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Down The Rabbit Hole We Go: Mind-Expanding Documentaries

283 points by kaaist 13y ago

Blahah 13y ago
There is no worse way to learn than through documentary films. They are free to be as inaccurate and emotive as they want, without the inconvenience of journalistic ethics, and they very often are much more sensationalist than their textual equivalents (books). Something about the medium of TV makes people stupid. Some of the films in the list are just outright activist propagada. Others might be fine - I haven't watched them all. Want to learn something? Read.
- RachelF 13y ago
  Some are pretty good. You'll find that early documentaries tried to convey more information, I guess they figured out dumbing things down made them more entertaining. Take a look at this Feynman documentary from 1964 for a case in point: http://youtu.be/y3Vc-cL9lTM http://youtu.be/y3Vc-cL9lTM
- nisa 13y ago
  I tend to agree but take a look at Adam Curtis. He is not perfect but his documentaries give you a lot of insight and ideas to think about.
  - zabuni 13y ago
    Adam Curtis is a prime example of what he is complaining about. Sure, he gives you things to think about, but he is fast and loose with said facts, and uses quick cuts, stock footage, and emotional music to try and sway opinion.
    - onebaddude 13y ago
      >Adam Curtis is a prime example of what he is complaining about. Adam Curtis has produced some of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It's like people in this thread can't appreciate art for what it is. Or that some of the topics here have been determined in absolute, and aren't open to interpretation, philosophizing or opinion. Malcolm Gladwell? Junk. Adam Curtis? Junk. Is nothing worth reading or watching unless it's an unstylized list of facts? I don't know about you, but all I ask from my personal entertainment are "things to think about".
    - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
      He does so absolutely. But he is also careful to identify conclusions as opinion, and you get to decide for yourself. He leaves you the framework for his conclusions, and you can continue to work on it. If you use him, Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky as sources, then draw your own conclusions, my experience is that you'll get more and better answers. I disagree strongly with all of them at the level of conclusion, but will continue to reuse all the legwork they did to get there. It's a force multiplier. History is not a restaurant where you just send the food back; it's more like doing your own cooking. And my experience with Adam Curtis' stuff is that pulling one or two conclusions out does not cause the whole to collapse in a heap. His metaphors and narratives are sound.
- lennel 13y ago
  I agree with you 100%, reading is a much better way to absorb information with fewer emotional strings available for the plucking with yer brain in a more rational state. We all however know people who got through university without ever reading an inch of their set list, wrapped in a bubble of uncaring, who could do with a jolt again, a boost to remember why they want to be alive and that money is not the only reason to be alive. For these people, recommending a good documentary is your duty. It could kickstart a moral highground for a month or so in them!
  - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
    Perhaps I've just surrendered to laziness, but I find that in trolling through BookTV to find books to read, I usually get more and better value from the discussion of the book than the book itself. Emphasis "usually" - some of the books are of much more value than the hour on air. BookTv is a drier setting than yer average TED talk or propaganda piece (documentary) film, so it seems less biased. You get the executive summary without having to invest all the time to read it. But the books that I actually read - where I was motivated to actually read the book - from BookTv have been very good.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Dont quite see why none of that can't apply to books. Books can easily be inaccurate and emotive, if not more so. Authors are not bound by, what you very amusingly call, "journalistic ethics" at all. Then, it seems to me that, in general, that there is something about books which makes people arrogant and judgemental. And yes, there are plenty of examples of propaganda books.
  - Blahah 13y ago
    I'm not saying it can't apply to books. I'm saying that the prevalence of bullshit is much greater in documentary films, making them in general a bad source of information. Of course I agree that there are many examples of propaganda, emotive and inaccurate books. Journalistic ethics do exist in print media, but the point is taken that they don't apply in many situations.
    - monkeynotes 13y ago
      Not all documentaries are subject to your sweeping judgement, just as not all books are bullshit. You have to seek out the good stuff, and that means occasionally watching some crap too.
