the list of best non-fiction films. I would like to get feed back from you. i have avoided wild life films and science films
1. Hearts and Minds (director: Peter Davis)
Year: 1974
My favorite documentary. It boldly probed the depths of Vietnam war with sharp critical observations. The film was made when the war had hardly ended and when the movie picked up Oscar for best non-fiction film there was protest from the Hollywood conservative elite. 34 years
later the film still manages to evoke a similar degree of pain, even if it only the pain of recall.
2. Bowling for columbine (director:Michael Moore)
Year: 2002
I prefer "Bowling for Columbine" than 9/11 Fahrenheit as Michael Moore's best film. It is a brave, well researched, alternately humorous and activist film about the violent social psyche of United States. He is searching the answer to the question "Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence?"
It was the first documentary film accepted into competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 46 years.
3. Ram Ke Nam (Dir: Anand Patwardhan)
Year: 1991
Restrainedly courageous and prophetic film, in combat with the communal forces. He has foreseen the rise of communal power in India. The film reveals the campaign waged by the militant "Sang Pariwar" to destroy a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya. in this film u can see the
real image of our "Next Prime minister..!! "
4. Night and Fog ( Dir: Alain Resnais)
Year : 1955
It has a powerful and poetic commentary along with haunting achieve footage of several concentration camps in Poland. It portraits the horror of brutal inhumanity in the Nazi Concentration Camps. The film offers far more than visual evidence of Nazi atrocities. It urges us
to remember and never forget what happened long ago in these camps. It links the past to the present and gives to memory the burden of sustaining a moral conscience. Through the elliptic, evocative tone of the commentary by Jean Cayrol, a survivor of Auschwitz, The film sets out to represent the unrepresentable.
5. The Hour of the Furnaces (Dir: Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas)
Year : 1968
It is a four-hour long,sprawling, convulsive, radical documentary on the political, social, and economic condition of Argentina. It is a call for violent revolution designed to be used as a tool for
education, information, and debate (complete with titles signaling intervals for discussion). Cinematically, it is a varied catalogue of aesthetic approaches, encompassing interviews, cinema vérité footage, newsreels, sophisticated montage, and even minimalism (most famously, a still image, held for two-and-a-half minutes, of Che's dead face).
6. Koyaanisqatsi (Dir. Godfrey Reggio)
Year : 1982
Koyaanisqatsi means Life out of balance, is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. According to Godfrey "these films have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It's been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it's not the effect of it's that everything exists within [technology]. It's not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe..." . The film is a visual symphony created by incomparable talent of Ron Fricke(cinematographer) and music by Philip Glass. The movie do not have any commentary or dialogue.
7. Baraka (Dir. Ron Fricke)
Year : 1992
Like Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka is also a visual poetry without any commentary and dialogue. Baraka means Blessings, a film which traces the cultural diversity, development crisis, historic violence,
religious believes, technological take over etc., Unbelievable camera work and editing. In this film you can see classic examples for time lapse cinematography. The movie was filmed at 152 locations of 24
countries.
8. Power of Nightmares - The Rise of the Politics of Fear (Dir: Adam Curtis)
Year : 2004 (3 episodes, 1 hour each)
Well made, well researched BBC documentary on the Fear Politics created by American neo-conservative movement. It describes the origin of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement and their similarities. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islam as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of Al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more Utopian ideologies.
9. Man with a movie camera (Dir: Dziga Vertov)
Year : 1929
Upon the official release of Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov issued a statement at the beginning of the film, which read:
"The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT
(a film without script)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A THEATRE
In this film Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life from dawn to dusk. You can see the presence of the camera man in every where...he is not a observer but a part of the events. It has used all kinds of editing techniques which we still follow.
10. Repatriation (Dir: Kim Dong Won)
Released on 2004
The film is about unconverted prisoners in South Korea. You may wonder what is this unconverted prisoners?? They are ex-prisoners in South Korea who were jailed for their Communist beliefs, and refusing to renounce their ideology despite torture and intimidation. Many of these men spent decades (up to 45 years) in South Korean prisons. Only in the 1990s, against the backdrop of democratic reforms, did large numbers of unconverted prisoners gain their freedom. But what to do with these people. Many of them wants to go back to North Korea, but the government was against it.
The filmmaker Kim Dong Won developed a close relationship with them after they moved to his neighborhood after their release from prison. This friendship eventually led him to a film project, which spanned 12 years and 800 hours of videotaping. The film documents their views on Korea's partition, their daily hardships as they attempt to adjust to South Korean society as well as their struggle for repatriation.Through this intimate portrayal, Kim offers a penetrating insight into the tragic consequences of the Cold War that still persist in Korea.
Repatriation is equally effective in portraying the experiences of some noteworthy participants in history, and giving insight into the situation faced by Korea as an ideologically divided nation.
Kim Dong-won was arrested and jailed by the government for making this film but because of public protest he was released.
(Some information on Director Kim Dong-won: He is the legendary documentary film maker in Korea, and a hugely influential figure in the independent film sector. Kim's Sanggye-dong Olympics is seen as a key early milestone in the independent documentary movement in Korea.
With Repatriation, a project that took him many years and much effort to produce, he won over an unusual amount of attention from local media and critics. After debuting at the 2003 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan, the film won the Freedom of Expression award at Sundance in the US. When it was released in Korea in March 2004, it became the best-selling local documentary ever)
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1. Hearts and Minds (director: Peter Davis)
Year: 1974
My favorite documentary. It boldly probed the depths of Vietnam war with sharp critical observations. The film was made when the war had hardly ended and when the movie picked up Oscar for best non-fiction film there was protest from the Hollywood conservative elite. 34 years
later the film still manages to evoke a similar degree of pain, even if it only the pain of recall.
