Chicken Ranch: A Legal Brothel in Nevada (1983)

Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Documentary

Director: Nick Broomfield

Cinematographer: Sandi Sissel

Chicken Ranch is an entertaining and enlightening look at life inside of the world famous Nevada brothel, Chicken Ranch – where the women work for three weeks at a time, unable to leave their rather unnatural confines – examining the personal and professional relationships of those within. Iain.Stott

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Thames Film (1986)

Recommended

UK

Feature Documentary

Director/Cinematographer: William Raban

Narrator: John Hurt

Artist Raban, as he takes us on a journey down the eponymous river, juxtaposes images of decrepit, decaying docklands with archive film footage and readings from T.S. Eliot & Thomas Pennant, to paint a portrait of a nation in terminal, self-actualised decline. Iain.Stott

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Of Time and the City (2008)

Recommended

UK

Feature Documentary

Writer/Director/Narrator: Terence Davies

Cinematographer: Tim Pollard

Davies’s expertly crafted cinepoem – an ode to the Liverpool of the great film-maker’s youth, as well as a mediation on the effects of time and progress, and a soul-baringly beautiful piece of self portraiture (bitchy, effervescent, elegiac, insightful, nostalgic) – shows the exalted Liverpudlian at both his best and his worst: delightful. Iain.Stott

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Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

Recommended

USA

Feature Documentary

Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky

Cinematographer: Robert Richman

Composers: Metalica

Berlinger and Sinofsky’s slightly exploitative yet revealing and even-handed documentary, covering the trials of three West Memphis teenagers, accused of the brutal killings of a trio of eight-year-old boys, is a film that casts serious doubts over the courts’ rulings, but one that also paints a rather disturbing portrait of a community where gods and devils have a greater influence on the everyday lives of its inhabitants than cultural and class understanding and tolerance. Iain.Stott

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The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993)

Recommended

Germany/France/UK/Belgium

Feature Documentary

Original Title: Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl

Director: Ray Müller

Cinematographers: Michel Baudour, Walter A. Franke, Ulrich Jaenchen, Jürgen Martin

Composers: Ulrich Bassenge, Wolfgang Neumann

Featuring: Leni Riefenstahl

Müller’s fascinating rhetorical documentary - a thorough examination of the titular infamous film-maker's life, in which the wilful, irascible 89-year-old pleads ignorance and innocence over charges of Nazi collaboration, whilst Müller’s images often tell a different story - is an engrossing and entertaining film, but one that is unlikely to change anyone’s views of the enigmatic, larger than life figure. Iain.Stott

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F for Fake (1974)

Highly Recommended

France/Iran/West Germany

Feature Documentary

Original Title: ?: About Fakes

Director: Orson Welles

Writer: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar

Cinematographer: François Reichenbach

Composer: Michel Legrand

Featuring: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving

Welles’s final film is a documentary of and about fraud and fakery, taking a look at the art forger Elmyr de Hory, notorious biographer Clifford Irving, as well as at Welles himself, which proves to be a fun, playful, and absorbing look at the role of the artist in a capitalist society. Iain.Stott

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The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Documentary

Director: Jeff Feuerzeig

Cinematographer: Fortunato Procopio

Featuring: Daniel Johnston

Feuerzeig’s affecting documentary - a beautifully composed portrait of the titular troubled genius, sensitively chronicling his battles with manic depression, and giving us plenty of examples of his music, drawings, and films that winningly combine painfully honest self-portraiture, apoliticism, and cheeky, absurdist humour - is a heart-warmingly funny yet devastatingly moving work. Iain.Stott

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The Bridge (2006)

Recommended

USA/UK
Feature Documentary
Director: Eric Steel
Cinematographers: Peter Baldwin, Peter McCandless
Composer: Alex Heffes

Despite the film-makers’ slightly dubious ethics (the film’s structure is particularly troubling), the resulting documentary, an unflinching look at suicide, featuring actual footage of people jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge as well as interviews with family and friends, is an undeniably invaluable, strangely beautiful, and deeply sad work, and one that highlights the insignificance of the individual, as it dispassionately shows images of people who have reached their lowest ebb, contemplating the end of their lives, whilst all around them life whirs gently on. Iain.Stott

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My Kid Could Paint That (2007)

Recommended

USA/UK
Feature Documentary
Director: Amir Bar-Lev
Cinematographers: Matt Boyd, Nelson Hume, Bill Turnley
Composers: The Rondo Brothers
Featuring: Marla Olmstead

This compelling and emotional documentary - chronicling the rise, fall, and sort of rise again of four-year-old, art prodigy, Marla Olmstead, whose abstract paintings became the toast of the New York art world until a television exposé cast doubt on their authenticity - largely sticks to the did she/didn’t she question, whilst rather ignoring the more interesting question of even if she did paint them, so what? (Surely a painting made without any sort of intellectual contextualisation, something that can only come with an adult mind, is nothing more than a series of random marks on a piece of canvas.) Iain.Stott

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The Baby and the Buddha (2008)

Recommended

UK/France/Denmark/USA/Israel
Feature Documentary
aka Unmistaken Child
Director: Nati Baratz
Cinematographer: Yaron Orbach
Composer: Cyril Morin

