What`s the best documentary you`ve ever seen?

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CallaghanFilms said:
MM...I loathe that assclown,

...and something that pisses me off to no end is the fact that he didn't have the common goddamn courtesy to ask permission from Ray Bradbury (a true American literary legend, mind you) to use the title, a reference to the timeless classic Fahrenheit 451. Then, the fat poo poo wouldn't even return Mr. Bradbury's calls, upon his finding out.

No class...no class at all
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I tried Googling that, I wasn't aware of that - now THERE would have been a winnable lawsuit, odd one wasn't brought. Do you have an article? All I found was some thread on some site where this was mentioned, but I find no active links to any sources. Personally, I didn't like that movie as compared to other stuff he had done before, that year "The Fog Of War" was certainly a WAY better film (was same year right?).
 
Duct Tape Films said:
How many times have you been watching a period narrative film, and then out of freaking nowhere, you spot some kind of car that is time inappropriate, or a figure of speech is used that isn't right for the time? Are those lies?
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No, those are errors. I'm mildly baffled as to where you are trying to go, with that...you're pointing to a mistake made during the production of a work of fiction, presented as a work of fiction, to an audience that walked in the door based upon the promise of being shown a work of fiction, and then suggesting that there is some connection between that, and deliberate, calculated lies inserted into a work promoted as a documentary, presented to an audience which walked in the door having been told to expect a work that was constructed to document real events and present accurate, truthful information.

For example, when a narrative film set in a 1925 canning plant includes a scene where the camera goes too wide and you catch a glimpse of a modern rocket assembly-line in the background, that's an error. When a documentary filmmaker shows you footage of a rocket plant whose products are used solely for launching satellites, and tells you that the plant is used to produce rockets for delivering military warheads, in an effort to draw a connection between a destructive militaristic product being produced in the factory and a violent tragic episode in a nearby community, that's a lie.

Duct Tape Films said:
Here's the thing about Moore's movies, for all the "lies" in them,
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Your use of quotation marks is intrinsically dishonest, all by itself. Deliberately presenting as falsehood as truth, is a lie, no qualifiers or quotations marks required. And Moore's decision to repeatedly present falsehoods as truths, is well-documented.


Duct Tape Films said:
or at least the charges of such hurdled at him, there has not been, nor will there be, a single successful libel or slander suit brought. Why? Because he's accurate, and it would hold up in court as "truth".
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Well, this has already been well-addressed by someone with better qualifications on all things legal, than mine. There are plenty of reasons why libel/slander suits don't get brought, and the presumption that "it's all true" must be the reason here, is lazy and simplistic.

Duct Tape Films said:
Now maybe it might not be the "truth", but that is subjective,
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If a ball is red, and someone who knows that it is red, tells you that the ball is green, to suit his particular purpose, then he's not telling you the truth. If someone tells you that a given interview happened on a given time and in a given place, when it really happened in a different time and at a different place, to suit his particular purpose, then he's not telling you the truth. If someone tells you that you can walk into a bank any old time and casually walk out with a brand-new rifle, a few minutes later, when in fact you can't, to suit his particular purpose, then he's not telling you the truth, either.

And when someone is deliberately telling you something which is not-the-truth, while claiming that what he's telling you *is* the truth...he's lying.


Duct Tape Films said:
and again, even the very presence of a camera eliminates all posibility of "truth" - the second you hit record, something is outside the frame - hence, no "truth".
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This is basically the kind of nonsense I came across in various film-and-media theory courses at the graduate and undergraduate level, back in school. It's like suggesting that, if you take a snapshot of your grandma in her living room, but the frame cuts out most of the room, and her house, and her street, and her neighborhood, and her city, and the state in which the city exists, and the continent it's on, and the planet Earth itself, well, then, that snapshot isn't really an authentic document representing your grandma. Of course it's an authentic document representing your grandma, within the limitations of the frame. Just as the content of the documentary "frame" can be an accurate representation of the truth of what is contained, within that frame.


Duct Tape Films said:
This is just from a business standpoint, but let's use common sense about Moore - Harvey Weinstein has WAY too much to lose to let Moore release movies chocked full of lies, and untruths, he'd simply never do it, and this is from a business standpoint alone.
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And yet, there the lies and untruths are, plain to see. It's not about the degree to which a work contains untruths; it's about the degree to which the releasing entity figures they can expect to get away with it. I suspect that a fellow of Harvey Weinstein's experience and intellect, has a pretty well-tuned sense of what he can get away with.

"Chock-full" of lies and untruths, isn't the point, either. A few well-placed and carefully-constructed lies and untruths, are bad enough, and disqualify the work from being fairly labeled as a 'documentary.'


