Culture

One of my favorite historians, Michael Wood, tells the fantastic history of India by visiting the places where it happens. Best of all, he describes the IDEAS that each place launched. The story of India spans thousands of years and thousands of miles, and five episodes. Wood is both intelligent and genial, and deeply familar with the subcontinent, so you get an incredibly insightful tour of this vast land. Wood takes you to unexpected corners deep inside the culture. I've read a lot of Indian history, seen a fair number of documentaries about the country, and I have traveled extensively throughout India over many years. This is by far the best treatment of this still rising civilization I've seen.

The Story of India
Michael Wood
2007, 345 min
$30, DVD & Blu-Ray (2 discs)

Official website

Read more about the film at Wikipedia

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Cooking show meets travel show. The gimmick works. Balding fat chef goes on a quest to eat the weirdest, strangest, most bizarre foods in world. He'll try anything twice, and then give his "review" of it. Humans somewhere will consume anything that moves, or grown, so there is plenty of material. Strict vegetarians may want to avoid watching. Not only is any animal, insect, fish, invertebrate eaten, any part of it is gobbled down is as well.

The host, Andrew Zimmern, is plain spoken and enthusiastic. Sort of the opposite of a food snob. While there's adequate background on each exotic host country and culture, the main emphasis is on Zimmern simply understanding and trying out bizarre foods. I've given my kids the DVDs in order to encourage them to eat outside the box. I think we owe it to ourselves to explore the world's cuisine and outer boundaries of food. You don't have to like it, just try it. Better than several books on the subject, this series will make you rethink your food limits. It's comparative foodology 101. All weird foods have a good story behind them, as revealed in these upbeat documentaries.

There is a competing cooking/travel show hosted by another globetrotting chef, Anthony Bourdain, but this series, No Reservations, is more about the chef himself than the food. I found Bourdain smug, self-centered, prissy, and uninteresting, but your mileage may vary. Some like his snarky style. For a fun journey to somewhere different stick with Bizarre Foods.

-- KK

Bizarre Foods
Andrew Zimmern
2007, 338 min.
DVD, 2 discs, $18

Official website

Read more about the film at Wikipedia

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This series is the best exposition of a minimal-technological lifestyle that I have ever seen. It is far more revealing than most anthropological documentaries. Here, two white guys go native. For three months they live with a Papua New Guinea tribe that still adheres to traditional hunter gathering mode, using bows, stone and bone tools. Unlike most visitors, including anthropologists, these guys eat only what the tribe eats; indeed, they eat only food that they help find and process. They learn to make their own traditional tools and weapons. Seeing this process we get a very good sense of what is involved in living "in harmony with nature." It's tough. Each week the visitors give up more of their gear until they wear what the tribe wears, which is not much. The filmmakers record their own bumbling attempts to learn how to survive in the forest as these members of the Kombai tribe do, and via their education we get a fantastic view of tribal life.

In the second season, Mark and Olly join the highlander Mek tribe, also in Papua New Guinea (the Kombai were lowland tribe), and again go full immersion. During their four month stay, they build their own hut, get initiated into the tribe, learn to love roots, and get swept up in village and tribal politics.

In their third season Mark and Olly go native with the Machigenga tribe at the headwaters of the Amazon. As in the other two tribal stays, this series gives a intimate portrait of what life tribal life is like day to day. Tribal life is easier than one expects in many ways, and less appealing in many others. What surprises me is how disruptive small events are to a tribe, yielding constant drama.

-- KK

Living With the Kombai
Mark Anstice, Olly Steeds
2007, 287 min.
DVD, 2-disc set, $18

Available from Amazon

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Living With the Mek
Mark Anstice, Olly Steeds
2008, 319 min.
DVD, 2-disc set, $18

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Available from Amazon

Living With the Machigenga
Mark Anstice, Olly Steeds
2009, airing now

Official website

Series website (US)

World's Lost Tribes (UK)

My favorite travel host, Michael Palin, explores his own continent. With his usual agreeable wit, Palin departs from his home in Old Europe and with BBC crew in tow, he sets off by train to investigate all 20 newly opened European countries which were formerly off-limit to casual travel. Besides the expected classic Eastern Europe destinations, this journey includes the many new tiny Balkan countries, and several breakaway provinces near Russia, and little visited countries such as Moldavia, Albania, Kalinagrad. To present a country Palin mixes the grand and the tiny, the classic shot and the offbeat, the intelligent uplifting interview and the plain goofy stunt. What else would you expect from a former Monte Python member? This seven-part travelogue on Eastern Europe is fun, revealing, informative, and fresh, and made me eager to know more.

