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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?

#421
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stalingrad" is a horrifying documentary about the battle. It's recounted by the German and Soviet soldiers who took part. The takeaway was that given the right incentives human mass depravity is bottomless. Edit: https://youtu.be/VnJJQxZ0hu8

This link is to "Practical Deep Learning for Coders 2022".

Black humour at it's finest?

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

#422
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.

I don't mind a bit of Adam Curtis, largely for the soundtracks. Still hugely enjoy this though https://www.tomscott.com/infinite-adam-curtis/

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

#423
_Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control_, I believe by Errol Morris. Four totally unrelated subjects, but Morris finds connections and echoes between them. Delightful, fascinating.

_When We Were Kings_, about the Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and Foreman in the 1970s, really awesome. Young Ali is so quick witted, warm, and charismatic.

And the recent doc about Apollo 11, for its 50th anniversary, was breathtaking.

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

#424
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.

I like it but frankly don't get a solid 'revelation' out of it. Hypnotic, that's about it (for me).

I thought how individualism is just something that was marketed uppon us was pretty powerful. Also how medical science became more about grouping symptoms than understanding where those things originated from.

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

#427

I saw a 2-hour-long documentary about the Standard Model of particle physics, sometime around 1980. It was basically a presentation, by one man, with graphics (which were pretty good for back then). The presentation was sober, and completely free of gee-whizz hype. I think it must have been BBC. As I remember it, it was a really good presentation of the discoveries that had recently been made in particle physics. I'v…

Thr sounds pretty good
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