criterionforum.org

Thank you both. I was quite surprised on getting the disc today to find the mention of new footage.

I'll hope you guys forgive this little digression.

I was named after my great-grandfather who coincidentally shares my birth date, December 24th. He had died a little over a year before I was born. He came to the US at the turn of the previous century with his father from the town of Berdychiv in the Ukraine when faced with serious threats of death due to antisemitism. His mother didn't survive. Despite never hearing his voice and seeing him in the flesh I feel like I've lived with him by my shoulder. I don't entirely know why this is, but I've lived life as if it were with him. If I had to attribute this to anything I would think it was because of my family's emphasis on an oral history that goes back generations. Nobody ever dies since they are truly and fully remembered forever and those like his mother who are lost to history create for the family a truly existential crisis.

I say this entirely to explain why, without an ounce of objectivity, Jonas Mekas' Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania destroyed me. I'm sure in reality it is no better (nor worse) than any other Mekas film cut from the same cloth, but while the others hinted at this need for memory none have targeted my memories. The film, as the title suggests, has Mekas going over the home he left behind for one in America. Now Mekas looks nothing like my Great-Grandpa, but his story as he explores it with the character and words he chooses to define these reminiscences is like giving a physical life to my history. That state of memory is always in the now and when made real, as when Mekas meets his lost family, creates a conflict of self. Is the necessary act of survival that allows this moment to be a betrayal? Is Mekas no longer a Lithuanian or even his mother's son? Is the loss from memory of Sam's, my great-grandfather, mother a murder to the past wherein who she made him in their decade together meaningless? It was recently found out that she might not have been Jewish coming from a near by town that was home to gypsies, something Sam went to his grave not having been a question. If this new information is true then he was not technically Jewish. Does this new piece of the cloth of our memory change who he was or is she still dead and the question doesn't change Sam's past.

In learning about life as it developed in Lithuania without him Mekas strikes me as similarly displaced. He's a man without a stable memory nor a stable place in others memory. Alive and welcomed he's dead. There are ghosts of the past I don't want to get to here and don't think it is appropriate anyway. Mekas is mostly happy in the film, not longing over the dead camps, invisible to the eye, and communicating with his family as best as he can. Even a ghost like him can live his remembrances in glee which might mean these little questions of displacement and memory are only in the mind. And yet even after leaving Lithuania for the second time he goes back a remembers where he and brother slept as the Nazis prepared for their deaths. That changes the person in a way where they can never truly return. He's an American now ready to shame the Lithuanian life with his camera, the mechanism which is now his only set of eyes.

Speaking from a more objective perspective, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania is indeed a great and moving film. It's really an unusual situation to be caught on film, especially in such an intimate way. Thanks for sharing your experience. You can't always tell when a film is going to have an extraordinary personal resonance (for me it's Mizoguchi's Woman of the Rumour).

Your welcome, I was a little embarrassed when I wrote that since I was describing this emotional memory of the film that doesn't really have any physical being. It was like sitting in a bus, closing your eyes, and thinking back.

Also, because it doesn't seem to be the easiest thing to find, it seems for the next week Mubi has his film with Guerin up for free. It's pretty great.

Per the discussion in the 70s thread, I'm bumping the deadline to March 15, whether you like it or not. Everyone just pretend we've actually been posting here constantly for the last month.

Wait till I finally get off my ass and watch Ophuls' Barbie movie. Been starving myself with the worst crap possible i.e. anything popular on IMDB.

matrixschmatrix wrote:Per the discussion in the 70s thread, I'm bumping the deadline to March 15, whether you like it or not. Everyone just pretend we've actually been posting here constantly for the last month.

We have a Documentaries List Project?!

domino harvey wrote:

matrixschmatrix wrote:Per the discussion in the 70s thread, I'm bumping the deadline to March 15, whether you like it or not. Everyone just pretend we've actually been posting here constantly for the last month.

We have a Documentaries List Project?!

Yeah, what happened?!?
Things were rolling pretty well in the Summer.

I have 53 films on my list at the moment, and another 27 on my To See list.
Though my access being what it is, I can't really get to them until they get to me.

