Best documentaries you have seen

BBC documentary called 1.7 Billion Dollar Fraud is about the Olympus camera company in Japan hiring its first non Japanese chairman of the board who in turn realises the company is less than transparent with its profits....it's an amazing insight into how Japanese companies 'have there own way' of doing things.

I love the story of Shackleton and Endurance, and this documentary is fantastic. Narrated by Liam Neeson:

I quiet liked

Fifa, Sepp Blatter and Me with Andrew Jennings.

Here was a guy that looked like he was about to keel over and the likes of Blatter, Platini and Warner ignored him and scoffed at him as he tried to waylay them as they entered or left flash hotels and offices.

They thought he was a joke, but he had the last laugh.




A documentary series I remember from the late 80s was
The Silk Road.

This was a time when China was still not very open.

Another documentary series I from that was shown actually on RTE during the 80s was Vietnam The Ten Thousand Day War.

Dinosaur 13
about the famed Sue T-Rex dinosaur fossil and the jailing of Peter Larson on basically overblown charges partially because he peed off the Federal authorities and a particular judge.

It is not so much about the dinosaur fossil hunting business, but how taking on the state is dangerous.

Chancer3001 wrote: »

anybody ever see a documentary about a guy in rural china who only has daughters? Angry at the gods for having no sons.

I know exactly the documentary you mean and even though I remembered a few more specifics (the reason the villagers were so angry was that he was the sole custodian of the tunes of their ancestors played on some strange instrument, but he refused to teach his daughters or anyone else meaning the tunes would die with him) google turned up nothing for me.

It was a very intense watch and the bit with the goat was very unsettling.

Joad wrote: »

I know exactly the documentary you mean and even though I remembered a few more specifics (the reason the villagers were so angry was that he was the sole custodian of the tunes of their ancestors played on some strange instrument, but he refused to teach his daughters or anyone else meaning the tunes would die with him) google turned up nothing for me.

It was a very intense watch and the bit with the goat was very unsettling.

Rats. have another google if you can! I remember thinking it was brilliant at the time

Deleted User wrote: »

All Michael Moore's stuff is aimed at the most challenged section of society. Low brow polemics. Tabloid, dim stuff. A waste of an opportunity to enlighten people.

There are fantastic arguments to support his general political disposition - Noam Chomsky gives many of them - but he dumbs everything down and does the truth a disservice with his selectivity of facts and avoidance of nuance. Still, it's made him wealthy so that seems to be what matters...

The thing is you have to appeal to the masses and that often means dumbing it down.
What use is a documentary that appeals to experts or academics in an area when it just reaches people that already know about a subject ?

Now of course you don't need to go to the level that would appear on kids TV channels or have the irritating continous rehash of the facts that occurs with documentaries made for American TV audience where there is an ad break every 5 minutes.

Deleted User wrote: »

Laurence Rees's 6-part Nazis: a warning from history is one of the most fascinating documentaries I've ever seen. It really has some amazing insights on how the Nazis ruled (underneath the veneer of 'order' there was huge chaos and rivalry).

There were videos made by German soldiers of rounding up Jews and others in Baltic states - in one, German soldiers are laughing as the village idiot beats the Jews to impress them - and engaging in mass executions. Indeed, he notes that one of the major reasons for moving to extermination camps was that German generals were telling the Nazi leadership that all these close-range mass murders were damaging the mental health of soldiers. Then there is the analysis of how so few SS officers controlled so many people, topped off with an interview with an elderly lady named Reni Kraus:

One of the great myths propagated by the Germans, particularly after the war was that it was only select groups i.e. SS, Gestapo, especially the Einsatzgruppen in the East that carried out the atrocities.
The Wehrmacht especially the Heer were more than aware and even cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen in their slaughters and roundups.

Taped conversations of normal Wehrmacht POWs in British captivity proved the point that they knew and were sometimes very much involved.

Mad max 1, 2 and 3.

Wonder has Australia changed much over the years....

Enjoyed Particle Fever.

I think Michael Moore's stuff is pretty good. I don't get the snobbish condescension regarding his style and content. So it's dumbed down a little bit but that's because it's aimed at the general population who need things simplified somewhat.

Ipso wrote: »

They are partisan polemics, not documentaries. I Faherenheit 9/11 he flew the Florida election conspiracy in five minutes and left it as if what he said was the final word.

Yeah it's the nakedly partisan nature of his work. It's that way by design and he's more than entitled to his opinions but because if it, his work boils down to agitprop theatre. I wouldn't put him in the same category as filmmakers like Adam Curtis or Erroll Morris.