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domino harvey wrote: Kilka opowiesci o czlowieku (Bogdan Dziworski 1983) --Nabob of Nowhere Spotlight-- I was resistant to this at first, but the main subject gradually warmed me over. I thought the minutiae of the second half far outpaced the more "zany" antics of the start, and while the kooky feel of it all is the point, I suppose, I couldn't help but think I'd much rather have watched him draw his picture in real-time and without all the silly sound effects and camera tricks

For the record as mentioned earlier this was re-edited/re-shot for a BBC version called 'The Prisoner' which is largely devoid of the affectation you find problematic. The Tatiesque elements are symptomatic of the period in which Bogdan made deliberately more quirky films like the winter sports series including 'Ski-ing' and 'Hockey'. If I can find a copy or link to the Prisoner I will post it.

Magic Trip
If nothing else this is the best film version of On the Road I've seen. The film is actually pretty good, but entirely for reasons opposed from the film's stated and delivered intentions. In its attempts to paint Kesey and his merry band of idiots with an hagiographic light Gibney actually reveals the self-absorbed hypocrisy of the whole movement Kesey is posed as a stand in for. It starts small with the cavalier attitude the pranksters have for one and the others safety before eventually showing them turning their backs on the whole venture once things get too dangerous. These brats aren't doing anything revolutionary, but rather what gets them the highest, and not just in the drug sense. By the end with Kesey's cowardly reaction to being released from prison I just had to laugh at how hard their idea of what happened and how they stand differs from even their words. The most pathetic of these moments is when they're shut out of Millbrook once recognized for what they are and yet they strive to explain how the Millbrook group are the villains.

Neil Young Journeys
This on the other hand is just a perfect exploration of that generation full of regret and acknowledgement that a promise stands unfilled. This is easily the best concert film I've seen since Gimme Shelter to the point where it even makes an old standard like "Ohio" poignant all over again. It's plainly shot while never losing its cinematic significance staging and lighting everything like a hundred years after the cold wind of fallout destroyed everything. I suppose that makes all of this depressing, yet because it never suggests hopelessness there leaves to power for the promise to be fulfilled which I think is a very powerful message that all of these beatnick and hippy (and now hipster) nostalgia fests always seem to forget.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger & The Tillman Story
I'm combining these because me reaction is essentially identical. As movies they're absolutely pitiful, but their subjects are so anger inducing that one can't help but get caught up in everything. A great premise shouldn't be enough though especially when, such as in the case of the former title via Manufacturing Consent, other films and even books have done or could do the material so much better. This is the tragedy of modern documentary features I suppose.

Lumiere and Company
I guess this is the most literal example of what Swo was talking about in regards to cinema being a document of its own existence. In terms of the segments I had long been led to believe that the Lynch segment was the only one of interest, but several were interesting with Greenaway's in particular being the best thing he made in the '90s. It's like the Robert Florey to Lynch's Jean Epstein. I also thought Penn's swan song was powerful with Angelopoulos and Axel rounding things out with powerful successes. There were a few other ones that struck me as better than the film's reputation, but the segments are the film's least interesting components. Instead we get a weirdly in depth look into the filmmaking sub-conscious of the period. How you make a film, where you make a film, and other such questions that are at the edge of the real questions get pushed through for a fascinating portrait. In this respect Rivette naturally scores the highlight when he reflects upon the length of his career in terms of frames when not even one of his ideas for his short is completed after the three tries. The film also captures (predictably I suppose) artists at the end, height, and beginning of their careers with the responses making clear the follies of the medium (in this respect the African director who also has the worst segment pronouncing fame as his motivation is just too perfect). Haneke and Yoshida also strike me as the only ones to really reflect honestly on the nature of their work with Yoshida's stated intentions far exceeding the actual film (or is that the point?).

Viewing Log:

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey (Constance Marks, 2011): I wasn't expecting to like this film, but given its status as a high profile documentary from the last few years, I decided to give it a shot. While flawed, the personal journey of its subject from poor kid to self-made children's television legend is more than compelling enough to make this a journey worth following, though the allegations of teenage sexual partners--made after the film's release--inevitably changed the tone of some of the material. Of course, the material often comes off as hagiography (nothing negative about Clash is ever mentioned aside from being too busy for his daughter) and Whoopi Goldberg's narration feels out of place, but I would give it the barest of recommendation. I also think that it would be amiss if I didn't mention the true magnetic hold that the character of Elmo holds over children. I take it that mine is no exception. As a kid I was drawn to characters like Ernie, Bert, and Grover. While my son likes those guys, he loves Elmo and, as I can tell you, every kid at his preschool does too.

The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, et al., 2012): I'm sad to say that this is the first of Burns's documentaries that I've ever seen more than snippets of. That being said, this is a powerful portrait of the injustice facing African American youth in our racially biased justice system. As the basic story goes, a group of four boys (four Black, one Hispanic) who barely knew each other were arrested for guilt by association one night in 1990 when a youth mob ran amok in New York's Central Park. The following morning they found themselves charged with rape and attempted murder. Based on forced confessions all of the boys were convicted and lost their youth in prison. Although their names would later be cleared when the real perpetrator began to discuss his guilt with other inmates (and shockingly confess the crime to authorities more than a decade after the fact!), the wrongs committed against these men can never be righted. Anyone interested in social justice should watch this film, as should anyone who gives the least bit of credence to the real "race hustlers" like Bill O'Reilly, The New York Post Donald Trump (who took out four full page newspaper ads calling for the execution of these teenagers) lest we lose sight of the truth.

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (Alex Stapleton, 2011): Alex Stapleton's documentary on the life and works of Roger Corman is another in a long line of recent hagiographies. While there is no doubt that Corman is an enormously important figure in the history of filmmaking, it would be more interesting to see a portrait of him that views him less as a saint and more as a real person with flaws beyond being a skinflint. Corman's body of work and influence is more than interesting enough to merit its own feature length examination, yet it is also so voluminous that most of his greatest hits get little more than a minute of attention if even that. The studio's desire to condense it into a manageable length obviously meant that condensing large swathes of his career would be necessary, but the focus often feels as if it were given to the wrong projects with perhaps the most attention being dedicated to the hell that is Scy-Fy productions (no doubt because that's what he was working on during the filming). Ultimately, Corman's oeuvre strikes me as a subject that is far more befitting of its own documentary miniseries than 80 some minutes. Until we get that, I would suggest watching his works instead.

