Another short and sweet one this month, just a roundup of what DVD titles I've been purchasing recently. I'm having a run on documentaries. The other week, I happened to be up in the north-east corner of the city - an area I rarely venture to any more (once upon a time, I had both a job and a girlfriend in that part of town, and was thus a regular visitor; but now I can go for months at a time without straying out that way); so, I thought I'd nip into one of the city's most venerable pirated DVD stores, Tom's DVD (now hiding in a basement, but otherwise untroubled by the succession of supposed 'crackdowns' on IP infringement here), to see what titles they might have there. In fact, I was looking specifically for Terry Zwigoff's Crumb, which I'd spotted in there (but - foolishly! - failed to purchase when I was last up there a month or so back), but.... well, there was such a wealth of intriguing features on the 'Documentary' shelves that I didn't get any further in my browsing; I hoovered up 9 or 10 of these documentaries, and then had to impose a budgetary curb on myself.
My latest DVD purchases
Crumb
(Dir. Terry Zwigoff, 1994)
This portrait of the eccentric cartoonist Robert Crumb (and of the rest of his oddball family, particularly his possibly even more talented but even more mentally troubled brother, Charles) is arguably the best documentary biography ever made. Even if you don't like Crumb or his work (and he's not really a very likeable character), it's a beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking film.
102 Minutes That Changed America
(No director credited, 2008)
A History Channel special chronicling the 9/11 attacks on New York through contemporary footage and eye-witness testimony. It will be harrowing viewing, I'm sure.
Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country
(Dir. Anders Østergaard, 2008)
A study of the work of the Democratic Voice of Burma, a tiny dissident "TV station in exile" which strives to record the oppression of the Burmese people by the ruling military junta with on-the-spot film footage shot mostly by 'citizen reporters' on mobile phones and miniature camcorders.
Manufactured Landscapes
(Dir. Jennifer Baichwal, 2007)
A film following the work of art photographer Edward Burtynsky as he studies the transformations of environment and culture wrought by rapid industrialisation (mostly shot in east China, I gather).
Brother's Keeper
(Dir. Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky, 1992)
This won all sorts of awards when it first came out, and I remember hearing a lot of good things about it, but somehow I never got around to watching it. It follows the case of Delbert Ward, a reclusive and mentally compromised man in a small farming community in New York State, who was accused of murdering the brother he shared a bed with.
Power Trip
(Dir. Paul Devlin, 2003)
An American company struggles to upgrade the power grid in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, faced with a population who, after decades of Communism, obstinately expect their electricity to be free and contrive endless ways to steal it. Another multi-award winner that somehow passed me by.... until now.
Visions Of Light
(Dir. Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, & Stuart Samuels, 1992)
A ravishing history of the art of cinematography, including interviews with many of its greatest practitioners - like Vittorio Storaro (The Last Emperor), Nestor Almendros (Days of Heaven), Michael Chapman (Raging Bull), John A. Alonzo (Chinatown), and Conrad Hall (Cool Hand Luke). How had I missed this for so many years?! For a film nut like me this is a little slice of heaven: I think I could watch this once or twice a month for the rest of my life.
The Genius Of Photography
(Dir. Tim Kirby, 2007)
A six-part BBC television series on the history of photography. I think this is going to bring on the raptures in me as well.
Edvard Munch
(Dir. Peter Watkins, 1974)
Originally a four-part series made for Norwegian TV (though I'm not sure if I may have bought the slightly pared-down three-hour version later prepared for theatrical release in America) written and directed by an Englishman, Peter Watkins; this won a BAFTA in 1975, but I don't recall it being shown on British television back then. I finally caught it on BBC2 in the early '90s, and it is jaw-droppingly good: exquisitely acted and photographed. Ingmar Bergman apparently described it as "a work of genius". My recollection of seeing it nearly twenty years ago, though, is that its muted palette, its languorous pacing, and perhaps rather excessively lugubrious voiceover narration (and its subject matter: Munch didn't have a very happy life, and almost all of his circle of friends and associates from his time in Berlin in the 1890s - the main focus of the film - died young from drug and alcohol abuse, TB, or suicide) make it a very, very, very depressing experience. I'll have to choose my moment to try this one again....
[Watkins is perhaps otherwise best remembered for making The War Game, a docu-drama about the impact of a nuclear attack on the UK, commissioned by the BBC in the mid-60s, but considered so disturbing that it was suppressed for nearly two decades - only finally getting a showing on British television, as far as I recall, when the similar Threads was aired in 1984. Despite the Beeb's misgivings about the film, it did get a limited theatrical release, and went on to win the 'Best Documentary' Oscar.]
5 comments:
When we switched from cable to satellite TV, among the bananzas was an entire channel showing nothing (as far as I can tell) but documentaries. (Its title is "The Documentary Channel," which seems a pretty blunt clue.) Alas, The Missus isn't as big a fan of them as I am, and even my own mind staggers a bit at the thought of being on a documentaries binge -- I can do maybe one every couple weeks. But it's very nice finally having a DVR, so I can watch some of them at odd times, in snatches if necessary.
I've seen only the first two in your list. The 9/11 film was just on a regular commercial network a couple weeks ago, for obvious reasons -- ad-free, a nice surprise. Yes, harrowing.
Have you seen any of Erroll Morris's documentaries?
The Fog of War is great, probably the best 'talking head' documentary I've seen. I'll have to dig out more of Morris's stuff.
What's that camera set-up he uses? The 'Interrotron', is it?
"Interrotron" sounds familiar. *checking* Yes. (I see there that EM's wife coined the name, which she liked "because it combined two important concepts -- terror and interview." Ha!)
Interrotron? Sounds like one of the evil aliens in Dr Who.
My friend JES informs me that the phrase was coined by Morris's wife, who felt that the term "combined two important concepts - terror and interview". [Not sure why that comment didn't show up on here. Did you decide to withdraw it for some reason, JES? Or did it just somehow 'fall through the cracks'??]
The set-up, I believe, is like this. Morris interviews his subject from another room, with a camera on himself, hooked on a live feed to some sort of screen like an autocue (or teleprompter, in US English) that displays his face in front of the camera lens (and a speaker next to the camera to convey his voice). He has the same arrangement in his room - so the interviewer and interviewee can see each other's faces in front of the camera they're talking to. Morris doesn't use any footage of himself in his films, so you just see the interview subject talking to camera - but willing to look directly into the camera lens (rather than mostly looking off to one side, as in a regular interview), and interacting with it as if it is a person. It can be a very powerful technique.
Oddly enough, it seems to reduce some of the stress - and self-consciousness - of the interview situation, and encourages the subjects to open up. It also increases the sense of engagement with the audience, making you feel as if the interviewee is talking directly to you.
The Fog Of War, a feature-length interview with former Secretary of State Robert Macnamara, the architect of the Vietnam War, is a stunning example of how potent this device can be.
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