  - jerf 13y ago
    Books can't have a manipulative soundtrack. Books can't put a guy in front of you who triggers all your "this is a wise (wo)man and I should listen to whatever they're saying" brain routines, while the guy radiates honesty (which isn't that hard to fake). Books can't put together slick video presentations that gloss over all the problems while having nice special effects (or even merely "nice cinematography", an even lower bar). Books don't have access to any of a wide range of video-based manipulation techniques that I'm not listing here. Books have a much harder time reaching into your subconscious and bypassing your conscious mind with those techniques. I phrased that carefully. Books can sort of do those things, but it is much, much weaker. Books are generally much easier to engage on an intellectual, thoughtful level. Documentaries scare me, and I've nearly entirely cut them out of my intellectual diet. They are way too powerful, far out of proportion to the difficulty of making them or the assurance that they are even remotely connected to the truth.
- danpalmer 13y ago
  I mostly agree if you're talking about learning something in detail. But I'm never going to be a... marine biologist, for example, however, I enjoy documentaries about life in the sea because it gives me some basic knowledge that means I'm not totally ignorant of the issues, and could have a conversation with a marine biologist about their field, even if it is just me asking better questions rather than being able to hold up a scientific argument.
- stiff 13y ago
  If you are only interested in the hard facts, sure, but then most popular science books and even some textbooks are not much better either, in some sense I wish I could unread some of the stuff I read as a youngster about complex numbers, zeno's paradox, goedels theorem, various probability puzzles, physics etc. because in the shallowness of the description (and often the authors understanding) it was actively detrimental to understanding the topics. Full comprehension of complex topics requires years of sustained effort. Yet one still wants to get some sense of what is happening in different places of the world, to people in different disciplines or cultures, and you specifically do not want to get into too much detail, because nobody simply has the mental capacity to study every discipline out there, and this is mostly a form of reasonably intelligent entertainment, at its best an inspiration to get deeper in and read books etc.
  - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    I can't believe I'm reading a comment that brushes off "hard facts" like some kind of nuisance.
    - stiff 13y ago
      That's because you clearly are unable to read at all.
- pedalpete 13y ago
  Sadly, journalistic ethics have followed the path of documentaries.
- gmoore 13y ago
  Oh yeah good point - no one every wrote a book that was just "outright activist propagada[sp]"
- brownbat 13y ago
  Charlie Brooker once provided a nice demonstration of emotional editing techniques, albeit in the context of reality tv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI Reality TV is just documentary filmmaking with a rapid production schedule and without the pretense of dignity. To crib from Bobby Shaftoe, it's really documentary filmmaking, but moreso.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Very true. The Zeitgeist films contain many horribly inaccurate 'facts' and outright lies (inaccurate understanding of the monetary system, complete lies/fabrications concerning Egyptian mythology in Zeitgeist 1), yet people believe them and hold them up as examples of 'good' documentaries... Edit - it also seems nearly anything that deals with mythology horribly misrepresents what the ancients actually believed and what we have discovered concerning their mythologies.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Counter example: documentaries about nature or other countries. Sometimes, nothing can quite replace moving images and sound. I'll go further and claim that in theory, documentaries can be every bit as factual as books, but not the other way around.
  - Blahah 13y ago
    I agree about some nature documentaries, though I've seen a good number that are clearly manipulative (in that they have staged a situation or misrepresented the facts). The BBC stuff is generally excellent.
- Tycho 13y ago
  Now and again I like to watch one of those crackpot alien contact or religious prophecy documentaries, just to be amused at all the same techniques being employed on a message that you can never take seriously.
anigbrowl 13y ago
I like documentaries, but life's too short to watch 300 of them from some random list. You might as well just search for documentaries on Netflix and go by the ratings.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  This is actually a pretty good selection based on the sampling of videos on it which I've already seen. The point isn't to watch all 300. But if you do find a topic you're interested in, this list is a good place to start your search. There are a few stinkers as well, so caveat youtube-dl'er.
stiff 13y ago
Looks like a random sampling. My personal favourites: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman Little Dieter Needs to Fly by Werner Herzog
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  A good list, at least based on the first three (which I've seen and/or heard a great deal about).
