Raquel, Staff Writer
Helvetica (2007) // Amazon Video / iTunes / Youtube
I know I’m going to be that girl, but y’all, I love this documentary. More and more people are becoming versed in fonts/typography, and I think this documentary does a great job of letting us look in and see the weird world of conceptual movements in capital-D Design. I’m fascinated by the tensions between modernist and postmodernist thinking, the devolution of idealist modernism into an undemocratic high-consumer style and the ensuing anti-corporate backlash, and how even the look of the words you’re reading can deeply affect how you feel about what you’re reading. It’s a great one to have up in the background, so you can randomly pick up information but not necessarily die of boredom if you aren’t a huge nerd.
I Am Not Your Negro (2016) // Amazon Video / iTunes / Youtube / Google Play
This documentary is effectively a postmortem collaboration between director Raoul Peck and James Baldwin. It’s entirely constructed of Baldwin’s words, mostly from his last, unpublished novel “Remember This House,” a personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. The film is interspersed with some of his other speeches and writings and is so, so powerful. The format is beautifully done, and feels like it could have been written yesterday. I immediately wanted to go back and read everything he has ever written.
The Cruise (1998) // Amazon Video /Vudu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBDjfZX_xMg
I first watched this in a class my first year of art school. The professor wanted us to start learning “how to see”—that is, how to be an active, participatory observer of the world around us. This documentary is a perfect example of this. A very strange, beautiful man, working as a tour guide in new York, takes us around his city and waxes lyrics about the buildings he sees and the nature of living. It’s sweet and lovely and unpretentious, unlike how it sounds.
Room 237 (2013) // Amazon Video / iTunes / Youtube / Google Play
This documentary is WILD, put together around tons of different weirdos and their conspiracy theories about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. I first saw it after a screening of the Shining and was riveted until late into the night. My favorite theory is by the woman who makes intricate maps of the architecture of the hotel, and how the ways it doesn’t make sense add to the sense of the uncanny in the movie. It’s a mind-bender, but some of them are also very silly (see: the woman who found minotaurs everywhere). Watch it, and tell me which is your fave.
Carmen, Staff Writer
4 Little Girls (1997) // Amazon Video
The first time I saw 4 Little Girls, I was 11 years old. Some people would probably say that’s too young to watch a documentary about white supremacist violence during the civil rights movement and the 1963 bombing of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church. My parents felt differently; after all, I was the same age as Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carole Denise when the bomb took their lives. If they were forced to live that unspeakable terrorism, then surely I could bare witness from the safety of the couch in my home. I’ve never thanked my parents for that decision, but I probably should. With our proximity in age, seeing Addie May, Cynthia, Carole Robertson, and Carole Denise taught me that even as a child nothing was to be taken for granted. That to get up every morning and be a black girl in this country was an act of bravery. Most importantly, it taught me that as a black community, we keep going further. We don’t give up. My black girlhood was and is valuable- because their black girlhood was stolen from them. Those are lessons I still carry with me.
I Am Not Your Negro (2016) // Amazon
I know Raquel already mentioned I Am Not Your Negro. What can I say? The Autostraddle Team has good taste. On that note, I also second Heather’s recommendation of The 13th and Nora’s recommendation of Black Power Mixtape. Both were on my short list. You guys, I love James Baldwin. I love love love love James Baldwin. In my Autostraddle bio it says that I slept with a copy of his Fire Next Time under my pillow for years, and I mean that sincerely. His essays are the reason I wanted to be a writer. I adore I Am Not Your Negro because it’s not a biography of James Baldwin; it uses his prose to narrate a meditation on the epidemic of racism in America. His words, interpreted by Samuel L. Jackson, caption both turn of the 20th century blackface cartoons and videos of Black Lives Matter rallies. They detail intimate reflections of the night that Martin Luther King died. They illustrate parallels between the mid-century and the dawning of Trump’s America. If you’re interested in studying white supremacy and plotting resistance, this documentary is the first place I would direct you to.
Dior and I (2014) // Netflix
This documentary feels more like an episode of Project Runway, if the designers had one of the most storied fashion houses in the world supporting them. I was a kid who loved dresses, the frillier the better; the kind of teenager who kept stacks of fashion magazines on my bed. Still, I was an adult before I really appreciated the marriage of art and engineering that goes into fashion designing. Dior and I offers a thorough, and fascinating, look into that process as Raf Simons (formerly head designer at Dior, now with Calvin Klein) navigates the potential perils of his first couture collection. It’s the kind of movie that would make a great weekend morning watch, as long as you don’t mind if your mouth hangs agape over your pancakes while Simons’ designs strut down the runway.
