50 Documentaries To See Before You Die
Apr 21, 2012 23:25:38 GMT
Post by jill on Apr 21, 2012 23:25:38 GMT
Think maybe this is now a thread for good documentaries?
Dreams of a Life
The 'story' of Joyce Vincent, the sad case reported in the news a few years back of a woman who died and lay dead in her flat, with the TV still on, for three years, in the middle of London. I'd read the story in the press at the time and was aware of the documentary/film, but didn't really pay too much attention to it, so didn't have any preconceptions. Or so I thought. Obviously did, because I found so much of this surprising. A woman who was a bit of a social butterfly in the 80s-briefly attached to a record producer, weekend in the company of Gil Scott Heron and Isaac Hayes, friends with Betty Wright, met Nelson Mandela, so not the always lonely, always unloved person you might think. Yet, sort of elusive or 'mysterious' ( a term used a lot in the film). Despite working, having lots of acquaintances (no real close friends though, it seemed), she was still able to drop completely off the radar and end up pretty much entirely alone during difficult times. The 'dreams' bit in the title alludes to the various constructions of who she was which never quite find her. As the reviews say, it is partly about the fleeting or fragile nature of relationships and the death of community (does make you wonder if this would still happen in a facebook world where people have hundreds of 'friends'-probably), but also about how other support system-welfare, healthcare etc fail. Paradoxically, it also sort of reaffirms the ideal of community-almost as if the director was driven by an abstract sense of guilt in paying this tribute to a stranger. Sad, haunting even. Glad I've got kids and will try to be a bit more appreciative of other people in my life, even when they're driving me mad
Manufactured Landscapes.
A nice one for photographers, with some really arresting images that manage to render the ugliest landscapes and human disasters almost-almost- beautiful, but without that nostalgic emotion that industrial ruins evoke. Which is a bit disturbing since the documentary is actually about the environmental devastation that rapid devlopment brings and the violence it wreaks on human communities as well as natural habitats. Most of the film is shot in China (bits in India), charting the rise of huge factories and massive plastic new towns (all yellow and uniform), extraction industries (especially coal) and the rapidly changing physical and social face of cities like Shanghai, as rural displacement brings floods of new inhabitants. The scariest bit was a unimaginably huge dam project-the biggest in the world, which required the 'relocation' of 1 million people (we never find out to where-the Chinese would rather not say), which despite the stupendous engineering achievement, has the look of a massive flooding tradegy waiting to happen. The director claimed he wanted to stand back in filming it and not make judgments-that classic Western guilt trip/moral dilemma-how can I complain about development in a desparately poor country, when I am still driving my car, over-consuming etc? He's quite right, which is why you end up feeling that we're basically f*cked Scary
Available to watch here:
Dreams of a Life
The 'story' of Joyce Vincent, the sad case reported in the news a few years back of a woman who died and lay dead in her flat, with the TV still on, for three years, in the middle of London. I'd read the story in the press at the time and was aware of the documentary/film, but didn't really pay too much attention to it, so didn't have any preconceptions. Or so I thought. Obviously did, because I found so much of this surprising. A woman who was a bit of a social butterfly in the 80s-briefly attached to a record producer, weekend in the company of Gil Scott Heron and Isaac Hayes, friends with Betty Wright, met Nelson Mandela, so not the always lonely, always unloved person you might think. Yet, sort of elusive or 'mysterious' ( a term used a lot in the film). Despite working, having lots of acquaintances (no real close friends though, it seemed), she was still able to drop completely off the radar and end up pretty much entirely alone during difficult times. The 'dreams' bit in the title alludes to the various constructions of who she was which never quite find her. As the reviews say, it is partly about the fleeting or fragile nature of relationships and the death of community (does make you wonder if this would still happen in a facebook world where people have hundreds of 'friends'-probably), but also about how other support system-welfare, healthcare etc fail. Paradoxically, it also sort of reaffirms the ideal of community-almost as if the director was driven by an abstract sense of guilt in paying this tribute to a stranger. Sad, haunting even. Glad I've got kids and will try to be a bit more appreciative of other people in my life, even when they're driving me mad
Manufactured Landscapes.
A nice one for photographers, with some really arresting images that manage to render the ugliest landscapes and human disasters almost-almost- beautiful, but without that nostalgic emotion that industrial ruins evoke. Which is a bit disturbing since the documentary is actually about the environmental devastation that rapid devlopment brings and the violence it wreaks on human communities as well as natural habitats. Most of the film is shot in China (bits in India), charting the rise of huge factories and massive plastic new towns (all yellow and uniform), extraction industries (especially coal) and the rapidly changing physical and social face of cities like Shanghai, as rural displacement brings floods of new inhabitants. The scariest bit was a unimaginably huge dam project-the biggest in the world, which required the 'relocation' of 1 million people (we never find out to where-the Chinese would rather not say), which despite the stupendous engineering achievement, has the look of a massive flooding tradegy waiting to happen. The director claimed he wanted to stand back in filming it and not make judgments-that classic Western guilt trip/moral dilemma-how can I complain about development in a desparately poor country, when I am still driving my car, over-consuming etc? He's quite right, which is why you end up feeling that we're basically f*cked Scary
Available to watch here: