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100 Documentaries Well, it's something like this. Back in '05, I guess, I remember having this sense that I wanted to watch documentaries. A LOT of documentaries. It wasn't that I liked the genre: just the opposite. I had seen a couple of documentaries, and the flap about Fahrenheit 9/11 was big back then. I was impressed that most of the documentaries I'd seen, despite their pretensions to being a sort of popular education, (and thus quasi-radical), were more manipulative and biased than the mainstream news they so frequently disparaged. That fascinated me; I have this ongoing love of biased media. Understandably, no one in my household was that keen on going out to rent bad documentaries, though. Around that point, my aunt gave my great-aunt a DVD player for Christmas, and asked that I ensure that my great-aunt actually get some use out of it. She's an amazing old-school socialist, feminist, atheist agitator. I love her to bits. Too often, I think, young radicals embrace their older counterparts on sufferance—we love them if and only if their politics mesh perfectly with ours. But the great thing, after eight decades of the grind, is to have any politics left at all. Anyway, my great-aunt and I began to watch one documentary every week, with tea and ice cream, very ritualistically. Usually it ends with her shouting in indignation about the failings of the United States, white people, and humanity in general. That was several years ago. At that time, the local video store had about three shelves worth of documentaries, and after discarding those that were about sex, boxing, and/or Charles Bukowski, the remainder seemed like a relatively straightforward checklist. Now they have fifteen shelves of documentaries. When I look at a site like Snagfilms, of their 559 listed documentaries, I have seen precisely one. The genre is booming, and most of it is still ineffably effing terrible. The tacit understanding of many thousands of documentarians seems to be that their voice has not been heard, and rectifying that omission is worth any number of journalistic sins. But the best of them are very, very good: the AV equivalent of great essayists like Orwell or McPhee. So I have tried—first on paper, then on Zemita, now here—to make a list of the better documentaries we've watched, or that I've watched elsewhere. At first I was going to extend this list to include progressively lower and lower circles of hell, but I am largely abandoning that enterprise. It seems bad for my soul, and also meaningless in light of the sheer volume—what Bloom calls “Malthusian repleteness”--of the genre. Moreover, the fact is that I forget the insipid documentaries. Only the good ones and the memorably horrible ones stick out in my mind. So here is the current list, at least of all the ones I can think of. The Excellent Dozen These are documentaries that I think are brilliant, engaging, and unique. They also have some kind of journalistic integrity—that means very different things in these instances, but in every case I felt like I was not being intellectually manipulated. Emotionally, perhaps, but that is what art is for, no? Perhaps because many of these are so conceptually unique, I came in doubting half of them. And they won me over. Buena Vista Social Club Shapes of the Invisible The Devil's Playground Terror's Advocate Genghis Blues The Up Series (series) My Architect Touch the Sound My Country, My Country The Way Things Go Planet Earth (David Attenborough Series) Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill The Very Nice Twenty Basically these are excellent documentaries that for one reason or another I can't quite bring myself to place in the previous category. The flaws are subtle, though. Been Rich All My Life Life And Debt Control Room Manufactured Landscapes David Attenborough in Paradise Milarepa (BBC Series) Nanook of the North David Attenborough Wildlife Specials No Direction Home (BBC Series) National Geographic's The Photographers Eyes on the Prize (PBS series) The Real Dirt on Farmer John Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control Rivers and Tides Frank Lloyd Wright Spellbound Into Great Silence The Take Jesus Camp Winged Migration The Pretty Good Twenty-five This is my largest category. They're good. They have some issues that I wouldn't feel like an ingrate pointing out. But if you like the subject matter, you'll probably love them, and even if you don't, they may still draw you in. Atomic Cafe Into the Blue The Beauty Academy of Kabul Koyaanisqatsi Bling The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Discovery Channel) Bowling for Columbine Monsters of the Deep Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed Outfoxed Crumb The Shape of the Future David Attenborough Life in Cold Blood Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, (BBC series) Supermasochist Don't Look Back Sir! No sir! The End of Suburbia Sketches of Frank Gehry Gandhi The Story of the Weeping Camel Good Night and Good Luck This is what democracy looks like I'm Your Man Who gets to call it art? In the Shadow of the Moon The OK Eighteen These are documentaries that have tragic flaws ranging from being boring or propagandistic to mere inept writing or cinematography. I think they still manage to be compelling if you have some previous interest in the topic. Otherwise, probably not... The ACLU Freedom Files (Series) The Human Face (BBC Series) The Blue Planet (Series) Money as Debt Breaking Vegas Roger and Me Butterflies of the Northeast South Indian Temples (Discovery Channel) The Corporation Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America Earthscapes (Series) The Endurance This Film is Not Yet Rated Flow Who killed the Electric Car? The Future of Food Writer of O Genesis The Lousy Ten That You've Maybe Heard Of Most of the really bad documentaries I've seen alo have the virtue of being fairly obscure, so I will simply let them rest in peace. These ten are worth mentioning, though, because they're relatively popular and—I would say—not worth people's time. Blue Vinyl Freedom Fries Darwin's Nightmare Genesis Everything (else) on the Discovery Channel Guns, Germs, and Steel Everything on the History Channel King Corn Fahrenheit 9/11 Supersize Me* The Unforgettably Horrible Five And then there are these. These are documentaries that reach some kind of Nirvana of horrificness. They are to non-fiction cinema what Plan 9 From Outer Space is to fictional cinema. I do not recommend watching any of these, because your brains will dribble out your nostrils, but then, some people like that kind of thing...and I strongly encourage would-be documentarians to watch these and learn from their excruciating mistakes. Loose Change Lost in La Mancha Nobelity Pirates (Discovery Channel) World Tour 1966: The Home Movies The Possible Ten These are documentaries that have come very strongly recommended to me by people whose opinions I respect, but which I haven't seen. The Beales of Grey Gardens Race: The Power of an Illusion Born into Brothels† Some Kind of Monster† The Business of Being Born Vernon, Florida Into the Wild When the Levees Broke Mad Hot Ballroom Young@Heart * This one gets an honorable mention, though. I don't gross out easily. I mean, I have a friend, a doctor, who talks about dissecting penises lengthwise, and I managed to gross her out with a veterinary tale involving the phrase “sucking the mucus out of its nostrils.” So...yeah. But Supersize Me left me so disgusted I couldn't eat for 48 hours, and when I finally had to have protein or die, I was driving past the skeezy Polish-food shack on the highway. I ordered a gristlewurst or something, which was the absolute last thing I wanted to eat at that point, and asked the lady if it was spicy (Cause, you know, empty stomach.) She fixes me with a kind of baba-yaga look and says: “I don't know, kid. I don't eat this shit.” True fact. † Saw these later, and they are indeed awesome..
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