An Impossible Job: ILX's 40 Favorite Documentaries

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.