Watch these docs

As a follow-up to my last rambly post about making movies and documentaries, how about some short lists of documentaries to check out? Let me know if I’ve missed some or if you’ve seen any of these and want to share your review.

My picks

These are the kinds of docs that might make you change your mind about the genre, if your mind was, like mine, made up that documentaries are boring and sad.

1. Circus. This is a 6 part miniseries about the Big Apple Circus. So. Fascinating. The characters! The stunts! The animals! The artistry! The financial precarity! I’ve watched the whole series at least twice. These filmmakers also made a series aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier called…Carrier…which is also great. (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
2. Exit Through The Gift Shop. The un-documentary. Maybe. Maybe not? But probably. Who knows. It follows one man’s discovery of street art (graffiti), and one deviant-turned-well-respected-artist-turned-art-community-snubber named Banksy. Stay tuned, at the end something happens. What a twist! (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
3. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Weird story of domestic parrots that somehow live wild in San Francisco, and the quasi-homeless eccentric man who takes care of them. Bonus: another twist at the end. One I promise you will NOT see coming. I’ve searched for the birds at Telegraph Hill but am as of yet unsuccessful at spotting them. (Watch on Amazon)
4. Marwencol. So this guy gets beat up at a bar and ends up severely brain-damaged. He begins building models of his home town and enacts elaborate storylines featuring the people in his real world and in his imagination, as a way to understand what happened to him and as rehabilitation. (Watch on Netflix)
5. Being Elmo. Ok, this is such a fantastic one about a man with a passion and a calling and Sesame Street, but now, unfortunately it has to come with a caveat if you’ve heard anything about the star in the news this year. Hopefully you don’t know anything about it and you can just watch and enjoy. (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
6. The Thin Blue Line. This could go on the next list too, as the director, Errol Morris, is very important to the genre. The style makes it feel more like a cop show, or a 48 Hours Mystery (done well). Classic whodunit mystery. (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)

Documentaries 101

Watch these to feel highly superior to non-documentary-watchers. These will give you a good grounding in the ‘important’ docs, and are the ones most programs will force you to watch.

1. Hoop Dreams. Kind of interesting story about two kids from inner-city Chicago who are given the chance to raise themselves up through basketball. One of my professors worked on this doc so I feel special by the transitive property. (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
2. Nanook of the North. I’ve only seen clips, but this is one of the first real film documentaries (which may have been staged in parts), set in the arctic North. (Watch on Amazon)
3. Man with a Movie Camera, a weird, montagey, Russiantastic early early film. (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
4. Gimme Shelter. I’ve only seen a few sections of this, but I’d watch more. About the Rolling Stones, and it starts with their 1969 concert in San Francisco where someone had the brilliant idea to let the Oakland chapter of Hell’s Angels run security for a bunch of hippies, and someone gets stabbed. To death. On camera. (Watch free in Russian!) Other great music docs: No Direction Home (Dylan), Trouble No More (Mellencamp–also director by another professor!)
5. Probably something Michael Moore-ish. They’re good if you want to feel simultaneously justified as a liberal (if you happen to be one) AND rubbed the wrong way by a raging, unapologetic liberal. I’ve seen Bowling for Columbine and Roger & Me and am kind of all set, thanks. Oh my gosh, I didn’t know he directed & wrote Canadian Bacon! Damn, I kind of liked that one.

Sad but true

Ok, so these are the hard, heavy ones that I said I hated. But whatever.

1. Born into Brothels. A great and terrible story about the children born in the red light district of Calcutta and the filmmaker’s quest to help them get a good education. Heavy but hopeful. Winner of best documentary Oscar in 2005. (Watch on YouTube)
2. Restrepo. Also known as Hard to Watch. Really. And I watched it in a movie theater, there was no escape. But really worthwhile, if you can get up the nerve. (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
3. Jesus Camp. Interesting and TERRIFYING look into the world of Evangelical Christians, how they indoctrinate their children so efficiently and how they might just take over America. (Watch on Amazon)

In my Queue

No spoilers, please:

1. Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Like 8 different people have told me to watch this. It’s about a sushi-master, I think? (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
2. Paris is Burning. Ball culture (drag queen runway?) in new York City in the 1980s. How can you not want to watch that? (Watch on Netflix)
3. Nostalgia for the Light. Astronomers hang out in the clearest spot in the world in Chile, in the same desert where people look for the remains of their loved ones who were taken by the Chilean army decades ago. A-wha? (Watch on Netflix, Amazon)
4. Searching for Sugar Man. Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature this year. A nobody rock-n-roller from Detroit is more famous than Elvis in South Africa and the voice of the Apartheid resistance. They had no idea who he was and he had no idea he was famous. Also the first Oscar-winning documentary funded on Kickstarter! And a lot of it was shot with an iPhone and a Super-8 camera. (Watch on Amazon)