All new documentary thread

[Famous Mortimer]

Old thread about the classics here - https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=21160

This is more for stuff that's not necessarily worth its own thread, or asking if a doc is any good, or stuff like that.

Hot Potato: The Story Of The Wiggles

Brand new documentary about the Australian planet-bestriding childrens' entertainers. I didn't really know much about them - I was an adult by the time they made it out of Australia, and have no children - so my only knowledge of them is when a Wiggle would occasionally pop up on a show like "Cheap Seats".

What was interesting is that their stuff is based, in part, on the things they learned at Uni about how very young kids process information (three of them were training to be kindergarten teachers) so their stuff is rooted in the best intentions. It's extremely hard to think badly of any of them, honestly, they just seem like lovely blokes. There's medical issues for the yellow Wiggle, there's an unsuccessful marriage between two of the new crop, and vague hints that touring as much as they did created struggles in their own family relationships. But mostly it's just about a very unusual success story with four people  who seem just as nice now as they did in the late 80s.

I did like the reformed OG team, playing arenas and getting Triple J's song of the year in 2021. Everyone seems to love them, no mockery at any level (as far as I can see). Just a really positive documentary, well worth a watch.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I watched this the other week https://aarontrinder.co.uk/freeparty

All they wanted was the freedom to party. The State saw them as the enemy within.

This DIY indie film follows the birth of the UK's free party movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a meeting between urban ravers and the new age travellers during Thatcher's last days in power, and the explosive years that followed, leading up to the infamous Castlemorton free festival in 1992 - the largest ever illegal rave.

It didn't really tell me much I didn't know, but I'll happily watch old camcorder footage of crusties and city kids dancing around off their chops.

[Magnum Valentino]

Yeah I have them on sometimes when the kids need settling and I have limitless tolerance for them really. I like that there's a couple of old blokes in the mix, it's very wholesome.

[sevendaughters]

I watched this the other week https://aarontrinder.co.uk/freeparty

It didn't really tell me much I didn't know, but I'll happily watch old camcorder footage of crusties and city kids dancing around off their chops.

did it have anything from the now Guido Fawkes?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Not that I recall.

[Papa Wheelie]

I watched and loved this a great deal. Think it's currently on sale at HMV and Amazon. It's four (plus two) short films set in post-war Britain, featuring children in several pieces. It's often very touching but quite devoid of sentimentality. The older I get, the more I just love watching and listening to people, their hopes and dreams, their unexpected perspective, their wistful resignation. I love this kind of time capsule especially, not only enjoying the empathic connection across the decades but also seeing how significantly people have really changed for the better and worse. Much as I enjoy connecting with a perception or emotion from a different era, I also find it fascinating to feel the distance. Their lives are simpler and quainter but also massively, linearly predetermined in a way that causes me to feel enormous pity and a tinge of envy. This evoked some wonderful ambiguous feelings.

[jamiefairlie]

I watched and loved this a great deal. Think it's currently on sale at HMV and Amazon. It's four (plus two) short films set in post-war Britain, featuring children in several pieces. It's often very touching but quite devoid of sentimentality. The older I get, the more I just love watching and listening to people, their hopes and dreams, their unexpected perspective, their wistful resignation. I love this kind of time capsule especially, not only enjoying the empathic connection across the decades but also seeing how significantly people have really changed for the better and worse. Much as I enjoy connecting with a perception or emotion from a different era, I also find it fascinating to feel the distance. Their lives are simpler and quainter but also massively, linearly predetermined in a way that causes me to feel enormous pity and a tinge of envy. This evoked some wonderful ambiguous feelings.

Seconded and for the same reasons. Have you read any of Kynaston's post-WW2 social histories? Such an immersive experience.

I very much envy the simpler more linear lives. I think much of the stress of modern life is to do with feeling we have infinite potential futures and somehow it's our fault if we're not achieving something better.

[Papa Wheelie]

Seconded and for the same reasons. Have you read any of Kynaston's post-WW2 social histories? Such an immersive experience.

I very much envy the simpler more linear lives. I think much of the stress of modern life is to do with feeling we have infinite potential futures and somehow it's our fault if we're not achieving something better.

I haven't but I'll have a look. Thanks.

As for envy of simplicity, as I say, I do and I don't. Possibly not a relatable reference, but I find something very comforting about stuff like Skyrim or Witcher 3, feel like I'd love to just cunt around in a little town, riding my horse, loads of wooden buildings, simple tasty food, farming or fishing, getting pissed, absolutely smoking wife who is an elf or goblin.

[Mobbd]

featuring children in several pieces.

You sick fuck!

