only voted for 4 docs from the 2000s, but i dont think there's anything wrong with privileging recency. i think it's inevitable for any poll that isn't era-specific, and if that's an undesirable outcome to you then you gotta put your money where your mouth is like morbs did and lay big points on your old tymey favs. clemenza's point about the 90s documentary boom is a good one too

'what is a documentary' is a pretty tedious line of discussion to me when we could be talking about the docs themselves, but whatever

it's a way of talking about the docs

Love Makavejev's The Switchboard Operator

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 12 August 2011 18:37 (2 minutes ago)

yeah, lotta fun, immediate like the french '60s stuff. makes me feel i ought to be watching WR.

Fun Fact: Makavejev came across the true crime that inspired the fictional part of WR while researching the crime that Switchboard fictionalizes.

I thought about throwing a vote towards his Innocence Unprotected, which is a really poignant doc about the first Serbian talkie. It's in the Eclipse box.

I wish you'd sent in a ballot, history mayne. Maybe when we finish you can post a list.

feel too conflicted over it

Over "what is a documentary?", or polls/lists themselves?

ffs history mayne, poor show

Haven't seen many of the others *sigh* so can't comment on the apples and oranges controversy.

Anvil is horrible tho'. Guess Spinal Tap is going to win *deeper sigh*

Hoping Night and Fog makes it.

i love innocence unprotected!

hah, i didnt even consider that someone would vote for spinal tap. it'd be funny if it placed

unless that was a joke!

spinal tap definitely isn't a documentary. LOL

#15 best in show

All-Guest "Top 3".

(x-post)

#1 'the office'

why do u h8 shermy's march amon

it came out in about 1973. they made docs about the war as it happened. and used clips from them to make... 'the world at war'.

― we started this punning display name shit (history mayne),

oh, my mistake, thought it came out in the '60's. either way that was 40 years ago. And obviously it's largely constructed with clips from other sources. It's a documentary.

you cant write it off as a 'clip compilation' though because they shot a shitload of interviews with important dudes for it

true, forgot that. i wasn't writing it off anyway -- some of my favourite... audio-visual things are compilations. like adam curtis's stuff, whatever that is. (again, it seems to me legitimate to include tv documentaries. they've never had good theatrical distribution.)

i guess it's coz my phd is (partly) on documentary in the grierson-flaherty sense.

<3 john grierson

i probably could've done a list entirely of tv docs

If there's one way I could expand what I've seen, it would be to see a lot of TV stuff over the years that aired and then more or less disappeared--An American Family being the obvious example, but there are others.

hah, i didnt even consider that someone would vote for spinal tap. it'd be funny if it placed

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, 12 August 2011 Bookmark

Seems like its all up for grabs w/this poll. No idea if its been nominated or what.

Curtis is what Makavejev sounds like -- video essay. Like Curtis v much apart from the last one. Even less of an argument with not enough golden nuggets in the archives. xxp

i have a fluctuating relationship w/ curtis's stuff. didn't like 'the trap', did like the most recent, even though it was completely mental.

i'd include 'century of the self' in my list of er, non-fiction films

Me too. It Felt Like A Kiss is the one I like best and it is probably the least "documentary"

The World at War is the That's Entertainment! of bombing.

priceless

Urgh, I hated the last Curtis. Bad premises. Loved and voted for The Power of Nightmares, though.

lol

Urgh, I hated the last Curtis. Bad premises. Loved and voted for The Power of Nightmares, though.

― emil.y, Friday, August 12, 2011 7:27 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah, sort of feel this is 'generation very much in character'. i think the premises of both series are pretty bad, the resulting films good. but people object more to the premise of ALOBMOLG. the last ep is transcendent imo.

woah never seen you get so effusive, maybe take a lie down

I agree with you too! craziness

I must confess I didn't watch the last one, as I'd been so annoyed by the first two.

ALOBMOLG was great

The last one really stood out

*AWOBMOLG

If you're going to praise something, at least get its name right. 'All Licked Over By Machines of Loving Grace'? (lol xp)

Not gonna retread why I hated it in detail, though - pretty sure I posted a few annoyances on the dedicated thread.

I didn't know a thing about Adam Curtis until this conversation started. This is good. (Not sure how I'll see this stuff if it's BBC, though.)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

www.rapidshare.com

most of them are on youtube or google video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOlwbaPe2os

Not one for downloading films, and really hate watching anything longer than a short clip off the computer.

^^ 'generation very much in character'

i doubt the good old beeb would sue. like 'la plays itself' i don't think it could be put on dvd even if there were a market, because it uses loads of copyright material. (like broadcast is governed by different rules than dvd or something.)

I voted for one Adam Curtis: The Mayfair Set.

(at least, I think I did)

"la plays itself" is a gay porn film. just sayin'

You did vote for The Mayfair Set, yes. And there is an Adam Curtis film in the top 25.

i haven't seen AOLOLBLOGOMG

Either The Trap or Power of Nightmares, prob. the latter

xp

"la plays itself" is a gay porn film. just sayin'

― A41 (admrl), Friday, August 12, 2011 7:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

wrongly naming that film has become just an annoying thing that i do.

It's actually a really interesting film, I mean both of them are. u shld check it out

why do u h8 shermy's march amon

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, August 12, 2011 2:12 PM

not sure, iirc it was really long and the narrator seemed overly-sedate. just total snooze-fest. should i watch it again, its been years since i've seen it

Limp Bizkit is surprisingly front and centre in this thread.

I do keep on getting confused by the auto-embed of TamTam's display name.

i havent seen it in a long time myself, but i gave it 5 points anyway. i need to watch it again

im hoping that it confuses someone into clicking on it looking for a hot documentary clip

Wow, I had no idea this was in progress. "Gleaners & I" is so good, and casually profound. "WR: Mysteries of the Organism" I can't stand. "Winged Migration" I can watch all day. The perfect example of a doc that shows you something common from such a (literally) different angle it changes the way you think about said something, in this case, um, wings. But man, are those flapping/gliding wings so cool.

Wd have voted for LA Plays Itself if I knew we were opening up slots to gay porn.

im hoping that it confuses someone into clicking on it looking for a hot documentary clip

I'm stealing your idea for something.

xpost So we can discuss the "doc"/"not a doc" veracity of full penetration and non-waxed ass.

I showed Winged Migration to my two grade 6 science classes last year, and most of them were pretty attentive through most of it.

