Documentary

Into Great Silence

12 Feb 2007

Shakespeare’s comment that ‘The silence of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails’ pervades German documentarian Philip Gröning’s film about life inside a silent Carthusian monastic order in France. For Into Great Silence is less of a critical…

Child Genius

Channel 4, Thu 8 Feb, 9pm

29 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Most of us would like to have a few more brain cells than we currently have at our disposal. But who would really want an IQ of 170, putting us into the top 0.002% of the population? And what if we had that mental ability and were around…

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes - DVD review

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes

29 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Avi Mograbi’s tough-minded documentary on the horrors of today’s Israeli-Palestine conflict looks at events not from the point of view of Palestinian fanaticism and Israeli brutality, but chiefly from the long established fanaticism…

Day the Country Died, The - DVD review

The Day the Country Died

3 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Subtitled ‘A History of Anarcho Punk’ this is actually a visual retelling of Ian Glasper’s excellent book of the same name. Exploring in minute detail the obscure, esoteric, UK anarcho-punk scene of the early 80s, this absolutely…

Remote Control - documentaries round-up

Brian Donaldson uncovers some fine documentaries a

11 Dec 2006

One of the stories of the year had to be the big whale that swam to London. So, the cryptically titled The Whale that Swam to London (Channel 4, Thu 21 Dec, 8pm) launches upon us dividing opinion between those who thought that it was a natural…

When the Levees Broke

BBC4, Mon 18 & Tue 19 Dec, 9pm

11 Dec 2006

DISASTER DOCUMENTARY ‘Only in America’ is often a phrase you hear when some weirdness occurs or a mad technological advance has been made. But surely only in a Bush America could hundreds of thousands of people (the bulk of them black and poor) be…

Deep Water

(PG) 93min

11 Dec 2006

DOCUMENTARY This cogent and authoritative documentary feature recounts the sad, regrettably true story of a British eccentric and loser. In 1968, amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst decided that he would take part in The Sunday Times’ first Golden Globe…

The US vs John Lennon

27 Nov 2006

This incisive and engrossing documentary is both a portrait of the former Beatle as political activist and a slice of secret history from America’s recent past. It follows its subject from 1966-76, the heady years during which Lennon left The Beatles…

Unknown White Male - DVD review

Unknown White Male

27 Nov 2006

DOCUMENTARY Having lost touch with his pal Douglas Bruce, now a successful New York stockbroker, word came to Rupert Murray that Bruce had woken up one day with his previous 37 years wiped from his memory. Having fended off other interested parties…

Pervert’s Guide To Cinema, The - interview

Popcorn and Brecht

13 Nov 2006

‘You enjoy a film immediately, naively, but theorising about films spoils enjoyment. I violently disagree with that,’ says outspoken and influential Slovenian philosopher and film lover Slavoj Zizek (pictured). ‘If anything I think it’s the opposite.’

Rampage

(15) 108min

13 Nov 2006

DOCUMENTARY Rampage is the middle film in a trilogy by Australian filmmaker George Gittoes. The first Soundtrack of War looked at how music plays a part in US army life in Iraq. Rampage follows Elliot Lovett, a very gifted young rapper who Gittoes…

Kz

13 Nov 2006

Filmed over five weeks at the Austrian concentration camp, Mauthausen, documentarian Rex Bloomstein follows tour guides and tourists around the site as visitors discover the drip drip accumulation of the dehumanisation process. As the guides move…

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

13 Nov 2006

If you want to know why Northern California’s avian population went nuts in The Birds, or how The Wizard of Oz was able to send Dorothy home to Kansas despite being a fraudulent huckster, then this is the film for you. A collaboration between Slovenian…

John Pilger - Documentaries That Changed the World

John Pilger - Documentaries That Changed the World

2 Oct 2006

POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY It’s hard not to feel ambivalence towards anyone who insists on partisanship. John Pilger is a case in point. A genuinely crusading print and TV journalist, Pilger has been fighting for the rights of the poor, the put-upon and…

This Film is Not Yet Rated

(18) 97min

18 Sep 2006

DOCUMENTARY Kirby Dick’s hilarious but deeply worrying exposé of the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating board is one of the most thoroughly entertaining documentaries of the year. A clearly partisan Dick (his own films, among them Sick…

Black Sun

18 Sep 2006

French artist, documentary filmmaker and author Hugues de Montalembert describes his life after he was attacked in his apartment in New York and blinded with paint stripper. This is less the story of an artist coming to terms with his blindness (and all…

An Inconvenient Truth

1 Sep 2006

Perhaps because somebody pointed out that jetting all over the US warning the masses about climate change was just a tad hypocritical (he’s still happy to fly to film festivals, mind), Al Gore and director Davis Guggenheim have brought his global…