Documentary Recommendations - The topic of the documentary doesn't matter

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Burden of Dreams is a great documentary about the making of the classic film Fitzcarraldo, which was directed by Werner Herzog and starred the madman Klaus Kinski. It was filmed deep in the Peruvian jungle and involved the ordeal of dragging a big steamship over a big hill, as well as working with local tribes (Who were so shocked and appalled at Kinski's constant angry ranting they offered to kill him for Herzog)

Mein Liebster Fiend/My Best Fiend is specifically about the relationship between Herzog and Kinski, which was full of friction and arguments, and yet they worked together numerous times and produced some legendary cinema.

Hearts of Darkness, about the making of Apocalypse Now, was recommended earlier in the thread and that also came to my mind. It's really great
 
The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez

If you want to watch a documentary that’s similar to Dear Zachary in terms of how screwed up justice system can be, I recommend watching this documentary. I’m surprised not many people realize just how corrupt CPS is.
 
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Let's start with a couple of prison documentaries.

My favourite is probably Inside Death Row With Sir Trevor McDonald.
It features many long interviews with several death row and lifer inmates in Indiana State Prison. The documentary spends lots of time letting you get to know and humanizing the inmates, only to then hit you with the truth of what exactly they did to get the death penalty to begin with. Trevor McDonald openly says he is against the death penalty, but ends up telling one of the inmates directly to his face that after hearing what he did he understands why people are for it. It has a sequel, Death Row 2018, which follows up with some of the prisoners 5 years later as well as features some new inmates, including a recently caught serial killer.

Another one I love is The Condemned, a BBC documentary about Penal Colony 56, better known as Black Eagle (not to be confused with Black Dolphin), one of the most infamous prisons in Russia, a former gulag that was recently closed due to its lack of basic things like toilets.
The documentary features no commentary. The only people you hear speaking are the prison guards, prisoners, and the family members of the prisoners. They tell the stories of how they got arrested, what they do to pass the time in prison, their opinions on the abolishment of the death penalty, and what it's like to drive 7+ hours through desolate frozen wastelands just to see your son for an hour once per year. It's haunting.

And to finish off, the most disturbing documentary I have ever seen. 被曝治療８３日間の記録～東海村臨界事故～ (83 Day Record of Treating Radiation Sickness -The Tokaimura Criticality Accident-), by NHK.
www.dailymotion.com

東海村臨界事故 — Tokaimura Nuclear Accident (with English subtitles) - 動画 Dailymotion

1999年の東海村臨界事故で大量被ばくした大内久さんの治療に関するドキュメンタリー番組です。
www.dailymotion.com www.dailymotion.com
It details the slow and absolutely horrific death of Oouchi Hisashi, the most radioactive man ever, over 83 days of pure hellish torture as doctors try in vain to keep him alive and his children try to cheer him on and tell him to hang in there. Since 2010 it has become difficult to find Japanese sources on the event online due to privacy complaints having been issued and sources including the names of the victims getting scrubbed from the Japanese-speaking Internet. The documentary contains the only publicized images of the victim; any other images purporting to be of the victim are actually from an American burn ward.
 
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millais dijo:
Empire of Dust - Chinese engineers struggle to complete an ambitious road construction project in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to problems with an incompetent and unmotivated Congolese workforce and local contractors.
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Just finished watching it. Any time there's no narrator is an instant plus for me. I think it manages to tell things very well. Definitely reminds me of my very limited interactions with businesses from china.
 
I Like Killing Flies
Entertaining and wholesome doc about a dirt poor Jewish family in NYC running a tiny restaurant serving amazing comfort food. Centered around the patriarch Kenny Shopsin, made famous by his antics here.

A classic.

The Corner (Pseudo Documentary)
Precursor to The Wire, the greatest TV show of all time. A fake documentary about the Baltimore Hood. Fun watch if you've seen the The Wire due to a lot of the same actors but playing completely different characters. Prop Joe selling sneakers getting clowned on, Lt. Daniels a junky, etc.

Extremely anti-woke like The Wire, couldn't be made today.
 
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Vernon, Florida -

Errol Morris goes to a small town in Florida because he hears that people have been amputating their own limbs to receive disability benefits. Finds a treasure trove of pre-meth Florida men.


It turns out that while not unfounded, the self amputation stuff is a bit overblown. There were a few cases where it happened, but he can't really find anyone to talk about it, but winds up making lemonade out of the lemons anyway.

Into the Deep

I think this was on Netflix, and a lot of people didn't like it, which is understandable, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. A journalist goes to interview a BULLSHIT ARTIST who has built a submarine as a precursor/command center for his privately owned sea-based space launch platform (also he is competing with a splinter group who are competing with him to fund their own sea-based space launch platform). But then she gets murdered by the guy. Then he goes to prison. Now I consider this a happy ending, as everyone involved is eminently unlikeable, and I mean EVERYONE. So I quite enjoyed it. I guess maybe if you have some empathy in your soul, you may not. But it has a good documentary rhythm and there's a lot of interesting stuff that unfolds as the documentary is getting made, that has to get folded into the story.
 