Here, imo, are some of the most interesting recs from this thread:
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
Sherman's March (1985)
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)
Propaganda (Slavko Martinov, 2012)
Leviathan
Edward Said: The Last Interview (Mike Dibb,2004)
Vivan las Antipodas!
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
Project Nim (2011)
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009)
Quince Tree of the Sun (1992)
Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (1994)

Wondering if anyone has seen Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2007) which I've been anticipating? Also, any thoughts on West of Memphis (Amy Berg, 2012), which I keep forgetting to pick up?

I'll look over my provisional list and start to tout some faves which have so far gone unmentioned.

Lemmy Caution wrote:Also, any thoughts on West of Memphis (Amy Berg, 2012), which I keep forgetting to pick up?

It's a good, solid round-up of an important story. Though it's quite a conventional documentary, it's a lot better than Berlinger / Sinofsky's ethically dubious trilogy (the solution to a situation where innocent people are convicted of murder simply because they're perceived as weird? Find some other innocent guy who you perceive is weird and insinuate that he must be the real culprit - because he's really weird!) The investigative stuff in Berg's film is much more persuasive.

Two docs on modern China I'd strongly rec: Up the Yangtze (2007) and Last Train Home (2009).

Up the Yangtze focuses on two young kids in their first jobs aboard a cruise ship.
It's a nice glimpse into the way young people in China think and act today, but also delves into issues such as the dam and relocation of people (the girl's family), and the way the new consumer market-leninism is changing rural life.

Last Train Home provides impressive access to a migrant family struggling to make money, migrating from the countryside to an urban industrial hellhole, leaving their daughter in the care of the grandmother. It's heartbreaking seeing how lovely their rural land is, especially compared to the cramped squalid factory where they can earn more and live less. A good glimpse into the way workers are treated in China, and the way people are trying to provide for their children, and the resentments built into all of this.

The resemblance of the two films is no accident, as Lixin Fan, the director of LTH, worked on Up The Yangtze, and employs a similar style/approach.

I've lived in China for quite some time, so I can attest that these films are authentic and accurate and essential viewing if an outsider wants to understand China/Chinese today.

Lemmy C's Spotlight Picks:

Talhotblond (2009). A rather bizarre true internet story. Very well paced and put together. I have no idea why the rather bland and mediocre Catfish garnered so much attention the following year for a somewhat similar internet identity tale.
I think this doc is still very much under the radar, but it is completely engrossing.

And if I'm allowed a second spotlight:

Facing Ali (2009) a masterful portrayal of ten ex-fighters, all Ali opponents, who reminisce about their careers and lives. It's really poignant as most are at a reflective stage of life and talk about their regrets and mistakes and triumphs.

There's so much good material here, with highlights including Larry Holmes' frank self-appraisal, George Chuvalo detailing mob involvement, and Ernie Terrell on the Tonight Show singing a ditty about beating Ali to the tune of Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey, two days prior to their fight.

There are sad moments, including the void of Ali unable to be interviewed, which the documentary spars and dances around. George Chuvalo and Ron Lyle are the most interesting and informative about boxing. Chuvalo talks of mob influence; while I wasn't aware that Lyle, a trainer now, had served 7+ years in his 20's for 2nd degree murder which afforded him mucho training time.

My only quibble would be that Frazier, Spinks and Norton sadly are deemed to require fixed subtitles, though I thought they were pretty intelligible. Would have been better to have the whole film be subtitle optional on Dvd. Excellent doc, which I've watched three times, and being Mr Kevyip, I don't re-watch much.

Speaking of pugilism ...

On The Ropes is a great boxing doc. A close cousin to Hoop Dreams.

China Heavyweight (2012) is a fairly strong doc from the Chinese-Canadian documentary director Yung Chang who previously made the impressive Up the Yangtze doc in 2007. The English title is a little odd, as there are exactly zero heavyweights in the film, and the main ex-boxer/coach is a bantamweight (55kg/120 Lbs). I assume they are going for the double meaning of China Heavy-Weight as in a heavy burden in China, on these poor folks looking for a path towards a better life. Their parents are awfully good at piling on pressure and guilt-tripping. They also promote the film with a photo of the Chinese bantamweight looking a good deal like Ali, probably no accident since we see some Ali photos here and there in the boxing dorm and gym.

