I present here the best general interest true films I've found. I define true films as documentaries, educational films, instructional how-to's, and what the British call factuals - a non-fiction visual account.
As dogged as I have been in tracking down great true films, I have seen only a fraction of the estimated 40,000 that have been made. So I am ready for more. However I will only list true films and documentaries that are available as VHS tape or DVDs at consumer prices. In other words, films that are easy for most people to see upon request. I won't include films that are only shown in theaters, or available via high-priced rentals, or simply out of print.
If you know of an available amazing true film that I've missed please recommend it to me.
What happens after buildings are built? Why do some buildings get better over time and others get demolished? Stewart Brand says architecture is a prediction, and all predictions are wrong, so the more monumental the architecture, the more wrong the building is. The buildings that thrive are those that can adapt to how people actually use them. The worst buildings for inhabitants are usually statement architecture -- buildings that look like art. The best buildings are often non-descript, and pick up character as they evolve. In other words they grow into art.
Brand's classic book How Buildings Learn and this BBC video series provide example after example of how great spaces are ones that are adaptable. The BBC series is divided into six sections which feature six strategies for designing or redesigning buildings that serve people over time. They travel throughout Britian and the US seeking examples of buildings that learn and ones that don't. This true film will give you confidence and perspective in altering your own current space, and will transform your mind if you have the opportunity to design a new building, small or large.
-- KK
How Buildings Learn
Stewart Brand, James Runcie
1997, 180 min.
6-part BBC series
Once upon a time unions were central to the American economy and culture. No more. What they once were and what they've now become can be seen in this detailed documentary about an 8-month-long strike at the Spam meat packing plant in Minnesota. It feels like the last gasp of former heavy weight. As the local union fights in total desperation, first against management, then their own national union, and eventually against each other, the unexpected drama kept me watching.
-- KK
American Dream
Barbara Kopple
1991, 102 min.
DVD, $10
It's hard to be neutral about a war, any war, or even war itself. This is the most neutral inspection of the Iraq war to date. Perhaps because of this neutral perspective, the effect of this documentary is all the more shocking and maddening. It sets aside the controversial reasons for going to war in Iraq and focuses on what happened once it began. This is no Michael Moore prankster rant. It is a non-partisan recounting of the facts by the principle players themselves of what happened. We are talking generals, secretaries of state, ambassadors. Mincing no words they tell how the Iraq war became an ill-planned descent into a generational disaster. One interview after another with key administration and military leaders confirm the colossal scale of this misadventure. The degree of self-admitted incompetence, waste, and hubris among the war planners is simply mind-boggling. Some claim this three trillion dollar debacle is the worst planned war in the last 100 years. Sadly, as this film makes very clear, there is no happy ending in sight.
-- KK
No End In Sight
Charles Ferguson
2007, 102 min.
DVD, $17
The focus of this documentary is a four-year-old girl who likes to paint large pictures. Attractive colorful paintings. She is discovered by a local artist and art dealer. He stages a show of her work. Now her story makes the national news and she picks up a number of wealthy patrons who want to buy her paintings at $20,000 a piece. She is only 4!
A hundred questions burst forth. Would experts be able to discern whether these canvases were paintings made by an admired artist or just pictures that "your kid could paint"? Does it matter who paints a painting? Would it matter if her father gave her suggestions? Is it all a scam? Is modern art itself a scam?
After planting a hidden camera in her painting room, PBS's Charlie Rose decided the young artist must have had help, but time-coded film made by her parents suggested she did not. The documentary weaves all the bigger questions of what is modern art anyway, with the more intimate question of whether the little girl has a special talent, and if she does, what should her parents do or not do about it? The girl is so young she can't articulate what she does, nor why, and in fact is bored by the whole subject.
For what it's worth I came away with the notion that this girl does have special talents -- not in seeing or painting abilities, which I think she shares with most open-eyed children -- but in her confidence and willingness to follow through and keep painting. A good doc for artists and art students.
-- KK
My Kid Could Paint That
Amir Bar-Lev
2007, 83 min.
DVD, $20
A mixed family of dwarfs and tall folks stars in this reality program. The father and mother are both dwarfs, their daughter and one young son are not. They also have teenage twins; one is a dwarf and one is not. Two layers keep this multi-year show captivating. One is the how-do-they-manage curiosity about being a little person in a big world. How do they drive, work, date? The other attraction is the drama of the usual parent-child, husband-wife, and sibling relationships, but all raised up a notch by the stress of dwarfism. Emergency surgery, near-death accidents, and even arrests by cops keep it lively. The father is an ambitious, creative, hard-driving, bigger-than-life little guy, and his family struggles to keep up, or get out of his way. In the third season the father was cited, but acquitted after trial, for a DUI charge. Even his own father (normal height) can find his dwarf son's bossiness exacerbating. At one point grandfather tells the crew, "I've had it up to here with these dwarfs." It's that kind of candid honesty that is both entertaining and educationally compelling. Their dwarfism is neither romanticized nor overtly exploited, but is portrayed realistically. The series also benefits from its uncommon longitudinal stretch of 3 years, so you can watch characters mature and evolve. Because this unusual family is fundamentally likable, yet keeps overcoming obstacles both self-made and circumstantial, it's a joy to watch them march forward.
-- KK
Little People, Big World
(Season 1)
The Learning Channel
2006, 440 minutes
DVD, $20
Part documentary and part how-to. A struggling musician uses his PC to produce his own album and winds up with a stack of 800 CDs in his apartment. Now what? How does he get anyone to buy them? He turns his camcorder on, and records his journey into music promotion and small time marketing. He tries flyers, bar gigs, street corner handouts. Eventually he goes to a seminar for indie music promotion, and for the rest of the documentary he records the results of following what he learns at the seminar. It's a good crash course in Music Marketing 101, perfect for any indie band. You really should hear what works. I think there are enough general purpose lessons that any artist should watch this and learn. There's no formula. The film's seminar leader can't repeat too many times: it's all about tapping into the inner authentic you, doing things in a way that is appropriate for you and your creations. Following this injunction, the musician-filmmaker does sell out his 800 CDs by the end of the film. Now he has a stack of 800 DVDs of this indie film to unload, but he knows how to do that. For example, he got one to me.
Whole is a long stare at a disturbing psychological abnormality wherein the afflicted feel an extreme need to amputate a perfectly good, working limb. From childhood the subjects in this film "knew" this limb was not really part of them, and removing its alien presence becomes an obsession. Some can map the alien border on the limb down to a millimeter. Most will get the part amputated one way or the other, or die doing it, and some do die. Those who succeed in amputation (often by deceit) feel happy and whole for the first time in their lives. It's a hard film to forget. There's no gore, but a lot of exposed psyches. This is far from a perfect documentary -- too many questions are left unanswered -- but it is powerful in its simplicity. It does what I always hope a documentary will do: move you to a place you have never been before. The place in this case is the idea that amputating a good limb is a good idea. It moved me several inches closer in understanding this bizarre compulsion.
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.
