Documentary

Standard Operating Procedure

17 Jul 2008

Legendary American documentarian Errol Morris’ films fall into two catagories, political and wacky, and it was with the former that he won an Academy Award in 2003 for his astonishingly candid portrait of Vietnam-era US Secretary of Defense Robert…

Standard Operating Procedure

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Errol Morris, USA) 116min The great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War) turns his investigative eye towards the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. The coup of the film is that Morris interviews some of the soldiers who…

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

19 Jun 2008

DOCUMENTARY (18) 93min Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – most people would regard this maxim as pretty true. Documentary filmmaker Chris Waitt, however, flies in the face of danger. After finding himself on the receiving end of a string of…

Let's Get Lost

5 Jun 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 109min One of the girlfriends of the late legend of the cool school of jazz once observed, ‘Chet Baker sure knew how to get lost.’ Aside from knowing how to get lost in his music (being a brilliantly intuitive trumpet player), Baker…

Peter Kosminksy

5 Jun 2008

DOCUMENTARY/DRAMA SEASON More4, Sat 14–Sun 20 Jun In the era of Play for Today, the rabblerousing TV dramatist lurked in every nook and cranny of the BBC, cropping up on primetime slots to frighten the horses. Now though, the nation’s broadcasting…

Terror’s Advocate

22 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY (12A) 137min Filmmaker Barbet Schroeder starts his engrossing documentary with a written statement claiming that this is his view of Jacques Vergès and that the opinion of those interviewed may be different. He then proceeds to show an…

13 Kids and Wanting More

22 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY Channel 4, Thu 22 May, 9pm When is enough really quite enough? The subjects of this film clearly don’t believe in the concept, as they churn out child after baby after offspring, some for reasons of faith, others simply because they love…

Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead

22 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 83 min Back in 1980, a Polish-born Jewish doctor Garri Urban published an autobiographical account Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead of his remarkable experiences in Eastern Europe during World War Two. Having fled the Nazis, who massacred…

Manufactured Landscapes

8 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY (U) 86min Beginning with a bravura eight-minute lateral tracking shot through a giant Chinese factory, Canadian director Jennifer Baichwal’s thoughtful documentary explores the work of the photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose large-scale…

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

8 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY (12A) 89min Having successfully supersized his career by eating way too many Big Macs, Morgan Spurlock has let fame go to his head or maybe he’s just contracted a bout of mad cow disease. His new documentary sees the campaigner try to do…

Joy Division

24 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 96mins After last year’s Control, Anton Corbijn’s considered and stylish dramatisation of Ian Curtis’ life, it would be easy to think that everything you need to know about the legend and legacy of English post-punk outfit Joy…

High Tech Soul

24 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY (E) 64 min Subtitled the ‘Creation of Techno Music’ this documentary sets out to detail just that very subject, going back to the roots of the Detroit scene, the birthplace of techno as we know it today. The film aims to position the…

Sheffield International Documentary Festival on Tour

24 Apr 2008

The highlights from one of Europe’s premier documentary festivals make their way to the capital’s number one arthouse cinema this fortnight. The four films selected for this showcase are Nitzan Gilady’s Jerusalem is Proud to Present, a record of the…

Shine a Light

10 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY/CONCERT (12A) 122min It was customary in early Greek and Roman books to have the portrait of the author on the opening page. Martin Scorsese brings this tradition to his Rolling Stones concert movie. The opening exchanges depict the…

A Very British Gangster

10 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 98min (Contender DVD retail) A strange amalgam of fiction film devices and impressive access, Donal MacIntyre’s look at the life of infamous Manchester gangster Dominic Noonan is compelling viewing. As he follows the Noonan crime…

Back To Normandy

13 Mar 2008

DOCUMENTARY (12A) 113min For this quietly compelling, multilayered documentary, French filmmaker Nicholas Philibert (Etre et Avoir) returned to the same Normandy agricultural community where, some 30 years earlier, he had served as an assistant…

TV: Iraq Season

13 Mar 2008

BBC/Channel 4 With the fifth anniversary of the West’s illegal invasion and errant desecration of Iraq upon us, the networks have seen no reason to halt the stream of related documentaries and dramas which have been filling the schedules on the…

