Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
March 29, 2024, 12:28:25 am

ballp.it is the community forum for The F Plus.

You're only seeing part of the forum conversation. To see more, register for an account. This will give you read-only access to nearly all the forums.

Topic: Documentaries worth watching  (Read 34170 times)

lazzer grardaion?

  • Paid
  • 703
  • 27
Documentaries worth watching #60
If I could throw another suggestion in here, I'd recommend Marwencol, a documentary about a dude who suffered severe brain damage after being beaten up by five or so guys outside of a bar, and who had to re-learn basically everything, up to how to walk and feed himself. As part of his efforts to start re-training himself, he made this little dollhouse-sized bar, and populated it with G.I. Joes and Barbies, and this eventually grew to an entire WWII-era town full of buildings and people. The detailing and customization he was doing was to build hand-eye coordination, but he also started using the town to tell stories about its inhabitants, and cope with his own personal traumatic experiences.
Salubrious Rex

CormansInferno

  • Forsooth! A ravenous ghoul approaches!
  • Paid
    • 301
    • 38
Documentaries worth watching #61
My local arthouse has recently gone very doc-heavy (among other things they're doing a four-part, four-year retrospective of Frederick Wiseman's complete filmography). They also had a fantastic mini-festival of avant-garde docs. A few choice selections:

The Killing of America: A bleak, terrifying, essential piece of American filmmaking. After Taxi Driver indirectly caused Reagan's near-assassination, Paul Schrader's brother Leon became obsessed with how and why violence was so prevalent in America. Leon happened to be fluent in Japanese and ran into manga artist turned producer Mataichiro Yamamoto, who was looking to capitalize on the success of Faces of Death in the Japanese video market. Sheldon Renan was hired to direct, and added cherry-picked future Oscar winners from UCLA's filmmaking program to his production team (who made the American dubs of Shogun Assassin and later, Akira). The final result is more of a stark Werner Herzog type meditation on the increase of violent crime in America instead of straight-up mondo schocksploitation, which its producers were not happy about. But it's accompanied with the most tragic and horrific film of the 20th Century, including the murder of JFK, live footage of the Nguyen Van Lem execution, and late 70s' LAPD gunfights that the doc's production team filmed themselves. It goes from the most high-profile assassinations of the 60s' into the political violence at home and abroad through the late 60's and 70's before hitting the serial killer boom of the 80's (including a horrific interview with an obscure serial killer). It's such a bracing slap of reality that it was never distributed in the US,not even on home video. But in Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia it was a box office hit (it was the #7 highest grossing movie at the Japanese box office in 1982). It's currently being restored for a Blu-Ray release.

Not a valid vimeo URL

Dead Slow Ahead: Mauro Herce's first feature, a horror movie about late capitalism, a version of Alien where the massive clanking emptiness of the spaceship is the monster. Filmed with almost no dialogue from the POV of a commercial freighter as it makes its way from one dystopian seaport to another, barely connected to land by a faulty satellite phone line. Sometimes the crew is shot in close profiles as they maintain the ship or relax in an impromptu karaoke room, but most of the time they are tiny figures outlined against a bleak and inhuman space. I saw it on a Sunday afternoon and that pretty much the perfect time for it, as it works best when the viewer relaxes and lets the endless roar of the sea and industrial freight roll over them completely.


Cameraperson: Kirsten Johnson has worked as a cinematographer on documentaries for most of her life (including Fahrenheit 9/11 and Citizenfour) but in the middle of making her first feature, one of the main characters of the documentary asked to be removed for reasons of personal safety. Forced to reconfigure her footage, Johnson accidentally hit upon how much of herself she had documented on camera. That sent her on an archival search through raw footage from over 120 projects she'd worked on to create a nonchronological memoir of a live lived in dozens of countries; including postwar Sarajevo, full War on Terror era Afghanistan, and a resource-strained maternity clinic in Nigeria, as well as autobiographical snippets from her own life (including her mother's sad descent into Alzheimer's).

Not a valid vimeo URL

Helmut Berger, Actor: This is less a documentary than a Mexican standoff with a resentful German manbaby that descends into a real-life Lars Von Trier or Gaspar Noe movie. Helmut Berger was the one-time lover and muse of Austrian director Tony Visconti. When Visconti died in 1976, Berger tried committing suicide, fearing he'd never work as an actor again. Afterwards Berger became a recluse, famously swearing off interviews about his work with Visconti or his attempted suicide. Though he'd agreed to do a documentary, he still wouldn't talk about any of these subjects to director Andreas Horvath. The only person willing to talk about Berger's past is his maid, who's dutifully maintained Berger's run-down two-room apartment for decades. Horvath won't stop asking and Berger starts having full blown freakouts at him both in his decaying apartment and over voicemail. And then things get even weirder.