The only thing I really remember about Winged Migration is that I bought a bottle of wine and some brie and crusty bread to consume while I watched it.

that really sounds delicious

Obviously I provided my students with wine and crusty bread.

wd do the same w/ showing a class Sex Positive

three of mine placed so far. (i was the other shoah voter if it makes you feel any better morbs.) (on the other hand, i voted for fog of war.) enjoying this so far. thanks, c.

whoops, make that four. i figure about another three have a shot. the other three, not so much.

i think i have ~10 that still have a shot at placing.

Oh man I haven't had a chance to read through this yet but I'm psyched that brother's keeper placed. I gave it a lot of points iirc. I think I may have voted for hated too but I can't remember.

Brother's Keeper is so heartbreaking, the non-fiction equiv. of "A Simple Plan."

Loved it, have to see it again.

Fans of Anvil who wished it had more pathos and OCD dramedy should check out Driver 23, which is almost a companion piece to American Movie (American Metal?). I didn't vote for any of those but they'd make my Top 100.

Josh you were the one who recommended it to me on the netflix thread! :)

I thought Brother's Keeper was really quite boring

i would love to see driver 23 but it is oop yes?

also how in the world is brothers keeper boring

Like, it bored me. It seemed realllllly drawn out and ultimately rather pointless. It just wasn't "well-crafted" (can't think of a better term, sorry)

huh. experiences differ etc i guess

i found it engaging but i wasn't really blown away. it's a unique and sad story, but formally it's a very familiar kind of doc.

i guess i can see that - the story outweighed the style for me prob - which is super true of one of my other choices but im not saying anything because i am still holding out hope that it places

oh yeah i'm not making a style v. substance argument here. i mean i prefer to have both, but "transparent style" is also a style etc etc.

i need to revisit it, but like admrl, i was left v v cold by BK a few years ago.

apologies for not participating in this (seventeen would have made it, i bet!), good work getting this together clemeneza, etc. but srsly fuck the canon, it's missing almost everything i love.

clemenza*

here's a question i meant to ask during the nominations thread, but forgot to: has anyone on ilx ever MADE a doc?

yes, someone on this thread is a very good filmmaker

I have. And gbx has. And s1ocki made a faux-documentary. Sure there are others

i knew dr. morbius would finally put his money where his mouth is.

xpost: oh well thanks for ruining my joke ADAM.

seriously though where/how can i see your film?

(i was referring to adam, idk about gbx and s1ocki's films)

I don't get it! =/ But I don't think I want it explained

xp

me? I don't know...which film? Are you in Baltimore or Philadelphia or something? Let's save this for another thread!

that was to strongo

haha! i am everywhere you want to be. but yes.

me? I don't know...which film? Are you in Baltimore or Philadelphia or something? Let's save this for another thread!

― A41 (admrl), Sunday, 14 August 2011 00:31 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

you shouldn't be so modest/should agitate for yr work to be discussed in the 'top 40 documentaries' thread. i'd be innarested ...

As I mentioned on the previous thread, I was in Alan Zweig's Vinyl for about half a minute. And I once had an idea to make a documentary about Denny McLain. The next step of actually doing anything about it was just too much to bear.

I'm a little lost--which person has made a documentary?

Haha, I do not think my film would be on this thread even if every ilxer ever had seen it and I don't really much want to talk about it on ILX. I also wouldn't presume that because I have worked on documentaries, I know anymore about what makes a good one than any of you guys. If y'all want to rep for Brother's Keeper, that's cool.

xp I saw Vinyl! Are you a record nerd and/or sad person?

Hmmmmn...Both? A friend posted my clip on YouTube a few years ago, so here's a non-embedded link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCAGSnsnkVA.

Ha! I love that after my clip, the "Up Next" one is "8-1/2 minutes with Robert Crumb."

Woaaaaah! I remember you!

I think I posted that clip on I Love Vinyl, actually

i keep meaning to hassle gbx into seeing his doc - it was about seeland, and theres a thread around here somewhere

And it showed on a bus!!

s1ocki's film(s) is also great, fwiw, but not an actual documentary. And his new film is hilarious

I was hoping for Vinyl: The Next Generation and Vinyl: The Final Conflict, but the franchise just never happened.

It was a good film about record collecting, but it made my wife sad (she is not a record person, though).

If Vinyl is #1 in this poll, I will now be very suspicious...

oh whoops "sealand", seeland was the negativland label thing

I did a search on "Seeland"--a band?

(I gave it 164 points, just enough to take #1.)

"Island nation"

As in, it's about the island nation of sealand, that's not what the film is called.

i have been mulling a doc for several years now but have no idea how i'd get started etc etc. hats off to anyone who's done is, is my take.

I would like to see a strongo doc, do it!

ugh you actually made me say doc

i have been mulling a doc for several years now but have no idea how i'd get started etc etc. hats off to anyone who's done is, is my take.

i know nothing about filmmaking but: i think i would probably feel better about starting making a doc casually, & digitally, & spontaneously, than i would a feature. like have you seen the recent, digital, agnes varda films? they seem to've been made v piecemeal, and are very charming.

hats off, still, obviously.

like have you seen the recent, digital, agnes varda films? they seem to've been made v piecemeal, and are very charming.

no, but i will check them out! sometimes i feel like i need to make a movie at some point just to justify the $17k of film school debt i still have hanging around my neck.

ha, yeah. i went to (read about films do not touch the camera) film school + usually end up pondering whether working towards a thing is valid irrespective of whether you achieve it - like it is more about the time you spent, rather than whether that's retroactively invalidated by its conclusion. but yeah making a film would really sock film school in the jaw (doubly so if it isn't about someone being stalked, w/grainy long-shots & a haunting cello score).

watch 'the gleaners & i', if only to join my chorus of 'this deserved better, ilx documentary thread' - i think since she got a handheld camera, AV carries it in her bag and just shoots very freely & without necessarily having a surrounding apparatus of sound-men, &c - so there are these brief, very intimate passages of self-reflection, and glanced sights on her travels, etc, and she digresses to follow whatever's piqued her interest. which i think she's always done, but which you can imagine is easier with a compact production unit + which she mightn't still be doing if it still required like huge financing and pre-planning and pre-approval, &c.

