Interesting Documentaries

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I love watching documentaries short or long so I thought we could have a thread dedicated to talking and posting interesting documentaries you've seen recently or in the past.

This is probably the weirdest one i've seen:
Donkey Sex: The Most Bizarre Tradition
 

[El Barto]

Ah, damn it, where's Emindead when you need him.

[Sketchy]

I'm a huge fan of the David Attenborough documentaries. I find it interesting to see the diversity of species and also just general natural history.

[MoraWintersoul]

Miss Representation: https://www.missrepresentation.org/the-film/

"In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman’s value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors."

According to my American buddies, it's on Netflix, so if you have that, knock yourself out.

[black_biff_stadler]

Supersize Me was pretty amusing.

[sueño]

Sicko

Mansome (on modern male grooming).  Hilarious and informative!     And Martin Spurlock from "Supersize Me!" is in it.

ANY Ken Burns doc

Planet Earth   

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Planet Earth   

[El Barto]

ANY Ken Burns doc

I watched a couple of his docs, and it's pretty much the exact opposite of what I want to see in a documentary. I like facts and details. While I found Baseball and Jazz to be entertaining, Ken Burns doesn't do facts, in lieu of offering up flavor and atmosphere. I can see how people would dig that more, it's just a matter of taste and preference for style, but not really my bag. I figured out the exact opposite of any Ken Burns documentary is Battlefield. Rather than showing you what fighting in Guadalcanal must have felt like, Battlefield lays out all of the details in an amazingly well organized fashion. Like I said, a matter of individual preference, but more my thing.

[7StringedBeast]

The Wonderful Whites of West Virgina was a good one.

Life 2.0 was really intesting too.  It was about people spending more of their live living through virtual avatars than real life.

Waiting for Superman I thought was a great documentary.

[sueño]

Caught this on PBS a few years ago; had to own it:   https://www.amazon.com/The-Audition-Alek-Shrader/dp/B002V0BAJC

It's like American Idol for people who can REALLY sing! 

[jasc15]

Gypsy Child Thieves (BBC Documentary)

Just watched this yesterday.  Sad existence for these kids.

A tangential response I had to this documentary is the overt racism shown towards these people.  America certainly has her hands dirty with respect to racism, but it seems like it is nowhere near as acceptable here as it seems to be in Europe.

[sueño]

Reminds me of "Rabbit-Proof Fence".  Not exactly a documentary but based on true events when the Australian government was taking aboriginal children from their families to place them with white families.  Very sad. 

[kári]

Home is really, really good.

Also, not really a documentary but a must watch anyway: Koyaanisqatsi. Mind-blowing.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Great ones so far, keep 'em coming.

[Big Hath]

here are several I thought were interesting, some were better than others:

Spellbound - about kids in the national spelling bee

Murderball - about rugby-playing quadriplegics

Helvetica - about the ubiquitous typeface and typography/graphic design in general

March of the Penguins - about  emperor penguins in Antarctica

The King of Kong - about the pursuit of the Donkey Kong arcade scoring record between two very different people

In the Shadow of the Moon - about the Apollo space missions

Man on Wire - about a guy who tight-roped between the World Trade Center towers in the 70's (before they were open)

Hoop Dreams - about two Chicago high school basketball players and their NBA aspirations

Searching for Sugar Man - about a Detroit blue-collar worker who had unknowingly become a music star on the level of the Beatles or Elvis in South Africa

Last Days Here - about Bobby Liebling, self-destructive frontman of doom band Pentagram and a fan's efforts to help him

[black_biff_stadler]

Just saw a trailer for The Imposter when I was looking up Searching for Sugar Man on IMDB. It's about some French teen who convinces a Texas family that he's their long-missing son. Creepy and compelling shit indeed.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Man on Wire - about a guy who tight-roped between the World Trade Center towers in the 70's (before they were open)

Searching for Sugar Man - about a Detroit blue-collar worker who had unknowingly become a music star on the level of the Beatles or Elvis in South Africa

Great ones. I urge everyone to see Man On Wire if you haven't just for the amazing story and suspense. The way they executed that was just amazing, let alone Phillipe Petite himself. Amazing man with cajones the size of Everest.

[Dr. DTVT]

American Movie.  I think it is downright hilarious, especially if you get the DVD version with the extras.  Unintentional comedy gold.

[jasc15]

In the Shadow of the Moon - about the Apollo space missions

This is available free:
 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ditEyvRbM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Df-ditEyvRbM

Bonus:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBhPsyYCiM&feature=player_detailpage#t=1235

[El Barto]

In the Shadow of the Moon - about the Apollo space missions

This is available free:
 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ditEyvRbM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Df-ditEyvRbM

Bonus:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBhPsyYCiM&feature=player_detailpage#t=1235

The bonus vid of that is great. It's easy to compare what they had back then to, say, the phone in my pocket and laugh about them being a bunch of cavemen, but at the same time what they were doing was absolutely brilliant. There's a reason Rene Descartes is still looked upon as a badass.

I watched a bit of NASA stuff a couple of weeks ago. While not necessarily a documentary, For All Mankind is quite remarkable. It's a composite of the Apollo missions shown through films shot by the astronauts with handheld cameras and stored in the NASA Archives for the last 30 years. They actually gave this guy the original negatives so he could do a better job of printing them to be shown on movie screens. There is no narration; just radio comms and the occasional interview.

[BlobVanDam]

In the Shadow of the Moon - about the Apollo space missions

This is available free:
 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ditEyvRbM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Df-ditEyvRbM

Bonus:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBhPsyYCiM&feature=player_detailpage#t=1235

The bonus vid of that is great. It's easy to compare what they had back then to, say, the phone in my pocket and laugh about them being a bunch of cavemen, but at the same time what they were doing was absolutely brilliant. There's a reason Rene Descartes is still looked upon as a badass.