NSFW content. Click to show.
Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop

Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop

  • Trill Lesh
  • Paid
  • 12 cellphones and I look like kurt angle
  • 3,922
  • 240
Documentaries worth watching #62
My local arthouse has recently gone very doc-heavy (among other things they're doing a four-part, four-year retrospective of Frederick Wiseman's complete filmography). They also had a fantastic mini-festival of avant-garde docs. A few choice selections:

The Killing of America: A bleak, terrifying, essential piece of American filmmaking. After Taxi Driver indirectly caused Reagan's near-assassination, Paul Schrader's brother Leon became obsessed with how and why violence was so prevalent in America. Leon happened to be fluent in Japanese and ran into manga artist turned producer Mataichiro Yamamoto, who was looking to capitalize on the success of Faces of Death in the Japanese video market. Sheldon Renan was hired to direct, and added cherry-picked future Oscar winners from UCLA's filmmaking program to his production team (who made the American dubs of Shogun Assassin and later, Akira). The final result is more of a stark Werner Herzog type meditation on the increase of violent crime in America instead of straight-up mondo schocksploitation, which its producers were not happy about. But it's accompanied with the most tragic and horrific film of the 20th Century, including the murder of JFK, live footage of the Nguyen Van Lem execution, and late 70s' LAPD gunfights that the doc's production team filmed themselves. It goes from the most high-profile assassinations of the 60s' into the political violence at home and abroad through the late 60's and 70's before hitting the serial killer boom of the 80's (including a horrific interview with an obscure serial killer). It's such a bracing slap of reality that it was never distributed in the US,not even on home video. But in Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia it was a box office hit (it was the #7 highest grossing movie at the Japanese box office in 1982). It's currently being restored for a Blu-Ray release.

Not a valid vimeo URL

Dead Slow Ahead: Mauro Herce's first feature, a horror movie about late capitalism, a version of Alien where the massive clanking emptiness of the spaceship is the monster. Filmed with almost no dialogue from the POV of a commercial freighter as it makes its way from one dystopian seaport to another, barely connected to land by a faulty satellite phone line. Sometimes the crew is shot in close profiles as they maintain the ship or relax in an impromptu karaoke room, but most of the time they are tiny figures outlined against a bleak and inhuman space. I saw it on a Sunday afternoon and that pretty much the perfect time for it, as it works best when the viewer relaxes and lets the endless roar of the sea and industrial freight roll over them completely.


Cameraperson: Kirsten Johnson has worked as a cinematographer on documentaries for most of her life (including Fahrenheit 9/11 and Citizenfour) but in the middle of making her first feature, one of the main characters of the documentary asked to be removed for reasons of personal safety. Forced to reconfigure her footage, Johnson accidentally hit upon how much of herself she had documented on camera. That sent her on an archival search through raw footage from over 120 projects she'd worked on to create a nonchronological memoir of a live lived in dozens of countries; including postwar Sarajevo, full War on Terror era Afghanistan, and a resource-strained maternity clinic in Nigeria, as well as autobiographical snippets from her own life (including her mother's sad descent into Alzheimer's).

Not a valid vimeo URL

Helmut Berger, Actor: This is less a documentary than a Mexican standoff with a resentful German manbaby that descends into a real-life Lars Von Trier or Gaspar Noe movie. Helmut Berger was the one-time lover and muse of Austrian director Tony Visconti. When Visconti died in 1976, Berger tried committing suicide, fearing he'd never work as an actor again. Afterwards Berger became a recluse, famously swearing off interviews about his work with Visconti or his attempted suicide. Though he'd agreed to do a documentary, he still wouldn't talk about any of these subjects to director Andreas Horvath. The only person willing to talk about Berger's past is his maid, who's dutifully maintained Berger's run-down two-room apartment for decades. Horvath won't stop asking and Berger starts having full blown freakouts at him both in his decaying apartment and over voicemail. And then things get even weirder.

NSFW content. Click to show.
CormansInferno, September 09, 2016, 12:40:46 pm
Holy shit, well there goes my weekend

MythosSanta

  • HONK!!!!!
  • Paid
    • 55
    • 5
Documentaries worth watching #63
Not certain if this is the best place to put this but here goes nothing. Recently, a friend alerted me to a documentary on yaoi he has only seen the trailer for called "Fragile Heart of Moe":


From the trailer, it looks pretty excellent, if a little cringy and low budget. So of course, I tried to find it online...

I got just about nothing. Nothing illegal nor legal, and believe me I'd be happy to pay good cash for such a weird piece of work. The only thing I was able to find was a foreign language copy on some sort of Asian youtube look-a-like.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTc0MTU4MDgw.html

I have considered the fact that their may not be an English language version of this at all. However I find this doubtful as I've seen a few blogposts saying that there are Eng version around and that this documentary was even shown at a convention. Regardless I have somewhat become obsessed. If you know anything about this film or are willing to help me do some leg work I'd be delighted. I'll also be asking around the IRL film circles I know of.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2016, 07:58:31 pm by MythosSanta »

cyclopeantrash

  • Aspergers Unto Death
  • Paid
  • High velocity man-hatred fired at everything
  • 1,698
  • 90
Documentaries worth watching #64
I don't know if it's actually worth watching. But this VICE documentary struck home with me.