"Vinyl" was also made by just one guy and his camera, unless clemenza knows otherwise.

yeah indeed. tarnation also.
sorta at a tangent but not really; whenever, in docs, you see old super 8 footage blown up & featured, i always think it holds up stunningly well - there are those passages in the daniel johnston doc of films he'd make as a kid, i think with his brothers, and dub over with voices, and they're just beautiful to look at, very full and warm + alive. like i feel like you can make a doc as a pretty varied tapestry of different sources & still thread it together somehow.

long time since i've seen vinyl but i remember it as looking like it was shot on video

But yes, it really doesn't have to take all that much. I try to shoot either on my own or maybe with one other person for sound (though I sometimes do both at once), but I have not made or worked on anything much longer than 30 minutes. Sometimes I feel like if you aren't blessed with the breadth of ideas and quickness of thought that someone like Agnes Varda has, you do need a few more people just to give you some flexibility, but it is a tradeoff.

oh I wonder if The Devil And Daniel Johnston will be in here. I would have voted for that!

Yes, Alan was on his own for Vinyl, and also for the next two (I Curmudgeon and Loved)--I was interviewed but wasn't used. He made another one after that, and seems to be doing well now--he got a retrospective at last year's Hot Docs festival here--so maybe he's got others who go on shoots now. I wish I could remember the film I saw that sparked the Denny McLain idea. The director spoke beforehand, and said he'd never touched a camera till he started whatever film he showed that night. (Wondering if it was the Arthur Kane documentary.)

I was surprised that Tarnation didn't get a single vote. The Devil and Daniel Johnston got a couple.

i think i'd be de-railing if i went too far into my thoughts on the DJ doc here, partly b/c i assume it's discussed elsewhere & partly because my complaints are fairly vague and not well remembered, but i think i was less enthusiastic about it than some. i kinda feel like it never reconciled the key weird paradox with him, which is how the sort of heaviness of everything meets the artist part. like there are such heavy moments in which he's gone off the rails, + been in terrible situations, and i didn't feel they connected with the portrait of him other than as sort of detail, as biography. i don't know.

when i saw tarnation i loved it; i think it's probably suffered since from seeming unique as a production rather than as a film, or for maybe seeming a little emotionally heavy-handed (which obv how could it not be, but). i think there are weird things about it.

Of the two, I liked the Daniel Johnston better at the time. But I remember very little in terms of specifics now, other than Tarnation was the more unconventional.

i remember loving tarnation too; i think i considered putting it on my ballot but thinking id need 2 watch it again and make sure it was actually good

I saw some new work by Jonathan Caouette recently...I kind of wish I hadn't

TARNATION is an atrocious film. Ignoring all the narcissism, I find it mindboggling that anyone found it aesthetically exciting ("lol 2003"?)

The narcissism was intriguing enuff, but the iMovie raindrop overlay was a bit too much.

i hate tarnation so fucking much. like in that thinking of it makes me angry sort of way.

otoh i was one of the votes for devil daniel johnston etc. so it is DOOMED

I love you guys who hate Tarnation. I wasn't going to say anything, so I'm glad you did.

Receiving a vote from jjjusten was the latest blow for Daniel Johnston in a life filled with tragedy.

I'll resume this with #25 tomorrow morning. My only regret so far is not naming the thread "Documentaries! The Story of Documentaries."

feel terrible using this thread for non-top-40-related material, but it seems so much smarter than reviving another docu thread, since everyone's here:

skimming this earlier, i wondered if anyone has seen any of tsuchimoto noriaki's films

I said I was going to make note of first-place votes, and then forgot all about it. I'll start doing that with today's films. It's a little ambiguous on a few ballots, where there are point values but the films aren't numbered, and two or three films are tied at the top with the most points. I'll assume the one that's listed first is that person's #1.

There were three films not in the Top 40 that each drew one first-place vote: With Orson Welles: Stories from a Life in Film, Sans Soleil, and Eyes on the Prize. Of the films I counted down on Friday, each of these also received one first-place vote: Être et Avoir, The World at War, Spellbound, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, and Shoah.

Sans Soleil

ILX, you fucking bastard!

#25: Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mJhtf0fqf7s/TCItcK_623I/AAAAAAAAEIw/k7KynMzaAgU/s400/paris+burning+3-1.jpg

32 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydA7-qCv570

Oh shit, there's a Ronald McDonald biopic?

#24: Winter Soldier (Fred Aronow/Robert Fiore/David Gillis/David Grubin/Jeff Holstein/Michael Lesser, 1972)

http://www.fromthevaultradio.org/home/wp-content/images/FTV008_Memorial%20Day%20Special/john%20kerry%20winter%20soldier.jpg

32 points/4 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucmDbv-Ck60

No director is listed for Winter Soldier, so I listed the cinematographers. To head off any complaints, I chose the Kerry still simply because its dimensions were most suitable--if I remember correctly, he's not in the film much.

Don't be afraid to watch WS, Kerry's not in it that much.

xp!

Not only did I psychically divine complaints, I psychically divined where they'd come from!

http://www.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/images/lowrez/jckarnak211.jpg

#22: The Century of the Self (Adam Curtis, 2002)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/images/bernays_lead.jpg

35 points/2 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUYFr-uDQgg

#22: Hype! (Doug Pray, 1996)

http://thefilmist.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/hype3.jpg?w=280&h=175

35 points/2 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZh_qP6lv98

Don't be afraid to watch WS, Kerry's not in it that much.

For a second, thought there was a documentary called "Would Smash"

Nice that Paris is Burning placed, but I'm reading you all so hard over the Marker snub.

#21: Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cTV4oFOmN74/Svmunhm_clI/AAAAAAAAAao/3elVrc4hyp8/s320/dylan_l.jpg

35 points/3 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc6HcA6kEJc

Don't give a shit.

I like DLB fine but didn't vote for it. Hype! is nice but for fuck's sake.

who voted for Paris Is Burning besides Eric and me?

#1 in this poll is gonna have, like, 6 votes total.

#20: Grey Gardens (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Ellen Hovde/Muffie Meyer, 1975)

http://www.mayslesfilms.com/films/images/greygardens/greygardens.jpg

35 points/5 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyaRYMFWYxs&feature=related

Eric, you're not even close. But by all means, keep the complaints coming.

Happy gay day, An Impossible Job: ILX's 40 Favorite Documentaries poll thread.

Century of the Self was my adam curtis selection.

I'm really glad someone gave Hype! a first place vote. I gave it 5 points and wasn't sure if it would rank, but I think it owns really hard.

The banana I ate for breakfast is as close to being the best documentary ever.

But by all means, keep the complaints coming.

I'll keep quiet so long as stuff like Grey Gardens are in the mix.

But the next lame music doc that shows up, I'm paging Tape Store to thread.

