vastandgrand:

30 min Elliott Smith documentary

Hori Smoku: Sailor Jerry is a feature length documentary exploring the roots of American tattooing through the life of its most iconoclastic figure, Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins. Considered by many the foremost tattoo artist of all time, Collins is the father of modern day tattooing, whose uncompromising lifestyle and larger than life persona made him an American legend. Through rare interviews, photographs and hours of archival footage, Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry: The Life and Times of Norman Keith Collins, explores the past, present and future of the global tattooing phenomenon.

Until the Light Takes Us is a new documentary about Norwegian black metal. The way their website describes it:

[Norwegian black metal is] the most malevolent musical genre in existence, whose surprisingly articulate founders hold complex sets of extreme nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian beliefs. Unlike musical purveyors of evil who do so only for the sake of showmanship, these young friends actually practice what they preach, engaging in rampant church burning, suicide, and – as notoriously chronicled in the European media – murder.

It’s in theaters this winter. I’m really looking forward to it, it looks like a really interesting documentary about a morbidly fascinating genre.

— Krzysztof Kieslowski

The Smartest Man in the World is about Chris Langan who has a very high IQ, somewhere between 195 to 210. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Gladwell writes about the issues surrounding people who have a high IQ yet aren’t as successful as he/she might think. Gladwell wrote about Chris Langan’s background to explain why Chris Langan’s not as rich or successful as people think he should be. Throughout the interview with Chris Langan, the viewer can start to tell what type of attitude Langan has towards academia. The documentary is a glimpse into a man’s potential and eventual downfall.

Part 2 & Part 3

Just To Let You Know is a short documentary which takes an honest look at the life of a 26 year old chap with Down syndrome. Hayden Stephen is a charismatic, charming man with a fantastic sense of humour. This documentary offers a glimpse into his desires and goals, and leaves the viewer with a warm heart and a sometimes conflicted mind.

Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir) 2008

www.waltzwithbashir.com

One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore about that period of his life.

Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images …

(video above has left channel audio in Japanese and right channel in English)

When did your addiction to docs start? Michael Moore films? PBS? Or was it when you saw Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth?

For me the fascination began when my history teacher played educational movies in class. While my friends dreaded the boring videos, I was hooked learning about the life and times of Roosevelt and Jefferson, or the Depression Era, or even Roman Emperors. Whatever the topic, I was simply paralyzed not aware of the world around me.

One of the earliest doc that I can recall (and find a full vid of on the net) is The Prize. An eight part series based on the book of the same name.

The Prize has been called the “definitive” history of the oil industry, even a “bible” [1]; some critics, though, consider the book too sympathetic to the perspective of the oil industry, of which the author is, in a way, a part. The Prize was the basis for a six hour documentary television series titled “The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power”, narrated by Donald Sutherland. The series is frequently used as a source material in Middle Eastern studies classes and is said to have been seen by 20 million people in the United States.

Above is the first part.

We Live in Public follows the vision of Josh Harris. He envisioned a live streaming Internet broadcast a decade before services like Justin.tv and Ustream came about, and actually made it happen. To Josh, this was like theater or a performance art. And what the director, Ondi Timoner realized years after filming the movie that Josh’s message and idea was the streaming services we have today, so the documentary is a very timely piece for what we can learn from past mistakes and what we can improve on present day. The movie isn’t out on DVD yet, so there are live showings in select areas, so go to their website.