Documentaries has been a major source for my knowledge for some years now. I am a big film fanatic, where at one point I even had a movie review blog and I have seen over 3000 films so far. Some how out of all the film genres and master pieces , documentary still holds the most important place for me. It seems closest to life but somehow fictional, objective somehow subjective, it is closest to the essences of film if there is one.
When you are watching a documentary, you are watching someones truth through someone else's lenses. The camera is the medium between the subjective and the objective, just like Iimura Takahiko's coinendance where he dance the camera with the Butoh dancers, just like when Sophie Caille made a film to just be together with her love interest, just like Dziga Vertov's Kino Eye.I fell in love with docu-essays, poetic documentaries that are from Alain Resnais and Chris Marker and Matsumoto Toshio, as well as the seemingly mundane documentaries from Andy Warhol, and the minimalistic documentaries of James Benning.
Documentaries are interventional, even without any action upon the camera person, the looking, the filming, is intervention itself.
It has made impact both on the observed and the observer. As viewer I engage into others reality through Documentary makers pipe. It is both the unseen reality and the way it is presented that open up my interpretation of the world.
The snoring people on ferry in Japan, by Chris Marker. The poem of stone plate factory by Matsumoto Toshio, The absurdity of homework by Abbas Kiarostami, The essay film of suffer and beauty by Forough Farrokhzad, The experimental and powerful essay by Adachi Masao, the lists go on.
Documentary helps me find the hidden fragments that I overlooked in life, a way of disclosure, understanding the world through distancing my self.
Current list (Updating)
Le Chant du styrène (1959), Alain Resnais
Sans Soleil (1983), Chris Marker
Enthusiasm (1931), Dziga Vertov
The song of stone (1963), Matsumoto Toshio
La chambre (1972), Chantel Akerman
A.K.A Serial Killer (1969), Adachi Masao
Titicut Follies (1967), Frederik Wiseman
Ten Skies (2004), James Benning
Empire (1964), Andy Warhol
Rose Color Dance (1965), Iimura Takahiko
Homework (1989), Abbas Kiarostami
The House is Black (1963), Forough Farrokhzad
The Old Believers(2001), Jana Ševčíková
Werner Herzog eats his shoe (1980), Lees Blank
God Speed You! Black Emperor (1976), Mitsuo Yanagimachi
Goodbye CP (1972), Hara Kazuo
The Act of Killing (2012), Joshua Oppenheimer
Ici et ailleurs (1976), Jean-Luc Godard
The Young Patriot (2012), Du Hai Bin
Walker (2012), Tsai Ming Liang * Conceptual film with documentary elements
A (1998), Mori Tatsuya
Everybody In The Place (2019), Jeremy Deller