We Are Together

13 Mar 2008

DOCUMENTARY (PG) 86min Whether the tragedy is personal or universal, filmmaker Paul Taylor manages to extract an upbeat film out of harrowing and difficult lives in this moving documentary. Concentrating on the Agape Orphanage in South Africa, Taylor…

The London Nobody Knows/The Bicyclettes De Belsize

28 Feb 2008

DOCUMENTARY (PG) 73min (Optimum DVD retail) The London Nobody Knows is a genuine curio. James Mason takes his brolly and bowler for a stroll around the seedier parts of the big smoke in the late 1960s, bemoaning ruined buildings such as Camden’s…

Baby Bible Bashers

14 Feb 2008

DOCUMENTARY Channel 4, Thu 14 Feb, 9pm; repeated Tue 19 Feb, 11.05pm It never fails to chill the blood to see people who claim to be working on behalf of the little baby Jesus with banners denouncing everyone from liars to homosexuals and adulterers…

Che Guevara As You Have Never Seen Him Before

4 Jan 2008

DOCUMENTARY (E) 50min (Network retail) There’s a certain duplicity to the title of this Cuban effort from Manuel Perez Paredes. The story it tells of the life of the great Argentinean revolutionary, who was given Cuban nationality for his immense…

Remote Control: Documentary Reviews

13 Dec 2007

Brian Donaldson uncovers some fine documentaries about daredevils, dancers and daggers There’s a special poignancy about Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel (BBC2, Sun 23 Dec, 9pm) now that we know the subject of the show has since died. The Top Gear…

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

29 Nov 2007

DOCUMENTARY (PG) 83min With The Guardian recently offering the front page headline ‘World economy shakes as oil nears $100 a barrel’, A Crude Awakening is nothing if not pertinent, giving credence to the film’s thesis that it isn’t money that…

A Massacre Foretold

29 Nov 2007

Scottish documentary maker Nick Higgins’ commendable and deeply disturbing film investigates the murder of 45 people at a prayer meeting in a Mexican village in 1997. The film gets a brief outing in both cities this fortnight. Also showing is Higgins…

Cocaine Cowboys

29 Nov 2007

Billy Corben’s lively and scintillating documentary about how Columbian drug lords revolutionised the recreation scene in Miami in the 1980s is a must for anyone whose ideal dinner party guests include Robert Sabbag, Howard Marks and Tony Montana.

In the Shadow of the Moon

15 Nov 2007

This exhilarating British-made documentary about the American lunar programme of the 1960s and 70s serves to remind us just how stirring the best efforts of mankind can be. Assembled under the guidance of director David Sington from a wealth of…

Hitler – A Career

15 Nov 2007

Hardly justifying a DVD release, this 1970s-made steady trot through Hitler’s rise and fall has the sanctimonious tone of an admonition. Joachim C Fest’s film is less a warning from history and more a sustained attack of Hitler’s one-dimensional…

The Not Dead

1 Nov 2007

DOCUMENTARY Channel 4, Mon 12 Nov, 9pm There’s always a danger that with the constant barrage of rolling news coverage, dramas and documentaries that we may become immune to the horrors of the world, particularly the terror of warfare. But while…

Sicko

18 Oct 2007

DOCUMENTARY (12A) 123min The best and worst of Michael Moore are on display as he sets about attacking the way that healthcare is managed in America. The first line of attack exemplifies Moore at his maverick best. Instead of basing a documentary…

In the Hands of the Gods

6 Sep 2007

Forget the ‘Brand Beckham’ circus bringing ‘soccer’ to the States. This journey of five working-class football freestylers who pitch up in New York to busk their way to their idol (the devious genius Diego Maradona, in Argentina) captures the genuine…

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

6 Sep 2007

Simultaneously a dream and a nightmare for film buffs everywhere, Alexandra Cassavetes’s film melds together various different strands into a fascinating portrait of the power of cinema. The Z Channel was an LA-based cable TV station dedicated to the…

Manufacturing Dissent: Unconvering Michael Moore

23 Aug 2007

Is Michael Moore a self-regarding political liability who also screws with journalistic codes of conduct, or a wayward truth seeker who has no truck with compromise as he pursues fairness and justice? We probably didn’t need Deborah Melnyk and Rick…