#19: Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982)

http://i2.listal.com/image/113777/600full-koyaanisqatsi%3A-life-out-of-balance-photo.jpg

35 points/6 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY4L5npPdao&feature=related

damn, wouldn't have even thought of koyaanisqatsi. forever since i saw it, also.

I voted for it. Koyaanisqatsi was a very moving experience the first time I watched it. Powaqqatsi bored me to tears, and I never saw the third one.

#18: Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984)

http://silverdocs.com/media/images/films/lg/StopMakingSense-a.jpg

38 points/5 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHJmPcILfg8&feature=related

also don't look back is excellent just as a study of bob dylan's bubble, milieu, brain, fans, times, &c, irrespective of it being a music doc.

i actually think powaqatsi's good, just incredibly frustrating if you go in expecting something molded by recurrence and rhythm, like the first. it has that great really-long-train shot. koyaanisqatsi's one of those things that i loved first seeing, but was p young when doing so, so am inherently suspicious of my judgment of.

Eric, there isn't much music in Don't Look Back; I don't think you hear BD perform a complete song aside from the Subterranean Homesick "video."

I haven't seen Stop Making Sense since it came out--not a fan--so I hope the YouTube clip is indeed from the film.

Srsly, people.

as I've said, Demme's is my favorite concert film, but I chose not to consider them documentaries. Just like many of you apparently chose not to consider political films documentaries.

i ignored concert films with one exception, but Stop Making Sense is way up there with the best and a personal fav. good album too

i actually think powaqatsi's good, just incredibly frustrating if you go in expecting something molded by recurrence and rhythm, like the first. it has that great really-long-train shot. koyaanisqatsi's one of those things that i loved first seeing, but was p young when doing so, so am inherently suspicious of my judgment of.

― bruce actual springsteen (schlump), Monday, August 15, 2011 11:10 AM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah you might be right. my predominant memory of it is as a movie consisting of slow shots of indian peasants herding cattle. it didnt have the same pizzazz for me, i guess

what do you mean by political films, morbs

#17: Brother’s Keeper (Joe Berlinger/Bruce Sinofsky, 1992)

http://media.ifc.com/img/movies/main-image/310x229_brotherskeeper.jpg

40 points/2 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDSGMAyUrE

The corrected totals for Brother's Keeper.

I mean documentaries about political matters. xxp

There are at least a couple political docs upthread iirc.

#16: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

http://benjaminjacobballard.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/vertov_man.jpg

41 points/6 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=22_KBgOxQL8&feature=related

#15: Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/protectedimage.php?image=KevinGilvear/nightandfog2.jpg

48 points/3 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEfkPlnie0&feature=related

#14: The Up Series (Michael Apted/Paul Almond, 1964-2005)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SPYL8UC1UCY/TAVbSUDJTxI/AAAAAAAACyE/iD61SBzjY3I/s1600/Seven+Up!+%281964%29.JPG

48 points/5 votes/2 first-place votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJj-fc6h0fo

Didn't count Stop Making Sense as a documentary, though it is an awesome concert. Haven't watched it in a little while, so I may be wrong, but I'd only class a concert film as a documentary if it had some commentary and/or behind-the-scenes action, which SMS doesn't have. Having said that, I briefly considered voting for 1991: the Year Punk Broke, which has lots of non-music scenes, but still discounted it, I guess for lacking a narrative thrust? Now I'm thinking I probably should have voted for it actually, damn.

Three films have come up in this lot that I really would have liked to see before voting. Firstly, I feel strangely guilty about having never watched Don't Look Back - I guess it's something of a touchstone for a certain type of music obsessive and it seems somehow wilfully ignorant for me to have never seen it. Not really sure how much I'd like it but I know lots of people who adore it. Secondly, a couple of my friends have raved about Grey Gardens recently and I've been desperate to watch it for a little while now, so not getting myself together to do so before the poll seems idiotic. And lastly, another one I really should have seen: Man With a Movie Camera. I am rubbish.

xpost and I hadn't seen enough of the Up series to feel comfortable voting for any of it.

that up picture breaks my heart

the up series has always been a blind spot for me. i need to watch them

I said I'd make note of the total points for Up-related votes. The whole series received 48 points, and there were also separate votes for 28 Up (20), 7 Up (20), and 21 Up (10). Added together, the 98/10 votes points would have placed it second.

i did so in a week or two, a few months ago, having got a box set from the library, & found it incredibly rewarding. i think it'd be quite a good thing to do socially (like up club) just because it's so compelling and alternately funny and moving while still being tv-watchable. what's probably even more interesting is having seen it unfold over a forty years in tandem with your life, but either works, the fast-forward nature of watching it in compression weirdly satisfying.

#13: Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)

http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/img/2008/ep36/manonwire_large.jpg

49 points/4 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEU7lrtehDs&feature=related

I didn't vote for Man on Wire (it just missed my list of 20), but if you haven't seen it, take a look at the clip--beautiful.

Terrifying.

#12: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon, 2007)

http://www.knowmad.org/filmdvd/King-Of-Kong.jpg

49 points/5 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K7wpatALDQ

ok, bye thread

#11: When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996)

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/stills/1945/original.jpg?1289431429

52 points/4 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N44vdCqI7LI

I'll stop there and do the top 10 tomorrow. I now wish I'd voted for The King of Kong, which I loved--5 more points would have pushed it into the top 10, possibly triggering some kind of highly entertaining meltdown for Morbius.

How difficult isShoah to watch? On one hand I have a fairly strong interest in Holocaust history, but on the other I don't know if I can commit to watching it all. For instance, It took out Night and Fog from the library like 4 times before watching it because - as someone who generally has difficulty committing to watching anything - I seemingly couldn't find 30 minutes of free time to do it (which is essentially an excuse to avoid a difficult watch).

Yeah, the King of Kong was great, don't be such a grouch Morbs.

I mentioned my own experience with Shoah on the thread that preceded this one. If you mean in a theatre, make sure you've had major rest beforehand--I hadn't and couldn't last. That wouldn't be a problem at home.

great pics on the last two.

i havent seen when we were kings since i was a child, and it was certainly mesmerizing, but i wonder if i'd find it overly reverent towards ali today.

Anybody ever tried Billy Mitchell's BBQ sauce?

I liked When We Were Kings a lot, but I like this VHS I once picked up of the entire Ali-Foreman fight even better--including a post-fight interview with David Frost that's amazing. Probably Leon Gast used some of the footage from this broadcast.