Duct Tape Films said:
Futhermore, the parent companies would never let movies full of the amount of lies and untruths out their doors either, for the same exact reason. There are lawyers that go through this stuff with a fine tooth comb - nothing gets out the door without all the I's dotted and T's crossed.
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Forgive me, but that's plain ignorant, which is not intended to give offense, but it's the only word that fits. Why, just last year I was on a very expensive studio feature film, that was beat-for-beat recognizably taken from an earlier, lower-budget work, without permission. And it wound up going to a lawsuit, all because the lawyers in whom you place such faith either (a) failed to cross and dot as they should have, and/or (b) figured that the studio would get away with it. Studios don't just keep attorneys on retainer to cross-and-dot; they keep them around to argue in court when the cross-and-dot isn't properly performed.

Duct Tape Films said:
Disagree with the movie, fine, but question it's accuracy? - I'd question the accuracy of those questioning the accuracy first, personally.
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I do. And the people who point out Moore's fabrications support their positions very well, indeed. A fair amount of this is absolute black-and-white, and comes directly from the very people appearing in, for example, 'Bowling for Columbine,' who can back up their assertions with documentation going back years.

If you are unwilling to tolerate any questioning of Moore's accuracy and truthfulness, it suggests that you are so predisposed to accepting his conclusions that you don't care whether or not the path leading there is straight, or crooked.

Duct Tape Films said:
Answerable to no one but their web site regulars, and oddly enough using those very movies and their accuracy critiques for their own personal gain. Now compare that to Moore's responsibilities - investors, lawyers, producers, and Sony & Miramax. These parent companies have WAY too much to lose to let something like that out the door.
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And yet...Moore depicts walking into a bank and walking out with a new rifle, over-the-counter, as though the bank can or would permit that to really happen under non-staged conditions - which by law and policy they can't, didn't, and don't. Talk about 'web-site-regulars' to your heart's content, but Moore still showed something staged for the camera, that an actual customer couldn't have done, informing us that yes, an actual average customer *could* have done it. Another lie. And somehow, it remains a lie, even with Sony and Miramax having lawyers and investors, and all. And there are many other such lies in the film, that remain lies, no matter how much you feel the parent companies may have, to lose.
Duct Tape Films said:
They would simply not risk it over Michael Moore of all people, no freaking way. Remember these companies, for the most part, their relationship with Moore is one of "keep your enemies closer". Ain't no way they're EVER going to risk even a single cent of profit defending that guy in court, that's why his stuff that actually makes it to market is highly unimpeachable.
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I think at this point it's reasonable to ask for your CV, so as to determine whether your unswerving conviction in the competence and rule of lawyers and the absolute risk-negation of studios is based in personal and direct experience, or merely semi-informed opinion. I've spent enough years working around copyright-and-clearance, and receiving legal-department notes and directives, and discussing what-can-we-get-away-with, with producers on some fairly large projects, that I would like to see that your perspective is rooted in at least an equivalent degree of first-hand experience.

And, your post above regarding Ray Bradbury's complaint, contains an admission that, yes, in fact those vaunted lawyers and their oh-so-careful studio clients, do indeed leave openings for lawsuits, and let things fall through the cracks. So I guess we can ditch the whole business about "they'd never do such things/they're much too careful," right now.
 
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Isaac's Top Ten Documentary List

1. Titticut Follies
2. Sans Soleil
3. The Mystery of Picasso
4. Nanook of the North
5. Gimme Shelter
6. Salesmen
7. Sherman's March
8. American Movie
9. Triumph of the Will
10. [SIZE=-1]H-2 Worker


[/SIZE]
 
Sad Max,

I guess my point is, the expectation of truth should not be higher for a documentary, as the hand of the filmmaker, even those short documentaries on Jackson Pollack, only reveal a sliver of truth, if that. I think the expectation of truth from the medium is what suckers people into believing what they were seeing on reality shows like "The Restaurant" was REALITY, or not staged in ways. And it's not a matter of lowering the bar for truth, it's correcting the misconception that somehow documentaries of yore, "High School" for instance, had more truth to them. In my opinion, the Ben Kenobi rule applys - "It is the truth, from a certain point of view", and that, within this medium, is about the best we can strive to offer a viewer. I'll inject the word of the year here - "truthiness". I'm not of the opinion that you can't have a picture of your grandma that fairly represents her, it's just the one picture does not give me an accurate reading of who she was, how she was feeling, if she was faking the smile or not, and I don't expect to garner that information from a single picture. It seems to me that people are expecting exactly those types of specific factiods from documentaries these days, in order to qualify as a "documentary".