Delicately presenting a picture of a process that could easily be seen as anything from mystically beautiful to something akin to child abuse, Baratz’s fascinating documentary chronicles a devoted Nepalese monk’s quest to find the reincarnation of his former Tibetan master, Lama Konchog, a journey that takes him to a number of remote Tibetan and Nepalese villages, which have barely been touched by the 20th let alone the 21st century, in search of this holy child. Iain.Stott

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Man on Wire (2008)

Recommended

UK/USA
Feature Documentary
Director: James Marsh
Writer: Philippe Petit
Cinematographer: Igor Martinovic
Composer: Michael Nyman
Featuring: Philippe Petit, Jean-François Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau, Annie Allix, David Forman

Using archive footage, staged recreations, and new interviews, Marsh – managing to capture the suspense, wonder, and ridiculousness of the event – paints an entertaining portrait of the charismatic Petit’s 1974 World Trade Center shenanigans, when he spent 45 minutes perched 1350 feet above New York on a high-wire. Iain.Stott

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Let's Get Lost (1988)

Recommended

USA
Feature Documentary
Director: Bruce Weber
Cinematographer: Jeff Preiss
Featuring: Chet Baker

Weber paints an even handed portrait every bit as bitter-sweet as its dilapidated protagonist’s often wonderful music (which underscores the majority of the film), presenting Chet Baker as a once beautiful figure, ravaged by years of drug use, but one that could still seemingly hold a tune. Iain.Stott

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Afghan Star (2009)

Recommended

UK
Feature Documentary
Director: Havana Marking
Cinematographer: Phil Stebbing

Marking’s fascinating Afghanistan-set documentary, chronicling the progress of a number of contestant’s on a reality-TV tinged musical talent show (one that retains all of the qualities that make its western equivalents so distasteful), paints an eye-opening portrait of a country in the process of monumental change. Iain.Stott

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My Voyage to Italy (1999)

Highly Recommended

Italy/USA
Feature Documentary
Original Title: Il mio viaggio in Italia
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Raffaele Donato, Kent Jones, Martin Scorsese
Presenter: Martin Scorsese

Scorsese guides us on a delightfully personal and subjective journey through classic Italian cinema, shining a delicate, thoughtful light on Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni, in this more focused companion piece to the equally excellent A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995). Iain.Stott

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Gallivant (1997)

Highly Recommended

UK

Feature Documentary
Director: Andrew Kötting
Cinematographer: Nick Gordon Smith
Composer: David Burnand
Featuring: Andrew Kötting, Eden Kötting, Gladys Morris

Kötting’s remarkable film - chronicling the film-maker’s low-key journey around the entire coastline of Britain accompanied by his 85-year-old grandmother and 7-year-old, Joubert's-syndrome-suffering daughter - is a visually playful, whimsically funny, quietly moving, and obliquely informative minor masterpiece, and a quite unforgettable experience. Iain.Stott

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Mondovino (2004)

Recommended

France/Argentina
Feature Documentary
Cinematographer/Director: Jonathan Nossiter

A fascinating, fairly even-handed documentary, exploring the varied and opposing philosophies of the world’s various winemakers, Mondovino examines the battle between traditional and modern, big and small, and left and right, with its subject serving as a metaphor for modern society in general. Iain.Stott

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Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006)

Cautiously Recommended

France/Iceland
Feature Documentary
Original Title: Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle
Directors: Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno
Cinematographer: Darius Khondji
Composers: Mogwai
Featuring: Zinédine Zidane

The melancholically beautiful images of a stony-faced Zidane, trotting around the pitch, devoid of the context of the game that they belong to, suggest that this film, a documentary following the titular footballer through the course of one game for Real Madrid in 2005, is less about football than it is about the futility of human experience, and on that level it is a depressingly successful if not entirely engaging work. Iain.Stott

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The Game of Their Lives (2002)

Recommended

UK
Feature Documentary
Writer/Director: Daniel Gordon
Cinematographers: Nick Bennet, Daryl Kibblewhite
Composer: Illustrious

A documentary looking at North Korea’s surprising impact upon the 1966 Football World Cup, combining contemporary interviews, archive footage, and a rare and gorgeous look at Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the murals, statues, monuments, costumes; all that wonderful colour) - entertaining and well-made, but not particularly critical. Iain.Stott

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Trouble the Water (2008)

Recommended

USA
Feature Documentary
Directors: Carl Deal, Tia Lessin
Cinematographers: P.J. Raval, Kimberly Rivers Roberts
Composers: Neil Davidge, Robert del Naja

An excellent documentary, by turns upsetting, moving, heart-warming, angering, and painful, taking a personal look at the Hurricane Katrina New Orleans debacle, featuring incredible amateur footage from the charismatic would-be rapper, Kimberly Rivers Roberts. Iain.Stott

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Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002)

Recommended

USA
Feature Documentary
Director: Paul Justman
Writers: Walter Dallas, Ntozake Shange, Alan Slutsky
Cinematographers: Douglas Milsome, Lon Stratton
Composer: Alan Slutsky
Narrator: Andre Braugher

A gorgeous, delectable, and wondrous documentary, mixing delightful reunion/tribute concert footage with a wealth of touching, perceptive, and funny interview subjects, putting a human face on the history of Tamla Motown’s criminally underappreciated house band, The Funk Brothers. Iain.Stott

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