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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?

#431
post #63

“The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis. https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s It goes through each decade of the 1900s and explains how Freud’s psychology and the new field of marketing completely reshaped society. For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society. This film is probably best if you’re age 40+ and actually remember some of the events.

Adam Curtis is great.

I recommend even looking into his older material, such as The Mayfair Set (won a BAFTA Award in 2000). Another older documentary of his that I recommend is The Way of All Flesh (1997) which is a rather remarkable story on HeLa cells with a depth I hadn't encountered before. To give you an idea of the subject matter, here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"HeLa cell contamination has become a pervasive worldwide problem – affecting even the laboratories of many notable physicians, scientists, and researchers, including Jonas Salk. The HeLa contamination problem also contributed to Cold War tensions. The USSR and the USA had begun to cooperate in the war on cancer launched by President Richard Nixon, only to find that the exchanged cells were contaminated by HeLa."

Some of his material is viewabled on BBC iPlayer if you have access to that. His older material can be challenging to find. You can download his complete collection via torrents.

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

#432
post #63

“The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis. https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s It goes through each decade of the 1900s and explains how Freud’s psychology and the new field of marketing completely reshaped society. For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society. This film is probably best if you’re age 40+ and actually remember some of the events.

+1 for any Curtis documentary. They aren't something you necessarily need to agree with to enjoy. Most of them involve him attempting to stitch together an over-arching narrative for events of our time.

Same here. I love watching them. They are very entertaining but don't care if his theme is sensible or not.

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

#433
Lots of great suggestions already. Off the top of my head, one not mentioned so far is Ocean Warriors (2016) about Sea Shepherd chasing an illegal fishing vessel across international waters. It's quite gripping as a documentary, but also does a good job of highlighting the Tragedy of the Commons that is international fishing and the failure of governments to prevent it.

https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Warriors-Season-1/dp/B09238BH7L

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

#434
post #167

My favorites on Netflix this year were: Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 https://www.netflix.com/title/81280924 Challenger Final Flight https://www.netflix.com/title/81012137 FYRE (Festival) https://www.netflix.com/title/81035279 From a long time ago, and I don't even know if you can still watch it anywhere, but that FogBugz Aardvark'd documentary was really fun to watch too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_W…

FYRE was epic. Worth it just for the schadenfreude of watching influencers suffering. :-)

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

#435

Fires of Kuwait - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tUzkF_Dp8M A first hand account of the firefighters who were sent to cap the oil wells that Saddam set on fire during his attempt to invade the country. Senna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aPLOQeSHrM The story of famed F1 driver. I'm not a racing fan but this one was amazing. Apollo 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc Completely new footage was found of…

I would also recommend Senna. I don't care for F1 or racing at all but I couldn't stop watching because it was so gripping.

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

#436

The World at War - BBC documentary series about WWII. Shows humanity simultaneously at it's best and worst. The Vietnam War - Ken Burns documentary series. Very balanced and sobering take on the Vietnam war, events leading to the Vietnam war, and unrest in the US during that period. The Fog of War - Errol Morris doc about Robert McNamara. The Salt of the Earth - Doc about photographer Sebastião Salgado Alone in the W…

Similar to "Alone in the Wilderness" I recommend a recent doco series "The Last Alaskans". Unlike most recent reality/doco style shows it's not the usual melodramatic, exaggerated rubbish. The characters speak for themselves and its allowed to "breathe". The TV series is inspired by the book "The Final Frontiersman" by Heimo Korth. Heimo is one of the characters in the series.

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

#437
Some of my favourites that I did not find mentioned here, the topics might not be that interesting but I appreciate these documentaries for the very "real" human interactions in them. (I am not sure how to word it better:

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401179/ Following a japanase salaryman throughout his every day life

Empire of Dust - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/ Chinese company is building railways in Democratic Republic Kongo, documentary follows the chinese head of Logistics and his "partner" who is an congolese that speaks fluent mandarin

I'm new here - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7573428/?ref_=nm_knf_t4 African buisnessmen trying to make buisness in china

Invisible - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468496/ Very personal and intimate documentary of the everyday life of a group of heroin users in Sofia Bulgaria

Pakistan's Hidden Shame - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4173938/ From IMDB: A look into the sexual abuse suffered by the children living in the North-Western city of Peshawar in Pakistan.

A tough watch, comparably tough to An Act of Killing. I cried

Also I can recommended everything by Louis Theroux and to some degree Channel 5, if that qualifies as a documentary. I'd say that kind of content are more reportages, if I were to make a distinction

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

#438

The Death of Yugoslavia (1996) [1] [2]. Won the BAFTA and Peabody awards that year. It's a BBC documentary in six episodes about the conflict that caused the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Balkans. It stands out among many documentaries for being a truly dispassionate moment-to-moment record of events. No sensationalism, no grand-standing, just the facts. If you're tired of the Netflix style of documen…

I really can't stand the new Netflix style documentaries as you call them. Like, there's no coherent sentence or point being made by the speaker when it's literally not even full sentences just parts of sentences being strung together. It's really disorienting and obviously any nuance that the original interviewee was trying to get across is completely lost when every word they say is taken out of context into whatev…

I suppose it's all because of the topic or the content itself. They try to use any technique to keep the view and to make it longer. They sometimes build miniseries from something that could be an hour max.

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

#439
Icarus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film)

It's a really odd documentary because it is two films in one. It starts off as the filmmakers attempt to dope himself as a cyclist and document that. As part of that process he seeks out coaching on how to dope better, meets some Russian coaches who tell him about their experiences doping Russian athletes for the winter Olympics. That in tern leads to a documentary about the investigation into that doping.

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