Crazy Horse (Frederick Wiseman, 2011): The most recent work form the indefatigable octogenarian finds him documenting the goings on at Paris's infamous erotic review, The Crazy Horse. Like other Wiseman films, he doesn't stick himself in the action, but instead allows the footage of performances, rehearsals, and behind the scenes planning to speak for itself (although it is perhaps more slickly edited than his other works that I've seen). Some of it is truly cheeky (no pun intended) fun like their famous Beefeater routine and "Baby Buns" which sounds like it was recorded by a randy Andrews Sisters cover band, while other performances are gorgeous works of art. The acts with the mirrored body parts, the slow strip tease that is only filmed from the waist down, and the traced light dance from around the forty minute marks are all truly stunning dances. Not everything is interesting here, and much of the discussion with management comes off as boring. It's not even close to Wiseman's best work, but it is certainly worth a viewing.

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Kazuo Hara, 1974): Although I had previously seen The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, Hara's other documentaries remained unknown to me. Both this title and the next one are major revelations that are probably my favorite discoveries of the project so far. Here Hara's ex-lover and mother of his child leaves him before the filming begins. After Miyuki announces her desire to move to Okinawa, he decides to film her life to help organize his feelings of her, and we're treated to an intimate portrait of a free spirited young Japanese woman and the emotionally fragile filmmaker who is still deeply in love with her (though he begins dating during the filming as well). We see Miyuki break taboo after taboo, from briefly taking a female lover to becoming pregnant by an African-American sailor (an experience that Hara films despite still being in love with her!) and discussing her refusal to remain monogamous. The film features some truly unforgettable imagery including two childbirths, one of which was blurred out. I initially thought that it was a streaming issue, then that it had to do with Japan's taboo about showing pubic hair, but Hara's narration revealed that he was too excited to check to see if the camera was in focus! While the film would be a masterpiece if it were merely a portrait of the endlessly fascinating Miyuki, it works equally well as a tale of the man behind the camera as struggles to let go of the woman that he loves.

Sayonara CP (Kazuo Hara, 1972): Hara's first film finds him commissioned by The Green Lawn Movement, a Japanese disability rights (specifically cerebral palsy) organization, to make a film about their protests and day-to-day lives dealing with both their physical challenges and the perceptions of a distrustful society. Instead of producing a run of the mill documentary, Hara films it black and white, using numerous camera tricks and out-of-synch dialogue. The end result is an intentionally disjointed and jumpy presentation that brings us closer to the spastic motions of its subjects than a conventionally made film would have. Tricks aside, the film could not have worked if its protagonists were uninteresting. Thankfully, that is not the case here. The members of The Green Lawn Movement are all fascinating individuals who approach the subject of their disabilities in different ways. One is a lame poet whose performances in public include stripping nude to demonstrate his inability to control his own body, while his wife is an intensely shy individual who wants no part of the camera's attention. Expect all three of Hara's films that I've mentioned to rank high on my final list.

I’ve just seen a hefty bunch of new documentaries, and it’s made me think a bit about how I’m classifying documentaries for the List Project. I see a lot of fine, informative and enjoyable films get mentioned in this thread, and sometimes I think, “yeah, that’s a good film, but there’s no way I’d vote for it.” In many cases it’s because, however great the material is, I just don’t consider the film in question a great piece of filmmaking – though there’s certainly something to be said for not messing up a good subject. Anyway, I realise that I have a bias for certain kinds of documentaries over others, and watching a whole bunch of them recently made me realise that there were actually more categories than I’d expected, with good and bad work within all the categories and a lot of interbreeding. So here’s a round up of the good, the bad and the ugly on the new documentary front.

The Glossies

These are high-production-value films that tend to throw every technical trick at their subject (computer graphics, reenactments, artsy – but not too artsy – photography, that irksome 3D-ifying photo effect), almost as if they were embarrassed that their film is basically talking heads and want to distract us from this unfortunate fact. They’re aiming for an Oscar nomination. I tend to find the style of filmmaking pretty generic, and if the films have flaws, they’re usually conceptual rather than technical. I saw four films that clearly fell into this category, but there were others that aspired to it.

The Summit – Great adventure story / tragedy about a disastrous ascent of K2, gussied up with fabulous photography and a tricksy forward / backward structure. I felt a little uneasy that the film went so far out of its way to have a single tragic ‘hero’ (especially when the event’s most apparently heroic figure, who inconveniently didn’t die, is right there, being interviewed), and couldn’t help but wonder if that structural hook had more to do with who funded the film and whose family was most cooperative than with the highly contested events of the day.

Twenty Feet from Stardom – A paean to the backing singer: fabulous subject, fabulous material (seriously, who doesn’t want to see Merry Clayton revisit the ‘Gimme Shelter’ recording session?), a little underdone. It sort of undercuts the core idea of the film to spend so much time on those who strived and failed for solo success, and I found it very hard to care for the plight of Judith Hill, who seemed to me plainly the least talented diva on display.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks – Alex Gibney is one of the patron saints of this kind of filmmaking, and he marshals the technology as efficiently as anyone. This is a sharp and persuasive exposé of Julian Assange, and Gibney gets at the complexity of the issues pretty well.

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God – But this film is even better, and deeply upsetting. Again, the evidence is dense and intelligently organized, but what most impressed me about the film is how much faith he had in his talking heads: the deaf complainants were incredibly expressive, and Gibney rightly realized that they were the film’s star footage.

The Arties

These are films in which the filmmaker’s artistic expression is more important (or at least more prominent) than the notional subject matter. A lot of the greatest films ever made fall into this category, but it’s no guarantee of greatness. I also tend to stick films with obvious gimmicks in this category.

The Act of Killing – Like this one, which I’ve already commented on in its own thread.

The Missing Picture – Rithy Panh’s Marker-esque memoir of his experiences under the Khmer Rouge, with the ‘missing images’ (just about everything) re-enacted by carved clay figures. That’s sort of distancing (as you’d expect), as is Panh’s reflective narration, but it’s nevertheless an impressive conceptual achievement.

