My recent favorites include:

1) The Hunting Of The President

2) Bush Family Fortunes

3) Control Room

4) Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election

5) The Fog Of War

6) 9/11 by Jules & Gedeon Naudet & James Hanlon

7) Uncovered: The Whole Truth AboutThe Iraq War

8) Unconstitutional: The War On Our Civil Liberties

9)Life & Debt

10)The Corporation

I would have included Michael Moore's Bowling For Colombine and I though the first half of Farenheit 9/11 in which his claims are supported by multiple sources was comendable.

Bowling for Columbine and Far. 9/11 but my experience with documentaries is limited. I also like this one on HBO that I recently saw about a Schizophrenic man trying to live life normally, it was really interesting.

Harlan County, USA was another good doc. that I don't think has been mentioned yet.

I would recommend the following.

The World at War (BBC, UK)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, Soviet Union)
The Civil War (Burns, US)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Ophuls, France)
People on Sunday (Siodmak/ Ulmer, Germany)
Story of the Weeping Camel (Daava/ Falorni, Mongolia)
Sans Soleil (Marker, France)
When we Were Kings (Gast, US)
The House is Black (Farrokhzad, Iran)
Touching the Void (Macdonald, UK)
Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, Germany)
Song of Ceylon (Wright, UK/Sri Lanka)
The Last Bolshevik (Marker, France)
The Thin Blue Line (Morris, US)
Streetwise (Bell, US)
A Diary for Timothy (Jennings, UK)
Nanook of the North (Flaherty, US)
Night and Fog (Resnais, France)
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Ruttmann, Germany)
Elgar (Russell, UK)
The Fog of War (Morris, US)
Basque Ball (Medem, Spain)
Comandante (Stone, US/Cuba)
Woodstock (Wadleigh, US)
Olympia (Riefenstahl, Germany)
The Gleaners and I (Varda (France)
Man of Aran (Flaherty, US/Ireland)

Not forgetting:
Shoah (Lanzmann, France)
Buena Vista Social Club (Wenders, Germany/Cuba)
Hoop Dreams (James, US)
Etre et Avoir (Philibert, France)
Listen to Britain (Jennings, UK)
Welfare (Wiseman, US)
Night Mail (Wright/ Watt, UK)

I'm not sure why Moore should be left out- perhaps too much a focus of controversy, detracting from others here + unbalance the thread? Anyway, he'd scrape in my recommendations- with reservations.

To see:
Tale of the Wind (Ivens)
The Battle of Chile (Guzman, Chile)
Land without Bread (Bunuel, Spain)
Medium Cool (Wexler, US)

I thought Errol Morris' "The Fog of War" was truly amazing. For any lefties out there who thought "Fahrenheit 911" was the best documentary ever (it wasn't), check out this movie. Errol Morris and Bob McNamera present a far better case against the Iraq war than Michael Moore and they don't even mention Iraq or Bush. It's also not nearly as preachy.

I'm not sure about some of the older docs, but other great recent ones include "Dogtown and Z-Boys", "The Kid stays in the Picture", and "My Architect".

I've seen quite a few excellent documentaries, but there are three that stand above the rest: "Capturing ther Friedmans," "The Fog of War," and "Hoop Dreams." "Capturing the Friedmans" was absolutely the creepiest, most mysterious movie I have ever seen, fiction or non-fiction, period. You watch it and still have no idea who did what to whom. I guess "The Fog of War" is an anti-war film, but I just saw it as incredibly scary and incredibly interesting, McNamara (sp?) is just a really really smart guy, the Donald Rumsfeld of his generation. A must for anyone who loves history. "Hoop Dreams" was named by Roger Ebert as the best movie of the 90's, and it is hard to disagree. One of the most powerful movies ever made. I love documentaries.

I am curious.
Is there a logical other side to mr death.
What I mean is...in mr.death the guy "trys" to make the fact that the holocost did not happen.

Is there a documentary i could see that is like the other side of the story?Like a holocost surivor's prespective??

I will check it out, but i was wondering if there was a logical one to check out that was good.

