Kevin Kelly - True Films 3.0 - 200 Documentaries, You Must See Before You Die (2007).pdf - Książki USA - dwlodek

TRUE FILMS

3.0

This is the golden age of documentaries.

Inexpensive equipment, new methods of distribution, and a very eager audi-

ence have all launched a renaissance in non-ﬁ ction ﬁ lm making and viewing.

The very best of these non-ﬁ ction ﬁ lms are as entertaining as the best Hol-

lywood blockbusters. Because they are true, their storylines seem fresh with

authentic plot twists, real characters, and truth stranger than ﬁ ction. Most

true ﬁ lms are solidly informative, and a few are genuinely useful like a tool.

The rise of documentaries and true cinema is felt not only in movie theaters,

but on network TV and cable channels as well. Reality TV, non-ﬁ ction stations

like the History Channel or Discovery, and BBC imports have increased the

choices in true ﬁ lms tremendously. There’s no time to watch them all, and

little guidance to what’s great.

In this book I offer 200+ great true ﬁ lms.

I deﬁ ne true ﬁ lms as documentaries, educational ﬁ lms, instructional how-to’s,

and what the British call factuals – a non-ﬁ ction visual account. These 200 are

the best non-ﬁ ction ﬁ lms I’ve found for general interest. I’ve watched all these

ﬁ lms more than once. Sometimes thrice. I haven’t had TV for 20 years, so I’ve

concentrated my viewing time on documentaries and true ﬁ lms. I run a little

website (www.trueﬁ lms.com) where I solicit suggestions of great stuff.

What am I looking for in a great true ﬁ lm?

• It must be factual.

• It must surprise me, but not preach to me.

• If it introduces me to a world or subculture that I never thought about

before, even better.

• There’s a plot – a transformation from beginning to the end.

• It’s easily available.

As dogged as I have been in tracking down great true ﬁ lms, I have seen only

a fraction of the more than 60,000 that have been made, and the thousands

now being made each year. If you know of an amazing true ﬁ lm that I’ve

missed please recommend it to me: kk@kk.org.

Where to get the ﬁ lms:

I recommend only those great and worthwhile titles that are available

on tape or DVD at consumer prices. I indicate whether a ﬁ lm is rentable

from Netﬂ ix, and if it is purchasable from Amazon. If neither of those op-

tions is available, I will then list an alternative source.

For too long true ﬁ lms have been hard to ﬁ nd, appearing only ﬂ eetingly in

theaters, or projected in school classrooms on expensive 16mm prints, or

hidden on back shelves at video rental places. Now DVDs and websites

are rapidly increasing the availability of true ﬁ lms; their prices continue to

drop, and their distribution expands.

However, many great true ﬁ lms are still not easily seen. The British

produce fantastic factuals that are shown a few times on BBC and then

mothballed. A lot of older documentaries have still not been released on

DVD or tape. Some of the greatest documentaries ever made are owned

by educational agencies that price them according to the old model of

scarce ﬁ lm prints. Since their customers were once only classrooms in

schools and universities, these distributors set very steep fees – typically

$300 to purchase a tape, and $100 merely to rent it. They have main-

tained these prices for individuals, which is plainly ridiculous. I view this

as an ideal strategy to prevent as many people as possible from seeing

a ﬁ lm. So far, I am unable to recommend any of those good ﬁ lms since

their fees, though lowered, are still not reasonable consumer prices. And

much of the BBC treasure trove is still not released, although more of it

is seeping out online as electronic downloads. As they reach consumer

levels, to the point that anyone who wants to see it can pretty easily order

a copy, I’ll add the best of those to the True Films list.

Happily, more and more recent documentaries are being released to a re-

ceptive public at consumer prices. Even better, a growing number of fac-

tuals are also carried by the emerging online DVD subscription services.

Big companies like Blockbuster, WalMart, and Amazon UK offer some

true ﬁ lms among their wide selections of ﬁ ctional ﬁ lms. Some smaller

players like GreenCine (www.greencine.com) offer interesting selections

of true ﬁ lms that no one else may carry.

The major player in the documentaries is now Netﬂ ix (www.netﬂ ix.com).

