German filmmaker David Sieveking had just finished film school and was a huge fan of David Lynch. How could he pass up the opportunity to see Lynch when he came to speak about creativity and how to unlock it? How could he possibly fathom that the lecture would lead him on a five year voyage into the world of Transcendental Meditation, viewing the movement from within and without, with an accepting and then a critical eye, and ultimately would lead him on a journey to the source of the Ganges and yield a feature-length documentary, Sieveking's first movie?
For a limited time, David Wants To Fly can be viewed at the Link TV website in its entirety. [~95min]
posted by hippybear
on Jan 17, 2012 -
7 comments
Victorian Farm |
Edwardian Farm -- 18 hours of BBC experimental archeology/historical documentaries, online. Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and historian Ruth Goodman spend two years living the life of rural country farmers.
posted by crunchland
on Jan 15, 2012 -
33 comments
When Mitt Romney Came to Town (subtitle: The King of Bain) a 30 minute attack documentary whose "overriding sensibility is not Swift Boat — it's Frontline, replete with a calming voice of God narration and meticulous sourcing to SEC filings, court documents, and the Boston Globe" (
Rolling Stone) provides an interesting moment in the future of political messaging and funding.
[more inside]
posted by stratastar
on Jan 12, 2012 -
195 comments
WALK
.. is a trippy 1983 journey from one part of Minneapolis to another. It begins with a guy who can hardly move. He slowly gains stuttered motion and utters basic letter sounds, then begins a real and imaginary walk. His journey is from his view - floating. At the end of this walk, he meets a friend. Walk's film surface is hand worked and street noise is composed as music-concrete. 16mm B/W SLYT
posted by louche mustachio
on Jan 7, 2012 -
13 comments
We've all seen variations on the personal time-lapse video --
a snapshot every day for six years, or a look at
a young girl's first decade. But nobody's done it quite like
Sam Klemke. For thirty-five years the
itinerant freelance cartoonist has documented his life in short year-end reviews, a funny, weary, eccentric, and hopeful record dating all the way back to 1977. Recently optioned for
documentary treatment by the
government of Australia, you can skim Sam's opus in reverse in the striking video
"35 Years Backwards Thru Time with Sam Klemke," an ever-evolving home movie montage that grows grainier and grainier as it tracks Sam
"from a paunchy middle aged white bearded self deprecating schluby old fart, to a svelt, full haired, clean shaven, self-important but clueless 20 year old."
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 31, 2011 -
7 comments
The James Dean Story Directed by Robert Altman, Starring James Dean two years after his death "by means of a new technique... dynamic exploration of the still photograph".
posted by oneswellfoop
on Dec 30, 2011 -
9 comments
Viewable in its entirety at YouTube,
Ballou is an engaging, inspiring, funny and entertaining documentary film about inner city Washington DC's Ballou High School band.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 26, 2011 -
1 comment
Click the photo at the top of the linked page to view
The Voyagers, a rumination on the universe, love, a golden record and two small space probes.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Dec 26, 2011 -
4 comments
A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated
O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for
a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich
cinematography (a pioneer of
digital color grading), its
whimsical humor,
fluid vernacular, and
many subtle references to Homer's
Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out:
the music.
Assembled by
T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from
cheery ballads and
angelic hymns to
wistful blues and
chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a
heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage,
a paean and uchronia of the Old South.
Though the multiplatinum album was recently
reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian
D. A. Pennebaker's
Down from the Mountain, an
extraordinary yet
intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them
Gillian Welch,
Emmylou Harris,
Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend
Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by
John Hartford, an accomplished
fiddler,
riverboat captain, and
raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on
Hulu and
YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of
the set list's fascinating history.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 22, 2011 -
107 comments
"In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath. The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a
brinicle." A BBC film crew has recorded one of these
freezing life on the sea floor.
posted by cosmac
on Nov 23, 2011 -
47 comments
Gullah—the African-influenced dialect of Georgia’s Sea Islands—has undergone few changes since the first slave ships landed 300 years ago, and provides a clear window into the shaping of African-American English.
This classic PBS program traces that story from the west coast of Africa through the American South, then to large northern cities in the 1920s. Studying the origins of West African pidgin English and creole speech—along with the tendency of 19th-century white Southerners to pick up speech habits from their black nursemaids—the program highlights the impact of WWI-era industrialization and the migration of jazz musicians to New York and Chicago.
posted by cthuljew
on Nov 15, 2011 -
12 comments
In Southern California in the 1980s, KROQ had this weird un-DJ-like guy named (seriously)
Rodney Bingenheimer, who came on late at night on Sundays and played punk records and new bands like Blondie, The Ramones, X, Joan Jett, Devo and Cheap Trick. Did this weirdo really have some influence? A 90-minute 2004 documentary now on YouTube,
Mayor of the Sunset Strip (Part 1) tells his story, and it's weirder than you may have imagined.