The film follows a boxing coach in Sichuan Province who recruits young students primarily from one middle school which has set up a boxing program. Two of his proteges make it to the provincial finals, which gets them on to the provincial team, which is quite impressive considering Sichuan Province has a population of over 80M, more than any country in Europe except for Russia. Boxing is a fairly new sport in China -- having been banned from 1959-89 -- but has been fairly heavily televised in China for the past two decades. Most big Western pay-per-view matches in the US are shown live on Chinese cable TV for free. As my father likes to say, China must have paid their $49.99.

Anyway, it's a good film, with plenty of scenes of the rather grueling training and basic living conditions. We also meet some of the families and hear their concerns. While not everyone agrees that boxing is a good path, they all seem in agreement that being a farmer is a hard life best avoided if possible. There aren't too many options and the coach serves as a role model as someone from the area who nearly made it.

You do get a sense that the discipline and training will pay off in any future endeavor, at least to some extent. Though a number of the amateur boxers have fairly unrealistic dreams of what they can accomplish. It's also good to see that a group of female students are also recruited to be boxers, probably largely because in China the female athletes tend to be more competitive internationally than the men. But also, China is genuinely pretty good at providing opportunity for women. Unfortunately the film concentrates on two older teen males, and the younger girls are only briefly in the film. There's one deleted scene which features the girls in their dorm discussing their thoughts about boxing, followed by some sparring sessions. I wish they had kept that in the film.

A solid film, providing a glimpse into poor rural China, where everyone more or less laments their fate, and is unable to appreciate the natural beauty around them while striving to get ahead.

Postscript: My neighbor is an ex-boxer, who has set up a very basic mini-gym in the garden, in back of the entrance to the bomb shelter. His heavybag is just a dozen tires stacked on a concrete post. I gave him a copy of China Heavyweight and he was very appreciative. He had heard of the film but hadn't seen it. He went back in and got his scrapbook with some pics of him posing next to Ali circa 1985.

Speaking of documentaries, there is on-going discussion of Teshigihara's Antonio Gaudi in the new film club thing.

Speaking of architecture, the BBC's Churches: How to Read Them is an excellent examination of British religious history via the images and architecture of its churches. Host Richard Taylor is a supreme font of information and enthusiasm. Just an excellent presentation of material with clarity and a nice attention to the visuals. Really made me want to go there and see these churches firsthand.

Any other BBC history docs folks would recommend?

Politically the ones that come to mind areThe Death of Yugoslavia, the three part Tsar Boris: The Yeltsin Years and the 25 part 1998 Cold War series narrated by Kenneth Branagh (perhaps it is just Branagh as the new Olivier but the series is kind of picking up where The World At War leaves off), which were all fascinating series.

The I, Caesar series (narrated by Brian Cox) was also a great primer to its subject.

Plus any of the Adam Curtis documentaries
___
Regarding documentaries shown on Channel 4, I have a huge soft spot for the three part New Nightmares series from 1993 which featured extensive film clips, readings from novels and interviews with the likes of William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Marvin Minsky, Bruce Sterling, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, Michael Crichton, etc to discuss the issues around science and the way that they have been depicted in film and literature.

The first episode, Man-Machine, was all about artificial intelligence and becoming self aware, cyborgs and plastic surgery or replaceable parts, the coming online world, video games, cars as the last technological innovation that humanity is really totally 'in control' of, whether human intelligence versus artificial intelligence is really an important distinction, etc.

The second episode, Nature Says No, is on natural disasters, pollution and ecology, Jurassic Park's themes including nature as a tourist attraction that is cultivated for visitors rather than naturally existing, the idea of viruses and the possibility of resistant strains (taking in Greg Bear's Blood Music), James Lovelock talking about the Gaia theory, and the idea of the natural world as a forbidding and hostile place disinterested in humanity (if Antichrist were around at the time, this section of the documentary would be a perfect fit for it!).

