Occasionally, the movie about making the movie is the better movie. Les Blank's Burden of Dreams is the better movie which documents the filming of Werner Herzog's fictional movie Fitzcarraldo. Herzog imagines that his film hero, Fitzcarraldo, employs a small army of native tribesmen to haul a steamship over a mountain in the Amazon, from one river to another. For reasons clear only to himself, Herzog decides this super-human scene must not be done with special effects. Burden of Dreams records Herzog's 4-year obsession in trying to film native American tribesmen hauling an immense steamship over a mountain pass in the deep Amazon jungle. He becomes Fitzcarraldo, or maybe Captain Ahab. Herzog's blind determination whips him from one disaster to the next, making this journey both astonishing and incredibly mesmerizing. Like Hearts of Darkness, this is a peek into how a movie can drive one insane.

-- KK

Burden of Dreams
Directed by Les Blank
1982, 95 min.
$40, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rent from Netflix

What started out as a British documentary exposing the role of class in a child's destiny has turned into one of the most satisfying works of cultural anthropology and a showcase longitudinal study. Every seven years, starting at the age of seven, we visit the same group of children as they grow up, have dreams, are lost and remade, and in many cases see their lives take the unexpected turn as they age. Because each new film is created to be understood by itself, each recapitulates all the others before it, so there is a lot of repetition from issue to issue, but a lot missing if you only see the last one.

-- KK

The Up Series
Directed by Michael Apted
2004, 576 min.
$90, DVD (5 disc series)

Available from Amazon

Rentable from GreenCine

The concept is simple. Reveal what really happens as a world-class couture designer develops, in fits and starts, his fall line. Show the factual side of a fashion show. The result is both hilarious and mesmerizing. Unexpectedly I came to appreciate fashion designers as artists, even though I have zero fashion sense.

-- KK

Unzipped
Directed by Douglas Keeve
1995, 73 min.
$18, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rent from Netflix

This unforgetable and legendary documentary relives a real crime from multiple viewpoints. Like Rashmon, you get many versions of the event, each story told from the perspective of a different persuasive person. You don't know who to believe. As variations of the day's events are re-enacted over and over again, your sympathy is whipped back and forth from one plausible person to the next. Eventually, after many changes of mind, the truth dawns on you, as the director Errol Morris hopes it would, and it doesn't jive with the verdict. But because you've gone down so many alternatives, the final conclusion is hard to shake off. After watching this brilliant film the necessary judges admitted ordered a retrial. So now this documentary has the unique distinction of being an artwork responsible for freeing an innocent man wrongly jailed. Not many films can say that. The film is heroic, and more entertaining than the best fictionalized crime show. However, the way the released film influenced the courts in real life, and the bizarre events it unleashed in the lives those it touched, including the director, demand a film of its own, a film that sadly has not been made. You'll have to read about it online. In any case, Thin Blue Line is the canonical crime documentary, impeccably crafted, as it artfully plays upon your belief, and shows how hard it is to discern the truth. It's a great ride.

-- KK

Thin Blue Line
Directed by Errol Morris
1988, 82 min.
$18, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rent from Netflix

That woo-woo sound during the scary parts in old science fiction films was generated by a Theremin, an odd musical instrument invented by the Russian Leon Theremin. The futuristic device is operated by waving your hands without touching it, and was the inspiration and precursor of all electronic music today. The story of its unlikely creation is wrapped in mystery and drama, including the disappearance of Theremin, who may be been have kidnapped from the US by the Soviet KGB to work on sonic weapons back in the USSR. This documentary reveals the strange characters who orbited this strange instrument. You've got Jerry Lewis, stage dancers, a Russian diva, the Beach Boys, and nerds like Robert Moog, who invented the electronic synthesizer. It's a strange story.

-- KK

Theremin
Directed by Steven M. Martin
1993, 82 min
$13, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

This monologue performance by the late Spauding Gray can be considered a documentary because threaded through funny satire is a lecture on the geography of Cambodia and a journalistic report of the civil unrest, revolution, and incursion by the US that occupied that country. It's a comedic history documentary. It's also about him. You'll learn a lot, while laughing.