One I just mentioned in movies you've recently seen, but have to put here as well:

Overnight Troy Duffy rose to fame quickly in Hollywood as the new wunderkind in writing. His script for The Boondock Saints was seen as a new masterpiece of sorts in the industry and many actors wanted in. But Troy did exactly everything you are not supposed to do when you want to get a movie made, and this is a documentary of that story. Absolutely unbelievable to watch this guy. A great lesson in how NOT to make a movie. I highly recommend.

Yeah, I heard about that Troy Duffy doc. I always thought Boondock Saints kinda sucked though, but i guess some people were gaga over it.

I just got 'gunner palace' today.
It look slike it could be really good and from what i have read it is.We shall see though.

I'm an aspiring documentary filmmaker, and I've found a lot of inspiration from these films:

Control Room
The War Room
FEED
American Movie
Off the Charts
Instrument
The Fog of War

One of the wackiest and one of my favorite documentaries is GREY GARDENS, which I caught at the Museum of Modern Art again last week. I had previously seen it on video and it held up on the big screen.

It was made by the Maysles Brothers (GIMME SHELTER, SALESMAN) in the mid 1970s and focuses on two of Jackie Kennedy's relatives, her aunt and cousin, who live in this mouldering house in the Hamptons. Both are at best eccentric and at worst seriously mentally ill and I guess there was some criticism for the Maysles exploiting his subjects.

In any event, compelling viewing.

Now that I think of it, another documentary I recently caught again was MARJO, which came out in the early seventies and recently screened at the IFC theatre in Manhattan. This one also held up and pulled the fig leave off on the tele-evangelists, though when MARJO was made they were still itinerant preachers setting up tents in small town America. This film kind of pulled the veil off and showed how cynical these people are and was a portent to the scandals that brought down Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker or whatever that guy's name was.

A documentary I saw recently and enjoyed was Double Dare. This one concerns stuntwomen, particularly Jeannie Epper, the stand-in for Lynda Carter on "Wonder Woman", and Zoe Bell, who did the stunts on "Xena: Warrior Princess" for Lucy Lawless. After XWP comes to a close, Bell is unemployed and eventually becomes friends with Epper. Double Dare is a great look at the struggles of women in the world of stuntwork.

quote:

Originally posted by keylimetrev:
Harlan County, USA was another good doc. that I don't think has been mentioned yet.

I watched this again recently. I had seen it on video years ago and it popped up in a theatre in NYC with no display ads and virtually no publicity except in the listings sections of the newspapers. I think it was the 30th anniversary of the film so a new print was struck and it received a brief theatrical run again. It holds up very well.

quote:

Originally posted by Imprezu21:
I just got 'gunner palace' today.
It look slike it could be really good and from what i have read it is.We shall see though.

I just watched this last weekend. It is already showing on cable. I taped it off "The Military Channel" a channel I didn't even know I had. The film works quite well and is still topical.

I saw "Murderball" over the weekend, and I think it's my favorite doc so far this year. It found a way to be inspiring and uplifting without being sappy at all. Great Doc.

AMPAS East has a monthly screening series where they screen a film, usually with a new print struck. This month's selection was THE ELEANOR ROOSEVELT STORY, the winner of the Oscar for Documentary in '65. While not the best documentary I've ever seen it was a very informative and interesting doc. on a former first lady, who was an amazing woman. The director, Richard Kaplan, didn't overrely on talking heads or still photograph, which make most docs deadly. Fortunately, lots of footage of Eleanor Roosevelt existed so he was able to use a lot of newsreel footage.

Sadly, I don't watch as many docs as I used to, but I recently watched Helvetica, and found it terribly interesting. I've always had a casual interest in typgraphy, so it was really right up my alley.

Earthlings because it shows the viewer the truth.

I watched American Hardcore today (again), It's held up well and the same can be said for the music that came out of that scene.

quote:

Originally posted by Everyoneanindividual:
I watched American Hardcore today (again), It's held up well and the same can be said for the music that came out of that scene.

It's weird, I'm not a big fan of hardcore music, but I find that movie fascinating. That and this doc called Punk: Attitude.