Stories We Tell – This is basically a Me-Me-Me film (see below), but the sneakiness of Sarah Polley’s craft sticks it into the ‘formal play’ category. She could have used the same strategies for a purely fictional film, though it wouldn’t have been as effective.`

Leviathan – Fish-eye (in more ways than one) view of industrialized fishing, as disorienting and immersive as the filmmakers can imagine. A tour-de-force, and one of the most original documentaries I saw.

The Steadies

Operating in a different sphere from the above Oscar-baiters are career documentarians who make less flashy, quietly compelling portraits of their chosen subjects. They are safe pairs of hands who can create transcendent cinema just by facilitating the material, rather than dominating it. Of course, not all of these films or filmmakers were established, and some of the films were more successful than others, but they shared a sensible, unpretentious efficiency.

This Ain’t No Mouse Music – Highly enjoyable portrait of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records from Les Blank veterans Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling. It’s as infectious and delightful as that implies, with acres of great music and enough hints that Strachwitz can be a bit of a narrow-minded arsehole to give the film bite.

The House of Radio – Nicolas Philibert’s latest vérité exercise, a warm and characterful look at Radio France. Like most of his work, it’s completely assured and immersive.

The Source Family – Decent look at a Californian cult from the 1970s that peters out somewhat because it lacks a Charles Manson or Jim Jones. There are the expected dark implications, but nothing that’s substantiated (and almost all the survivors of the cult seem to be pretty happy about their experiences within it), and ultimately the film’s strongest accusation against cult leader Jim Baker seems to be that he cheated on his wife. . . in a free-love commune.

Charles Bradley: Soul of America – Another competent documentary in search of a more compelling structure. The film is built around a countdown to Bradley’s debut album release, but it’s a weird, false structure, since so much of the promotional action happens before or after that date, and even on the date (and for some time afterwards) nobody’s any the wiser whether they have a hit or not. That said, this is one of the few music docs that really examines just how hard it is to make a living in the music industry. In most such documentaries, there’s a retrospective sense of having ‘paid one’s dues’, but you rarely get to see just how stressful and daunting that can be on a day-to-day basis.

56Up – No surprises here, naturally, but one of the stronger of the recent entries. I’ve long felt that 28 and 35 were the apex of the series, since there was still a substantial amount of change going on in the participants’ lives (so there were some real surprises when we caught up with them) and it had been going long enough for the overarching form of the entire series to start emerging. With 42 and 49, a certain amount of inevitable stasis started kicking in, the percentage of recap material began eating up the films, and a lot of energy was devoted to bitching about how inconvenient the whole project was. This time around, the participants seem more relaxed and less defensive, and Apted is doing a few nice things to break up the rigidity of the interview format, such as pairing people who weren’t part of the original class-based divisions. I think it makes this the third strongest of the series to date.

The Perfunctories

This is sort of the next level down from the Glossies and the Steadies: they’re films that are borderline competent (maybe poorly made or lumpily structured) and cruise on the appeal or fascination inherent in their subjects. There are lots of films like this out there, and many of them can be rollicking entertainment, if the material is strong enough.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia – Case in point: a clip-show biography that works almost entirely because Vidal is so insanely entertaining and articulate in just about any context. A lot of the archival material looks like shit, but that’s not the point.

Persistence of Vision – A fantastic subject – Richard Williams and the decades-long debacle of The Thief and the Cobbler – but the documentary barely gets that amazing story out in coherent fashion, and it’s completely hobbled by the absence of good quality archival material (and the non-involvement of Williams). Thus it lands in the “better than nothing” category, which is a shame.

The Venice Syndrome – In part a “people who live in Venice” vérité exercise, and in part an “isn’t it terrible what’s happening to this once vibrant city” hand-wringer, with most of that latter material relegated to intertitles. A lot of that content emerges far more naturally from observing the lives of the citizens and hearing them talk, but a lot of what we see isn’t really on point, so I felt this was a really awkward mish-mash of two films. Still, Venice always looks great, so it was enjoyable enough.

Terms and Conditions May Apply – This sets out to be a high concept, issue-driven Glossy (what are we really letting ourselves in for when we click that box?), but it also sets out to be a Michael Moore-style ‘I the Angry Filmmaker’ personality piece (and fails miserably – the guy manages to doorstop Mark Zuckerberg and basically just says “hi Mark”, then tries to torture that footage into some Really Deep Irony). In comparison to the Gibney films, the material is terribly organized and all over the place. The topic has a lot of inherent interest, but this film is a mess.

Nothing Can Hurt Me – Golden subject matter (the Big Star story) poorly handled. This film clearly aspired to Glossy status (lots of manipulation of old photos, for example), but its storytelling could have been much better. The film seemed to harp on certain aspects of the story while completely omitting other ones which I’d have assumed were pretty significant, such as the existence of Rock City and Icewater (which could have easily been covered in a couple of sentences – Rock City tracks even appear in the film) and the fact that Third was unreleased on completion (which would have completed the trajectory of the underdistributed first album being followed by the undistributed second, something the film takes pains to spell out). But the biggest crime is that, for a film that’s all about music, no song is allowed to play for more than ten seconds without interruption. A newcomer to the band may well come away from the film completely bemused by all the praise, since they’ve only been allowed to hear the intros (and maybe half of the first verse) of countless songs. Meanwhile, it’s wall-to-wall unidentified music playing in the background. A really frustrating viewing experience. The recent Scott Walker doc is a good example of how to give the music its appropriate stature in a music documentary, but on that front this film is a disaster.

The Grungies

The idea here is raw reality, unmediated by the filmmaker – which is, of course, a chimera, but that doesn’t stop a lot of very great filmmakers striving towards that goal. I only saw one film that clearly fell into this category.

Three Sisters – Wang Bing documents at length the life of an extremely impoverished family in rural China. Long takes of everyday activities, no overt overarching structure, just pure immersion, and the most wrenching hacking cough since In Vanda’s Room.

