vastandgrand:

30 min Elliott Smith documentary

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.

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.

I’ve been watching the first season of Art:21 and I love it. Basically, the PBS documentary focuses on a few contemporary artists per episodes and allow them to explain what their art exhibit or artwork mean. There’s a bunch of insight we get from the artists, as well as a blog that goes along with the TV show, as well as updating us with new exhibits from previously featured artists on their show.

The video above is a preview of Richard Serra, a minimalist sculptor who creates behemoth walls and closed areas following a theme of space. On of the artists concerns, especially Serra, is the issue of the space around us, so he attempts to open our spatial senses with his pieces of work.

You can download the previous episodes of Art:21 on iTunes or buy the DVDs on Amazon if you’re interested in watching more. The series is also available on hulu.

American Movie is a 1999 documentary about one man, Mark Borchardt, who attempts to make his low-budget short horror film Coven, against seemingly impossible odds. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, American Movie is an inspiration, comical, and uplifting tale of an average Joe from Minnesota who followed his dreams right to the indie red carpet. Experience the full journey on Youtube.

Modest Mouse “Untitled”

Shot in 1997 by indie filmmaker Rick Madsen, this 36 min documentary filmed during the recording of the Modest Mouse album “The Lonesome Crowded West” will never be released commercially. Artists interviewed for the film include Elliott Smith, Spencer Moody from The Murder City Devils, Doug Martsch of Built To Spill, Sam Coombs of Quasi and Calvin Johnson.

Code Rush, produced in 2000 and broadcast on PBS, is an inside look at living and working in Silicon Valley at the height of the dot-com era. The film follows a group of Netscape/Mozilla engineers as they pursue at that time a revolutionary venture to save their company - giving away the software recipe for Netscape’s browser in exchange for integrating improvements created by outside software developers. The copyright to the film is now available under Creative common licence vers. 3 for interested viewers to download and use. In the future the original footage from which this film was made will be accessible under the same terms.

Controlling Our Food

On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television - a documentary that Americans won’t ever see. The gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.