I am a huge fan of Netﬂ ix’s ﬁ lm subscription service. Their library of

55,000 ﬁ lms (including nearly 6,000 true ﬁ lms) is now my library. At any

one moment I have over 100 documentary titles I’d like to see stacked

up in my Netﬂ ix queue waiting for me to return the last one I watched.

The way Netﬂ ix works is this: the list of ﬁ lms I want to see is kept on

my computer; the ﬁ lms come as DVD discs in the mail; I always hold

3 at home. As I watch them I send them back in the same envelope

(no postage and no late fees) whenever I am done, and they auto-

matically send me the next one in my queue. The service is amazingly

fast, incredibly intelligent, inexpensive, and the best way to try out

documentaries in a low risk way (it costs you nothing to return a disc

unviewed). Give them a try (each ﬁ lm I review that they carry is linked

to their database from my True Films site). If there is a true ﬁ lm you

want to see that they don’t have, ask them to order it.

Netﬂ ix are such great fans of true ﬁ lm fans that they have been re-

leasing notable documentaries onto DVD themselves, on their own

“label.” These are ﬁ lms that were released in theaters but for various

reasons never transferred to DVD. As of this printing, Netﬂ ix has

released 170 such true ﬁ lms. Indeed, if you are the creator of a ﬁ lm

documentary looking for a way to transfer it to DVD, you should con-

tact them directly.

Still, some true ﬁ lms are hard to ﬁ nd. If you can’t ﬁ nd a listed great

true ﬁ lm for sale on Amazon, or even the used-item section of Ama-

zon, you should check eBay, which carries a surprising number of

used videos and DVDs. Don’t forget your local public library either. It

is not uncommon for libraries in one region to pool their videos into a

decent video library, yours for the asking. Also, even the saddest video

rental store should carry at least a dozen of these titles. Shopping in-

formation changes rapidly so I’m trying to keep the ordering informa-

tion for each ﬁ lm current on my website, at www.trueﬁ lms.com. Check

there if you are having trouble ﬁ nding something.

Tip on watching ﬁ lms:

Almost every ﬁ lm listed here is a ﬁ lm made with the big screen in

mind. Even independent and underground ﬁ lmmakers intend (and

hope) their work will be projected in a large theater. You’ll get more

out of the ﬁ lm if you can watch it on a sizeable screen. Seven years ago

when we decided to migrate from our tiny 12” screen to something

more appropriate for ﬁ lms, I choose to use a cheap computer projec-

tor shining on a wall screen. In a few years from now extremely large

ﬂ at screens should be quite affordable and even better.

I bought the cheapest, smallest, computer projector I could ﬁ nd,

the kind of portable conference projector you see advertised in airline

magazines. You can get a good one now for $800. The quality of even

the low-end projectors exceeds the quality of video, although it is not up

to High Deﬁ nition yet. I recommend the Epson Powerlite S1, or whatever

will replace it (models obsolesce within a year). You hook it up to an

everyday DVD player. The setup works perfectly ﬁ ne. So many folks have

discovered this trick that manufactures like Epson, In Focus and Sharp

now market models for precisely this use.

If your wall is white and uncluttered you can project onto the wall, or you

can ﬁ nd an inexpensive roll-up screen, which is what we did. In addition

to the small projector we also added inexpensive surround sound to the

room. You can get wireless speakers these days which make installation

easy. The full experience is as about as good as our local half-plex theater.

Is it perfect? No. Our cheap home theater quality does not match the ex-

perience of viewing a good print on a large screen in a good theater. Also,

because of the large windows in our room, we use the theater mostly at

night. The projector has a fan in it so it is not as silent as a TV or a ﬂ at

panel, but in a large room with the volume cranked up you won’t notice.

All the electronic gear sits compactly hidden beneath a tiny end table,

on the ﬂ oor. (By design the projector angles upward slightly so it ﬁ lls the

screen from the ﬂ oor perfectly.) Most visitors to the room don’t have any

idea that it can transform into a serviceable home theater in the time it

takes to roll down the screen.

Enjoy. And let me know which ﬁ lms you like the best. Even better, tell me

about one I missed. I plan to do future editions and I’ll share your tip.

Winter 2007

– Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly - True Films 3.0 - 200 Documentaries, You Must See Before You Die (2007).pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: