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Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#71

* Icarus. It's a wild ride that just keeps getting wilder and would be spoiled by my attempt at an explanation. I suggest just watching it. * Winter on Fire. Documentary about the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in 2013-2014.

+1 on Icarus, the documentary that itself became part of history

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#72
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga by Dmitry Vasyukov. The English narration was written/voiced by Werner Herzog and matches the tone of the documentary perfectly. If you’ve ever had any interest in homesteading, or just getting away from it all, I would highly recommend it.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#73

I haven’t checked the previous links but just going off the top of my head: - Jiro Dreams of Sushi, I watch it every now and then to inspire me about my craft. I want to go to Japan to try his food in the future. - Icarus, I suggest you go into this blind without knowing what it’s about. - The Barkley Marathons, this sort of got me into running. Edit: I just went into the older discussions about how there’s a dark si…

Icarus and Barkley Marathons are great

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#74
Honeyland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeyland

There's this Godard quote which sums this one up for me: "All great fiction films tend towards documentary, just as all great documentaries tend towards fiction." (I think the director mentioned it in an interview too?)

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#77
I recommend Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control by Errol Morris. It’s a series of interviews with passionate geniuses in various areas, including a naked mole rat scientist.

I watched it in the 90s and gave me awareness that there’s people who have very deep interest in a subject and achieve fulfillment in studying and working in an area.

Morris directed many other good documentaries- Thin Blue Line, Fog of War- but I think FCOoC is his best.

Also Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (there’s a documentary and a fictional portrays) is interesting to show how someone can work on a seemingly pointless and impossible task. This was helpful in programming as frequently areas of interest seem so confusing to people outside my mind.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#78
"Dig!", the documentary about a band named the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Introduced me to psychedelic rock, and lead singer Anton Newcombe is the prototypical mad musical genius. I got the impression that he and his lead guitarist Matt Hollywood had kind of a modern-day Mozart/Salieri relationship, and tambourinist Joel Gion adds such a funny dynamic to the group.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#79

This is the best WWII documentary I've ever seen, and it's available free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5O9I5AUXI What makes it great is (a) that the filmmaker tried only to use source material, including audio narration, created during WWII, and (b) that the film sources were shot in color (rare for the time).

There's a YouTube channel called "CHRONOS-MEDIA History" that has a lot of archival footage from that era. A couple ones I found interesting were a clip with American and German officers casually working together to coordinate a German surrender/withdrawal at the end of the war, and a German propaganda piece from before the war (?) where the skyline of the village they're in matches 1:1 with one of my vacation photos.
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