Catfish (US, 2010)

This documentary, that follows the Facebook relationship between a New York photographer and a woman in rural Michigan, starts slowly, as there seems little point in making the film, but ultimately nails a keypoint about the Facebook era. Like Capturing the Friedmans (US, 2003), the documentarists seem to stumble upon something significant; Andrew Jarecki, who [...]

Tabloid (US, 2010)

Errol Morris makes, what  Bill Nichols calls, ‘participatory documentaries’ where talking head interviews offer a variety of, often contradictory, viewpoints on events. Most famously, with The Thin Blue Line (US, 1988), this led to a man on death row being released as the real murderer, apparently inadvertently ‘fessed up’ whilst being interviewed. The subject of this [...]

Fire in Babylon (UK, 2010)

This excellent documentary focuses upon the Clive Lloyd-led West Indies test cricket team from the mid-’70s up to the ’80s; and a postscript on Viv Richards’ side, Lloyd’s successor. Although it’s ostensibly about cricket, the focus is on how the cricket team managed to forge an identity for the disparate Caribbean islands and shake off [...]

Life in a Day (US-UK, 2011)

A brilliant idea, inviting anyone to submit a YouTube video about their life on 24th July, 2010, and then editing it into a feature. The producers also made camcorders available to places in the world where they are scarce in an attempt to avoid a skewed view. Much of the material, it was reported, was [...]

Pina (Ger-Fr-UK, 2011)

I’ve been pretty much unconvinced by the current fad for 3D but Wim Wenders’ documentary on choreographer Pina Bausch suggests there is a reason to wear two pairs of spectacles in the cinema. I was entirely unfamiliar with Bausch, however I’m now craving for more having found the excerpts offered in the documentary frustrating in [...]

Exit Through the Gift Shop (UK, 2010)

It’s rare, in these interconnected days, to watch a something that is you find doubtful and not be able to checik out whether it is true or not. This documentary is about a video-maker (well he videoed but didn’t edit) who becomes the artist Mr Brain Wash (MBW) and produces a hit contemporary art show [...]

A Day in the Life – Four Documentaries by John Krish (UK 1953 and 1961-3)

I’d never heard of John Krish when Roy Stafford suggested a Friday night at the pictures to see documentaries made 50 years ago. Low expectations often lead to an over generous appraisal,  however these four films are undoubtedly the work of a great documentarian. Take They Took Us to the Sea (1961) (above) which follows [...]

Why We Fight (US, France, Canada, UK, Denmark, 2005)

This film focuses on why the US invaded Iraq from the claim it was involved in 9/11 to Bush’s statement that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that ‘watershed’ attack. However it contextualises these years by explaining America’s neo-colonialist project throughout the 20th century and bookends the film with Eisenhower’s swansong speech as President [...]

The Age of Stupid (UK, 2009)

This is a quite brilliant documentary about the disaster of climate change that capitalism cannot possibly do anything about as it’s, as the film states, predicated on expansion and when you’ve only one planet of resources… An SF framing device places an archivist, Pete Postlethwaite, in 2055 looking back at the ‘age of stupid’ – [...]

Standard Operating Procedure (US, 2008)

Watching this disturbing and necessary film, which interviews many of those involved in the infamous Abu Ghraib abuse, I thought I could now understand how the Holocaust happened. Most of the Americans involved could not be described as evil, although their acts might be described that way, but they lacked the understanding to realise what [...]