The Me-Me-Mes

Films in which the filmmaker’s personality / ego is the main thing being documented. These can range from exquisite diary films (just about anything Jonas Mekas has done) to the completely insufferable spurious Spurlocks of this world. I tend to avoid these if I can spot them coming, but managed to see one anyway.

Mistaken for Strangers – The National’s lead singer’s beery slacker brother makes a road documentary, which is, naturally, all about what a hopeless loser he is. The film is pretty funny, but it doesn’t help that it’s a one-joke film and that The National are such a boring band (I had no idea).

The Homelies

This is sort of a hybrid category, equidistant from the Me-Me Mes, the Goodies and the Grungies. In here I’m placing homemade labours of love. They often have a strong personal leaning (but without the self-aggrandizement of the previous category) and are made by passionate amateurs. I’ve got two fine films that don’t really fit comfortably in any other category but both share a certain homemade quality.

Antarctica: A Year on Ice – This is a very rare hybrid of a home movie and a high-gloss natural history documentary, and its strength is largely down to the modesty of its conception. The director is a spare-time filmmaker who spends most of the year working in Antarctica. Over the past decade he’s invented a bunch of equipment in his shed to help him take spectacular time-lapse footage of the place, and in this film he contextualizes that by simply telling the story of what it’s like to winter over. He’s a self-effacing guy, so the interview material is focussed on the life of the tiny community, and it’s spiced up with amateur video of their goofy boredom-killing antics and the absolutely dazzling time-lapse footage. The disparate elements work together beautifully.

Sheen of Gold – This film about 80s New Zealand industrial / noise band the Skeptics is a total labour of love, made on the smell of an oily rag. Again, its ambitions are modest, and it’s not really targeted beyond a core of fanatics who already believe that the band were transcendently great (and who, for example, know exactly who The Gordons were, or can recognize Chris Knox and are absolutely delighted to see him dancing, post-stroke, to his labelmates’ vintage racket). That’s all a limitation, of course, but it frees up the film to get into all sorts of geeky specifics that a more generally targeted film would never get around to, like the pros and cons of different brands of vintage synth. This bargain-basement film actually makes an interesting comparison to the Big Star film, and I think it comes out well ahead. They’re basically the same story - great marginal band; tragic conclusion – but the Big Star film is far more preoccupied with the ‘dramatic arc’ of the band’s story, to the extent that it gets in the way of the music. In that film, we get lots and lots of talking heads telling us how amazing the music was; in Sheen of Gold, we get the music instead. Lots of uninterrupted music videos and live performances, identified, contextualized, and reflected on. The seven-minute ‘Agitator’ is broken up into three parts to provide a structural spine for the movie, and each of its very different movements fits in perfectly with the story of the band at the time. It’s a very straightforward film, very well executed.

Oh sure, now I have to follow Zedz'z encyclopedic post.

Leviathan sounds quite good.
Merry Clayton recorded her own version of Gimme Shelter, and while its fine, it's also kind of a letdown from what you imagine a Merry Clayton lead vocal on Gimme Shelter would be.

Was wondering what people thought about The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu. I found it interesting but a bit long and rather uneven. The first half hour was kind of dull and I wasn't sure who a fair number of the participants were.

The next 40 minutes were filled with highlights:
- Ceausescu goes to some large national fair where there is a costumed reenactment of some Romanian medieval founding myth.
- There's a press conference with ridiculously softball questions such as: "Romania and the Romanian Communist Party is the only country and party worldwide to have good relations with every country in the world, even the Communist Party of China. Tell me, how has such a result been achieved?"
- There are big rallies in Bucharest to condemn the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and NC sternly warns everyone to respect Romanian sovereignty.
- Tricky Dick pops in to Romania and glad hands everyone willing to be touched by him. First American president to visit Romania and commie Eastern Europe, (at least according to Nixon).
- Then a big parade which oddly includes simulated sports. So there's a travelling basketball game with the baskets pushed on wheels and lots of people dressed in white acting as the walking sidelines. A moveable boxing match, with 4 guys as walking turnbuckles, holding the ropes. A volleyball match in the parade as well. Kind of zany and more than a touch surreal -- you wonder who thought that up. Some comrade in the Sports Ministry must have been proud.
- Next Ceausescu visits China and sees everyone dressed alike and meets with Mao and Lin Biao (the soon to be disgraced #2, who helped launch the Cultural Revolution but then was accused of trying to overthrow Mao, and died in a plane crash reportedly trying to flee the country).

Amusingly, Ceausescu tries to greet the people like Nixon did in Bucharest, and the Chinese are having none of it. No one interrupts their clapping or other choreographed behavior, so Ceausescu is reduced to shaking the forearm of Chinese who studiously ignore him. Probably no one wants to risk standing out or doing something individual and/or unscripted during the hyper-regimented Cultural Revolution. Intentionally touching a foreign leader might lead to trouble. Or maybe the concept of a handshake just hadn't penetrated into Mao's China yet ....

But after that there wasn't too much that was memorable. I did like when Ceausescu was awarded an honorary PhD for his 55th birthday and everyone goes into some sort of sycophantic overdrive. The opening with some interrogation of the overthrown Ceausescus was interesting, but brief and the video quality was rather poor. I think it would have had a greater impact if it came at the end after witnessing how powerful Ceausescu was for 3 hours.

I assume I missed a lot not being overly familiar with Romania. But the whole 3 hours just left me kind of numb and unable to draw any useful conclusions. I saw a few people put the doc on their best of 2012 lists, but I couldn't find any discussion of the film. Thoughts?

Lemmy Caution wrote:Merry Clayton recorded her own version of Gimme Shelter, and while its fine, it's also kind of a letdown from what you imagine a Merry Clayton lead vocal on Gimme Shelter would be.

I don't know how well-travelled the story is, but it's a very entertaining one, with the Stones recording late at night, wanting to try a female voice on the track, and the producer summoning Merry, in curlers and nightgown, from bed. She's completely taken aback by the lyric she's expected to sing, does a good first take, then decides to give the band both barrels on the second, catapulting herself into history. In the film she's in the same studio, listening to the playback with everything but her vocal pushed way down.