-- KK

Swimming to Cambodia
Directed by Jonathan Demme
1987, 85 min.
$30, DVD

Available from Amazon

ring_fire.web

The best travel documentary series ever made. For ten years two brothers lived in, adventured throughout, and mastered the islands of Indonesia. They delve into this truly esoteric culture with reckless enthusiasm and true love. And they film a lot of bizarre events. This is travel as art.

-- KK

Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey
Directed by Lorne Blair and Lawrence Blair
1999, 290 min.
$55, DVD (2 discs)

Available from the distributor, Mystic Fire

Proving that even an interview format can succeed if done with passion, this famous set of conversations between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers on the power of myths still delivers a very powerful punch.

-- KK

Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth
With Joseph Campbell and George Lucas
1988, 360 min.
$50, DVD (2 discs)

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

One of the first film documentaries in history, and still unrivaled for clarity and amazement. Shows how Eskimo (Inuit) survived with traditional ways.

-- KK

Nanook of the North
Directed by Robert J. Flaherty
1922, 79 min
$27, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rent from Netflix

What would world famous film directors do if all they had was the naked simplicity of the very first movie camera? Could they produce anything as interesting as the first movies made? Twenty modern directors try. They load up an original camera with new film and deliver an unexpected variety of very short (3 minutes) film vignettes. Constraints yield creativity; this is a very cool way to teach history.

-- KK

Lumiere & Co.
Directed by David Lynch
1995, 88 min
$45, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

Design is hip these days. Long before it was hip, Charles and Ray Eames pioneered the design approach to life. Nowhere is their legacy so well represented as in this single-volume exhibit covering every project in their life's work. The Eameses were probably the tech-friendliest designers ever, without ever being hi-tech. They certainly were the first on the frontiers of exhibit, museum, and informational film design. They designed types of things that had never been designed before. This book, together with the multi-volume DVD of their brilliant short films, makes it clear that the Eames pursued their passions first. As design goes commercial in a big way, theirs is a mighty inspiring stance. This is the most comprehensive and graphic record of not only their work (3,500 images) but perhaps of any designer's work. I use this book to expand my notions of what can be designed.

-- KK

Eames Design
The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames
John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, and Ray Eames
1989, 456 pages
$64
Amazon

The Films of Charles and Ray Eames
From Amazon, $22 each:

Vol. 1 "Powers of Ten" and "901: After 45 Years of Working." 21 minutes
Vol. 2 "Toccata for Toy Trains," "House: After Five Years of Living," "Lucia Chase Vignette," "Kaleidoscope Jazz Choir," "The Black Ships: and "Atlas." 62 minutes
Vol. 3 "The World of Franklin and Jefferson," "The Franklin and Jefferson Proposal Film" and "The Opening of an Exhibition."
Vol. 4 "Design Q&A," " IBM Mathematics Peep Shows," "SX-70," "Copernicus," "Fiberglass Chairs" and "Goods." 59 minutes
Vol. 5 "Tops," "IBM at the Fair," "A Computer Glossary," "Eames Lounge Chair," "The Expanding Airport," "Kepler's Laws," "Bread," "Polyorchis Halpus" and "Tops."

Rentable from Netflix

Also available from Eames Office
310/396-5991

Excerpt:

Young viewer watching a Mathematica Peep Show. These films were called "peep shows" because they were first shown in devices designed to accommodate one viewer. They were intended for a short attention span; each two-minute film explored one mathematical concept and could be seen as many times as a viewer needed to understand the idea.

The Moebius Band with its traveling red arrow. The arrow is started on its path by pushing a button. 1961.

A large drum made in the Eames Office demonstrated how calendar years and feast days are determined. The drum was divided into horizontal strips, each of which represented one solar year, with the succession of days and full moons marked. The drum charted certain seasonal celebrations--Christian Easter, Orthodox Easter, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Ramadan, Islamic New Year, winter and summer solstices, vernal and autumnal equinoxes, Thanksgiving and leap-year day--and showed how their dates change from year to year.