The Tribe that Hides from Man

(E) 67min (Network DVD retail/rental)

23 Aug 2007

Co-photographed by the great Chris Menges (Kes, The Killing Fields), this British TV documentary from 1970 seems consistent with some of the best fiction films that explored the Amazonian jungle in the 1980s. Like Fitzcarraldo, The Emerald Forest and…

My New Home

Channel 4, Mon 13 Aug, 9pm

9 Aug 2007

SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY Stung by the claims of racism which dogged them over the Celebrity Big Bigot scandal, Channel 4 must be glad they can still make programmes like this one. My New Home catches up with three immigrant children who they first featured…

Thomas Telford: The Man who Built Britain

BBC2, Mon 6 Aug, 9pm

1 Aug 2007

Jeremy Clarkson will no doubt be livid if he ever watches this. The man who backed Isambard Kingdom Brunel to second place behind Churchill during the 100 Greatest Britons series in 2002 will be aghast to hear that some experts believe Scotsman Thomas…

Date set for Kurt Cobain documentary release

27 Jul 2007

A documentary about Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is set to be released in the US in October. The AJ Schnack movie Kurt Cobain: About a Son premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival last month. According to Schnack’s blog, the documentary will…

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing

2 Jul 2007

DOCUMENTARY When the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks made an off-the-cuff remark at a concert in London in 2003 about the band being ashamed of President Bush coming from their home-state Texas, there’s no way they could have foreseen themselves…

Sketches of Frank Gehry

2 Jul 2007

DOCUMENTARY Two minutes into this documentary about Frank Gehry, America’s most famous living architect, the director Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, The Interpreter) admits that the documentary was Gehry’s idea. When the architect suggested it to him…

Tony Blair Season

18 Jun 2007

DOCUMENTARY One of the most striking cultural factors of the Blair years has been the relatively easy ride he got from the satirists. When you compare the last ten years to the Thatcher period, the comedy clubs, print media and TV shows have hardly…

Brits Get Rich in China

22 May 2007

BUSINESS DOCUMENTARY Paul Merton recently recalled with some anxiety how he forced down a portion of cooked donkey penis in the name of travel shows. And in this documentary, a marginally traumatised businessman dines briefly on the same delicacy.

Science is Fiction

DVD

21 May 2007

DOCUMENTARY There’s just space to mention this fascinating film about one of the great pioneers of science films, Jean Painlevé (1902-1989). Painlevé was a poet in every sense of the word and there was nothing he liked to do more than film fish, foul…

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten

21 May 2007

DOCUMENTARY Joe Strummer was man of contradictions, some he could deal with, others he couldn’t. Director Julien Temple was a part of the London punk scene and experienced many of Joe’s magnificent contradictions first hand. Temple has a patchy…

DVD - General Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait

7 May 2007

DOCUMENTARY

Scott Walker: 30th Century Man

7 May 2007

DOCUMENTARY

Blue Blood

7 May 2007

DOCUMENTARY

A Bridge Too Far

7 May 2007

A Bridge Too Far

The Seven Sins of England

Channel 4, Tue 8 May, 10pm

23 Apr 2007

SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY Before anyone gets on their high horse, let’s admit straight off the bat that the Scots might claim to have a largely pacifist Tartan Army, but the seven sins of our Anglo Saxon brethren could be matched and probably surpassed by…

DVD - Bridging The Gap: Lies

Bridging The Gap: Lies

11 Apr 2007

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS This collection of short documentaries from the all too often undervalued and under funded Scottish Documentary Institute serves as a welcome taster for the excellent work executed by this organisation. The best of the films here…

Iraq In Fragments

(15) 94min

13 Mar 2007

DOCUMENTARY Photographed, edited and directed by the American filmmaker James Longley over a two year period following the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003, this haunting documentary doesn’t take the familiar perspective of the occupying forces.

The Trap

BBC2, Sun 18 Mar, 9pm

13 Mar 2007

SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY Writer and director Adam Curtis gained waves of acclaim and acres of flak for his Power of Nightmares series which suggested that the threat to the West from a network of Arab terrorist cells is nothing short of a…