The third episode, Them!, is on the fear of 'the other'. Alien invasions, radioactive mutation, the masses of humanity, racial and cultural fears. Ideas of conformity (e.g. mass religious gatherings such as mass weddings, the Hajj, revivalist meetings, but also political rallies or displays of power with armed rallies or sports gatherings) that offer both the comfort of loss of individuality (and responsibility) to the person within the group but also become slightly terrifying to those on the outside looking in. The programme also looks at urban sprawl, and living in tightly packed cities along with overpopulation and foot shortages. Riots and civil disobedience also get tackled. Social engineering and architecture. Features the great line from Martin Amis from a time when he was trapped in a crowd of shoppers that he was scared that "death was coming in the form of too much life".

The closest film has come to that series so far is something like the similarly fascinating 'virtual reality' documentary Synthetic Pleasures.

Andre Sauvage's Etudes sur Paris is a gorgeous impressionistic travelogue / city symphony from the 20s that's well worth a look. It's got an absolutely magical sequence early on in which a Vigo-esque barge makes its way through the canals underneath Paris, lit only by occasional light wells to the world above.

I made the mistake of watching two extremely disappointing films about films:

Moguls and Movie Stars (No Credited Director 2010) If you're going to devote over seven hours to something as vast and varied as American cinema through 1969, perhaps at least some of that screentime should be devoted to telling an audience something it doesn't already know. This is just a glossy version of those VH1 nostalgia shows, only even less valuable as the "insights" offered are so fleeting and useless (and frequently debatable) and boxed into little thirty second segments within a larger whole that has no overarching theme other than "Hey, here's movies, I guess." I read that it took three years to make this film-- at least I only wasted seven hours of my life and came away with the same thing: nothing.

Two in the Wave (Emmanuel Laurent 2010) Another hagiographic doc about the movies that has nothing of interest to say, this one at least has the benefit of including some interesting behind the scenes footage and shots of articles. This is the perfect example of a doc that is far less interesting than just watching the raw source footage used within it. The thesis here is pretty shaky: Godard and Truffaut both made films and both used Jean-Pierre Leaud in their films. Eventually feelings got hurt. One died. The end. It's hard to reduce a vital filmmaker like Godard, a flawed but once promising sell-out like Truffaut, and one of the most important actors of the era into something as simple as the sentence you're reading right now, but this film does it.

domino harvey wrote:Two in the Wave (Emmanuel Laurent 2010) Another hagiographic doc about the movies that has nothing of interest to say, this one at least has the benefit of including some interesting behind the scenes footage and shots of articles. This is the perfect example of a doc that is far less interesting than just watching the raw source footage used within it. The thesis here is pretty shaky: Godard and Truffaut both made films and both used Jean-Pierre Leaud in their films. Eventually feelings got hurt. One died. The end. It's hard to reduce a vital filmmaker like Godard, a flawed but once promising sell-out like Truffaut, and one of the most important actors of the era into something as simple as the sentence you're reading right now, but this film does it.

I avoided seeing this film because it sounded too much like the very film you describe, plus the added annoyance (of which I was unaware) of reducing Leaud to Truffaut's stand-in (who occasionally appeared in Godard films). Leaud's great strength and importance as a filmmaker is that he would boldly throw himself 110% into the projects of lots of very different auteurs: Eustache, Pasolini, Rivette, Ruiz, Kaurismaki, Assayas, Tsai (and presumably Garrel and Rocha, but I haven't seen those collaborations yet). You watch The Mother and the Whore and he's a quintessentially Eustachean actor; you watch I Hired a Contract Killer and he's quintessentially Kaurismakian; he's as perfectly at home in What Time Is It There? as Lee Kang-sheng. Just because The Truffaut films are much better known to a general audience doesn't mean that's what Leaud is all about, however important they were in establishing him as an actor.