Riese, Editor-in-Chief
This is hard because I like so many and will watch pretty much any documentary n the past, I’ve made you lists of documentaries about crime and about economic injustice and about art & artists and about the gays SO where do I even begin right here right now to talk about my favorites of all time!
Grey Gardens (1975) // iTunes, Amazon Video, HBO)
Little Edie’s American flag dance is an integral element of my personal brand. It is difficult to be close with people who haven’t seen Grey Gardens yet.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices(2005) // Hulu)
If you live in America it’s important to know who is really running things. For example: Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is running things and they suck at it.
Roger & Me (Amazon) // 1989
I was 12 or something when I first saw this and it changed my understanding of the world forever and what could be accomplished by investigative journalism that challenges dominate narratives. I live near Flint and didn’t really fully grasp what had happened there and what was happening all around me in Michigan until I saw this.
Paradise Lost (1996) // YouTube, HBO
I was 16 or so, I think, when my best friend and I found this documentary airing on HBO late at night, and quickly became obsessed with the case — it turns out I wasn’t alone, as the first film led to the construction of a trilogy, and changed the course of the case and the fates of the wrongfully accused humans at its center.
Gideon’s Army (2013) // Netflix & Amazon
The story of the public defenders working long hours for low pay to get actual justice for people who can’t afford their own representation. Another eye-opener.
The Central Park Five (2012) // Amazon
Can you tell I have a lot of feelings about people who are incarcerated for crimes they did not commit!
The Celluloid Closet (1996) // Amazon
My introduction to the wonderful world of how gays and lesbians are misrepresented in mainstream film and how our stories have been censored and re-written to make us look bad.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) // Netflix
Another bit of required reading for feminist media critics — there is a group of conservative humans in charge of approving ratings for films and they do not like it when women have orgasms onscreen. They prefer murder, really.
High School (1968) // Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/176401029
This is one of the earliest examples of an “observational documentary,” and I saw it at an indie theater in New York in 1999 and I remember going to Cafe Mozart afterwards and quoting it, something some kid had said about accepting their detention under protest that I’ve yet to get out of my head. The New York Times wrote of it, “As an expression of existential exhaustion and despair, the landscape of High School is as eloquent as any dreamed up by Camus or Satre.”
The UP Series (1964 ->)
This series, which I was turned onto while on a trip to Australia during which we saw 42 UP in the theaters, followed the lives of 14 British children starting in 1964, when they were 7. The filmmaker returns to his group every seven years to make a new film, so this is pretty cool stuff, watching somebody’s entire damn life happen (or not). The trailer up there is for the 2012 edition, 56 UP. But you have to start from the start.
The Queen of Versailles (2012) // Amazon
There’s something about this woman — who wants to build this insane mansion for literally no reason besides that she can afford it — that just fascinated me. But disclaimer I also was one of three fans of the classic reality TV program The Anna Nicole Show. So don’t trust me!
Rachel, Managing Editor
The Price of the Ticket (1989) // California Newsreel
I almost hate to recommend this because it’s difficult to find; it isn’t streaming anywhere that I’m aware of and I have LOOKED, you basically have to buy the DVD but I promise it’s worth it! This is a really beautiful and compelling documentary on the life and work of James Baldwin and has a lot of really amazing people, like Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, sharing commentary on him which is like another layer of getting to see something great. The footage of his funeral always makes me really emotional. I Am Not Your Negro, already recommended widely in this post by others, is also incredible and much easier to find!
Pina (2011) // Amazon Video
I don’t know anything about dance or really follow it at all; I have no idea why this documentary fucking wrecked me but it did. I texted my mom about it after to tell her she needed to watch it and she already had and was like I KNOW RIGHT. I watched it alone in someone else’s apartment with all the lights turned off and wine and a frozen pizza and I feel like that was a good way to do it.
Okay, your turn!
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I really need to rewatch the Celluloid Closet. I saw it in a film class in collage over a decade ago and thought it was really interesting(also remember it being mostly focused on cis-gay men). I wonder now that I am out how I would find it.
QUEEN OF VERSAILLES YES!!! thank you riese for reminding me of my other favorite documentary
The UP series is so amazing. My roommates and I watched it together in grad school, and we would anxiously await each netflix dvd with such anticipation. I had forgotten about Neil until just this moment reading this post, but I about had a full-blown come apart watching his story unfold. Neil broke me, but luckily put me back together again by the end.
I’m surprised that there were not that many lesbian documentaries here. Specially surprised by no one bringing up Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement
I really enjoyed Suited and The Strange History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I think both are HBO documentaries.
In addition to a bunch mentioned here, What Happened Miss Simone wrecked me. So does Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. The new one, Obit, on the obituaries section of NYT was also fantastic.