I love seeing that kind of stuff. Wikipedia's article on the computer technology of the Apollo missions is great too, so I was familiar with this from reading about it. Much better to see video from the time though.

I watched a bit of NASA stuff a couple of weeks ago. While not necessarily a documentary, For All Mankind is quite remarkable. It's a composite of the Apollo missions shown through films shot by the astronauts with handheld cameras and stored in the NASA Archives for the last 30 years. They actually gave this guy the original negatives so he could do a better job of printing them to be shown on movie screens. There is no narration; just radio comms and the occasional interview.

That sounds like my kind of thing. Will be checking that one out.


The only documentaries I can think of that I've seen recently are Indie Game: The Movie, and Jason Becker - Not Dead Yet. Both are an interesting watch whether you're interested in the subject matter or not, I think.

[bout to crash]

Two great ones I've seen recently-

Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist- not for the faint of heart, but AWESOME.

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet- awesome story of the guitarist who was headed to huge fame playing for David Lee Roth, etc. and got diagnosed with ALS around age 20, but is still miraculously alive and making music with his eyes.

[black_biff_stadler]

Ocular opuses!!!

[PuffyPat]

Exit Through the Gift Shop was cool.

[AngelBack]

One of the more interesting and extremely hard to watch docs I have viewed was on PBS American Experience about the practice of frontal lobotomies as developed by Walter Freeman back in the 50's I believe.  Black and white footage of the procedures and before and after footage of the zombies he created.  He started it as an open surgical type procedure but eventually found he could seperate the prefrontal lobe by going in thru the nose with long shank and using a hammer to break the connections.

Not for the squeamish.

[Dimitrius]

Exit Through the Gift Shop was cool.

I was gonna mention this one, though (IMO) it kinda turns into a mockumentary halfway through the film.

[Big Hath]

One of the more interesting and extremely hard to watch docs I have viewed was on PBS American Experience about the practice of frontal lobotomies as developed by Walter Freeman back in the 50's I believe.  Black and white footage of the procedures and before and after footage of the zombies he created.  He started it as an open surgical type procedure but eventually found he could seperate the prefrontal lobe by going in thru the nose with long shank and using a hammer to break the connections.

Not for the squeamish.

just watched this last night.  He was an absolute butcher.

[YtseBitsySpider]

I watched one recently on the state of Bees and the honey bee particulary in the US.

It was told by some pretty hippy earthy types...but was very alarming. I had no idea that "skids" of bees were rented and sent to polenate crops.
Crazy.

I like Micheal Moorer's stuff...I generally watch a documentary and go..."ok...if just 50% of that was true/not over spun-----then how much shit are we really in?"

[Big Hath]

I watched one recently on the state of Bees and the honey bee particulary in the US.

It was told by some pretty hippy earthy types...but was very alarming. I had no idea that "skids" of bees were rented and sent to polenate crops.
Crazy.

interesting that you bring that up.  I was reading just yesterday that the pollination of California's almond crop is the largest annual managed pollination event in the world.

According to wikipedia, almost one million beehives are brought in which represents basically half the managed beehives in the US.  Beekeepers travel to California from pretty much every state.

[El Barto]

I watched a pretty crappy DVD covering 30 years of NASA a few weeks ago, and while it sucked, a bonus feature was a very thorough photo-analysis of the Challenger breakup. Not so much a documentary as a video explanation of an internal report. Awesome footage which demonstrates very well exactly what transpired. As some people here know, accident investigation fascinates me in a big way, and this is a perfect example of how it's done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2x0BHU14ryI#t=905

The first 15 minutes is filler and not part of the actual analysis, so I skipped it. If you want short bios of the crew, check it out.

[jasc15]

Great find, Barto.  I didn't even bother with the first 15 mins either.

For documentaries, This American Life usually has some pretty good subject matter.  One that I can remember that was particularly insightful.  It is titled "Trends With Benefits", and looks into the increase in the number of Americans on disability.

It addresses the common reaction that most of these people are freeloaders or scammers, and tells a few anecdotes that are counter to that idea.

In a nutshell: The folks in the story presumably are physically capable of performing in a job which requires no physical exertion, but simply are insufficiently educated to seek these types of jobs.

And when I said things like, what about a job where you don't have to lift people, or a job where you don't have to use your shoulder or where you don't have to stand all night long, or just simply, have you thought about other jobs that you could do, people gave me such bewildered looks. It was as if I was asking well, how come you didn't consider becoming an astronaut.

Being poorly educated in a rotten place, that in and of itself has become a disability.

Here is an audio file of the show:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits

[wkiml]

here are several I thought were interesting, some were better than others:

Last Days Here - about Bobby Liebling, self-destructive frontman of doom band Pentagram and a fan's efforts to help him

Excellent film

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet- awesome story of the guitarist who was headed to huge fame playing for David Lee Roth, etc. and got diagnosed with ALS around age 20, but is still miraculously alive and making music with his eyes.

 

[CharlieDominietzsche]

Why Are Thin People Not Fat
The World According To Monsanto
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
Anvil: The Story Of Anvil
Spellbound
The People Vs. George Lucas
Fog Of War
God Grew Tired Of Us
Anything with James Burke or Louis Theroux

[Dr. DTVT]

Anything with James Burke

You.  You are an awesome person.  I've seen all his TV series, and read all of his books - at least everything published before 2005.

[El Barto]

Anything with James Burke

You.  You are an awesome person.  I've seen all his TV series, and read all of his books - at least everything published before 2005.

It's funny. I've tried to get other people here into James Burke, and nobody seems to keep much interest.