The documentary literally says at one point that in the 60s Leaud was like a child torn between two parents. I wondered what that made Pasolini, the dirty old uncle? Of course, I don't think whoever made this film bothered to think very hard about this or any other claim (but luckily there's a contemporary young woman who's filmed rifling through many of the vintage Cahiers articles and magazine covers since Godard and Truffaut both filmed girls)

Hotel Terminus
I guess this week I get to be luckier than poor Dom. Formally this isn't anywhere near the titan of The Sorrow and the Pity, but thematically it is probably the best and densest approach to this part of the war I've seen. As I understand it this is Ophuls follow-up to a film on Nuremberg and a lot of the questions seem to feature the trials as a ghost. The film goes beyond culpability into an almost universal fault where twists, ties, and personal interests obscure matters so badly that the possibility of truth seems an impossible labyrinth.

The movie doesn't get lost up that asshole though as the true horror Barbie committed is laid as an absolute fact with everyone infected with the virus of him. Like with the interviews this provides some healthy contradictions, but I think it aids in giving the film a moral sense within the murk. The truth of who is to be blamed for whatever an interviewee wants to be solved may be a tangled string, but truth itself is not given as an impossibility. People have to be held to standards and just because the source of the entanglement is an unknown doesn't make all matters of the situation as such.

I have no clue what I think of it as cinema, but Wang Bing's Fengming is extraordinarily effective storytelling and I feel indirectly addresses a lot of the grievances I have with Claude Lanzmann's failures. The film doesn't assert any authority on the subject of the revolution and the work camps. Hell, due to its compelling storyteller it barely seems to believe in the authority over her story. Yet despite that modesty its able to be so informative vividly recreating life as her through these horrible years. It doesn't really need special visuals as her face is more transportive than any staging could hope to be. There's also barely any sense of Wang over the film with only a minimum of cuts and no interviewer element or wacky set up. It's just her, her words, and a camera which excuses any pretensions over what the story might reveal as it has a conviction to those pretensions.

The Shock of the New (Robert Hughes, 1980)

I saw episodes 4-8 of this a while ago when it was shown on BBC4 - amazingly, it's not available on DVD, but all eight episodes seem to be up on YouTube at the moment. I've been meaning to watch the whole series and post something meaningful, but since I never seem to find the time I thought I'd just come in and give it a quick plug. Also, it seems MichaelB said some of what I wanted to say about the series in August 2012, at the time of Hughes' death:

MichaelB wrote:It's almost impossible to exaggerate the impact Hughes' TV series (and book) The Shock of the New had on me - I saw/read it circa 1983/4, i.e. precisely the point when Channel Four first launched and was cramming its schedules with documentaries about the avant-garde in all its manifestations.

I was instinctively drawn to this stuff anyway, but Hughes did a better job of clarifying and contextualising it for me than anyone else - like Pauline Kael (someone I must have discovered at about the same time), I often disagreed with him and sometimes profoundly, but his passionate enthusiasm for his subject and his fearlessness in slaughtering sacred cows was exhilarating.

It's a great series, and beautifully filmed. One of the most infuriating things about many art documentaries made today (those made by Andrew Graham-Dixon et al.) is that they don't take the time to really linger over the artworks and buildings themselves, retreating instead into various hackneyed stylistic tics which have ended up making one art series almost indistinguishable from another, and often make it hard to focus on the ostensible subject. These series often seem motivated primarily by a paralysing fear of losing viewers' attention, and of course this ironically makes them quite unwatchable at times - the good ones have slightly less naff stock music droning relentlessly away in the background, slightly less desperate presenters, and slightly less melodramatic editing.

As a reluctant addict of these shows, I found The Shock of the New a real breath of fresh air. Hughes is a tremendously confident, self-assured presenter (pompous at times, but in a very calculated and likeable way), but as such he knows when to get out of the fucking way and let the works speak for themselves. The series covers a lot of ground but never feels rushed - its leisurely pace is one of several things that makes it compulsively watchable.

I suspect many will find the music dated and annoying, but if (like me) you grew up on radio and TV shows scored by the BBC Radiophonic Orchestra, then (like me) you will absolutely love what they do here. I think the music is perfectly suited to the material - dissonant, jarring, shocking, and probably quite aware that it will become dated almost as soon as it has been made (and that this will paradoxically give it an enduring value).