Yesssssss! What Happened Miss Simone is amazing.
another recent favorite it Tickled, that was bonkers
“Southern Comfort”
I think it’s on Amazon video in the US? If not, do yourself the favor and get the DVD.
It could have been an entirely different story, following Robert, a trans man dying from ovarian cancer in Georgia, but it’s not what you think. It’s warm and full of love and friendship and family and I still think about this movie, over ten years after having seen it at some festival.
Another one would be “Silver Girls” a German documentary about three prostitutes over 60 that I caught at a festival and it was just so beautiful and liberating, watching the women free themselves from societal expectation that I hunted down the DVD after it was finally released.
Oh man, I am still outraged at the cruel irony that he was denied a full hysterectomy (which I think he wanted initially as gender confirmation), then he died of ovarian cancer.
The Lion in Your Living Room for the Cat People-it’s all about CATS and how they came to be living with you. Did we domesticate them or did they choose to be domesticated? What’s up with feral cats? Find out by WATCHING THIS DOCUMENTARY!!!
The documentary about the creators of Wallace and Gromit is good: A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman. I didn’t realize how big of a thing they were/are in Britain, so that was interesting. CHEESE, GROMIT!
“The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” is about this man who decides to take care of wild parrots living near his home in Telegraph Hill, San Francisco. It is really sweet and will probably make you cry. I’ve seen it a few times because my Mom loves birds.
If you want to learn/be horrified about Scientology, there’s “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.” I wasn’t at all interested in learning about this until my Mom wanted to watch it and then I was HOOKED! Scientology is AWFUL! Apparently the book the doc is based on is even better, and then there’s Leah Remini’s doc and book which I haven’t seen or watched but want to.
Has anyone seen Jesus Camp? Because as someone who was indoctrinated at a Christian camp from a very young age, that film left me WRECKED. It’s really, really good though.
Also Tickled by fellow Kiwi David Farrier is brilliant and weird and a total mindfuck. You can’t imagine where it’s going even in the midst of watching it.
Jesus Camp! That film was seriously disturbing but also super fascinating. I read somewhere that the camp has been closed for a while now and somewhere I saw an article that caught up with the kids now that most of them are adults and they’re pretty much as messed up/traumatized as you’d expect.
IMO it’s incredibly immoral to force any kind of belief onto a kid who hasn’t yet developed critical thinking skills, because yeah it does mess you up for ages, even after you leave.
Another fun fact is that one of the directors of Jesus Camp went to my Catholic high school. We weren’t there at the same time, but I’ve always appreciated the connection!
Jesus Camp was so well done. Considering it was about the topic it was, I thought it did an incredible job giving you “a look at the culture” of the religion vs. a biased view showing you “the horrors” of it all and allowed you the space to make opinions on it all for yourself (which obviously is that it’s terrifying). It was nominated for an Oscar I believe…and has a woman director and editor so yay for that!
Just had to come here to reiterate what Erin, Kayla and Heather all said about Shut Up And Sing. Best documentary of all time. I saw it for the first time ten years ago in my first year sociology class, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.
The other documentary I would highly recommend, which I found randomly on Netflix one day a few years ago is Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show, which I suspect many people here are going to be interested in. One caveat is that I wish they’d talk to more women, or queers, or POC, but I still found it really illuminating.
If, in these dark times, you want to see a doc that’s a little lighter (to get your mind off things for an hour), allow me to recommend Bruce Brown’s On Any Sunday. It’s about the world of motorcycles in the 1970s. It covers different racing events (street racing, enduro trials, dirt tracks, hill climbing, ice tracks, etc). It follows a handful of individual racers over the course of a year, so you get invested in their personal tragedies/victories (it has some good humor, too). Also, it’s got a lot of Steve McQueen.
I love documentaries so I always love to see ones recommended that I haven’t seen! One of my favorites, especially when I need something uplifting, is First Position, which is about young ballet dancers competing to gain spots on elite dance companies (I’m fascinated by talented young people and this one was a bonus because it didn’t also feature overbearing stage parents). I also second the recommendation for Pink Ribbons, Inc and there’s a book that the documentary was based on.
OMG thank you for this comprehensive list! This is all I will do every waking moment. Documentaries are my jammm. ps. I finally have a working computer for the first time in almost a year and I’m so excited because that means I will be better about commenting cause I hate typing on my phone!!
Amazing selections and thank you all for adding new material to my gigantic list.
I think one of the first documentaries I saw was La República Perdida (The Lost Republic). It’s a 2 part series, released in 1983 and 1986, about the history of my country, Argentina. The prime focus are the repeated Coups d’état we had, starting in 1930 and finalizing in 1983 (we had 6, because it seems we’re morons that like to repeat the same mistake over and over again hoping to get a different result). Still is one of my favorites and can’t help myself for watching it at least once a year.
