FAVOURITE DOCUMENTARIES

By: Kenji

A Valparaiso (Ivens)

The Civil War (Burns), Around the World in 80 Days (BBC) and The World at War (BBC) are magnificent series

I’m including some which blur the lines between fact and fiction (e.g Our Beloved Month of August) or which re-enact reality (e.g Close Up)

ESSENTIAL DOCUMENTARIES (quite a few i’ve not seen, thanks to Apursansar for some additions):

A Propos de Nice (Vigo)
A Valparaiso (Ivens)
Acera, or the Witches’ Dance (Painlevé, Hamon)
Agarrando Pueblo (Mayolo, Ospina)
Alicia in the Land (Larrain)
American: The Bill Hicks Story (Harlock, Thomas)
Araya (Benacerraf)
The Arbor (Barnard)
Around the World in 80 Days (Palin, BBC)
The Artist and the City (Oliveira)
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Mekas)
Back to Normandy (Philibert)
Baraka (Fricke)
The Battle of Chile (Guzman)
The Battle of San Pietro (Huston)
Beginning (Peleshian)
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Ruttman)
Blind Child (Van der Keuken)
Blood of the Beasts (Franju)
Born into Brothels (Briski)
Bowling for Columbine (Moore)
The Brickmakers (Rodriguez, Silva)
The Bridge (Ivens)
Buena Vista Social Club (Wenders)
Bumming in Beijing (Wenguang)
Burden of Dreams (Blank)
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (Lewis)
Capitalism: A Love Story (Moore)
Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki)
Cat Dancers (Fishman)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog)
Chang (Cooper, Schoedsack)
Chronicle of a Chinese Woman (Wang Bing)
Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch)
City of Gold (Low, Koenig)
The Civil War (Burns)
The Corporation (Achbar)
Cosmos (Oyster et al)
Corral (Low)
The Cove (Psihoyos)
Cuba Si! (Marker)
The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (Wiseman)
Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (Munro, Pilger)
A Dedicated Life (Hara)
Deliver us from Evil (Berg)
A Diary for Timothy (Jennings)
Disenchantment (Chavarri)
Divorce, Iranian Style (Longinotto, Mir-Hosseini)
Don’t Look Back (Pennebaker)
Drifter (Guimaraes)
Drifters (Grierson)
Eadward Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (Andersen)
The Eldritch Influence (Owens)
Elegia (Huszarik)
The Eleventh Year (Vertov)
Elgar (Russell)
Elsewhere (Geyrhalter)
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Hara)
Etre et Avoir (Philibert)
Exit through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore)
Far from Vietnam (Resnais, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Godard, Varda)
Farrebique (Rouquier)
Fast Cheap and Out of Control (Morris)
Féminin, Masculin (Foroughi)
Fighting Soldiers (Kamei)
Fires were Started (Jennings)
The Fog of War (Morris)
For All Mankind (Reinert)
For Freedom (Torabi)
400 Million (Ivens)
Fuck Cinema (Wu Wenguang)
Garbo: The Spy (Roch)
Gates of Heaven (Morris)
Gimme Shelter (Maysles bros)
Giro d’Italia: the Greatest Show on Earth
The Gleaners and I (Varda)
Good News (Seidl)
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (Herzog)
Grey Gardens (Maysles)
Grizzly Man (Herzog)
Hanoi, Tuesday 13th (Alvarez)
Hearts and Minds (Davis)
Helsinki, Forever (Von Bagh)
Heshang- The River Elegy (Jun Xia)
Histoires du Cinéma (Godard)
Homework (Kiarostami)
Hoop Dreams (James)
Hotel des Invalides (Franju)
Hotel Terminus (Ophuls)
Hour of the Furnaces (Solanas)
The House is Black (Farrokhzad)
An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim)
India (Rossellini)
The Interrupters (James)
In the Year of the Pig (De Antonio)
It’s the Earth not the Moon (Tocha)
Jakub (Sevcikova)
A Japanese Village (Ogawa)
Le Joli Mai (Marker)
Juvenile Court (Wiseman)