It's no surprise that she couldn't recapture that magic. A big part of the impact is the sheer surprise of her taking the lead. Getting the notional backing singer(s) to momentarily sing lead is an underutilised arranging trick - it's a hallmark of Norman Whitfield's psychedelic-era Temptations tracks (and, of course, Sly and the Family Stone), and Aretha niftily swaps places with The Sweet Inspirations for the choruses of 'I Say a Little Prayer' - plus, you could probably count the rock arrangements that are as good as the Stones' version of 'Gimme Shelter' on one hand.

I was really looking forward to The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceacescu, but was let down, since it was pretty much exactly as I could have imagined it. It's an impressive archive of footage, but I didn't feel that the filmmakers did enough with it.

Viewing Log:

And This Is Free... (Mike Shea, 1965): This short documentary from the mid-sixties captures the time and the place (Chicago, mid-60s) where my father spent his late teen years. Unfortunately, I didn't get to watch it with him and my familiarity with the neighborhood only comes from a brief time in the mid 80s. Of course none of this kept me from being mesmerized by the endlessly fascinating slice of life as the camera captured the goings on up and down the street. The most interesting moments came with the street peddlers hocking their wares on the streets. I'm certain that it must have seemed mundane for those whose daily life centered on these sorts of experiences, but I personally found it enthralling.

The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh, 2012): Moreh's documentary centers on the operations of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security force that has overseen both internal and external operations since the state's inception. The film gained quite a bit of notoriety for pulling off the unprecedented feat of getting all living heads of the agency to discuss their tenures on camera. Some (I apologize that I can't remember names since it's now been over a week since I watched it) come off as sympathetic pragmatists who are horrified at the means that they've employed to keep their own people safe. Others casually brush aside any suggestion that they should feel guilt over the innocent Palestinian lives that were the cost of killing a few terrorists. The subject matter is weighty enough, which is why I was a bit taken aback by Moreh's decision to stuff faux newsreel footage (with the most grating narration imaginable) and needless CGI into the product. I would have vastly preferred a more Fog of War approach to the material where the interviewees could tell the story themselves.

High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968): I've wanted to see this one for years now, and I'm finally teaching at a school that has it! As it turns out, the film was well worth the wait. It follows the usual Wiseman style of allowing the institution to be the star of the film, with the individual people in it taking a back seat. Most only appear for a short while, and few show up more than once as Wiseman's camera tracks the daily goings on at a Philadelphia school. While the movie itself is fantastic, I would be remiss if I did not mention Wiseman's impeccable use of music in the film. The opening shot of the community with Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" was perfect, as was the use of "Simple Simon Says" over the girls exercising (the film's best segment, in my opinion).

High School II (Frederick Wiseman, 1994): While the follow up some 26 years later didn't capture the lightning in the bottle of the first film, its still a fascinating look into the lives of a LA high school from the same year that I entered one in Illinois. While my experience feels like it was about a world away from the harsh urban life depicted here, it was still a familiar journey. There were a couple of great scenes here (the peer mediation and the sex education preparation), but it doesn't feel like the sum of its parts added up to as great a whole as the original.

The Invisible War (Kirby Dick, 2012): As I've said before, I generally have a problem with Dick's choices as a filmmaker. When the documentary began with a wacky montage consisting of stock footage featuring women in the armed services, I thought that I was in for 90+ minutes of his worst directorial habits. Thankfully, there were no more wacky montages and Kirby kept himself off camera for the duration of the film. Instead, he chose to let the rape survivors members speak for themselves with only an infrequent CGI graphic breaking up the discussion. The stories are deeply moving, and although Kirby turns the documentary into a crusade, the fight against sexual assaults in the military is so unobjectionable that it doesn't hurt the film at all. I felt a deep emotional investment in the stories presented here. Very well done.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Gini Reticker, 2008): This documentary, which made a small splash on the scene a few years ago, features a group of Liberian Christian and Muslim women who band together to fight President Charles Taylor and his reign of terror. There isn't too much to say here. The women were courageous heroes, and while the camerawork and production here is rough, it doesn't get in the way of the story. Definitely recommended, but I doubt that it'll make my list.

Stevie (Steve James, 2002): This wonderful work features a highly personal story about Stephen Fielding, Steve James's ward during his time as a Big Brother in Carbondale, IL. After leaving Stephen for a decade, James returns to find him floundering: divorced, unemployed, and in-and-out of jail. However, things only get worse when Stephen is charged with molesting his young niece. The drama then unfolds as the two work together to try and decide how Stephen should proceed in his trial. James actually accomplishes something truly remarkable with this film. His subject is someone who is accused of a heinous crime and there is little doubt that he is guilty. However, James is able to humanize his subject without ever minimizing the severity of the crime that he's been accused of. As presented, Fielding is a victim too, raised in a dysfunctional environment, surviving molestation himself, and never having a chance of a normal life. None of this excuses Fielding for what he did, but it does serve to give us a richer account of his life. This was truly another masterpiece from James.

The Weird World of Blowfly (Jonathan Furmanski, 2010): As a freshman in college a friend of mine discovered Blowfly and I quickly fell in love with his off the wall antics and songs about fake sexual conquests. Yes, their both juvenile and puerile, but they made me chuckle. I had mostly forgotten about Blowfly until watching this rather depressing documentary, which features Clarence Reid (Blowfly) as a mostly broken and financially desperate man in his late sixties. To make matters worse, he's under the guidance of a dubiously intentioned ex-reporter who seeks to make a fortune off of the performer. Reid's real life persona is fascinating, and oftentimes a scoundrel of a different kind than his alter ego, but I couldn't help but feel sorry for the man. He was once the center of Miami's R&B scene, but gave it up to pursue a novelty act. It was a gamble that failed to pay off financially, and now he lives in shoddy motels and yells if you put his pizza box on a chair (butts go there!--a strange sentiment for a man who sings about anilingus).

bamwc2 wrote:And This Is Free... (Mike Shea, 1965): This short documentary from the mid-sixties captures the time and the place (Chicago, mid-60s) where my father spent his late teen years. Unfortunately, I didn't get to watch it with him and my familiarity with the neighborhood only comes from a brief time in the mid 80s. Of course none of this kept me from being mesmerized by the endlessly fascinating slice of life as the camera captured the goings on up and down the street. The most interesting moments came with the street peddlers hocking their wares on the streets. I'm certain that it must have seemed mundane for those whose daily life centered on these sorts of experiences, but I personally found it enthralling.