Other of my favorite documentaries are “The Corporation” (Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott, 2003) and “Memoria del Saqueo” (Fernando “Pino” Solanas, 2004).
One that I considered essential viewing, although is very recent, is “Trapped” (Dawn Porter, 2016). I just need to add one thing to let you all know why is important: “Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXFo0ELvGsg
If you have seen, and enjoyed, “We Were Here” or “United in Anger: a History of ACT UP” I cannot recommend the documentary “Small Town Rage: Fighting Back in the Deep South” highly enough. It is about the Shreveport, LA chapter of ACT UP and it’s so moving and so stunning.
Ooh, I’ll check this out!
It’s narrated by Lance Bass!
SUCH AMAZING SUGGESTIONS! The ones I have seen from the list are top-notch.
For The Bible Told Me So is excellent and supremely moving. I can also second Jesus Camp. And Going Clear (about Scientology) is really enlightening.
…it turns out I love documentaries about religion/cults!
ALSO Hot Girls Wanted – both the film and the subsequent series on Netflix (the incredible Rashida Jones is behind it) – is a fascinating look into pornography and various other topics related to 21st century sexuality.
British documentary presenters Reggie Yates and Stacey Dooley (individually) front some excellent stuff. I can particularly recommend Stacey’s Young Sex for Sale in Japan and Reggie’s Extreme Russia series.
so excellent! love love love these suggestions — in particular, Paris is Burning, 13th and Hoop Dreams.
Of my top-shelf documentary picks, I would also add The September Issue, I remember watching it and completely not understanding why everyone thinks Anna Wintour is terrible — I just felt that this was an excellent editor-in-chief in action, and I have an absolute decisiveness-crush on Anna Wintour.
Also, I absolutely fell in love with 20 Feet from Stardom, the documentary about back-up singers. *wistful sigh*
Personal favourite is Searching For Sugar Man. The story is incredible and the music is amazing.
Yes! It’s an incredible story – almost unbelievable.
One of my favourite documentaries is The Punk Singer, it’s on youtube. It’s about the lead singer for the pioneering riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna, and her life. It’s so good.
I loved The Punk Singer so so much
I am excited to hunt down the documentaries I haven’t seen and revisit the ones that I have. One of my favorite docs is Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about a man’s legacy and also BEAUTIFUL sushi.
Going Clear – the documentary about scientology and it’s history. If you’re into anything about cults or religions this is a must see. I was legitimately on the edge of my seat the whole time just in awe with every piece of information brought to the table.
OMG I have so many opinions on this topic!!
Let the Fire Burn – The story about how in 1985 the Philadelphia Police bombed a building occupied by the members of MOVE a black liberation organization. It uses news footage, MOVE promotional videos, and footage of the commission that followed.
If a Tree Falls – Follows a member of Environmental Liberation Front in the months leading up to a trail for arson and terrorism in relation to several fires set by the group as a form of environmental activism in the Pacific Northwest.
Planet Earth – All the amazing animals and landscapes you could ever hope for.
How to survive a plague / finding vivian maier
BUT ALSO, “Helvetica” is a great documentary about everyone’s fav ubiquitous sans-serif that I tried and failed to trick three different friends into watching with me –
“do u like documentaries?”
“yeah”
“ok cool this one looks sweet let’s press play faster than u can read the title”
…
…
…
“… Mick is this a movie about a font”
– before accepting my fate & watching it alone
AND I’D WATCH IT AGAIN
Has anyone seen Child of Our Time? It follows children born in January 2000, and at first conce trated on childhood development, but is really interesting to see the impact of that social changes in childhood have on children, imo. Probably influenced by the UP series.
Also the docu that jumped to mind was Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive. I remember watching it when it first aired, and it was the firdt time I had seen mental illness talked about so frankly and without judgement on TV. I’ve watched it every couple of years since, and they did a 10 years later episode last year.
I have cried through We Were Here several times. It is a powerful look at how a community was devastated. One of the few things that makes me cry juzt thinking about it is the AIDS quilt. This documentary made it even more poignant.
On the “charming / uplifting” front:
Did you watch Christopher Guest’s Best in Show and love it? Then you should watch “Chicken People,” about the world of competitive chicken breeders. The people are so sweet and lovely, their chickens are adorable, and their stories are a delight. I watched it on a flight back from Brazil and fell head over heels for it.
I feel compelled to point out that Steven Avery (from Making a Murderer) is from Manitowoc County (also where the alleged murder took place) and A-Camp Wisconsin is in Waukesha/Walworth County. #geography