What a little-known gem! Actor Al Pacino initiated this film to increase the awareness and appreciation of Shakespeare. His intent was to merge the making of a Shakespeare play, with the play itself. So in this documentary all the embryonic stages of play are woven unfinished into the finished play. For instance, the table readings for the cast, the rehearsals, the director's research, the arguments with the producer about how to stage it, are all mixed into the final sequence of this Shakespeare movie. It's a wonderfully weird hybrid, which maximizes the medium of film. The brilliance stems from Al Pacino's experience as a Shakespearean actor, where he discovered that the making of the play provided far more understanding of the text than the audience ever got, so let's let the audience in on the construction and development. As the actors grapple with the play's text -- what does this old word mean? Why does the character do this at this moment? What is going on in this scene? -- they (and the audience) begin to unravel the play's meaning. The play in this case is one of the most challenging of all Shakespeare plays, Richard III. There's tons of people, with multiple names, cross-cutting relationships, and lots of historical references. Usually, audiences are lost. However, in Looking for Richard, you get centered and oriented as the final film switches from full period-costume location, to location scouting, to the same actors reading around a table and then debating what it meant, then switching to an annotation by a Shakespearean expert, or insightful comments by other Shakespearean actors, then a visit to a historical footnote, and then back to the ongoing scene on stage. Looking for Richard is the most intense and rewarding Shakespeare I've ever seen. Heaven would be one of these factuals for everyone of Shakespeare's plays.

-- KK

Looking for Richard
Directed by Al Pacino
1996, 112 min.
from $5 for used VHS
Region 2 DVD from $24

Read more about the film at Wikipedia

Rent from Netflix

Available from Amazon

The thrill of a really great factual is you don't know how it is going to end. Here we follow young inner-city kids trying to escape their circumstances by making it big in basketball. We see how hard it is, and how big the dream can be. I came to root for them as if they were family.

-- KK

Hoop Dreams
Directed by Steve James (II)
1994, 171 min.
$22, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rent from Netflix

A film is like an invasion. Vietnam War's most memorable film, Apocalypse Now, like the war itself, nearly did in its creators. Francis Ford Coppola's wife filmed the director as his project sank deeper and deeper into sheer, irretrievable chaos. This is a strange case where the movie about the movie is just as good as the movie.

-- KK

Hearts of Darkness
Directed by Eleanor Coppola
1991, 96 min.
$15, VHS

Available from Amazon

The iconographic rockumentary, filmed before rock musicians had handlers. This peek inside the head of a very young Bob Dylan is disturbing and exhilarating. It's clear Dylan has a rare gift for channeling sublime lyrics straight from the source; it is equally clear the divine messenger was a jerk. I kept thinking of the undeserving Mozart in Amadeus. Rough, tattered, blazing like a million suns, a rocket lifting off, this is an unforgettable portrait of a young artist. And the model for every rock bio since.

-- KK

Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back
Directed by D.A. Pennebaker
1967, 96 min.
$22, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

This has to be the most honest portrait of an artist ever. Robert Crumb, the 60s underground comic genius, is revealed in all his pathetic neuroses and glorious brilliance. The tipping point is being introduced to his eccentric family which suddenly explains all.

-- KK

Crumb
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
1994, 109 min
$24

Netflix

Amazon

An offbeat, kinky, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the monstrous cane toad invasion of Australia and of the people who love the poisonous creatures and those who hate them. A nature film with attitude.

-- KK

Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
Directed by Mark Lewis
1987
$22

Amazon

Netflix

Bands and concerts lend themselves to documentaries easily; they�ve got a built in soundtrack. This one follows the rediscovery of forgotten Cuban musicians as they make a new best-selling album. What works is the insight it provides to contemporary Cuba.

-- KK

Buena Vista Social Club
Directed by Wim Wenders
1999, 101 min
$12

Netflix

Amazon

This won't help you with physics, like the book did, but it will give you a powerful portrait of what a brain trapped in a withering body can still accomplish. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking's ability to imagine the universe is matched only by his disheartening disability to do the most ordinary activity, including talking. His life is amazing; this film quite inspiring.

