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Recommend a documentary for me to watch.

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shwimpy

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Just finished watching Going Clear and was fascinated by it throughout. I'm in the mood to watch more so please recommend some of your favorites. I'm open to any subject/topic. I have netflix, amazon prime, and hbo now so I'd prefer if it was available on those services. I'll probably watch Citizenfour next before the hbo now trial runs out. Thanks!
 
The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence are incredibly powerful (and also really disturbing) documentaries about the Indonesian killings in the 60's. Watch those.
 
On the top of my head (don't know if they are available on Netflix or elsewhere):

Murder on a sunday morning (best trial/procedural you'll ever see, fiction or non fiction)
Hoop Dreams
Catching the Friedmans
Salesman
Man on Wire
Grizzly Man
Jiro Dream of Sushi
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Spellbound
The UP series
Exit through the gift shop
To be and to have (ĂŞtre et avoir)
Crumb
The Thin Blue Line
Gates of Heaven
Murderball
Grey Gardens
 
I watched Anvil:The Story Of Anvil last night. I'd never listened to the band before and I'm not really into that type of music but it was very interesting to watch.

Heres the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF4H8lB2Y_o

Saw this and feel the same. I only kiiiiinda like metal, and don't like that band at all, but you have to love those guys and their determination to follow their dreams. Great little followalong story.

I've loved these documentaries...

ON WAR:
The World at War (about WW2, like 20 parts of an hour each, by the BBC made in the early 70's, so they can interview a lot of people who were right in the thick of it).

The Fog of War: Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara gives an inside look at war from the point of view of those who sit behind desks through all of it. It will surprise, interest, and possibly anger you.

ON HOLY SHIT HUMANS ARE TERRIBLE:
The Act of Killing: Interviews with guys who rounded up and raped/murdered suspected communists on the order of the Indonesian government in the 60's. I had to watch it in multiple parts because it was getting, like, kinda sick.

REQUIRED VIEWING:
Automatic Brain (Saw it on PBS, in 2 parts of only 50 minutes each, shows you why you are not actually making most of the decisions you think you are. You will absolutely gain new insight into human behavior by watching and understanding this. It's all on YouTube, too.)
Part 1
Edit: I'm actually having trouble finding the complete part 2 (a lot of the uploads are labeled incorrectly), but here's the opening piece of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDyFoAEYTmk.

You're welcome!
 
Anything by Werner Herzog.

Grizzly Man or Cave of Forgotten Dreams are probably the most accessible. Then work your way from there.

Apart from that, some random ones...

Room 237. Only if you have seen The Shinking (Kubrick version)

Like photography or New York City? Bill Cunningham New York.

Like Jim Henson stuff? Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey.

Streetwise. It's about homeless teens in Seattle in the 80s
 
Alive Inside - Music Documentary


Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory, fights against a broken healthcare system to demonstrate music's ability to combat memory loss and restore a deep sense of self to those suffering from it.
 
Yeah any Herzog doc. I'll echo that Grizzly Man is probably his most accessible.

Also second Crumb, one of my favorite docs about one of my favorite artists.

Kingdom of Dreams and Madness is a doc focusing on Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki's last film. A good watch, and will definitely make you re-think the public's perception of Miyazaki and the studio as a whole.

Watched Life Itself on Netflix recently, about Roger Ebert. A hard watch, knowing that his passing would be included in the narrative, but very well done. Sam director as Hoop Dreams, which was one of Roger's favorite films.

It's probably not on a streaming service, but my favorite documentary and one of my favorite films of all time is The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. I don't want to say to much, but I will say it will haunt you the more you think about it. Highly recommended.
 
Exit Through the Gift Shop

Just watched this, it was amazing. I don't think you can really spoil a documentary so I'll just say it's a documentary by Banksy about a filmaker who was suppose to be creating a documentary about Banksy and Street Art.
 
Enron: The smartest guys in the room

Its about finance and a company that was writing down random BS profits in the books, if your into this stuff its really good.
 
There's three documentary series from the 70's which, I think it's fair to argue, were not only great documentaries in themselves, they also helped *define* a style of documentary filmmaking which was - at the time - pretty new. As I said a while back when talking about one of those three, Life on Earth:

Life on Earth came first in the series, I believe; then The Living Planet, and finally (at least in terms of the original Life trilogy) came The Trials Of Life.

While everyone knows the Life series, due to the fact they've kept going in various forms, it's not as well-known that there were two other big documentary series of the late 70's-early 80's, all with some Attenborough involvement (commissioned by him while he was Controller of BBC2). Civilisation covered the development of art in the west up until the present day - and was arguably the direct inspiration to the style of documentary presenting which Attenborough then ran with for the Life series - while The Ascent Of Man did much the same but for the subject of science.

Both are showing their age - naturally - but are arguably as good as the natural history documentaries, if not quite as full of 'wow' moments.

On top of that, I have to second the mentions of Louis Theroux's entire body of work and the UP series.
 
ON HOLY SHIT HUMANS ARE TERRIBLE:
The Act of Killing: Interviews with guys who rounded up and raped/murdered suspected communists on the order of the Indonesian government in the 60's. I had to watch it in multiple parts because it was getting, like, kinda sick.
You should watch the sequel The Look of Silence too. In it, Oppenheimer follows the brother of a man who got murdered during the genocide while he tries to reconcile with the events of that day by interviewing the people that murdered his brother. It's chilling.
 
Our Daily Bread (Trailer).

It's an art-house documentary about industrial food production. There's no narration, no dialogue or music, just scenes that show the everyday work in the industry. It also doesn't tell you what you're seeing nor does it guide you to any conclusions, it just lets the pictures do the talking.

If you can handle artsy stuff, it's the film for you.
 
Some of my faves off the top of my head...

Thin Blue Line
Capturing the Friedmans
Into the Abyss
Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room
Who Killed the Electric Car
Ken Burns' Baseball
Jack Johnson: Unforgivable Blackness
Dear Zachary
Hoop Dreams
Dog Town and Z-boys
Style Wars
Lost in La Mancha
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
Mr. Untouchable
The Central Park Five
Deliver Us from Evil

Also check out Vice's youtube channel. So much good stuff there. Especially the "Epicly Later'd" skateboarding series. I'm not even really a casual fan of skateboarding, but I've watched every single one.
 
septemberissue.jpg

Even if you're not into fashion
 
No idea if you can get it on Netflix and whatnot but the BBC a while back did a 3 part series on Electricity.

It covers from the dawn of using electricity where scientists were stumbled by animals that could produce it (like some fish) to AC/DC with Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison + the fued with them, the story of electromagnetic waves and Heinrich Hertz, etc.

It's presented by the physicist Jim Al-Khalili and it's called "Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_Awe:_The_Story_of_Electricity

It's a really good watch.

Also, When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions is a 6 part series that documents everything NASA had done leading up to the first American in space, Apollo missions, etc. There is so, so, so much original footage from it that'll blow your mind, like recordings from within the first capsule that carried the first American into space, a lot of stuff most people have never seen before. A highly recommended watch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Left_Earth:_The_NASA_Missions
 
Paris is Burning, ESPECIALLY if you watch Ru Pauls Drag Race

King of Kong, if you have even the most passing interest in computer games.

Everything by Louie Theroux, all of it.
 
Tons of good stuff here already.

I'd recommend The Sorrow and the Pity, an excellent, level-headed yet very human look at life under nazi occupation. The director interviews almost every side of the conflict and doesn't feel the need to add voice over, instead opting to let people talk about what happened.

 
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