Katatsumori (Kawase)
Kino Eye (Vertov)
Kisangani Diary (Sauper)
The Koumiko Mystery (Marker)
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio)
Krystyna M (Karabasz)
Land without Bread (Bunuel)
The Last Bolshevik (Marker)
Last Train Home (Lixin Fan)
The Last Waltz (Scorsese)
LBJ (Alvarez)
Lessons of Darkness (Herzog)
A Letter to Elia (Scorsese)
La Libertad (Alonso)
Liquid Crystals (Painlevé)
Listen to Britain (Jennings)
Louisiana Story (Flaherty)
The Love Life of the Octopus (Hamon, Painlevé)
Les Maitres Fous (Rouch)
Macedonian Wedding (Kanellopoulos)
Manhatta (Strand)
Man of Aran (Flaherty)
Man on Wire (Marsh)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (Achbar, Wintonick)
March of the Penguins (Jacquet)
A Married Couple (King)
Medium Cool (Wexler)
The Memory of Justice (Ophuls)
Milestones (Kramer)
Minamata: The Victims and their World (Tsuchimoto)
The Mirror (Christensen)
Moana (Flaherty)
Moscow in the Snow (Mundwiller)
Mother Dao, the Turtlelike (Monnikendam)
The Musicians (Karabasz)
My Voyage to Italy (Scorsese)
Nanook of the North (Flaherty)
Near Death (Wiseman)
New Castle (Guo Hengqi)
Night and Fog (Resnais)
Night Mail (Wright, Watt)
No Direction Home (Scorsese)
Oceans (Perrin, Cluzaud)
O Dreamland (Anderson)
Of Time and the City (Davies)
Olympia (Riefenstahl)
One Day in September (MacDonald)
L’Opéra Mouffe (Varda)
Orders (Brault)
Ordinary Fascism (Romm)
Our Beloved Month of August (Gomes)
Palms (Aristarain)
People of the Po Valley (Antonioni)
People on Sunday (Siodmak, Ulmer, Zinnemann)
Phantom India (Malle)
Pina (Wenders)
A Place Called Chiapas (Wild)
Poet in the Castle (Andrade)
Porto of my Childhood (Oliveira)
Pour la Suite du Monde (Brault, Perrault)
Pour le Mistral (Ivens)
The Power of Nightmares (Curtis)
Primary (Wiseman)
The Private Life of a Cat (Hammid)
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (Gianvito)
Public Housing (Wiseman)
The Quince Tree Sun (Erice)
Railway Junction (Karabasz)
Reassemblage (Trin T Minh-ha)
Riding Giants (Peralta)
Rien que les Heures (Cavalcanti)
Robinson in Space (Keiller)
Roger and Me (Moore)
Route One USA (Kramer)
Salesman (Maysles bros)
Sans Soleil (Marker)
The Seasons (Peleshian)
Senna (Kapadia)
Separado! (Goch)
Seven Up (Apted)
The 17th Parallel (Ivens)
Sherman’s March (McElwee)
Shoah (Lanzmann)
The Silent World (Cousteau, Malle)
The Sixth Part of the World (Vertov)
Sleep Furiously (Koppel)
Song of Ceylon (Wright)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Ophuls)
South (Hurley)
The Spanish Earth (Ivens)
The Staircase (De Lestrade)
State of the Nation: Austria in Six Chapters (Albert, Glawogger, Seidl, Sturminger)
Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Marker, Resnais)
Stealing a Nation (Pilger, Crotty, Martin)
Stop Making sense (Demme)
The Story of Film: An Odyssey (Cousins)
Streetwise (Bell)
Study of a River (Hutton)
Sweetgrass (Castaing-Taylor, Barbash)
Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse (Elliott)
Taking Liberties (Atkins)
Tale of the Wind (Ivens)
The Thin Blue Line (Morris)
Tie Xie Qiu: West of the Tracks (Wang Bing)
Touching the Void (MacDonald)
The Towers (Hale)
Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl)
Universe (Kroitor, Low)
A Visit to the Louvre (Huillet, Straub)
The War on Democracy (Pilger)
Warrendale (King)
The War You Don’t See (Pilger)
We Feed the World (Wagenhofer)
Welfare (Wiseman)
Westinghouse Works (Bitzer)
When the Levees Broke (Lee)
When we were Kings (Gast)
Whores’ Glory (Glawogger)
Why we Fight (Capra)
Winged Migration (Perrin, Cluzaud)
Woodstock (Wadleigh)
Working Girls (Borden)
The World at War (BBC)
ZOO (Haanstra)