An Impossible Job: ILX's 40 Favorite Documentaries

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.