- ordinary 13y ago
  The Ascent of Man is amazing. It's old, somewhat outdated, very slow... but amazing. I rewatch it at least once a year.
  - 3stripe 13y ago
    My parents have the book at home. Loved reading it when I was a kid. In another career...
- cypherpunks01 13y ago
  The first thing I did was search the 300-item list for "The Power of Myth". Little Dieter is really great too, thanks for the list.
  - hansjorg 13y ago
    Interesting aside, much of TPM was filmed at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. From Wikipedia: > Campbell and Lucas became friends when Lucas publicly acknowledged the influence Campbell's writings had on the development of his hugely successful film "Star Wars." Campbell expresses great enthusiasm for this film; a film that he says conforms to classical mythological legends.
- WickyNilliams 13y ago
  I love The Ascent of Man. Bronowski's presentation style and the camera work (e.g. a wide shot of some landscape with Bronowski narrating then you notice actually he's a couple of hundred metres in the distance walking by) amuses me to no end, but it's a great watch. I haven't heard of the others you list, so I'll check them out, thanks. Some of my favourites: Microcoosmos Anything by David Attenborough Capturing The Friedmans Anything by Louis Theoroux The Music of the Primes (this was technically a 3 part series, but it's a great look at the mathematicians who have tried to find the secret to the prime numbers, most of whom drove themselves insane) The (R)evolution of Immortal Technique - a documentary about political activist/musician, great watch
VMG 13y ago
From the site: > Zeitgeist II > Capitalism is the Crisis > The Pyramid Code And a bunch of other pseudoscientific conspiracy bullshit I see this tendency with all documentary collections, subreddits, playlists etc - somehow people love to see made up shit
- danpalmer 13y ago
  You can add Collapse to that list as well, some hints of truth, but mostly extreme libertarian FUD.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I've been puzzling over Ruppert for quite some time. I think his history's pretty solid. His projections are where things start to fall apart, and in several of his predictions he's clearly jumped the gun (but then: prediction is hard, especially about the future). He's in pretty good company there. My own sense is that a collapse is likely to take rather longer, though it's also likely to be highly nonlinear -- things can limp along for a quite a while before suddenly falling to pieces. And while not inevitable, I fail to see how a highly complex technological civilization predicated on massive energy flows and high levels of stability can survive the curtailment of both. I also suspect 2007 was a lot dicier than many people realize.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I wouldn't be so fast to knock Capitalism is the Crisis. Chris Hedges is absolutely worth taking a good listen / read of. My apologies if your particular worldview happens to get shaken.