Back on my shit to shill this once more. 3 episodes, 50ish mins each I think? Showcases an actual doctor, actually likeable host going through a sleep study with 30 other people, fixing their issues with everything from a biting brace to "literally sleep on the side, bro". Like, 14 days to fix decades of sleeping issues. Even the obese suicidal comedian manages to keep mind clutter out of the bedroom. Genuinely baffled me how easily we can fix bad sleep by just putting in a bit of effort, but so few people do it.

That aside, genuinely just entertaining to watch.
 
I love this documentary about Route 66 shot just before it was officially abandoned.
I am impressed that nearly all the music is from performers he met along the way.
I am also impressed at how well spoken nearly everyone is.
It is a snapshot of a country pregnant with it's own destruction.

If you like The Rolling Stones you should check out this NSFW documentary Cocksucker Blues.

The Stones were on tour in the mid 70's and had the bright idea to leave a bunch of cameras around and let random people film what happens on the road.
Once the film was finished they realized that had been a horrible idea and forbid the film from getting released.

There is plenty of sex, drugs and Rock 'n Roll.
 
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Watched this documentary after seeing ads for the new film Song Sung Blue with Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman. The doc and film are about a couple who are a Neil Diamond cover act and their ups and downs. Very real, interesting look into the lives of a couple without much, trying to make it big.
 
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TraumaZone 1985-1999 by Adam Curtis is truly something else, its composed of mostly unedited footage of the soviet union collapse and the post soviet economic crisis with on screen text narration, i have no idea how it aired in the BBC or any mainstream network for that matter cause it has uncensored sexual penetration and gore and so is technically a shockumentary, and its amazing.
I don't wanna spoil the stuff on it but its completely batshit insane, a crazy rollercoaster rides that alternates between hilarious absurdity and extreme deppressing content from clip to clip.
 
The Act of Killing is one of my personal favorites. You kinda have to watch it for yourself since words don't do it justice, but the basic gist is that a documentary crew is interviewing a bunch of old paramilitary guys who participated in the communist purges in Indonesia. From there it follows one particular militant and others as they decide to reenact their murders in the style of certain film genres, with one militant (Anwar Congo) actually coming to an epiphany about what he did during that period.

 
AFAB dijo:
The Act of Killing is one of my personal favorites. You kinda have to watch it for yourself since words don't do it justice, but the basic gist is that a documentary crew is interviewing a bunch of old paramilitary guys who participated in the communist purges in Indonesia. From there it follows one particular militant and others as they decide to reenact their murders in the style of certain film genres, with one militant (Anwar Congo) actually coming to an epiphany about what he did during that period.

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Holy shit this is fuckin wild. I'm Indonesian and I never heard of this movie before. For those of you who don't know, the president at the era, Soeharto, is a dictator who likes to extend his term of precidency by killing a bunch of journalists that exposed him. What I didn't know is that after the "Lubang Buaya" incident in which the Indonesian Communist Party kidnapped a bunch of generals, tortured and stuffed them in a hole to die. He launched an operation to kill his opposition by accusing them to be a commie. He really is an opportunist prick and some boomer still call him a hero and even reminisce the time when he was their president.

I didn't expect to found out about this movie through Kiwi Farms of all place. This was never mentioned in my history book. What an eye opener.
 

So damn good. I have heard it has made even the most stoic person sob.

I found out some interesting stuff about Shari both thats in the documentary and on the net:
I mentioned she and her husband wrote an episode of the original Star Trek. She also got her start on Captain Kangaroo.

There's an infamous video of her performing with a drunk Lamb Chop (yes really) at some award show in the 1970's. The funny part is that LC is perpetually 6 years old and never ages. And yes, the way she is able to perform as a drunk puppet without moving her mouth is pretty cool to see.

When people recognized her at a restaurant, she would purposely order lamb to freak them out. (As a joke)

She and LC, along with Fred Rogers, spoke at congress to save PBS and children's educational programming. I wish she had worked with Shelley Duvall because they would have been perfect.

Her final television project was Charlie Horse's Music Pizza. It was filmed in Vancouver as opposed to Hollywood.

She received her terminal uterine cancer diagnosis in 1998, after having a hysterectomy to stop it spreading. She had previously survived breast cancer in the 1980's.

Knowing she only had six weeks left, she recorded Hello Goodbye, a farewell music video tribute and a final episode of the series, insisting she had to do it for the children.

She treated her cancer with chemotherapy but contracted punemonia and died. Her husband refused to visit her at the hospital and preferred to watch sports on TV.

Mallory Lewis, her daughter, has taken over performing with Lamb Chop. She does resemble her mom. Originally she did not want to take on her mom's role, but family and friends, including CHMP co-star Dom DeLuise, convinced her to do it. (She received letters from all over after Shari's death, asking if Lamb Chop had died with her. She knew she couldn't do that and let people down, so in 2000 she began working with LC.)
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