-- KK

Michael Palin's New Europe
2007, 350 min.
DVD, 3 discs, $35

A few clips are available at the official website

Read more about the series at Wikipedia

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This lovely, lyrical documentary introduces Chinlone, a Burmese sport that soars somewhere between acrobatics, hackey sack, and Balinese dance. This game, unknown outside of Burma, became an obsession for Greg Hamilton. For the past 20 years he's painfully tried to whisk the distinctive woven-rattan ball, faithfully returning to Burma to play in tournaments, becoming the first westerner to do so. What makes this film so rewarding is Hamilton's candid autobiographical account of his slow learning. At first he is laughed at, but after 8 years of filming, he slowly gains respect from the Burmese. Chinlone is a beautiful non-competitive game. You "win" by keeping the ball in the air for your teammates -- a fit metaphor for life, and a perfect frame for this extremely contemplative but dynamic film. Greg's story is really not about sport, or the Zen of Burmese Hackey Sack, but about how to learn and love.

-- KK

Mystic Ball
Greg Hamilton
2006, 83 min.
DVD, $25

Available from the Mystic Ball website

The star of the hit documentary Supersize Me took his winning format of Total Immersion For 30 Days and applied it, with the help of other willing subjects, to a number of other alien worlds. For 30 days your host in each episode of this reality series will live within agreed constraints in order to shift their -- and your -- point of view. Ideally the show throws a person into the lives of those they despise. Take a southern Christian and make him live in a Muslim home and community. Take an anti-immigration bully and have him live with illegal immigrants. Make an abortion rights activist work at a pregnancy crises center. Or an atheist live with Pentecostals. A guy who lost his job to outsourcing in India, goes to India to reclaim his job there. Have middle class professionals try to pay rent and doctor bills on minimum wage. Or an innocent live in jail, with solitary confinement. A lot can happen in 30 days, distilled into an intense 60 minutes. Yes, it's a gimmicky formula, but it really works. You'll learn a whole lot.

-- KK

30 Days: Season 1
Morgan Spurlock
2004, 354 min.
DVD, $10

Series website

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Twenty years ago 20,000 orphaned and displaced boys began streaming out of Sudan. They languished with no future in poor camps in neighboring countries. In 2001, about 3,000 of them were resettled in the US. This doc is the true story of a few of those boys, almost men, as they leave their very stark pastoral life (zero electricity or running water) and slip unnoticed into frantic, crazy urban America. This is not the only documentary about this dramatic transition. The Lost Boys of Sudan, for instance, has many fans. But by following the immigrants for a longer period, both before they arrive and after their shock immersion into American culture, God Grew Tired of Us is the most rewarding and the deepest. One thing I learned from this film: no matter how amazing modern amenities are, people will take them for granted after about 5 minutes. But as these really remarkable and likeable "boys" show, it's people and relationships that really count for wealth.

-- KK

God Grew Tired of Us
Christopher Dillon Quinn
2006, 89 min.
$20, DVD

Rentable from Netflix

Available from Amazon

This fancy BBC series reveals art to be not the product of culture, but the producer and shaper of culture. It's a wonderfully creative and imaginative show of how great art changed our world, our ideas, and even our humanity itself. Each episode tackles a big idea using the latest state-of-the-art documentary techniques and special effects. It's brimming with news and consequential notions, but presented clearly and with wit. I think the series succeeds admirably. It does so in part by expanding your concept of what art is - without ever bringing up that boring debate. I like that they often focus on underappreciated artworks. In the end you see that art, like science and technology, has altered our environment and our identity. We are art.

-- KK

Directed by Robin Dashwood
2005, 290 min. (2 discs)
$27, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

This off-beat tour will take you to the other side of the railroad tracks. Our host -- a musician -- shows you his homeland in the rural Deep South. He buys a used car, hauls a wrong-eyed Jesus statue in the trunk, and circles around trailer parks and BBQ joints listening to genuine contemporary musicians - and their many stories. Everyone has a story. The host has a story. It would be misguided to suggest this was a two-eyed look at poor white trash culture, but not too far off either. This film has great music, authentic characters, and an honest gaze. It's an amusing trip.

-- KK

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Directed by Andrew Douglas
2003, 82 min.
$27, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

True stories from the most unlikely fishing hole ever -- New York City. Because New York is an island port there's far more places to fish than most New Yorkers would imagine, and now that environmental laws have cleaned the Hudson's water, the fishing is actually great. This lighthearted, cheery film documents the many ways New Yorkers fish, and why. And being New Yorkers, everyone has a story.

-- KK

Gotham Fish Tales
Directed by Robert Maass
2003, 74 min.
$13, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

A charming, gritty, real journey into the Saraha. You piggy-back on Michael Palin's arduous trip via freight train, land rover, camel and foot. Palin is fun, witty, intelligent and the perfect host for taking you to a remote area the size of the US, filled with tons of cultural diversity and most of it seldom seen. Palin has a wonderful knack for focusing on the real and informative. Not your usual travelog.

-- KK

Michael Palin: Sahara
Directed by John-Paul Davidson and Roger Mills
2003, 236 min.
$35, DVD

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix