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Going with that would structure films ala Casting a Glance count (or rather I suppose would anything in the Benning wheelhouse not count)? I figure anything specifically made to be documentary is worth counting though there are some examples where I personally can't jump that hump like My Name is John.

My prospective list contains several educational shorts, which dramatize "reality" to make didactic points, but they're really just taking Nanook of the North to a logical furtherance. If there's a general sense that docufictions et al are okay (and it sounds already like there is) maybe the Vote For It rule is best employed?

That's what I'm thinking in this case and unless somebody gives a good reason against I'll be voting for the Benning's.

Well, I just checked the borderline educational film that'll be my Spotlight and IMDB lists it as a Documentary, which seems like confirmation enough (so is Casting a Glance btw)

domino harvey wrote:My prospective list contains several educational shorts, which dramatize "reality" to make didactic points, but they're really just taking Nanook of the North to a logical furtherance. If there's a general sense that docufictions et al are okay (and it sounds already like there is) maybe the Vote For It rule is best employed?

Yeah, I mean if someone really believes that The Harder They Come is functionally a documentary, they can go ahead and vote for it- I don't know that it's a genre that needs a lot of stated restrictions, and the vote for it rule seems to work well enough as long as the general idea is clear.

Cool, thanks Matrix!

Super awesome, though I wish we could some how place a restriction on all of these terrible films I've been forcing myself to see because they're popular. Was Marlon Riggs really the last good American documentarian?

Haha, that's fair. No crappy films will be considered documentaries, nobody is allowed to watch them.

But my number one and two can still be Michael Moore Hates America and Sarah Palin the Undefeated rite

Oh, also, concert films = eligible, yes?

Absolutely, my spotlight is going to be one.

Hell, half my verite will be a concert films.

Also, I like Ken Burns. Matrix, can you stop the other kids on the board from making fun of meee thnx n advance

My number one vote is already locked in

We're weird. I'm just glad that BFI will be finished with the Jennings films before this is over. If only the same were true of Krish who I probably could put five on right now.

I'll also probably vote for some actualities and mockumentaries.

Glad to hear that we might be able to vote for arguably Peter Jackson's best film!

I had some thoughts about parameters for documentaries and wanted to run them by people:

I'm planning to allow individual episodes from anthology series, like Errol Morris's First Person or Frontline, and to allow concretely defined short series like the Attenborough Planet Earth. Does anyone have an issue with that, or a suggestion to make?

Also, I'm assuming that these would fit under essay film and therefore be fine, but I'm planning to accept things like Histoires Du Cinema and A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. Does that make sense?

All sound good to me

I don't see how that could break any previously established exceptions though are we counting Histoire(s) as one or multiple films?

That's a good question. Could someone who knows the series well make a suggestion?

It should be counted as a whole in the way that Planet Earth would be

You could argue that Histoire(s) was released erratically, piece by piece, over a number of years, but you'd be crazy not to consider it as a single work.

This doesn't affect the docs project, but I might as well ask now--for the decades projects, should the whole of Histoire(s) be eligible for the '80s list or for the '90s list? I believe that last round, people were voting for it for the '90s list (which is where most of the segments belong) but we also have some precedent for assigning multi-part films that straddle decades to the earlier of the two (e.g. Lang's Die Spinnen in the '10s, Ivan the Terrible in the '40s, The Human Condition in the '50s).

I actually think it made it onto both '80s lists.

The only place Histoire(s) has ever ranked was as an also-ran in the last '90s list. (See here.)

Another question, for both the '70s and documentary lists: I've seen the 13-part The Ascent of Man (from the UK in 1973) described in several places as a mini-series, but I'm just now seeing that IMDb calls it a TV series, which would make it ineligible. Is anyone that's seen it able to comment on how it would more properly be considered?