I'm so glad that someone else has seen and enjoyed this film—rarely seen for decades (still awaiting 5 votes on IMDb?!) but one of my favorite documentaries from way back. The times I've mentioned it here, I could never seem to stoke any interest, and no one else has voted for it in the 1960s lists. I probably won't put together a documentary ballot, so it may end up orphaned again unless others check it out.
Like a few of the actualities of bustling street life, this film captured a unique culture of urban that evolved from at least as far as the turn of the century, teeming with activity and countless striking encounters of many varieties, now long gone. Director Mike Shea went back week after week for months getting great footage of the crowds, buskers, and snake-oil peddlers. I'd love to be able to see the roughy 19 hours' worth from the cutting room floor—something I'd say about very few other films.

Thanks, Gregory. I think that it was your vote on the 1960s list that initially put it on my radar, though I've taken so much from so many that it's hard to keep track of it all. Unfortunately, I can't say yet whether it'll make my final cut, but it certainly has a chance.

Edward Said: The Last Interview (Mike Dibb,2004)
This is perhaps the ultimate documentary about a public figure. It doesn't contain illustrative stock footage (the nearest it gets is when Said leafs through one of his books for a picture he remembers!), re-creation of events from Said's life (except in verbal form) or a manipulative score (or any score at all!) - instead it involves Edward Said and his interviewer sitting in a room for three and a half hours discussing his life and work, as well as wider issues surrounding the same. The interviewer does not pepper Said with questions but knows how to keep the discussion rolling sensitively, and the camera stays mostly focused on Said with very occasional close ups and cuts across to the interviewer.

The conversations go on as long as they naturally need to without the constraints of time or needing to stay within the boundaries of one particular subject. The conversation moves fluidly from Said's upbringing and family history, the pleasures of an intellectual working within an organisation that will sustain them materially while they devote themselves to study (due to the distance of travelling from boarding school in the US to his parents he stayed on campus during school holidays with only the library for comfort; the usefulness of a university role in which to work; and even the similarities to the military, which provides the individual with all of their basic needs to survive and lets them focus on 'higher goals'!); in depth discussions of the initial impulses behind writing each of his works (the most famous of which is Orientalism) the ideas contained in each and how they fold into his wider philosophy, and the reception of them; his political ideas about Palestine (which includes a fantastically insightful section on the workings of the Yasser Arafat government, and Said's bitter disappointment with Arafat's role in the peace process and second intifada) and reaction to the then recent 9/11 attacks; as well as his approach to living with a terminal disease of leukaemia.

These are the wider subjects but throughout the discussion there are constant themes of nationality (Said both Palestinian and American and of Christian background), personal and family history, the feeling of belonging (and whether you can ever feel you 'belong') along with ways that people represent themselves and are represented by others (both often through sheer force of will), with all of these seemingly permanent and fixed points of a person's life being surprisingly fluid, subject to memory, remembrance, the attitude of others and clashing hegemonies. These issues apply when talking about tackling a terminal disease, talking about political matters, or even appreciating music or literature!

It is an utterly compelling documentary, surprisingly radical in its courage of its simplicity (and respect of its subject to have the ability to hold the attention and fascinate with his ideas for this length of time) and tackling a host of important and touching subjects that are still relevant today.

The Lusty Lady, the iconic San Fransisco feminist co-opt strip club from my recommendation Live Nude Girls Unite! is being forced to shut down due to rent hikes.

Missile to Moon (2012)

Just watched this on YouTube: it's a low-key but quite engaging doc about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his impact on the town of Huntsville, made for Alabama Public Television to mark his centenary. It has an air of wistful Cold War nostalgia about it (and is rather more deferential than the Tom Lehrer song), with old NASA engineers saying things like 'we wanted to kick Russia's butt'.

There are scores if not hundreds of documentaries about space and the space race, of course, many of pretty high quality (such as the BBC's The Planets series from the late 90s, not to mention things like For All Mankind). What I find most appealing about the story, perversely, is the melancholia of the winding down of the Apollo program and the end of the dream of manned exploration, and the irony that the libertarian 'pioneer' spirit that fired American science fiction authors was ultimately dependent on massive government spending and visionary Nazi technocrats.

Viewing Log:

5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, 2011): While Burnat's documentary captured the hearts and minds of American critics last year, there's sadly little novel in it for anyone whose been paying attention to the heartbreaking conflict in the Palestinian territories. The film begins with the hope of the peace accords in the early 1990s, which were cut short by Prime Minister Rabin's assassination at the hands of a Zionist extremist, and then finds things getting worse under years of brutal authoritarian oppression. Hamas attacks, Israel retaliates, and things just get worse and worse. There are no clean hands in the conflict and leadership on both sides often seem in the wrong. The film's biggest draw lies in the fact that we get to see the conflict in a very personal way, through the eyes one family over a decade of trying to live their lives as their freedoms disappear and the borders of their land contract by one settlement at a time.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012): Another story of rebelling against a totalitarian government, Klayman's documentary showcases Ai in his efforts to both express his art and increase the Chinese government's transparency. Of course, his efforts as a provocateur lead him into trouble at every turn, even as his country tries to capitalize on his increased worldwide popularity. Ai is quite the character and when you sympathize with his goals, it's hard not to feel for him even when he's at his most impish.

Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman, 2010): Well, this was another outstanding effort from Wiseman, who can turn any setting into the most compelling of set pieces. This is no exception. I despise the sport of boxing for its intentional harming of opponent, but the individual members of this Austin gym are all fascinating characters, from the braggadocio (who has the fastest punches, like ever!) to the mother who is learning to box; every second is captivating. On a side note, does anyone know if the elderly man throwing punches in the ring at the end of the film was Wiseman himself? It certainly looked like him to me, but I have such a terrible time with identifying faces.