Viewing Log:

A Band Called Death (Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett, 2012): The filmmakers picked a great subject here: an all African-American proto-punk band from Detroit that toiled in obscurity through the 1970s despite making some truly revolutionary music. The film itself, however, is fairly standard fair with talking heads explaining their history, and nothing novel mixed in. I suppose that you're experience with the film will be measured by how much you enjoy the music. For those uninterested punk, there may not be much of a reason to watch it.

A Place at the Table (Kristi Jacobson, 2012): Jacobson's work is another fairly conventional documentary, but the sheer horror of its subject matter is sufficient to outweigh any aesthetic criticisms. While we often think of hunger and malnutrition as problems for third world countries, the film exposes the utter devastation found every day in America caused by these twin deficiencies. The film itself feels like a punch to the gut with the maddening effects that our nation's food policy encourages. Of course none of it has to be this way, but the prospects of change seem grim at best.

The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, 2005): This compilation of the nation's top comics telling the world's dirtiest joke caused a minor stir upon its release a few years back, but it didn't do much for me. No matter how funny the film can occasionally be, the sheer monotony of hearing so many mutations of the same joke quickly catches up with the viewer and wears out its welcome. Pass.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Göran Olsson, 2011): As the film's introduction states, the footage here is compiled by a group of Swedish documentarians over eight years in an effort to understand the complexities of being African-American in America. Their focus quickly narrowed in on the black power movement, and we get some utterly fascinating looks at The Black Panthers, Angela Davis, and just about anyone who was anyone in this period. Unfortunately, the footage is often narrated by musicians and other influenced by, but unrelated to the movement itself. Aside from this often frustrating move, there is little to be critical of here. It's essential viewing for anyone interested in this era of American history.

Comizi d'amore (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): With this, I've now seen all of Paolini's feature length work, and I can honestly say that this one might be the oddest entry in his catalog. The entire film consists of him walking around Rome, doing "man on the street" interviews with the city's denizens. Children are asked if they know where babies come from, men fortheir views of prostitution, and women on the importance of virginity. Much of it feels very dated now, but it is still an interesting portrait at the rather quaint views of sexuality held in this era.

Double Dare (Amanda Micheli, 2005): Amanda Micheli's documentary takes a behind the scenes look at two female stunt doubles, and provides a fascinating examination of two women at opposite ends of their careers. Jeannie Epper is the matriarch of a family of stunt performers and a legend in her own right, but after decades of putting well being on the life has little to show for it and gets most of her work by calling out favors from friends. Zoë Bell, on the other hand, is on a charmed path. After finishing work as Lucy Lawless's stunt double on Xena, Bell leaves for LA and almost immediately gets work that (as we don't see in the film) leads to modest success as an actress. Again, there's nothing fancy here, but it's a worthwhile look at the less glamorous side of the Hollywood machine.

Endless Orgy for the Goddess of Perversion (Trace Burroughs, 2008): This collection of vintage erotic ephemera could have played something like The Atomic Cafe of nudie cuties. Instead, the filmmakers made the astoundingly poor decision to have the material broken down into segments introduced by actors pretending to be experts on the material. The acting here is horrible and the writing ranks among the most painful "jokes" ever recorded on film. Avoid it like the plague.

Hollywood Uncensored (James Forsher, 1987): While this Douglas Fairbanks Jr./ Peter Fonda co-hosted exploration of Hollywood's portrayal of sex does a competent job of condensing 60 or so years worth of material into 75 minutes, it's still far from anything like a definitive examination of the subject. Yet, there are some real gems in here ranging from exclusive interviews with Carroll Baker and Sheree North to uncensored footage from High School Confidential. It's not groundbreaking, but worthwhile nonetheless.

The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963): Others in the forum have written about the majesty of this short documentary in far better terms than I ever will, but I can say that this poetic examination of lepers in Iran stands as one of the most remarkable works that I've seen for this project. It should be essential viewing for anyone participating in this project.