2. Bowling for columbine (director:Michael Moore)
Year: 2002
I prefer "Bowling for Columbine" than 9/11 Fahrenheit as Michael Moore's best film. It is a brave, well researched, alternately humorous and activist film about the violent social psyche of United States. He is searching the answer to the question "Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence?"
It was the first documentary film accepted into competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 46 years.
3. Ram Ke Nam (Dir: Anand Patwardhan)
Year: 1991
Restrainedly courageous and prophetic film, in combat with the communal forces. He has foreseen the rise of communal power in India. The film reveals the campaign waged by the militant "Sang Pariwar" to destroy a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya. in this film u can see the
real image of our "Next Prime minister..!! "
4. Night and Fog ( Dir: Alain Resnais)
Year : 1955
It has a powerful and poetic commentary along with haunting achieve footage of several concentration camps in Poland. It portraits the horror of brutal inhumanity in the Nazi Concentration Camps. The film offers far more than visual evidence of Nazi atrocities. It urges us
to remember and never forget what happened long ago in these camps. It links the past to the present and gives to memory the burden of sustaining a moral conscience. Through the elliptic, evocative tone of the commentary by Jean Cayrol, a survivor of Auschwitz, The film sets out to represent the unrepresentable.
5. The Hour of the Furnaces (Dir: Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas)
Year : 1968
It is a four-hour long,sprawling, convulsive, radical documentary on the political, social, and economic condition of Argentina. It is a call for violent revolution designed to be used as a tool for
education, information, and debate (complete with titles signaling intervals for discussion). Cinematically, it is a varied catalogue of aesthetic approaches, encompassing interviews, cinema vérité footage, newsreels, sophisticated montage, and even minimalism (most famously, a still image, held for two-and-a-half minutes, of Che's dead face).
6. Koyaanisqatsi (Dir. Godfrey Reggio)
Year : 1982
Koyaanisqatsi means Life out of balance, is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. According to Godfrey "these films have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It's been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it's not the effect of it's that everything exists within [technology]. It's not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe..." . The film is a visual symphony created by incomparable talent of Ron Fricke(cinematographer) and music by Philip Glass. The movie do not have any commentary or dialogue.
7. Baraka (Dir. Ron Fricke)
Year : 1992
Like Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka is also a visual poetry without any commentary and dialogue. Baraka means Blessings, a film which traces the cultural diversity, development crisis, historic violence,
religious believes, technological take over etc., Unbelievable camera work and editing. In this film you can see classic examples for time lapse cinematography. The movie was filmed at 152 locations of 24
countries.
8. Power of Nightmares - The Rise of the Politics of Fear (Dir: Adam Curtis)
Year : 2004 (3 episodes, 1 hour each)
Well made, well researched BBC documentary on the Fear Politics created by American neo-conservative movement. It describes the origin of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement and their similarities. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islam as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of Al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more Utopian ideologies.
9. Man with a movie camera (Dir: Dziga Vertov)
Year : 1929
Upon the official release of Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov issued a statement at the beginning of the film, which read:
"The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT
(a film without script)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A THEATRE
In this film Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life from dawn to dusk. You can see the presence of the camera man in every where...he is not a observer but a part of the events. It has used all kinds of editing techniques which we still follow.
10. Repatriation (Dir: Kim Dong Won)
Released on 2004
The film is about unconverted prisoners in South Korea. You may wonder what is this unconverted prisoners?? They are ex-prisoners in South Korea who were jailed for their Communist beliefs, and refusing to renounce their ideology despite torture and intimidation. Many of these men spent decades (up to 45 years) in South Korean prisons. Only in the 1990s, against the backdrop of democratic reforms, did large numbers of unconverted prisoners gain their freedom. But what to do with these people. Many of them wants to go back to North Korea, but the government was against it.
The filmmaker Kim Dong Won developed a close relationship with them after they moved to his neighborhood after their release from prison. This friendship eventually led him to a film project, which spanned 12 years and 800 hours of videotaping. The film documents their views on Korea's partition, their daily hardships as they attempt to adjust to South Korean society as well as their struggle for repatriation.Through this intimate portrayal, Kim offers a penetrating insight into the tragic consequences of the Cold War that still persist in Korea.
Repatriation is equally effective in portraying the experiences of some noteworthy participants in history, and giving insight into the situation faced by Korea as an ideologically divided nation.
Kim Dong-won was arrested and jailed by the government for making this film but because of public protest he was released.
(Some information on Director Kim Dong-won: He is the legendary documentary film maker in Korea, and a hugely influential figure in the independent film sector. Kim's Sanggye-dong Olympics is seen as a key early milestone in the independent documentary movement in Korea.
With Repatriation, a project that took him many years and much effort to produce, he won over an unusual amount of attention from local media and critics. After debuting at the 2003 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan, the film won the Freedom of Expression award at Sundance in the US. When it was released in Korea in March 2004, it became the best-selling local documentary ever)
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There are lot of documentaries that i was unable to include here because of the constrain of numbers..... the films like "GLASS", "NANOOK OF THE NORTH", "FINAL SOLUTION" (Rakesh Sharma), "REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED", "FIDEL-UNTOLD STORY", "THE BATTLE OF CHILE", "CHECK POINT", etc.,
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