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Visual Acoustics (2008)
The modernism of Julius Shulman.
Filmmaker(s): Eric Bricker

Visual Acoustics celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world's greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California's modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. This unique film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic, whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images.

Speaking Space Here’s more about the challenge of architecture and cinema. It is not trivial, the problem of what spaces mean in films? What narrative role does it play? What vocabulary is relevant? This film is rather mundane in most ways. It is a biography...
Published December 26, 2022
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Life in a Day (2011)
The story of one day on Earth.

A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.

Snail Eats Label Life in a day: The Scott brothers sponsor a film with YouTube. I suppose the idea from YouTube’s side is that ordinary people make films that are real, and that allow us to deeply share humanity… the kind of films you can...
Published December 24, 2022
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Seven-Up! (1964)
Filmmaker(s): Paul Almond

A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.

This did not start as a folded adventure. It is a quite ordinary TV documentary. But it became so in later installments by Apted, where the interviews are largely about how the films affected their lives.
Published December 8, 2022
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7 Plus Seven (1970)
Filmmaker(s): Michael Apted

After a 7 year wait, director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born children from Seven Up! The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.

We Discover The way I think of films is that every film is first about other films and incidentally about life. In referencing or extending our film experience — and at the same time providing tools for folding that experience into life — movies give...
Published November 30, 2022
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How Art Made the World (2005-)
Filmmaker(s): Donald F. Glut

Nigel Spivey reveals how the images which surround us today come from the ancient world. It's an epic journey spanning five continents and a hundred thousand years of history.

The Skull in the Livingroom Here is a strange idea for a documentary. Make a movie about why movies work, why we cling to them and how they invent our humanity. Tell a story about storytelling. It is put together by a man who himself...
Published November 29, 2022
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Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997)
Filmmaker(s): Errol Morris

Errol Morris’s Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of four men, each driven to create eccentric worlds from their unique obsessions, all of which involve animals. There’s a lion tamer who shares his theories on the mental processes of wild animals; a topiary gardener who has devoted a lifetime to shaping bears and giraffes out of hedges and trees; a man fascinated with hairless mole rats; and an MIT scientist who has designed complex, autonomous robots that can crawl like bugs.

Architecture Machine My small survey of documentary types has brought me to this, and what a celebration! This is complex, meaningful cinema that just happens to be a documentary. It is intelligent, complex, deliberate and deeply thought provoking. I think it communicates something that isn’t...
Published November 28, 2022
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King Corn (2007)
You Are What You Eat.
Filmmaker(s): Aaron Woolf

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

Field of Dreams Modern documentaries fascinate me. In theory, the documentary category is an investigation, explanation or essay on something, presumably something both real and true. Because there is the supposition that the thing is interesting of worth hearing about for some reason, one assumes...
Published November 28, 2022
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Fata Morgana (1971)
Filmmaker(s): Werner Herzog

Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing for the camera something which is not there. It is about the mirages of nature—and the nature of mirage.

Notebooks Herzog has produced works of genius. That’s because he has incredibly trustworthy cinematic intuition, believes in forces that called be charmed forth and is unafraid to take deep risks in his quest. He also has some interesting things to say about his work. But...
Published November 14, 2022
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Free Solo (2018)
Live beyond fear.

Follow Alex Honnold as he attempts to become the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite's 3,000 foot high El Capitan wall. With no ropes or safety gear, this would arguably be the greatest feat in rock climbing history.

Needy Films are stories. When the story is in the real world, a different set of narrative engineering principles come in to play. A default is that somehow the filmmaker and crew present their own story of the quest for what we separately see. But...
Published October 9, 2022
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Mifune The Last Samurai (2015)
A documentary about Toshirō Mifune
Filmmaker(s): Steven Okazaki

An account of the life and work of legendary Japanese actor Toshirō Mifune (1920-97), the most prominent actor of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema.

Cut Vision is the strangest thing. If we see too much of something we believe it less. Stories are like this; the things that are left out can carry the agency more powerfully, and often the missing is referenced by the obvious. I like filmmakers...
Published September 22, 2022
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