Detropia (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2012): I'm honestly not sure why this one has such a low imdb score. It's nothing overly special, but it does a decent enough job chronicling the decline of Detroit from the USA's fourth largest city to a desolate shell of its former self. Again, there are no great revelations here for those initiated in the city's long fall from grace, but what it does do, it does well, giving a more than serviceable history of Detroit and examination of the contemporary blight that has overtaken the town like weeds in an untended garden. The filmmakers don't leave us without hope, but they also don't try to sugarcoat the problems facing Detroit, and, as one interviewee notes like a modern day Cassandra warning of the dangers of predatory capitalism, your city may be next.

The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki, 2012): Jarecki's latest documentary hits like a punch to the gut with his examination of the utter devastation created by the US's warn on drugs. There is really no room to doubt that the war has been a complete failure that has only served to ruin lives, turn petty offenders into felons, and increase the militarization of our nation's police force. Showcasing the kind of political absurdity that is rarely found outside of a Kafka novel, the film explain in agonizing detail how the prison-industrial complex feeds off of the sort of election year empty gestures that, while winning vote, also wreak havoc on individuals and entire communities. He was singing to the choir on this one, but I still found it heartbreaking.

The Law In These Parts (Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, 2011): The film plays like an amalgam of The House I Live In, 5 Broken Cameras, and Dror Moreh's The Gatekeepers with its examination of Israeli jurisprudence in the occupied territories. Surviving judges and legal scholars who helped to write and interpret the laws are featured before a green screen that plays video from the various clashes between the two groups. Perhaps this is unfair (we're informed early on that the contributors do not know what is playing behind them), but it does serve as a poignant counterpoint to the claims of justification espoused by some of the more defiantly hardened figures on screen. And that's perhaps the film's great interest. As I've already stated the unfair conditions that the typical Palestinian lives under is unjust and heartbreaking. That's not up for dispute (nor, I should emphasize, is the right of any Israeli to live life in peace without fear of a terror attack). However, the extent to which some of the film's participants go to justify their actions, and how repentant others are, never failed to captivate me.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, 2011): This is thankfully what will likely be the final look at the Robin Hood murders and the West Memphis 3 by Berlinger and Sinofsky. Here we find a repentant look at the smearing of John Mark Byers by the filmmakers in the previous installments (which I must admit I fell for hook, line, and sinker). Instead of being angry at the two for all but accusing him of raping and murdering three young boys, Byers turns his rage toward Terry Hobbs, another stepfather of one of the victims. The filmmakers seem to agree with his hypothesis as numerous pieces of evidence accumulate against him. The film ends with the release of The West Memphis 3 as part of a complicated maneuver that while granting them their freedom also prevented them from ever seeking financial compensation from the state of Arkansas for the years stolen from them by a overzealous prosecution. I can remember crying while I watched the first film in this series on HBO as a teenager. I don't think that that sorrow will ever go away.

A Private Collection (Walerian Borowczyk, 1973): This was quite a strange experience and not just because this documentary short features wall to wall vintage erotica. It was also surreal given that the film had no subtitles and I don't speak a lick of French. Still, it was fairly easy to discern what was going on in the frame, but I really would have liked to know what Borowczyk was saying!

Robinson in Space (Patrick Keiller, 1997): I know that I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but Keiller's film left me rather cold and bored. Even with the fictional narration by the great Paul Scofield, I just couldn't give the film the attention that it required to fully appreciate it. I couldn't do it at the time, but perhaps I'll give it another go someday.

Samsara (Ron Fricke, 2011): I know the the film invariably draws comparisons to the Qatsi trilogy, but not having seen that yet (I'll definitely give them a spin before the voting is through), I can't comment on the analogy. But, what I can say is that this collection of video from around the world served as empty calories for me. I was utterly enthralled by what I saw for the duration, but if the filmmaker sought to make a point with it, then I honestly can't say what it was. Still, this lovely collection of video is oftentimes stunning (I do regret not having seen the film in theaters or on BD) and worth the price of admission alone.

The T.A.M.I. Show (Steve Binder, 1964): What a fun festival! For those who don't know, T.A.M.I. stands for "Teenage Awards Music International" and featured a collection of the biggest names in US pop from the early to mid 1960s. There are simply too many highlights to list here, but damn was it a good time. James Brown stood out for giving another electrifying performance. The man wasn't that great of a human being, but he knew exactly how to captivate a crowd. My only complaint about it is the obvious segregation that the producers employed, with having the African American performers on one side of the stage and the white performers on the other. They could occasionally play together, but never mix. It was disappointing, but only to be expected of the era. If you can put that aside, then you can still have one hell of a fun time with this gem.

West of Memphis (Amy Berg, 2012): As Ebert noted in his review, Amy Berg's documentary stands as a valuable companion piece to the Paradise Lost films in that it has the vantage of history to anchor it in ways that Berlinger and Sinofsky lacked. Because the two had begun to examine the murders shortly after the fact, the earlier films missed out on a good deal of the developments (e.g. Hobbs's DNA on the shoelace) as well as falling into some of the now discredited reports (e.g. the sexual mutilation of the boys, Byers's "guilt", etc.). Since Berg has the luxury of perspective, she was able to make a condensed, but still close to comprehensive look at the case. I'd actually say that it's better than any single part of the original trilogy. Very well done.

Detropia mostly seemed like a wasted opportunity to me. It wasn't clear what the point was except to present some colorful local characters lamenting Detroit's fate. It certainly seemed like more could have been done with a tighter focus. I got more out of The Daily Show's 5 minute segment presenting why Detroiters are against a new bridge to Canada than I did from the entirely forgettable Detropia.

bamwc2 wrote:Samsara (Ron Fricke, 2011): I know the the film invariably draws comparisons to the Qatsi trilogy, but not having seen that yet (I'll definitely give them a spin before the voting is through), I can't comment on the analogy. But, what I can say is that this collection of video from around the world served as empty calories for me. I was utterly enthralled by what I saw for the duration, but if the filmmaker sought to make a point with it, then I honestly can't say what it was. Still, this lovely collection of video is oftentimes stunning (I do regret not having seen the film in theaters or on BD) and worth the price of admission alone.