[Mobbd]

Muriyama-san is one of me favourite documentaries of recent years. It's about a Japanese guy living in an architecturally interesting house. He listens to Noise music and reads books and looks after his fish. That's about it and it's COMPELLING.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/moriyama

My partner got the download for my birthday in 2018 and I must have rewatched it six or seven times since then. As well as having a deeply liable subject (and a very pleasant filmmaker) it is such a relaxing thing to watch, somehow "elemental" and contemplative. Just beautiful.

Edit: here's a news item about it (possibly where my partner and I first heard of the film) with pics: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/15/watch-beka-lemoine-movie-moriyama-san-ryue-nishizawa-moriyama-house-japan-video/amp/

[Papa Wheelie]

Muriyama-san is one of me favourite documentaries of recent years. It's about a Japanese guy living in an architecturally interesting house. He listens to Noise music and reads books and looks after his fish. That's about it and it's COMPELLING.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/moriyama

My partner got the download for my birthday in 2018 and I must have rewatched it six or seven times since then. As well as having a deeply liable subject (and a very pleasant filmmaker) it is such a relaxing thing to watch, somehow "elemental" and contemplative. Just beautiful.

Edit: here's a news item about it (possibly where my partner and I first heard of the film) with pics: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/15/watch-beka-lemoine-movie-moriyama-san-ryue-nishizawa-moriyama-house-japan-video/amp/

Sounds great. I'll check that out.

[Famous Mortimer]

Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (2011)

Pretty interesting documentary about the early-ish internet phenomenon of the Toynbee Tiles, which read (with minor variations):

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOVIE 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

Stuck to roads all throughout the USA, but mostly in Philadelphia. The doc is mostly about one chap, Justin Duerr, and his long-running desire to figure out who did it. He's probably somewhere on the spectrum, as is the person who almost certainly made and placed the tiles, but he and his two sleuth friends are friendly, warm people who don't seem obsessed, just that they have a really juicy mystery.

It doesn't bother explaining the Toynbee idea very much, as it's a load of old cobblers, but it does mention David Mamet, who wrote a play based on a call from the tile-maker to Larry King's late-night radio show back in 1980. The only real problem is that they figure out who probably did it fairly early on, and the rest of the movie is just their due diligence, eliminating other theories and finding more evidence to tie the one bloke to it.

Definitely worth a watch, though.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Love those tiles. As a builder I've written that message all over houses in South Wales, Germany and one in Switzerland, under plaster, in high rafters, carved in stone hidden in little nooks and whatnot

[imitationleather]

Is that A Day in the Life on BFI Player? It looks right up my alley but if I didn't buy a DVD player specifically for the Eurotrash box set I'm not doing it for this.

[Mobbd]

There's going to be a documentary about the iceman. He of comedy obscurity that is, not the contract killer.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/meltit/melt-it-the-film-of-the-iceman

(This might belong in comedy but it feels tangentially relevant to Muriyama-san as the sort of doc that profiles a single outsider type).

[El Unicornio, mang]

Beyond Utopia (2023) - Could also fit nicely into the grimmest documentaries thread. Riveting film following a family trying to escape from North Korea via an incredibly kind-hearted pastor and the shady brokers he pays to get them to the safety of South Korea via various other countries such as China and Vietnam. The journey is filmed and is at times unbearably tense, and there's also bits of history lesson and horrifying testimonies from those who were lucky enough to get out alive.

[Mobbd]

The Goodiepal Equation is free on YouTube (legitimately, posted by the maker).

Goodiepal (real name Kristian Parl Bjørn Vester, b. 1974–76) is a Danish musician, performance artist, lecturer and activist operating on the fringes of society. Goodiepal rides thousands of kilometres on a self-built bicycle that he uses to power his shows. He has released a record with a genuine 500-krone banknote embedded in the vinyl – priced at 250 kroner. Goodiepal has put together an exhibition for the National Museum of Denmark comprising all his material possessions, and he creates his art outside of customary institutions and norms.

Goodiepal's best friend, the former 1960s rock star Poul Erik, is another true eccentric, a hoarder living among things he has collected from skips. His dream is to own a piece of each item ever produced by human beings. Goodiepal considers Poul Erik his partner in crime, although his audience would prefer to see him without him.

Goodiepal's life is shadowed by Huntington's disease, an inherited degenerative disease of the brain that has driven men in his family to suicide. Doctors find odd tumours in his head and he begins to misplace and forget things. Many of his closest friends are likewise affected by illness.Goodiepal's activism turns increasingly radical and he drifts further and further away from social safety nets.

Goodiepal challenges us to reflect on our view of the world. What remains of us if we only exist to serve the system? What is THE GOODIEPAL EQUATION?