Fact is, in the last five years at the very least, the acceptance of the documentary in the marketplace has placed unreasonable expectations on to what a documentary actually is, and what it can actually deliver. At it's best, it should be a launching pad for a viewer's further exploration and/or discussion into a subject, that's all the time there really is, unless you happen to be so lucky to be Ken Burns. At it's worst (in my opinion F 9/11) it actually shuts down conversation. Right now we have fiction movies are incorporating documentary elements, and vice versa, and the line is getting thinner and thinner. Really it's all for the better of the medium, although it may be hard to see that right now. It's like sitting down with the paper or a non-fiction book. We've been taught not to believe everything we read. Why should a higher standard be placed on a medium that doesn't even have the same luxury as print does with footnotes or day after corrections?

There are many people that don't KNOW about or have never SEEN a documentary that doesn't have a voiceover, for instance - they think it's incomplete without one. They think documentary, and they think that they are going to have the equivalent of a tour guide through the film. Saying a particular type of filmmaker who does just that isn't making documentaries is a little like saying rap isn't music, but there are cinema verite' purists who do just that, as silly as it sounds. As filmmakers, it makes one better to not only know your likes, but your dislikes as well, because even within those, you may find a techinque you like, or find your own style that is diametrically opposed to the one you don't like, content be damned. Me personally, I prefer the old school DA Pennebaker style when shooting, fly on the wall, little interference with story as possible, it most suits my personality. Also, these days, that style almost seems fresh, what with almost every other documentarian injecting themselves as a character in their films.
 
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Isaac_Brody said:
Isaac's Top Ten Documentary List

1. Titticut Follies
2. Sans Soleil
3. The Mystery of Picasso
4. Nanook of the North
5. Gimme Shelter
6. Salesmen
7. Sherman's March
8. American Movie
9. Triumph of the Will
10. [SIZE=-1]H-2 Worker


[/SIZE]
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Gimme # 5 and # 8. Great docs.
 
I'm late on responding to this...but, I just watched a documentary on Ray Johnson called How to Draw a Bunny, and it was amazing. I really enjoyed it.

Awesome doc, go watch it : )
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Isaac's Top Ten Documentary List

1. Titticut Follies
2. Sans Soleil
3. The Mystery of Picasso
4. Nanook of the North
5. Gimme Shelter
6. Salesmen
7. Sherman's March
8. American Movie
9. Triumph of the Will
10. [SIZE=-1]H-2 Worker


[/SIZE]
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Damn Isaac

No Fog of War ?
 
Not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier post but 'The devil in daniel johnston' is a killer doc. last night i watched 'shadow company' about private military contractors in iraq, also pretty good.
 
I axed your post the first time for a reason (and hoped that it would be obvious enough why). No 9/11 conspiracy theory bandying here. No politics.
 
David Jimerson said:
I axed your post the first time for a reason (and hoped that it would be obvious enough why). No 9/11 conspiracy theory bandying here. No politics.
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I thought I forgot to click "submit reply"!

I agree 100%... but the film is not about conspiracy, it's about science; most of the film is about melting steel, controlled demolition, etc. it gives little or no insight into who might or might not be behind it.

but regardless I understand. I won't post any more links to these 9/11 mysteries videos any more.
 
I can't remember the name nor the country it took place in, but it was about street kids and their lives. I mean kids, the age ranged from 6-12. The way some of the kids spoke was stunning, wisdom way beyond their years. I know it is silly not to remember the name or even the country (somewhere in eastern Europe), so if anyone knows what I am talking about, please post the name.
 
I'll add another good doc to my previous list:
'Tell Them Who You Are'. Doc/home-movie (by Mark..... his son) about Haskell Wexler and the father/son stuff that went on between them.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005549/

No, it's NOT the 'best' doc ever made, but it is definately worth seeing. It's an especially relevant film for the film-maker/DP's on this board............... and also anyone interested in the dynamics of father-son relationships.

BTW, Haskell does a WONDERFUL job of commentary on the DVD 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf'. Well worth seeing the DVD with the commentary turned ON.

Regards
JohnG
 
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I liked Michael Moore's docs. Not great in cinematography, but trully powerfull stuff. And there's no such thing as a n Objective docummentary. As long as you point a camera to something, you are immediately doing a subjective POV. Kuddos for Michael Moore for assuming himself and doing his research. I don't see him in jail, if he's so wrong on what he says...

EDIT- Oops, seems like Dead End Films already explained this better than I did. :)
 
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