I Am an Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA (Matthew Galkin, 2008): Although I am an ethical vegetarian who agrees with Ingrid Newkirk on most of the fundamentals of what she says in this HBO produced examination of her life, her group's stupid human tricks (as PETA co-founder and ex-member Alex Pacheco describes them) has kept me from ever becoming a member. I'm sorry to say it, but this documentary only served to reaffirm my beliefs in both the rightness of her cause and the wrongness of her methods.

Impaler (W. Tray White, 2007): The Impaler (nee Jonathon Sharkey) was a fringe candidate for the Republican ticket in Minnesota's 2006 gubernatorial race. Given that he is an avowed Satanist/vampire who advocated the impaling of then President G.W. Bush along with many others, I'm sure you can guess how that turned out. What I thought was going to be a lighthearted examination of an eccentric individual proved to be anything but, as Sharkey continually uses and abuses those close to him while fighting both (apparent) mental illness and numerous legal troubles (which only magnified after the filming of the documentary when he got in trouble for helping an underage vampire runaway from her home). Sharkey is far too terrible of a human being to have made for a compelling subject. While the film has its moments, I can't ultimately recommend it.

Machete Maidens Unleashed (Mark Hartley, 2010): Thanks to the 70s project, I'm now familiar with some of the Roger Corman films highlighted in this overview of the exploitation film industry found in the Philippines under Marcos. Although fairly conventional, the documentary served as both an enjoyable and informative overview of this slice of cinema history. I learned a lot from this flick and have a few films that I must now search out. Without a doubt, it was a better experience than Corman's World.

The Order of Myths (Margaret Brown, 2008): Margaret Brown's documentary tracks both the history of Mobile, Alabama's Mardi Gras celebration and the racial disparities that exist in it today as it transitions from separate black/white celebrations to a single pageant. I hate to say this, but I found it fairly forgettable as I watched it about a month ago and retained almost none of it.

Rembrandt's J'Accuse (Peter Greenaway, 2008): A very Greenaway-esque (though lacking his typical abundant nudity) examination of the Rembrandt's "Nightwatch" (which he informs us is the third greatest painting after The Last Supper and Mona Lisa). The film is divided into an examination of the individual mysteries of the paintings as Greenaway narrates and actors recreate the scenes. There was quite a bit to like here.

Restrepo (Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, 2010): Restrepo is an amazing documentary from two first time directors. The film sees them embedded with the troops of Battle Company as they defend a lonely Afghan valley from the constant onslaught of Taliban forces. This, along with Hell and Back Again (reviewed a few pages back), contain some of the most shocking and unforgettable images of combat that I have ever seen. The hell that these men endure is truly astonishing. I cannot throw enough superlatives its way.

Skin for Sale (Vicente Perez Herrero, 2010): Herrero's documentary is a mostly unmemorable look behind the scenes of Spain's porn industry. There's really nothing new here, though I was a little surprised to learn the reason for the "tomato diet". Since I occasionally teach about pornography, I've seen a few of these low budget examinations of the industry. None of them really stand out. Pass.

Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012): Although I have yet to see her Take This Waltz, after Away from Her, I'd watch anything that Sarah Polley directs. Thankfully this highly personal work about her family is one of the best films that I've watched for the project and a sure bet for my list. The documentary chronicles the courtship between her parents, her birth, the death of her mother, and the various relations that came to life after her mother's passing. Polly's quest to better understand her family leads to some truly fascinating discoveries that are made all the more remarkable by the love and acceptance that her family demonstrate no matter what is uncovered. While both tragic and moving, the film also possesses an undeniable comic element that manifests itself perfectly in its final scene.

Varietease and Teaserama (Irving Klaw, 1954, 1955): Unfortunately, since I watched these over a month ago I can't remember which one is which. However, given that these two compilation films made by burlesque producer Irving Klaw are essentially the same movie, I think that I can be forgiven. Both films follow an identical formula: burlesque performers stripping down to their underwear, punctuated by vaudeville comics, dancers, and even a drag performance. Bettie Page is the real standout of the films. It's easy to forget what lightning in a bottle she once was.

I just updated the spotlights list, as swo was kind enough to point out that I'd managed to miss a few of them for like... six months. Sorry about that.