Here's the list so far:

#40: Salesman (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1968) -- 20 points/3 votes
#40: The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000) -- 20 points/3 votes
#40: The Gleaners & I (Agnes Varda, 2000) -- 20 points/3 votes
#40: The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984) -- 20 points/3 votes
#39: Être et Avoir (Nicolas Philibert, 2002) -- 21 points/2 votes/1 first
#38: Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010) -- 22 points/3 votes
#36: Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1970) -- 24 points/3 votes
#36: Winged Migration (Jacques Perrin/Jacques Cluzaud, 2001) -- 24 points/3 votes
#34: Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2002) -- 25 points/2 votes/1 first
#34: The World at War (Hugh Raggett/John Pett/David Elstein/Ted Childs/Michael Darlow/Martin Smith, 1973/74) -- 25 points/2 votes/1 first
#33: Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003) -- 26 points/2 votes
#32: Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1986) -- 25 points/4 votes
#31: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, 2008) -- 26 points/2 votes
#30: The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978) -- 26 points/4 votes
#29: WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971) -- 27 points/2 votes/1 first
#28: The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003) -- 27 points/3 votes
#27: My Best Fiend (Werner Herzog, 1999) -- 29 points/3 votes
#26: Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) -- 30 points/2 votes/1 first
#25: Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) -- 32 points/3 votes
#24: Winter Soldier (Fred Aronow/Robert Fiore/David Gillis/David Grubin/Jeff Holstein/Michael Lesser, 1972) -- 32 points/4 votes/1 first
#22: The Century of the Self (Adam Curtis, 2002) -- 35 points/2 votes
#22: Hype! (Doug Pray, 1996) -- 35 points/2 votes/1 first
#21: Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967) -- 35 points/3 votes/1 first
#20: Grey Gardens (Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Ellen Hovde/Muffie Meyer, 1975) -- 35 points/5 votes
#19: Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982) -- 35 points/6 votes
#18: Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984) -- 38 points/5 votes
#17: Brother’s Keeper (Joe Berlinger/Bruce Sinofsky, 1992) -- 40 points/2 votes
#16: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) -- 41 points/6 votes
#15: Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) -- 48 points/3 votes
#14: The Up Series (Michael Apted/Paul Almond, 1964-2005) -- 48 points/5 votes/2 firsts
#13: Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008) -- 49 points/4 votes
#12: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon, 2007) -- 49 points/5 votes
#11: When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996) -- 52 points/4 votes/1 first

Rattle and Hum is gonna be #1, right

King of Kong is so good. Ranking of Hype! suddenly reminded me of Dig!.

One of the many remarkable things about Night and Fog was that the French gov had two problems with it: showing all the bodies and showing the complicity of French officers. Resnais reportedly had to obscure the latter to include the former, and so it remained until ... only recently?

Morbs OTM

Can't tell you how much I disagree with what seems to be the underlying issue with some of Morbius's complaints about King of Kong and the Anvil film: that documentaries must be about serious matters to be valid. Unless he just wanted a more artistic film on the intricacies of Donkey Kong.

Eric--you voted for Jackass Two. Haven't seen it, but I'm interested to know what kind of an aesthetic values Jackass Two but deems The King of Kong frivolous.

I can think of few docs as honestly, surprisingly moving as King of Kong and Anvil. Flashing back to King of Kong and the wife's support for this guy who's been dealt such a bad hand ... the Anvil guy's family stepping up to help this super good-natured, optimistic, hard-working dude fulfill his belated dream ... not every doc has to be a freakshow or war tragedy. And Anvil even has a holocaust angle!

xp: sex sells

It's better.

And King of Kong is kinda pretty serious about its subject. Jackass doesn't pretend it's about anything so important as Donkey Kong.

the Anvil film video just isn't very well made, and the music is dreadful.

I'm not even a non-fan of Kong or Man on Wire. But c'mon; 12th and 13th best of all time?

but hey, Frederick Wiseman, lighten up!

Come on, it's not fair to demerit the Anvil doc for the music.

If those are the issues you guys have, no problem. I'm reading more your exasperation.

But c'mon; 12th and 13th best of all time?

Were you expecting the very large sample of 30 voters not to come up with some quirky rankings? People were voting for their favourites, not trying to assemble a correct list.

You were expecting us not to bitch?

Free to be you and me--fair point.

I'd sure bitch if something as turgid as Wiseman's "Belfast, Maine" made it to the list.

I do think Man on Wire should've been a lot lower. it's a solid movie, but I feel like a better one could've been made about the subject.

The issue isn't that these are quirky rankings so much as they betray the sample size's very ILM mentality.

haha i just looked up belfast, maine. 245 minutes! with this glowing review on imdb:

This is not a film for anyone under 35. Wiseman manages to portray Belfast as some sort of hellish retirement community. The entire film is done without a hint of humor, and Wiseman seems to be taking these people's gray little lives as over-seriously as they do. Rarely do any of the people of Belfast crack a smile - it's as if living in Belfast has literally sucked all of the joy out of their lives.

This film fails on every level. As entertainment, it fails miserably. As serious documentary, it fails because it grossly distorts your image of Belfast - the youth of the town are completely ignored, and the elderly, the infirm and the retarded are represented again and again. As character study it fails because of episodic nature of the film - we never stay with any person long enough to really learn anything about them.

"Belfast, Maine" is one of the worst mistakes in the history of the documentary. A poor, poor film.

People were voting for their favourites, not trying to assemble a correct list.

Never get this distinction, but carry on.

(Among music docs, some of you could at least have gone for Theremin)

I'd rather listen to Anvil than two hours of Theremin (/barely hyperbole).

is man on wire good? tbh i find that kind of dangerous feat of skill really stupid and careless and annoying rather than awesome. total dick move imo.

Titicut Follies is pretty spry and entertaining, fwiw.

Yeah, Man on Wire's filmmakers seem to adequately work the dick angle.

Theremin got three votes, including one from me, but not enough points.

I've gotten into many discussions about that favourite/best distinction over the years, but it's a long one and probably a separate thread. I do not make such a distinction when drawing up lists, but I've encountered people who do.

As for Wiseman, he got votes for a number of films, but it was the old problem of spreading the votes around.

who voted for Paris Is Burning besides Eric and me?

I did!

tightrope walking btwn towers >>>>> Philippe Petit saying "EET WASS MY DWEAMMM" for two hours

This is not a film for anyone under 35.

i HAVE to see this now

I didn't like Man on Wire. King of Kong was great. I wish I had voted in this.

xpost You really don't have to see it.

i am going to lobby so hard for "not suitable for anyone under 35" to become an MPAA rating

"rated ADD"

(Among music docs, some of you could at least have gone for Theremin)

― satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 15, 2011 5:18 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'd rather listen to Anvil than two hours of Theremin (/barely hyperbole).

