An Impossible Job: ILX's 40 Favorite Documentaries

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.