-- KK

A Brief History of Time
Directed by Errol Morris
1992, 84 min.
$18 VHS

Amazon

Filmed in the late 1980s when militant white supremacists were on the rise, this documentary lets them talk without comment during a rally in Michigan. It soon becomes clear what wackos and crackpots they are. For example the title of the film comes from their definition of a white person: a person who can blush, you know, where there's blood in the face. It's all downhill from there, with conspiracy theories, looney facts, secret information, unabashed ignorance, and of course, tons of blind hate. The more sincere and harder the racists try to explain, as they become more intimate in the film, the more ridiculous they seem. Rather than conjuring up fear (as say the film State of Mind, about the cult of North Korea, does), this one summons up pity for the deranged. Still, it's a fantastic window into a political force larger than its marginal numbers, and now with immigration back in the headlines, well worth looking into. They are nuts, but influential nuts. Their looniness is documented here with a fine touch.

-- KK

Blood in the Face
Directed by Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway
1990, 78 min.
$20, VHS

Available from Amazon

This is a self portrait of nuclear bombs and atomic energy. It was assembled from unaltered documentary clips produced by governmental and industrial agencies during the 1940s and 50s and even 60s. We get inside views of this iconic technology not usually seen. The parade of images and voices are cinematic and riveting; at times nuclear is beautiful, then silly, and then horrifying. Yet the narration of the time reflects a nonchalant acceptance of atomic power as wholesome. On first viewing, this montage of found visual evidence seem ridiculous, campy, kitsch. Could anyone believed it? But on second view the propaganda is stark and scary. There's no overt preaching in this film; only the words and images of the time. I think this brilliant documentary should be mandatory for all students.

-- KK

The Atomic Cafe
Directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin Rafferty
1982, 88 min
$22, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

This is one of the all-time great visual anthropology pieces. It took the filmmakers two years to settle into a village of Pygmies and six months of warming up before they even began filming. All this care transforms exotic natives into next-door people. My favorite part is when the little boy tells his parent he wants them to send his newborn brother back from wherever it was that he came. Noble savages, this ain't.

-- KK

Baka: The People of the Forest
Directed by Phil Agland
1990, 54 min.
$20, VHS

Available from National Geographic

The simplest are sometimes the best. This documentary is about one song, "Amazing Grace." An amazing lot can be seen through this four-stanza song. Bill Moyers follows the origins and evolution of one of the world's most famous hymns. It is part music history, part African-American history, and part song itself.

-- KK

Amazing Grace
Presented by Billl Moyers
1989, 70 min.
$30, VHS and DVD

Available from Amazon

Also Available from PBS

As he nears old age, a New York City artist decides to revisit the adventures of his youth in distant lands. In the 1950s, while on an art fellowship, Tobias Schneebaum walked alone and unguided into the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to make first contact with some Indian headhunters. He shed his clothes and old ways and went native with them. But after his clan raided a neighboring tribe, murdered the villagers, and then ate their enemies in a victory feast -- and he ate too, he decided to return. Later he ended up collecting the art of headhunters in New Guinea, where he lived with another tribe who were also cannibalistic, and subsequently fell in love with, and become partners with, one of the hunters. Forty years later he is persuaded, despite having an artificial hip, to leave his now well-worn routines in NYC to see if he can find the tribesmen in the Amazon and New Guinea again. He gets them to talk about their former eating habits. This is a complex weave of the weirdness of nostalgia, the subtleties of cross cultural communication, and the attraction of Otherness.

-- KK

Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
Directed by David Shapiro II, Laurie Shapiro
2000, 94 min.
$22, DVD

Rent from Netflix

Available from Amazon

It ain't news that kids play the turntable as if it was a musical instrument but this fast-paced history of how DJ scratching was invented is pretty cool. Profiles of four famous "turntable-ists" give a clear picture of how remarkable their scratching skill is; they can essentially sing by deftly oscillating appropriate portions of several records. With fine detail the film reveals the scratchers extreme dedication to innovation, constant practice, and an obsessive knowledge of records. It's quite a trip, very geeky in many ways, but it increased my respect and admiration for this weird little achievement 1000%.

-- KK [recommended by Matt Vance and by Alexey J. Merz]

Scratch
Directed by: Doug Pray
2001, 92 min.
$23, DVD

Rent from Netflix

Available from Amazon