  - VMG 13y ago
    Either way, the list is clearly heavily biased. At least put Free To Choose on there as well.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
dredmorbius 13y ago
People learn through stories and pictures. The documentary is a powerful teaching tool. Not perfect, and it can mislead, but powerful. I've spent more hours than I care to admit over the past year going through a range of material from slick and well-prepared documentaries (including several on this list: "Inside Job", "The Four Horsemen", "Capitalism in Crisis", How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth", "The Fog of War", "The Ascent of Money" (well, I read the book). "Collapse" with Michael Ruppert. And a few which aren't on the list: "The Prize", on the story of petroleum, based on Daniel Yergin's book of the same name. James Burke's "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed". And numerous conference presentations, interviews, and various other presentations. What's particularly useful is watching these not online through a crappy video player, but by downloading the videos, where I can stop and start playback, and by checking up on points (did that really happen? is there documentation of that fact?), and taking notes. Sometimes I'll breeze through a light topic at 140% realtime, in others it may take me most of a week to get through a 90 minute lecture. Yes, books have their place, but a well-made documentary or series which mixes spoken word, visual imagery, demonstration, and other effects, hits on the keys your mind uses to form memories. I'd watched "Connections" decades ago as a child, but bits stuck with me, and it was interesting to watch myself anticipating Burke reciting "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", which I'd last heard some 30 years earlier. Yes, there's material that tends toward the bogus, but sometimes watching good bogosity is decent training, or you can simply skip over that part of the list. I tackled an instance of this a few weeks back with an RT interview that was posted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905655 Dissecting the elements of conspiracy (or finding out that the conspiracists were right -- reading up on COINTELPRO and Operation HOODWINK (an attempt to set the Communist Party of the US and La Cosa Nostra against one another) from the FBI's own website a couple of days ago was sobering in context of Snowden and related allegations: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink). Ruppert's a case of one of the shakier videos. His history's pretty solid, his near-term future somewhat bleaker than I suspect is strictly accurate. If you read on background, the director notes that the story is as much about a man unmade by his own pursuit of an idea: "What I hoped to reveal was ... that his obsession with the collapse of industrial civilization has led to the collapse of his life. In the end, it is a character study about his obsession." (Ruppert's since continued to have a pretty hard time). Still, anyone not planning to be dead within fifteen years had better consider what happens on the energy, resources, population, and sustainability fronts to be the biggest factors in their lifetime. Dismissing the documentary format out-of-hand as some have done here, is simply uncalled for. Actually, it's pretty much straight out of the old FBI playbook. Perhaps even the current one.
saykou 13y ago
It's always nice to find a fellow documentary watcher, and here in hacker news, just proves to me that there's no better way to end an hard day, than to watch a nice documentary in bed. Everything is soothing in a documentary to watch in bed, soothing voice of the narrator, and the interesting facts that are brought to threw the screen. Of course that it's not the best way to learn. but after an hard day, there is no better way. thanks for sharing the list ... :D
neals 13y ago
I too love documentaries and used to love Discovery Channel before they turned into the disgrace they are now. However, it's a really showstopper for me when a documentary is dated and with the subjects that I find interesting ( tech, economy) documentaries are dated pretty fast. Watching anything on these subjects more than 1 year old is like whaching a documentary on ancient history.
- DanBC 13y ago
  The BBC has the long running tv documentaries "Horizon". Some of these are excellent. I would really like to see the BBC making use of this archive material by re-running old episodes, perhaps with discussion from the scientists involved before hand talking about advances since the programme was made or where they went right / wrong. Or perhaps the BBC could have a topic and collate clips from all the previous episodes to show how acience has tackled that topic over the years. There's. Brilliant radio programme called "The Reunion" which does something similar for news and current affairs. Here's their episode about Dolly the Sheep. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mhsdw http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mhsdw Here's their episode about the centre for alternative technology http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s393k http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s393k The format works well for the political stuff because the presenter (Sue MacGregor) is a respected journalist and was working at the time, and distance from events means people explain and explore without being so invested in a political position.
  - jwmoz 13y ago
    Horizon is great. Got the series on record along with Dispatches and Panorama.
  - timthorn 13y ago
    BBC Four does exactly what you suggest re:exploring a topic through past Horizon episodes.
drblast 13y ago
Cosmos is wonderful. But I'd mostly rather read to learn, it's faster. I'm a huge fan of documentaries that aren't mind-expanding and focus on quirky subcultures: King of Kong - Never cared about professional video gamers, but this film made me care deeply for 90 minutes. Spellbound - The incredible varied backstories behind the kids in the national spelling bee Grizzly Man - Don't even know how to describe this one. See Alaska through the eyes of a crazy person. Monster Camp - About people into live-action roleplaying. The culture clash with the couple on a leisurely stroll through the park that has no idea what's going on around them is one of the all-time great moments in documentaries. American Movie - Couldn't tell if this was real or Christopher Guest at first. It's real. It's awesome.