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, August 15, 2011 5:20 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Probably would have voted for it had I seen it seeing as it's tough to make LT's life boring. And Josh, that is sacrilege. Anvil really isn't about the music at all for me, anyway. It's about the story.

I liked Anvil better as American Movie.

Me too. Still liked both, though.

Man On Wire was my no.1, you philistines. For giving me an even stronger image of the towers than their destruction, somehow - I cam out feeling euphoric, there was something religious in the way it was done I think. Worth watching for the stills alone.

xpost I was mostly just referring the Morbs' comment that "the music is dreadful" as a demerit against the film's quality.

I've mentioned before that I don't like crying in documentaries. One instance where I find it moving is when the guy with the big mop of white hair breaks down while recalling the Twin Towers walk. It happens all of a sudden--we just see him cover his face with his hands. (It's in the clip above.)

I didn't like the way they filmed scenes to make it look like a heist film.

nearly all the music-related picks so far pale before the Metallica doc (and I'm not crazy about their music either).

I will reluctantly watch docs related to metal, but videogame players? No fucking way.

yeah but it's not really about video games

perhaps not, but you have to look at some

The Metallica film also got three votes. Again, not enough points.

gross!
xpost

I came to The King of Kong as someone who had literally never played a video game in my life--regular pinball back in high school, yes, but not video games. That was a large part of its fascination, the idea that this world still existed in 2011.

The peaks of the Metallica film are super high, but there are enough valleys to detract from them. Some of my fave stuff is in the deleted scenes, like Kirk in driving school or Lars whining that no one ever throws him birthday parties.

THE METALLICA FILM IS CALLED "SOME KIND OF MONSTER".

*ahem*, sorry.

smh at this list

<3 U

smh at this list

― ✇ (Tape Store), Monday, 15 August 2011 19:27 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

u were gone tape store, watch what happened. what is yr top ten

Well, you should have voted--I spent two-plus weeks trying to solicit votes. Morbius and Eric at least voted.

Man On Wire was my no.1, you philistines

Mine too. Glad to see it get a decent placing.

ILX Members of the Academy

god i don't know, xxpost

but very quickly, a tiny handful of the many major omissions on this list:
seventeen, demon lover diary, portrait of jason, fucking fred wiseman!!!, a married couple, en construccion, west of the tracks, in vanda's room, godspeed you! black emperor, sans soleil, sayonara cp, close-up, on the bowery, the seasons, perfumed nightmare...

Three of those received votes, plus four or five Wiseman films. To make the Top 40, a film needed 20 points/2 votes minimum. Seventeen and Sans Soleil you could have moved into the Top 40 for sure, probably top 25.

just to be clear, clemenza, i don't think anyone is attacking you--it's cool that you put this together, it was bound to disappoint me (half of the list i just posted is pretty hard to find, unless you belong to the right website or have money to buy from overseas)

I wouldn't put Close-Up and On the Bowery as docs, m'self

I've felt very much under assault today. I've been commiserating with Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich on Facebook.

Serious question, Tape Store: have you seen most/all of the results so far and are dismissing them because yours are better or do you just not like the look of the results? I'm asking because the discussion on the ballot thread and so far here shows me that there's a *lot* of documentary films that I've never seen.

(clemenza, you've done a stand up job with this poll and I've enjoyed the useful contributions to this thread plenty)

Yeah, Clemenza, it's not your fault or anything, but these results are pretty wan.

Even by ILX film poll standards.

I am just gonna listen to ten albums this year (up from 2 last year) and vote in the year-end ILM poll

Bill, I've seen 24 of the films on this poll (I'm not big into music films).

I'm just kidding about feeling under assault. I honestly don't understand getting the least bit worked up over the results when you're dealing with such a small sample size, though. Maybe I'm just too open-minded when it comes to documentaries--much more so than with narrative films--but I look at the list so far and I see a lot of good films of those that I've seen, and a few more that look really interesting of those that I haven't. I'm also not sure why Morbius assumes that voters haven't seen lots of documentaries. The assumption really comes down to, "I know you haven't seen many documentaries, because if you had, you'd of course be voting for the same films as me." Why would you think that? (And for what it's worth, 10 of your 20 made the Top 40--seems like a pretty good percentage to me. Only two of mine made it, and I'm okay with the results.)

I look at the list so far and I see a lot of good films of those that I've seen, and a few more that look really interesting of those that I haven't.

THIS.

yeah same

I don't get why people bitch about ILX film polls as though they were published lists in Sight and Sound or whatever. I prefer to treat polls like this one as: "Here's what a bunch of people who have similar tastes and interests as I do (given that we post on the same message board) think are some good documentaries." (And since ILX is not principally a film board, I would hardly expect to find a list teeming with old, obscure, and foreign-language titles.)

xposts, so yeah, I agree with the last few posts

I don't get why people bitch about bitching on ILX film polls as if they should be so markedly different from the bitching that goes on on ILM polls.

ilm doesnt have anything to do with this?

i dont usually read ILM polls though i recently participated in my first, and it was a really civil thread. maybe cuz u werent posting in it?

#1 should be future ILX documentary

Suggested title: The Sorrow and the Pity.

xxpost Maybe because the results were better?

More well informed?

Eric, don't you get it, movies are JUST FUN! They're not something where any kind of expertise or aspirations toward completism factor in at all.

SB'd u and me for still being here.

I don't get why people bitch about bitching on ILX film polls as if they should be so markedly different from the bitching that goes on on ILM polls.

They're not! I roll my eyes at Lex, too!

agree with people who are treating this casually; kinda seemed to be devised that way throughout its genesis, too, just an informal poll that might define a few consensus picks - us all going, damn, that mining strike film is good - & throw out some recommendations.

seventeen, demon lover diary, portrait of jason, fucking fred wiseman!!!, a married couple, en construccion, west of the tracks, in vanda's room, godspeed you! black emperor, sans soleil, sayonara cp, close-up, on the bowery, the seasons, perfumed nightmare...

this is a great list, however, even if a few are on the other side of the wall from my documentary definition. i was v tempted to vote for perfumed nightmare, but sorta think of it as pure cinema, in its deployment of technique and creativity, rather than intentional, recorded documentary. is demon lover diary good? i think for some reason i thought it would be underwhelming. & the diptych of en construccion & west of the tracks (which bravo for even having got through) seems really interesting. i'm helping out programming a season of films on cities at the moment and hopefully will show the former, i'm glad to hear someone testify that it's great as i've not seen.