Ghost Mall. It's under VICE's Abandoned series and it's about the Rolling Acres Mall in my town. It really is surreal seeing it like this. The host is kind of obnoxious in the way that hosts in VICE docs are wont to be.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2016, 11:23:11 pm by MISANDRY CANNON »

A Meat

  • Artificial Man Pop Seasoning
  • Paid
  • filled with delicious dude meat
  • 4,626
  • 131
Documentaries worth watching #65
Mission: Blue was interesting, what an amazing woman

chai tea latte

  • TheftBot is, simply put, a fully sentient robot for stealing automatic teller machines
  • Paid
  • (ATMs) from nearby convenience stores.
  • 5,773
  • -420
Documentaries worth watching #66
I don't know if it's actually worth watching. But this VICE documentary struck home with me.

Ghost Mall. It's under VICE's Abandoned series and it's about the Rolling Acres Mall in my town. It really is surreal seeing it like this. The host is kind of obnoxious in the way that hosts in VICE docs are wont to be.
MISANDRY CANNON, September 27, 2016, 11:21:20 pm

Neat! I tend to like the Viceland stuff. This is my favourite VICE documentary, worth watching imo:

BARK RANGER

  • MRS. ASTOR'S PET HORSE
  • Paid
    • 175
    • 15
Documentaries worth watching #67
The Town that Was (2006) is about the last guy that lived in Centralia Pennsylvania, the site of an anthracite coal mine fire has been burning since 1962.  Gives lots of history on the local mining industry, details on the buyout and relocation efforts, and perspective on why communities develop anti-government sentiment after enduring situations like this. 

Ghost Bird (2009) is about the mid-to-late 2000s  sightings of the extinct  critically endangered* Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, and some researchers' quest to rediscover it. They didn't.  But the circumstances surrounding the search itself and the academic shitstorm over the "evidence" made this a really interesting take on what is usually a dry subject.

Finders Keepers (2015) might still be on Netflix. It's about the grill leg guy.

cashmir sweaters

  • Paid
    • 102
    • 7
Documentaries worth watching #68
Killers In Eden. For over 100 years a family of orcas and a family of (human) whalers practiced cooperative hunting in Eden, Australia until their relationship fell apart due to humans being human.

Dad Noises

  • Paid
    • 5
    • 0
Documentaries worth watching #69
Rodney Ascher's documentaries definitely deserve a shout-out here for how good they are at just letting people air their neuroses with minimal interference, Room 237 covering people's crazy interpretations of The Shining was really fun and his documentary about sleep paralalysis does a great job  getting in their headspace. His shorter works like The S From Hell are good too.

Not a valid vimeo URL
chai tea latte Salubrious Rex

Spacebat

  • The Friedrich Nietzsche of Snuggling
  • Paid
  • 282
  • 36
Documentaries worth watching #70
I haven't watched this yet, but I think it's in our wheelhouse.

Lemon

Bunnybread

  • You're welcome, genitals of the world.
  • Ridiculist
  • 680
  • 169
Documentaries worth watching #71
If I could throw another suggestion in here, I'd recommend Marwencol, a documentary about a dude who suffered severe brain damage after being beaten up by five or so guys outside of a bar, and who had to re-learn basically everything, up to how to walk and feed himself. As part of his efforts to start re-training himself, he made this little dollhouse-sized bar, and populated it with G.I. Joes and Barbies, and this eventually grew to an entire WWII-era town full of buildings and people. The detailing and customization he was doing was to build hand-eye coordination, but he also started using the town to tell stories about its inhabitants, and cope with his own personal traumatic experiences.
LancashireMcGee, August 26, 2016, 04:04:18 pm

It's been a while since I saw this but I recall it being quite interesting.  He also put the GI Joes in jeeps and dragged them behind himself to practice walking, I think. 

Emperor Jack Chick

  • he/him
  • Ridiculist
  • Metal tyrant from hell
  • 3,193
  • 666
Documentaries worth watching #72
chai tea latte

Caroline

  • The Warren Buffett of snuggling
  • Paid
  • More spaceship than rabbit
    • 352
    • 43
Documentaries worth watching #73
Watching the Tickled documentary right now, and those tickling videos are so much weirder in real life than I could possibly have imagined. What the actual fuck.

I Liked That Joke

  • Paid
  • Boy oh boy, there's a lot of good jokes out there!
    • 270
    • 16
Documentaries worth watching #74
Hey it me the necro man

Behind the Curve is a documentary about flat earthers that's on Netflix.  I enjoy it, but every now and then they break up the flat-earth action with some stupid little cartoons making fun of flat earthers, it makes me feel like they don't trust me enough to realize that these people are dumb on my own. Also, the main dude has a huge unrequited crush on a female conspiracy theorist and it's really uncomfortable to watch.
 
It's a fascinating and not too depressing dive into the thought processes of textbook F Plus subjects. I recommend it! I feel that it humanizes them without agreeing with them. I'm only two thirds through it but so far it's really enjoyable!