- zalew 13y ago
  You will enjoy these then: Confessions of a Superhero - wannabe actors working on Hollywood streets as costumed superheroes for tips. The Great Happiness Space - Japanese male prostitutes entertaining girls in pubs. Suprising twist in the end. Indie Game The Movie, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope - titles say it all. I guess these two are well known around here, like King of Kong you mentioned.
  - drblast 13y ago
    Thanks! I forgot about indie game... is that the one about fez and super meat boy? That was fantastic.
- netghost 13y ago
  If you enjoyed "King of Kong", "Chasing Ghosts" is pretty entertaining as well.
- postscapes1 13y ago
  American Movie is one of my favorite films ever. "Jesus told me so". If you haven't seen it, Kevin Kelly's True Films site is a great resource for other gems like it http://truefilms.com/ http://truefilms.com/.
lowmagnet 13y ago
The College Conspiracy has some interesting 'information', but I wouldn't call it data. Most colleges are for-profit scams with massive sport programs. The backers of this video are gold-and-silver nuts inflation trolls. Their list of recommended stocks (unbiased they say; worldview is bias I say) are mostly for precious metal mining companies and other bubble industries. Here's one of the stocks, picked at random and overlaid with DJIA: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EXK+Interactive#symbol=exk;range=my;compare=%5Edji;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined; http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EXK+Interactive#symbol=ex... Bubble in 2012 corresponds with a peak in silver, which has been down since.
deleted 13y ago
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rossjudson 13y ago
I don't see "Marketing through Hacker News" listed. That's a great documentary.
wowsig 13y ago
This is going to be the list to finish this year!
JacobIrwin 13y ago
FYI, Video 7 under '[25] Science' is now a dead youtube url
badman_ting 13y ago
Check out Zizek's new one, The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. The structure of the stories we tell ourselves can be just as interesting as the content.
riffraff 13y ago
since I don't see this listed, I cannot recommend "Enemies of the people"[0] enough. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_People_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_People_(film)
acd 13y ago
Down The Rabbit Hole We Go a quote from Alice in Wonderland. The book Alice in Wonderland was written by a Oxford Math professor Charles Lutwdige Dodgeson under the pseudonym Lewis Carrol. Now comes the fun part, the book is supposed to be about holographic universes. One could say the author was quite ahead of his time. http://emergent-culture.com/alice-and-the-rabbit-holographic-universe/ http://emergent-culture.com/alice-and-the-rabbit-holographic...
Myrmornis 13y ago
Just listing / watching these things without making it clear who the authors are is crazy. Many of these topics are the sorts of things that the usual perverters of objectivity (lefties, conservatives, religious people, etc) are interested in.
dominotw 13y ago
I watched about 200 documentaries last year and my favorite was The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2nNtynZAiI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2nNtynZAiI
johnohara 13y ago
I found the documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga to be well worth the 90+ minute investment. No spin or agenda, just the hard truth about life in Siberia. Free on Netflix.
- placeybordeaux 13y ago
  What do you mean by free?
  - johnohara 13y ago
    I meant to say readily available. Apologies.
elwell 13y ago
I assume as an attempt to avoid copyright issues, "The Life of A Young Entrepreneur" [0] was changed from it's original title "The Startup Kids" [1]. Meh, not fair to the producers of the film. [0] - #1 under "Digital Entrepreneurship" category [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Kids-Brian-Wong/dp/B00BQRJ8I6 http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Kids-Brian-Wong/dp/B00BQRJ8I6
corny 13y ago
I'm not a sports fan by any means but I've been enjoying many of the ESPN sports documentaries. My favourites: Muhammad and Larry The Two Escobars Into the Wind Once Brothers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_for_30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_for_30
mathattack 13y ago
Holy Moses - I am not going to be able to sleep tonight. Thank you for sharing!