Eric, don't you get it, movies are JUST FUN! They're not something where any kind of expertise or aspirations toward completism factor in at all.

If clemenza had said, "You shouldn't vote in this poll unless you consider yourself an expert on film and have seen at least X amount of documentaries," then only like five people would've voted.

xxpost Maybe because the results were better?

― third-generation stripper (Eric H.), Monday, August 15, 2011 3:24 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

More well informed?

― third-generation stripper (Eric H.), Monday, August 15, 2011 3:24 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

no, it was definitely the You factor

Let me just The Index of ILX Film Snobs

Required reading if we're to continue with this discussion.

ok, let's be civil and wait to see if the wrong Herzog doc and the wrong Spike Lee doc finish 1-2.

Civil?! FUCK THAAAAAAAT!

:knocks over salt shaker:

I wouldn't put Close-Up and On the Bowery as docs, m'self

Or Perfumed Nightmare =)

They're not something where any kind of expertise or aspirations toward completism factor in at all.

TBF I'm only really interested in making lists, not so much watching movies.

^adapted from Metropolitan?

Dunno. Never watched it.

ha
xp

I am just gonna listen to ten albums this year (up from 2 last year) and vote in the year-end ILM poll

― satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 15, 2011 7:52 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

People do this. If you listen to 10 and love 8, why would you not want to bump up those 8? Obviously you'll be making less of an impact there than you would here as more people vote in those, but why the hell not?

Funnily enough one of the nicest polls to run of late was the 1950s music poll, where nobody threw their weight of supposed expertise around or insisted that there was an objectively correct list and an objectively wrong one.* Everyone got to discover a bunch of interesting stuff and also rep for their favourites, and it enthused most of us to go and listen to more music from that era, rather than making people uptight and hostile towards each other.

*Well, except for me and my insistence that everyone should vote for '50s electro, but... I was right.

I wish I could find all the Voice polls going back 10 years--I can't. I wanted to compare their results to the ones here that Morbius and Eric H. are decrying. All I can find online for the documentary category are the past four years.

2010 -- Exit Through the Gift Shop (didn't make our Top 40, but drew three votes)
2009 -- Anvil! The Story of Anvil (#31 in our Top 40; drew more votes than The Beaches of Agnes or La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet in the Voice poll)
2008 -- Man on Wire (#13 on our list)
2007 -- No End in Sight (no votes here)

In their films of the century poll, their highest ranking documentary was Man with a Movie Camera, #16 on our list. Conceding that the Voice is hardly the last word in anything, and also that there's not a lot there to compare, I don't think our results look all that different.

Woe is me! Our results have been validated by VV!

You mean as opposed to "Our results have been invalidated by Morbius and Eric H."?

i for one appreciate morbs & eric's dissent

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v4aj5vP__lQ/TdVyv1GFpsI/AAAAAAAAP80/aoehEe9pG6g/s1600/Statler%2Band%2BWaldorf.jpg

I think those are BOTH Dr. Morbius

i like to think my thread-pissing was productive rather than... not

Like away.

i want this thread to be made into a documentary so i can never watch it and never vote for it.

The point I'm making is that you seem to be adamant that the list here has been generated by a bunch of clueless people who don't see many documentaries. So I'm assuming you extend that to the people who vote in the Voice poll.

I have no problem with dissent. I do have some ideas on how to go about it.

I'm starting to think that the only film I voted for that was released after 1990 will not be on the list. :(

I think those are BOTH Dr. Morbius

"It's like a kind of torture / To have to watch the poll!"

Here, polyphonic, take a seat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AReU2zUTgs

i sorta feel like the top ten is gonna be down-the-line enough to straighten out the concern over presentism?, like probably. if things like man on wire, which everyone seemed to love, & totally got emotionally rather than cinematically driven votes, placed somewhere lower, i assume we all stuck to our guns on the crucial stuff that should have ranked high up.

similarly, continuing tape store's thing about not necessarily having been in the right place to catch a lot of docus, i feel like the probable absence of wisemans, for example, is complicated by the lack of a consensus pick & their pretty drastic unavailability/lack of exposure for most of the past thirty years

moreso than ilx's particularly dilettantish docu habits

This is true. Still, I see the opening to act the jerk and I'm gonna take it this time.

You fuckers snubbed Chris Marker.

In favor of Billy Mitchell.

Welfare was my #3, and I would have loved for it to finish in the top 10. But I also know it's not the easiest thing in the world to see. I'm lucky to live in a city where we had a Wiseman retrospective, and where there are two or three video stores that have it on the shelf.

you guys have driven me and Eric back into a coalition of the damned.

you guys have driven me into a coalition with Morbs

This is true. Still, I see the opening to act the jerk and I'm gonna take it this time.

ha. you gotta post up your top ten when this is through; i am curious, & will make a concerted effort to atone for my un-rigorous, semi-frivolous list by eating some of the greens that pepper your list.

i don't even like 'sans soleil'... or 'grin without a cat'

but id like to see more of his old ones

Based on what I've read about it, A Grin Without a Cat is one of the things I most want to see from the ballots that came in.

speaking as a dude who watches tons of documentaries and thx to some vote tally problems already knows that only 2 of my 40 make the list, so u can all shut it imo xposts

i don't even like 'sans soleil'... or 'grin without a cat'

but id like to see more of his old ones
--cloud computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype, (history mayne)

You are disgusting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Pb9nykjQA

I quite liked Grin Without a Cat but mostly remember Fidel trying to move that microphone. I also recall liking Sans Soleil... and don't remember anything from it.

And c'mon, World at War and Eyes on the Prize are longform TV shows, pure and simple.

it's partly that the 'grin' we have is some revisionist 1993 cut, i wanna see the original

not *that* much though

ok, let's be civil and wait to see if the wrong Herzog doc and the wrong Spike Lee doc finish 1-2.

had no idea Morbs was a booster for "Kobe Doin' Work"

World at War and Eyes on the Prize are longform TV shows, pure and simple.

I meant to link to this list of sports documentaries: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2011-06/13/gq-film-best-ever-sports-documentary-movies/review. I wish'd I'd voted for Burns' baseball film after I looked at it.

