The Spy in the Sandwich

Tracking Sandwich Eaters

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

6:30 PM | How's Your Film Education? Part Three

This time, after the American Film Institute listed the 100 Best American Films and a loose group of film aficionados listed the 100 Best Foreign Language Films (two lists I'm scrambling to cover -- because, really, I want to say I have seen everything...), the documentarians go at it, although they only came out with the best 25. According to IndieWIRE, the International Documentary Association "has announced a list of the 25 best documentaries ... span[ning] over 55 years and have both reflected and, arguably, influenced social history, exploring such areas as wars from WWII to Iraq, corporate downsizing and global warming..."

What I don't see however are some of the best documentaries I have seen, like any of Ken Burns's television specials. Or Michael Apted's acclaimed Up Series. Or Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven or A Brief History of Time. Or Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's The Celluloid Closet. Or Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil. Or Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera. Or Marcel Ophul's The Sorrow and the Pity. Or Peter Davis's Hearts and Minds. Or Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. Or Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning. Or D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Christopher Hughes's The War Room. Or Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennous's MicroCosmos. Or Leon Gast's When We Were Kings. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Jesus Camp. Or Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation. Or Patrick Creadon's Wordplay. Or even Luc Jacquet's crowd-pleasing March of the Penguins. Still, the listed ones are excellent, and most would top my own wish list of the best 25. They are, in ascending order...

[x] 25. Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh)
[x] 24. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais)
[x] 23. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
[_] 22. Winged Migration (Jacques Perrin)
[x] 21. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)
[x] 20. Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders)
[_] 19. Titticut Follies (Frederick Wiseman)
[x] 18. Born into Brothels (Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski)
[x] 17. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki)
[x] 16. Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer)
[_] 15. Sherman's March (Ross McElwee)
[_] 14. Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (Godfrey Reggio)
[_] 13. Salesman (Albert and David Maysles)
[x] 12. Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker)
[x] 11. Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock)
[x] 10. Roger and Me (Michael Moore)
[x] 09. The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
[_] 08. Gimme Shelter (Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin)
[x] 07. Crumb (Terry Zwigoff)
[x] 06. An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim)
[_] 05. Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple)
[x] 04. Spellbound (Jeffery Blitz)
[x] 03. Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore)
[x] 02. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris)
[x] 01. Hoop Dreams (Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx)

My score: 18/25. Not bad. Then again, I'm on a documentary streak right now. So, how's your film education?

Labels: documentaries, film