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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?

#521

Post by bmitc »

Anything by Adam Curtis. Is he right? Is he wrong? What is going on? He makes some strong arguments at a system-level and of an interdisciplinary nature that really make you think. Despite how people like to write him off, he is likely not too far off the mark most of the time.

Samsara and its kin are engrossing, if not quite stressful. They show you how insane humanity is in rather raw form.

The BBC's Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and Life series are masterclasses in ecological storytelling.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is about as subversively hilarious as you can get.

I'll need to look it up later, but there's a really good documentary about the people who still hand-make Steinway pianos in New York.

I think there's a series called The Planets (?) that covered a lot of the various probes that were sent out.

There's some documentary about the various moon programs, covering Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc. It was a series. I can't remember the name or immediately find the one I am thinking of.

There's been a lot of fascinating animal documentaries I have lost track of.

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

#522

Post by rkuska »

My favourite one is John Berger / Ways of Seeing. It's available on youtube [0]. If you enjoy photography you might enjoying this documentary as well. I think it's very much related to the recent topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794757

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk

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

#523

Post by ZeroGravitas »

bloqs wrote: post #121
orasis wrote: 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.

https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg obligatry response whenever anything by Adam Curtis is offered up. Sorry, I'm largely of the opinion that it is (well made) boomer-aimed catastrophe porn designed to give the viewer a smug sense of having "esoteric knowledge".

https://arquivo.pt/wayback/20151114022454/http://laurenceten...

Is a much more worrying link that should be obligatory when he comes up.

Curtis is heavily linked to the "Living Marxism" crowd, who started as the journal of the "Revolutionary Communist Party" in the UK which mutated into "Spiked" the extreme right-wing libertarian clique that pop up everywhere in the UK press. And appear to be some kind of personality cult around a guy who co-wites some of the documentaries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Furedi

He appears to be some weird Tony Blair/Jordan Peterson hybrid.

> George Monbiot has elicited an admission from the managing editor of Spiked Online that they have received $300,000 in funding from the Charles Koch Foundation,[11] a fact not declared on their website.[12] He has accused Furedi of overseeing extreme right-wing libertarian campaigns "against gun control, against banning tobacco advertising and child pornography, and in favour of global warming, human cloning and freedom for corporations". Monbiot also accuses him of leading entryism of ex-RCPers into "key roles in the formal infrastructure of public communication used by the science and medical establishment", to pursue an agenda in favour of genetic engineering.[13] The journalist Nick Cohen has described the RCP as a "weird cult"[14] whose Leninist discipline, disruptive behaviour and selfish publicity-seeking have remained unaltered during the various tactical shifts in the face it presents to the wider world.[15]

Someone should make a documentary about them, how do you go politically from actively celebrating the deaths of British soldiers to pushing for Brexit? There's got to be some amazing back story in that, and there's loads of "No way" moments.

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

#524

Post by WickyNilliams »

leobg wrote: post #359
WickyNilliams wrote: post #324

The greatest documentary to me is not a film but a series - The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. It charts the cultural and technological milestones that brought humanity to where it is today. Well, the 1970s rather than today, since it is quite old. However don't let that put you off! It is a BBC documentary of the highest calibre. David Attenborough commissioned its production. Bronowski is an incredible, if unusu…

That moment when he stands in front of the remnants of Auschwitz, kneels down, reaches into the sludge of ashes and says, “We need to touch people”. It would be an Ask HN in and of itself to ask: What broadcaster today, YouTube or otherwise, comes even close in education, trust in the intelligence of their audience, and sheer balls?

There's an accompanying booklet which comes with the DVD box set that explains how in most other scenes he does many takes, but for that scene in Auschwitz he does it in one, unscripted. Truly a powerful moment.

I'd love to see such a thread! I personally can't think of anyone comparable to Bronowski given those criteria. But even someome in the same ballpark would be interesting to hear about

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

#525

Post by WickyNilliams »

arethuza wrote: post #378
WickyNilliams wrote: post #324

The greatest documentary to me is not a film but a series - The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. It charts the cultural and technological milestones that brought humanity to where it is today. Well, the 1970s rather than today, since it is quite old. However don't let that put you off! It is a BBC documentary of the highest calibre. David Attenborough commissioned its production. Bronowski is an incredible, if unusu…

I watched The Ascent of Man when it first came out - I was probably 8 or 9 at the time. That scene at Auschwitz where he walks into the pond is burned into my memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjI3BXKBgY Edit: It was many years later that I noticed the reference to Leo Szilard, reminding me of this quote from The Making of the Atomic Bomb : "In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from t…

I'm not sure how I originally came across it, it was certainly well before my time. But I'm glad I did. It is incredibly dense - especially when compared to today's TV shows - but perfectly understandable. Bronowski's passion for the subject matter is evident at all times, and his humanist take on science lends an endearing quality.

That's a beautiful excerpt, thanks for sharing.

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

#526

Post by vojd »

I really like Werner Herzog. Too many good ones to list them all here. He brings in a lot of social implications of whatever subject he covers. A lot of randomness as well which is often quite funny. E.g. Encounters at the end of the world or Lo and behold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_and_Behold,_Reveries_of_the...

Petter Mettler is a great film maker imo, e.g. Picture of Light, due to the poetic and philosophical elements mixed in with actual documentation. Visually very appealing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_of_Light

Another favorite film maker is Stanislav Mucha who covers a lot of European topics and in particular German. Very ironic and partly sarcastic. Favs are Absolute Warhola, a film about Andy Warhol's extended family in Slovakia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolut_Warhola

Also, The Truth about Dracula is very interesting and funny: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1621024/

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

#527

Post by atchoo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #448
joshlemer wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there a good example of this style?

There is this satire of Netflix documentaries that sums the style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BUrNe3Vhtk

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

#529

Post by denton-scratch »

denton-scratch wrote: post #266

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…

I have a feeling that the programme may have been written and presented by Nigel Calder, former editor of the New Scientist. I'm having no luck tracking down the documentary itself, though. The title might be "The Key To The Universe", for which I've seen a couple of reviews that are consistent with the show I remember.

He seems to have published a book of the same title. The show was screened in 1977, possibly twice, and the show is indeed two hours long. I have a review here that says: "Level: popular science, but viewers without some knowledge of high-energy physics would be handicapped". That sounds about right (when I saw it, my knowledge of high-energy physics was roughly zero, and it's not much better now).

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

#530

Post by leobg »

WickyNilliams wrote: post #524
leobg wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That moment when he stands in front of the remnants of Auschwitz, kneels down, reaches into the sludge of ashes and says, “We need to touch people”. It would be an Ask HN in and of itself to ask: What broadcaster today, YouTube or otherwise, comes even close in education, trust in the intelligence of their audience, and sheer balls?

There's an accompanying booklet which comes with the DVD box set that explains how in most other scenes he does many takes, but for that scene in Auschwitz he does it in one, unscripted. Truly a powerful moment. I'd love to see such a thread! I personally can't think of anyone comparable to Bronowski given those criteria. But even someome in the same ballpark would be interesting to hear about

Ok then. Tuesday at ten it is.
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