I'm sure everything that's wrong with grin w/o cat stems from that disastrous decision to revise in 1993.

That's the only version I've seen.

Was thinking 4 Little Girls, DJP.

ah, I was hoping you'd run with that joke

(I should watch more documentaries; "4 Little Girls" has been on my list for a long time but I almost never want to watch or read about real-life events outside of news media)

I've only seen the original Grin Without A Cat, on a crusty VHS belonging to one of the filmmakers who polled above (/namedrop)

(/hint of namedrop)

namedrop of filmmaker awarded low-ranking poll-place in widely condemned internet vote

hahaaaa

The top 10. I expect the nature of today's complaints will have to do with predictability--past #10, which came out of nowhere on the last few ballots to arrive--there aren't really any surprises.

I found this Time Out list of the greatest documentaries: http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/599047/the-50-best-documentaries-of-all-time?page=0,1. They've got Shoah at #1 and Sans Soleil at #2--thank god for small miracles--and after that, a list that looks a lot like this one. Except ours has The King of Kong and theirs doesn't, so obviously this one's better.

#10: Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1z0V0tDtO7w/TIba_Mu20UI/AAAAAAAAAFc/z7CVeqcnvhI/s400/25411601.jpg

53 points/4 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcCFdPZ4IGI&feature=related

I will not comment on this thread today. You're welcome.

I gave Streetwise a first place vote. great movie

clemenza sets the stage for a predictable finish, only to unveil one behind-the-scenes musical dvd extra placing after another

that was a good one, I recall

I honestly don't understand getting the least bit worked up over the results when you're dealing with such a small sample size, though. Maybe I'm just too open-minded when it comes to documentaries--much more so than with narrative films--but I look at the list so far and I see a lot of good films of those that I've seen, and a few more that look really interesting of those that I haven't.

Totally OTM.

3 of mine have made it so far and I now have a lot of others I'm excited to watch. I had no idea that all documentaries are supposed to be such serious business. Just don't get why some people seem to get a rise sucking all the fun out of a casual poll.

#9: The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)

http://ctcmr.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-thin-blue-line-1988-630-75.jpg?w=320&h=185

53 points/5 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoJq8IflYB4

Just kidding around, Eric--your commentary is very welcome.

Just don't get why some people seem to get a rise sucking all the fun out of a casual poll.

hi, it seems you just arrived at ilxor.com. pull up a chair, there's some shit we need to go over before you decide to stick around or not. 1.) ned raggett...

look guys, Eric and I write about film. It shouldn't be that surprising that we have more historically-oriented expectations, right?

TTBL is an entirely respectable choice, I just went for Gates of Heaven.

I've never even heard of "Streetwise" but just read the description and it sounds amazing and like something that I, for various personal/professional reasons, would be very interested in watching so thanks thread!

lol Jess I know, I know

(and let's not dwell on the World at War voter who thought it sounded good) xxp

#8: Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978)

http://media.jinni.com/movie/gates-of-heaven/gates-of-heaven-1.jpeg

61 points/5 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjEZv6y_YO4

"look guys, i and many other people on this very thread write about music. but i'm not gonna go take a big drama queen dump all over the beach boys poll when "good vibrations" takes no. 1 over some side b album cut from surf's up."

big drama queen dump

lol

Strange--you can find lots of YouTube clips for Gates of Heaven, but almost nothing for The Thin Blue Line.

btw is looks like all of Streetwise is up on Youtube.

yeah i'm psyched for streetwise, too, & hadn't heard of it. the anecdote i just read looking it up is interesting, too:

The first night of shooting, Bell was able to earn the trust of the kids by doing something unexpected. They were filming in the Dismas Center, a facility that provides food, counseling, and recreation for kids. Suddenly Chrissie, a sixteen-year-old street kid, became very angry with Bell for filming her. To everyone's amazement, Bell opened his camera magazine and gave her the exposed roll of film. Chrissie stormed out, holding the roll of film, which was later found crumpled on the sidewalk. After that incident, whenever Chrissie saw Mark and Bell on the street, she wanted to be filmed and to be their friend. By giving Chrissie the exposed film, Bell showed her and the other kids that he was not trying to steal something from them. If the kids wanted to be part of the film that was fine, but if they didn't want to, that was OK. too. Bell understood that it was hard for these kids to trust anyone, but he hoped they would learn to trust him enough to make the film.

slightly confusing for britishes on being by a martin bell however.
psyched gates of heaven placed

#7: American Movie (Chris Smith, 1999)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hOImVOiGPo8/S3IiQ3w52AI/AAAAAAAAA_c/NAwVA_5An1A/s400/americanmovie1.jpg

64 points/8 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cugo51RqZWI

Oi! xps

x-post - Yeah that anecdote is really interesting. I filmed some at-risk teenagers for a video project during an internship a couple years ago so stuff like that is really interesting to me. One of the things I found that got them talking/opening up was giving them the camera and letting them film each other but, yeah, that's very neat.

there's a chilling scene in Streetwise where tiny's talking to roberta about how dangerous hooking is ("girls get killed out there"); roberta was later killed by the Green River Killer. also the opening shot is extraordinary

#6: Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)

http://blog.whatmovieshouldiwatchtonight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/hoop-dreams.jpg

68 points/8 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWUYDZzwybc

x-post - seriously? I'm also vaguely obsessed by the Green River Killer's story. Fuck. I know what I'm doing tonight.

I've been trying to post short clips (or, if stuck, trailers) rather than full-length films, because I figure they're going to get pulled at some point.

i have not seen so many of these films, both the nomination process & the results have reminded me how sketchy i am w/docs

Oh also, I'm happy to see American Movie even though I figured it would show up today.

#5: The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophüls, 1969)

http://pixhost.me/avaxhome/2007-12-06/bscap0033.jpg

70 points/5 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1FXDKE3HWk

blarg i did not need to skim the green river killer wiki at this moment in time

getting better!

i and many other people on this very thread write about music

^doesn't get worse

#4: Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976)

http://ferdyonfilms.com/Harlan%206.jpg

78 points/5 votes/1 first-place vote

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCiVMngILEI

sorry schlump :(

harlan county was my other first place vote. incredible movie

sorry schlump :(

no it's okay!, you kind of know what you're getting, but just jesus, brutal. there's sorta so much information & such a volume of detail that it kinda obscures what was even happening. terrible.

#3: Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003)

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/protectedimage.php?image=NoelMegahey/friedmans2.jpg

88 points/8 votes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVY4ehqJjAA

well, that's one of mine today.

xpost!