The word on the street is that people want to hear more about the word on the street. Over the past few years my enjoyment of regular cinema has been trumped by my growing appreciation for documentaries. When people are not able to create fiction that is more entertaining than our reality, we have to settle with the images around us, and I am learning that this may not be a bad thing at all.
Jay Cheel of thedocumentaryblog.com is an elder friend of mine. A few years back he started to throw a myriad of documentaries my way. Lots of them were amazing but the work of two documentary film makers stood above the rest for me. Werner Herzog and Errol Morris are men that create magic when they make documentaries.
When a documentary illuminates a moment it can cause us to feel hope, sorrow, misery, horror – verily the whole range of human emotions. Werner Herzog always talks about the importance of cinema he talks about the need for adequate images, and for me a good documentary focuses on just that. The location, the people, the sound of the wind everything in the frame of the picture tells you a story of what is going on. Very often the image is raw, real and unsanitized; and this is life.
We constantly need to be re evaluating the world in which we live. With so many of us in the spiral of sleep- work-entertainment it is hard to even notice what is happening around us, or quite frankly for us to give a fuck. The documentary is a cold trout across the face, it is a wake up call, and it is an opportunity for education.
Deliver Us From Evil, Vernon Florida, Grizzly Man, Jesus Camp, An Inconvenient Truth these are all Documentaries in recent history that have been harsh reminders of our human arrogance, ignorance and simplicity. These films are all a “must see” and I encourage you all to do so.
The documentary shows us a mirror and also illuminates things we may have passed over because of bias. When can view the world though another set of eyes together, it is quite simply one of the greatest feats of cinema, and one of the crowning achievements of the medium.
I got the chance to see Deliver Us from Evil after hearing you talk about it on the movieblog uncut and I couldn’t believe the crazy shit they got away with which makes me so piss off. Its very disturbing and shocking stuff that people should check out.
“In the Realms of the Unreal” was an excellent Doc.
Devil and Daniel Johnston.
Haven’t seen a film that made me cry so hard since Rugrats the Movie.
Its when he does his happy/angry/joyful/despairing dance right at the end in the credits, broke my fucking heart.
Plus:
Somethings Last A Long Time is the greatest song yet written, ever.
There were two docs I saw over this past weekend that I would HIGHLY reccommend should folks get a chance to see them at the varied film fests they have been appearing in and will be appearing in.
The first is “An American Opera” directed by Tom McPhee. It’s about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and how it affected people who were separated from thier pets- who were unwillingly left behind….only to find out half were shot and killed during the flooding, and some surving pets were “adopted” when the briefly homeless- and phoneless- Katrina victims could not get in touch with animal shelters for infomation regarding thier beloved dogs/cats.
The next is short, runs only an hour long, but it’s “Anatomy Of The Canvas” , directed by Michael Ciancio, which highlights the ‘Body Art Ball’ a body art competition held in Dallas for six years. During the ball, people can watch men and women models be ‘painted’ in varied costumes and designs. Then the models bring the art to life through gymastics, dance, and martial arts.
If you like documentaries, I reccomend ‘ Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer’ and ‘Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer’-both about the killer played by Charlize Theron in ‘Monster’. They have unprecedented access to aileen and, more interestingly, the odd balls surrounding her. Also, ‘The Devil’s Playground’ about teenage Mormons given the chance to rebel