[more inside]
posted by planetkyoto
on Nov 14, 2011 -
24 comments
Fred Martinez was nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine nature, a special gift according to his ancient Navajo culture. He was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at 16. Two Spirits explores the life and death of this boy who was also a girl, and the essentially spiritual nature of gender. (previously)
posted by Trurl
on Nov 10, 2011 -
15 comments
Pete Standing Alone has come full-circle in his dedication to preserving the traditional ways of his people on the Blood reserve in Southern Alberta. His 50 year journey from cultural alienation to pride and belonging has been uniquely captured by the NFB in the
Pete Standing Alone Trilogy. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher
on Nov 9, 2011 -
11 comments
The most vivid figure in Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields's End of the Century was the least articulate and most archetypal of the Ramones: Johnny, the right-wing prole whose hard-ass sense of style the others nutballed and softened and accelerated and above all imitated. ... Exciting and absolutely right though their '70s sets always were, the film establishes that they kept the faith live till the end, lifted by Joey's goofy dedication and powered by the chords Johnny thrashed out like they were why he was alive. As unyielding in his aesthetic principles as he was in everything else, this reactionary was an avant-gardist in spite of himself. -
Robert Christgau
posted by Trurl
on Nov 9, 2011 -
17 comments
This weekend marks the time of
the Hajj, a core pillar of Islam in which
great tides of humanity venture to the ancient city of Mecca to honor God.
Predating Mohammed's birth by centuries, the pilgrimage comprises
several days of rites, from congregation like snow on
Mount Arafat and the ritual
stoning of Shaitan to the circling of the sacred
Kaaba (the
shrouded cubical monolith Muslims
pray toward daily) and kissing the
Black Stone (colored by the absorption of myriad sins, and believed by some to be a
fallen meteorite).
While the city has
modernized to handle this largest of annual gatherings -- building highway-scale ramps,
gaudy skyscrapers for the ultra-rich, and
tent cities the size of Seattle -- it remains mysterious, as unbelievers are
forbidden from entering its borders.
Richard Francis Burton became famous for
touring the city in disguise to write
a rare travelogue, but contemporary viewers have a more immediate guide:
Vice Magazine journalist Suroosh Alvi, who smuggled a minicam into the city to record
The Mecca Diaries [alt], a 14-minute documentary of his own Hajj journey.
Browse the manual to see what goes into a Hajj trip, or
watch the YouTube livestream to see the Grand Mosque crowds in real time.
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 4, 2011 -
31 comments
The Burton Holmes Archive has information about Burton Holmes, the travel writer who became the first person to make filmic travelogues. More importantly, they also have a lot of
film clips by Holmes and his associate,
André de la Varre, who was also a great travelogue maker himself. Watching these clips is not quite time travel, but it is as close as we can get. Take a look at
Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1926,
Lake Michigan in 20s,
Cairo in 1932 and
the 1955 Rio de Janeiro carnival. The later films have sound and narration, but I prefer the silent ones.
[Burton Holmes previously, André de la Varre previously, and the Travel Film Archive, which runs Burton Holmes site, previously]
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 26, 2011 -
5 comments
The Reel History of Britain, a BFI/BBC co-production, brings archive film into the nation’s living rooms. The footage shown in the series has been selected from the hundreds of thousands of films and programmes preserved in Britain’s film and television archives. We are complementing the series by making many of the films featured in The Reel History of Britain available online in their entirety, alongside expert commentary from the nation’s archive curators.
posted by Trurl
on Oct 17, 2011 -
4 comments
80 Blocks from Tiffany’s was what The Warriors
, the cultish and campy Hollywood street gang movie involving roller skates and a race to Coney Island, could never be. It was real. Shot over the course of a couple of weeks in the summer of ’79 (as the seeds of hip-hop culture were slowly sprouting in the BX), 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s
, produced by Lorne Michaels [and directed by SNL director Gary Weis], veers away from the social commentary typically associated with gang exposés. Instead, the 60-minute documentary focuses on the personalities behind the news reports, including a tough NYPD detective from the Bronx Youth Gang Task Force and a sympathetic community activist. Quoted from the introduction to
an interview with Gary Weis.
posted by filthy light thief
on Oct 12, 2011 -
15 comments
"'
Being Elmo,' the crowd-pleasing [
documentary film] profile of the man behind Elmo, arguably the most-loved Muppet on 'Sesame Street,' has been melting hearts on the festival circuit since premiering at Sundance this year, where it won the Special Jury Prize. ... [It's the] story of how puppeteer
Kevin Clash came up through the ranks on sheer ambition and ingenuity to become one of the best in the business is an underdog tale of the best variety."
* However, could it be that there is
an Elmo backlash brewing?
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Sep 28, 2011 -
107 comments
Like a "modern-day pirate," 75-year-old Ray Ives has been diving for sunken treasure for decades. Wearing an ancient, bronze-helmeted diving suit, he searches the ocean floor and keeps a huge collection of marine salvage (including antique cannon balls, 'bottles, bells, swords, portholes and diving gear') in a shipping container "museum" at a British marina.
Ray: A Life Underwater:
Vimeo /
YouTube. (A short film documentary.)
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 23, 2011 -
5 comments