I also watched Samsara in the last week and don't think I've been left as angry by a film in a long time (Django Unchained excepted, which was just irritating in comparison!) and I really stand by my somewhat flippant earlier comparison of it to Mondo Cane in the "Great Double Bills" thread. It even follows the same 'lovely scene/nasty scene/beautiful scene/repellent scene' format of a mondo film, but at least mondo films have those strangely amusing metaphysical voiceovers trying to lumberingly contextualise their imagery into some sort of thesis. Here we just have those staged portraits of people looking accusingly into camera, which doesn't really work to gain sympathy or make any kind of specific point.

There are a lot of stunning images in the film which makes the film valuable in that sense (the footage of the Kaaba in Mecca is amazing and draws one of the few great parallels in the film, from the movement of the people around it to the circles of the Tibetan mandala, yet even this sequence scored to the Islamic call to prayer pales in comparison to a similar sequence that climaxes Powaqqatsi), but it often feels as if nothing particularly meaningful is being done with the extremely beautiful pictures, except for regularly having high-speed cameras capturing the days and nights flashing by. Much of the imagery felt already 'found' too, and I'm afraid that I would much rather see Petra being used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or the Namib Desert as used in The Cell (which also featured its own jajouka soundtrack in its opening walk over the dunes), or Manufactured Landscapes for the factory conveyor belt scenes, or the scene from Solaris for the Japanese motorway sequence, etc, etc.

Also like a mondo film, Samsara felt as if it crossed the line quite blatantly from 'captured' footage to very obviously staged material. Yes I know that all documentaries stage their action to a certain extent, or at least set up the circumstances to capture material in the most effective manner, but Samsara pushed way out of 'observational' mode and into polemic at many points. I'm particularly thinking of the factory farming sequence that follows the chicks being sorted to the chicken carcasses being conveyored onto a factor floor to be cut up by the similarly regimented and cooped up workers (symbolism!) to the breathtaking cut to a shot which pushes in meaningfully on three 'plump' people eating a fast food meal in a restaurant (intercut with the accusing eyes of a masked factory worker). And from there to a doctor marking up a wobbly obese stomach in readiness presumably for a liposuction procedure.

Or the scenes of bikini clad ladies dancing sexily on podiums whilst wearing numbers immediately followed by a classical geisha girl!

Or the scenes contrasting human faces to, shock! horror!, robotic humans! Whatever is the world coming to!!

Although I guess I shouldn't be too harsh on the film - I did leave never wanting to go to jail in the Phillippines since it seems that everyone is compulsorily forced into doing jovial dance routines! (which gets contrasted against the sea of kung fu practitioners near the end)

The best parts of the film were where it gave up on the idea of 'documentary' and just presented interesting 'ethnographic sequences' (again very like Mondo films), especially the 'man at desk' sequence which manages to capture some vividly horrific imagery while also saying something vague about capitalist oppression, or some such.

I haven't seen the Fricke films yet, but there's no way they are more annoying than the Qatsi films which can't even be consistently beautiful which is really their only benefit. They're just such stupid films filled with the lamest observations possible that they're frankly not worth watching except maybe the second which has a fabulous structure to it and doesn't use any stock footage keeping the pretty to look at element throughout.

Samsara is even worse than some of the more obvious observations in Naqoyqatsi! But even Baraka was better for 'captured footage' than Samsara is, as its message just feels irritating to the extent that it often ends up actively working against the beauty of its images. But then I'm someone who finds the industrial world to occasionally be beautiful too, rather than purely horrific, which I think is also the key difference between Reggio and Fricke. Reggio sees the world out of balance or being exploited. I get the impression that Fricke just seems to think the industrial world is irredeemably monstrous, gluttonous and aspiritual rather than being more imbalanced and/or exploitational.

Sorry to harp on about mondo films but I really got the same sense here of how much are the filmmakers exploiting/being exploited by their subjects, and by proxy passing that exploitation along to the audiences.

Although I do think some of the obviously staged performance material in Samsara (the opening and closing pieces, the man at the desk and even at a push the Phillipine jail synchronised number) is pretty good, to the extent that I often wished the filmmakers had just presented a discreet series of acts in the manner of a variety showcase rather than trying to manufacture some larger context into which they get stuck.

Now I'm just remembering the stupid money thing in Naqoyqatsi and am simmering. The terrible thing is that I actually like the first forty minutes or so of the film when it is just a bunch of random images and horrible early MAC CGI. I'm probably going to have to rewatch Sans Soleil to see this thing done by someone who isn't an idiot. I'll even get the frustration catharticly thrown out with the giraffe scene.

knives wrote:I'll even get the frustration catharticly thrown out with the giraffe scene.

Speaking of animals and mondo docs, this reminds me of the poaching section of Africa Addio, which climaxes with a scene featuring a baby zebra in one of the most deliriously over-emotive sequences in documentary cinema!

knives wrote:The terrible thing is that I actually like the first forty minutes or so of the film when it is just a bunch of random images and horrible early MAC CGI.

You mean it gets worse after that? I only lasted about 40 minutes.

colinr0380 wrote:. . . or the scene from Solaris for the Japanese motorway sequence, etc, etc.

Which reminds me that Victor Kossakovsky's intimate epic Vivan las Antipodas! is the perfect antidote to this kind of film, and the perfect embodiment of what it could be if it had a brain in its head. And it features the most awesome motorway sequence ever filmed.

Why this hasn't been rushed out on BluRay in R1 is beyond me. The DVD seems ridiculously cheap at the moment, however.

Not anymore-- I just bought the last cheap edition fulfilled by Amazon. Thanks for the rec!

I hope you like it! It's definitely a better class of eye candy. There's also a fascinating feature length making-of called Where the Condors Fly that seems to be missing from that disc (and doesn't even seem to have ended up on the unsubbed French BluRay).

Dom, you are one lucky bastard.

Matt wrote:

knives wrote:The terrible thing is that I actually like the first forty minutes or so of the film when it is just a bunch of random images and horrible early MAC CGI.

You mean it gets worse after that? I only lasted about 40 minutes.

Yeah, when the money motif comes in it goes from fascinatingly wrong headed into loudly obnoxious at about that point.

At least the lady in Naqoyqatsi actually gets to enjoy her hamburger and isn't demonised for it as a third world oppressor, more just used as a symbol of the corporate machine!