[KevinKlonopin]

I went to see a screening of a Documentary called 'On Our Doorstep' in a little cinema in London last night. Jeremy Corbyn was there during the Q&A afterwards for some reason, not really sure why as I'd rather have just heard from the guys that made it. Anyway, it's about the volunteers working in the jungle in Calais from 2015-2016, which seems fucking ages ago now, but I guess it's just as relevant today with all the 'Stop the boats!" and send them to Rwanda bollocks. It was really fucking upsetting, actually. It's well worth trying to find and see, although I don't know how unless they did a screening of it somewhere? Needs a bigger audience. They say it's streaming somewhere but I don't have any streaming services so I wouldn't really know. Anyway, I found a trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFrCNYqkhAE

[Mobbd]

There was some talk of A Brush with Comedy somewhere: maybe the comedy forum but I can't find it.

Anyway, I just watched it and absolutely hated it.

[Mobbd]

There was some talk of A Brush with Comedy somewhere: maybe the comedy forum but I can't find it.

Anyway, I just watched it and absolutely hated it.

Oh go on then, a bit more.

Vic Reeves' son made this. Someone called out the nepo baby nature of this wherever it was originally discussed on CaB, which I felt was a bit harsh at the time. It's a good criticism though because young Reeves isn't very good at making documentaries.

I hate the straw man structure that art and comedy don't usually mix. The fake conclusion in the end is that Jim Muir at least thinks they can. This has always been his (correct) position and we didn't need to go on a journey to find this out. And it's not a real conclusion anyway, but a subjective one held by a man who profits from it.

Miriam Elia came across as an absolutely disgusting prick. She's the artist who does those Dung Beetle (Ladybird parody) books. She discussed being anti-mask and anti-lockdown, describing those who don't agree with her position as "nihilists," "cranks," and as "people who like masks and lockdowns." There was no attempt to check this bollocks viewpoint. It should not have been platformed.

Elia made a shit short film designed to send up covid "propaganda." Apparently Vic Reeves was "keen to take part," which I'm not sure he was and made him look like a cunt.

Elia also mingled with Simon Munnery and Bec Hill who may or may not know about her shithouse views and looked a bit dodgy through (possibly unwitting) association.

Simon Munnery was good enough on his own but seemed harrangued. He clearly doesn't like Vic Reeves (though he was well behaved and approached this with good humour) and was clearly tired of young Reeves' rubbishy questions after a while. I think he only did the doc to be kind or to big up his artist friend Andy Holden, which is fair enough because Andy seems well-meaning, talented and nice.

Bec Hill was okay. I like her art. But she was among the worst of many voices in this documentary who seem terrified of "being pretentious," which really just demonstrates their own prejudice that they think art is "pretentious."

Spencer Jones was anxious to the point of making me anxious. Not his fault perhaps but unpleasant to watch. He also talked a lot of old bollocks about art and being pretentious etc.

There were some really shite edits where it wasn't clear who was talking or where one scene undermines the logic of a previous scene.

Martin Creed was in it at the end. I like his art but he looked like an "I'm mad, I am" prick in this. Not the doc's fault perhaps but I wish I hadn't seen it.

Funny to see Ben Moor milling around in the vernissage, not getting interviewed!

Fuck this film! Fuck SkyArts for funding it! The lads making The Ice Man documentary I mentioned up thread are working for free and they're doing a fucking 1k Kickstarter to cover their train fares. There is a crisis in the arts and it's the same crisis we see elsewhere: unjust inequality. It benefits barely anyone. RAAAAAAAAR!

*kicks table over and storms out*

*meekly comes out of the coat closet and exits for real this time*

[Sebastian Cobb]

Haven't watched it yet but Blue Bag Life is on iplayer, I wanted to watch it at the cinema but missed it and have waited for it to be 'available'.

Storyville documentary in which UK artist and film-maker Lisa Selby turns the camera on herself as she tries to understand her relationships with her late mother and her partner, both heroin addicts.

The film won the audience award at the 2022 London International Film Festival.
Less

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001lspj/storyville-blue-bag-life

[PlanktonSideburns]

Misread that as heron addiction

[Terry Torpid]

I've just watched My Octopus Teacher (2020), which went on to win Best Documentary at the Oscars.

I like octopuses, so I was already on-board with the idea. They're fascinating creatures, extremely intelligent, but generally asocial and very short-lived, so they've never had the chance to form a society and pass on their knowledge between generations. Their biology is amazing, the way they can change their colour and texture, squeeze through tiny holes, and even regrow limbs. They've got more neurons in their arms than their head, it's almost like each arm has a mind of its own, and it's not clear just how much is controlled by the main brain.

Unfortunately the bloke who made the documentary isn't interesting at all. He's this boring white South African who lives by the sea, and he's fed up with his job and his family, so he goes free diving every day to get away from them. He encounters the same octopus every day and "befriends" her.

The documentary is well shot, with lots of beautiful underwater footage, but there seemed to be something cynical about the whole operation. His wife, who he was supposedly neglecting, is the producer of the film. They say it takes place over a year, but also it was ten years in the making. So was it a spontaneous thing where he naturally developed this bond then realised he should make a documentary about it as it unfolds, or did he set out to engineer the whole thing from the start?

Spoiler alert

Long story short, the octopus helps him to find himself and rediscover his passion for life and so on. Lots of slow-motion shots of him looking ponderous and waxing lyrical about this magical connection he's made. The bit that really annoyed me was his hypocrisy regarding "interference". Sometimes he's a neutral cameraman, not helping the octopus, not shooing away sharks, obeying the Prime Directive, but other times they make physical contact, and when she gets sick he fetches some molluscs and cuts them up to feed her while she recuperates. Either there's a line or there isn't, and he goes back and forth the whole time.

Then the octopus finds a mate, and the man seems almost jealous. Mating is the beginning of the end for octopuses, so she hunkers down in her den and lays her eggs, and prepares to wind down. She gets very weak, and fish start nibbling at her, but the man does nothing. Then a shark comes and snatches her away and eats her while the man records it all. So he was willing to feed her and guard her den when she was sick earlier, because dying then wouldn't have been interesting denouement, but when she's in the home straight and he's got a fitting arc for his film, he steps back and doesn't let her have a peaceful end because suddenly he has ethics. Was she his friend or just his subject? You can't be Timothy Treadwell (form an emotional connection with the animals and directly intervene on their behalf), and David Attenborough (watch dispassionately from a distance and let nature take its course) at the same time. You have to pick.

At the end, he discovers some babies which could be hers, and it's all a bit Charlotte's Web. Will the man keep swimming and observing the next generation because he's genuinely interested in the species and their survival, or will he just pack it in now he's got the film in the can?

[close]

In summary: I couldn't help feeling that the guy was having a mid-life crisis and was basically using the octopus for his documentary. He also has the annoying habit of referring to himself in the second person. Load of shite.

[Captain Crunch]

There's going to be a documentary about the iceman.

You had me excited for a sec.

[Famous Mortimer]

He's German, I just discovered from Know Your Meme, which makes perfect sense. I would like to see a (probably short) documentary about that fellow.

[copa]

There's going to be a documentary about the iceman. He of comedy obscurity that is, not the contract killer.

Was hoping it was about Tony Philliskirk.

[Famous Mortimer]

My Kid Could Paint That

Feels very of its time, the documentary with an agenda. The timeline of the movie is a little vague - did the director know the 60 Minutes hit-piece was coming before or after he started filming the family? - and apart from the kid and the mother, no-one comes out of this looking particularly good.

The gallery owner is perhaps the villain of the piece, who is seen insulting the family when the sales dry up, but is happy to keep selling them when a new batch is made. The father is obviously guilty of painting the early ones, and carries on pushing his luck for several years after the gig should have been up. The documentarian is desperate for an admission of guilt on camera, even though he admits that if they're lying, they're the best liars he's ever met, and edits as if he's building to that moment.

From my very limited research, the kid is now 24 and is still painting; and the parents are still together, which I was a little surprised by.

[bgmnts]

Paris is Burning (1990)

This was on BBC Arena in the archive section which I like to peruse.

Heartbreaking yet inspiring, it's a fascinating peek into NYC minority queer culture, and reveals a lot about culture generally, and I feel I ended up learning a fair bit about it.

The main theme seems to be a sense of being rejected by their society, and have, through sheer resilience, carved out spaces among substitute families that lets them live a life denied to them through these 'balls'. That's what I thought they meant by realness, an avenue for them to be who they feel they really are or who they can be, regardless of their material reality, but then it's revealed that it's the opposite, it's to blend in.

Commercialism and consumerism pervaded the doc. Lots of the interview subjects nakedly desire to be rich and famous and be 'somedbody'. Again, fucked by capitalism I suppose?

I did also quite enjoy the society the community created for themselves, with hierarchies, subdivisions, vocabulary, and these pseudo dynasties they belong to.

But yeah, you can see why the queer community is as close as it is, with this shared niche yet rich culture, a culture that acts as parallel and almost seems to mock or perverse whatever the default culture is.

On a personal level, I found Venus Xtravaganza really endearing and that was a proper gut punch.

Waffle over, a lot I didn't mention but overall a fantastic doc.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Agreed, absolutely brilliant documentary. Even if it was crap, the ball footage alone would be worth it, but its also a series of really great interviews

[bgmnts]

That's 100% true. I think there may be a point where you perhaps see the invention of voguing in one of the balls.

And there's also a fun bit where one of the contestants gets quite aggro and there's some handbags.