As an avid skateboarder, "Dogtown and the Z-boys" is a classic, and another interesting skateboard doc is "Stoked- The Rise and Fall of Gator Rogowski"
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Ciudad de méxico, MX
the cove.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove
i'm sorry, i'm such a political bitch,
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
great trhead!
Last edited by Analog (May 21, 2010 8:17 pm)
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London, UK
the mist toggles wrote:
a very inspiring documentary is the one about the BBC's radiophonic workshop...(reminds me to upload an old lsdj track)
EDIT: found the name, it's "The Alchemists of Sound "
Yeah i watched this a while ago. it was awesome. i heard a bbc radio 4 (don't ask why lawl) documentary on Delia Derbyshire and her works that had been recovered and archived after she passed away. amazing stuff she created with early 'wobulators' (because synths hadn't been invented at that time) and reel-to-reel machines. she was pro at syncing tape recorders by ear.
but yeh for all you compufags, a documentary i saw about the development of linux was pretty awesome.
it's called "Revolution OS".
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid … 2627775409
if you've got 85 minutes to spare and like free software, then this is for you.
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copenhagen, denmark
Spellbound, Hoop Dreams, Nanook of the North, We Live in Public, The Atomic Café, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, The Decline of Western Civilization, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, In the Realms of the Unreal, Just Another Missing Kid, Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback, The Most Hated Family in America (with Louis Theroux), Murderball, Murder on a Sunday Morning.
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CHIPTUNE
Adam Curtis seems to do interesting stuff, although just started to download them (from Archive.org). Lots of psychology & politics -- fear, individualism, rationalism, PR -- and doesn't seem to be the usual scandalous shit. It's on archive.org, I suppose, because he uses BBC's archives extensively, which makes it impossible to clear all the rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOq1vQIt4UU
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query … 0Curtis%22
Last edited by goto80 (Jun 4, 2010 8:14 am)
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Grizzly Man is maybe one of the best movies of all time, let alone documentaries.
Crumb and American Movie already mentioned are great films and I actually found them very inspiring.
Another amazing documentary is called Century of the Self, about the history of the application of Freudian psychology to advertising, and further to corporate and government control of populations.
I also highly recommend Latcho Drom, a movie basically told entirely through music performances of traditional music in various cultures.
For more esoteric subjects, I really liked the Mindscape of Alan Moore, which got into a lot of his ideas about language, culture and magic. Also in that vein is For One Week Only, a short documentary about the films and psychological theories of Alajandro Jodorowsky.
I just watched Bound to Lose, a documentary about the Holy Modal Rounders which is great but maybe not for people who aren't fans or possible fans.
If you're into movies in general, Hearts of Darkness, the documentary of the making of Apocalypse Now and Burden of Dreams, the documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo, and Lost in La Mancha, the documentary about attempting to make Don Quixote are all very good.
Also, the Some Kind of Monster movie about Metallica is funny, painful and sad, if you're up for that.
These are the documentaries which have all changed my life in some way. Hope I didn't ramble too much.
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philly
If anyone here has HBO, check out Gasland. It premiers tonight at 9PM EST. A friend of mine did some filming and editing for it. It's about natural gas drilling and a process called 'fracking' which has left some communities devastated. It's a sad realization for what's often thought of as a cleaner and safer fuel source.
When filmmaker Josh Fox discovers that Natural Gas drilling is coming to his area—the Catskillls/Poconos region of Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, he sets off on a 24 state journey to uncover the deep consequences of the United States’ natural gas drilling boom. What he uncovers is truly shocking—water that can be lit on fire right out of the sink, chronically ill residents of drilling areas from disparate locations in the US all with the same mysterious symptoms, huge pools of toxic waste that kill cattle and vegetation well blowouts and huge gas explosions consistently covered up by state and federal regulatory agencies. These are just a few of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND.
...
BACKGROUND
A major upswing in production took place in 2005 when the Congress and the Bush Administration exempted the industry and its new process of drilling, “Hydraulic Fracturing” from the Safe Drinking Water Act and many of our primary environmental protection laws. While the PR campaign for the Natural Gas industry promotes its product as “clean burning” it hides the fact that the new form of drilling, pioneered by Halliburton, is incredibly harmful to our environment and threatens to permanently contaminate a huge amount of the country’s water supply, create drastic air pollution conditions, and despoil huge areas. Despite overwhelming evidence of contamination, mismanagement and corruption, the general public remains unaware of the extreme effect the drilling may have on their lives.
Oh, and what the trailer doesn't really give away? There are proposed drilling sites that threaten potentially millions of people's drinking water. Not just isolated communities, but other little places you may have heard of like New York City and Philadelphia... 
http://www.alternet.org/water/129308/new_york's_drinking_water_threatened_by_drilling_plans/
http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-y … threat-722
Last edited by bucky (Jun 22, 2010 12:17 am)
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Washington DC
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the documentary about the insane shit that went on during the filming of Apocalypse Now is one of the most wicked film making docs of all time. If you ever wanted to make a big ole Hollywood movie, watch that and you'll change your mind real quick.