aaron695 13y ago
Pretty much most movie style documentaries are just plain wrong or misleading. And this list seems to have some of the more nuttier ones, probably due to the requirement they be stream-able. But that's cool, I like watching nutty docos, they can be entertaining, but just don't think you'll come out smarter. If you want to learn, read or better yet do a structured course with lectures. ie. https://www.coursera.org/ https://www.coursera.org/
eruditely 13y ago
zzz the mention of kurzweil makes me disbelieve the author has the ability to make documentary suggestions, that mention alone falsifies a lot to me, i hope someone can point him to more serious discussions on technology future
dsego 13y ago
Shock Doctrine not on the list? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ

283 points by kaaist 13y ago

There is no worse way to learn than through documentary films. They are free to be as inaccurate and emotive as they want, without the inconvenience of journalistic ethics, and they very often are much more sensationalist than their textual equivalents (books). Something about the medium of TV makes people stupid. Some of the films in the list are just outright activist propagada. Others might be fine - I haven't watched them all. Want to learn something? Read.

RachelF 13y ago
Some are pretty good. You'll find that early documentaries tried to convey more information, I guess they figured out dumbing things down made them more entertaining. Take a look at this Feynman documentary from 1964 for a case in point: http://youtu.be/y3Vc-cL9lTM http://youtu.be/y3Vc-cL9lTM
nisa 13y ago
I tend to agree but take a look at Adam Curtis. He is not perfect but his documentaries give you a lot of insight and ideas to think about.
- zabuni 13y ago
  Adam Curtis is a prime example of what he is complaining about. Sure, he gives you things to think about, but he is fast and loose with said facts, and uses quick cuts, stock footage, and emotional music to try and sway opinion.
  - onebaddude 13y ago
    >Adam Curtis is a prime example of what he is complaining about. Adam Curtis has produced some of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It's like people in this thread can't appreciate art for what it is. Or that some of the topics here have been determined in absolute, and aren't open to interpretation, philosophizing or opinion. Malcolm Gladwell? Junk. Adam Curtis? Junk. Is nothing worth reading or watching unless it's an unstylized list of facts? I don't know about you, but all I ask from my personal entertainment are "things to think about".
  - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
    He does so absolutely. But he is also careful to identify conclusions as opinion, and you get to decide for yourself. He leaves you the framework for his conclusions, and you can continue to work on it. If you use him, Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky as sources, then draw your own conclusions, my experience is that you'll get more and better answers. I disagree strongly with all of them at the level of conclusion, but will continue to reuse all the legwork they did to get there. It's a force multiplier. History is not a restaurant where you just send the food back; it's more like doing your own cooking. And my experience with Adam Curtis' stuff is that pulling one or two conclusions out does not cause the whole to collapse in a heap. His metaphors and narratives are sound.
lennel 13y ago
I agree with you 100%, reading is a much better way to absorb information with fewer emotional strings available for the plucking with yer brain in a more rational state. We all however know people who got through university without ever reading an inch of their set list, wrapped in a bubble of uncaring, who could do with a jolt again, a boost to remember why they want to be alive and that money is not the only reason to be alive. For these people, recommending a good documentary is your duty. It could kickstart a moral highground for a month or so in them!
- ArkyBeagle 13y ago
  Perhaps I've just surrendered to laziness, but I find that in trolling through BookTV to find books to read, I usually get more and better value from the discussion of the book than the book itself. Emphasis "usually" - some of the books are of much more value than the hour on air. BookTv is a drier setting than yer average TED talk or propaganda piece (documentary) film, so it seems less biased. You get the executive summary without having to invest all the time to read it. But the books that I actually read - where I was motivated to actually read the book - from BookTv have been very good.
alan_cx 13y ago
Dont quite see why none of that can't apply to books. Books can easily be inaccurate and emotive, if not more so. Authors are not bound by, what you very amusingly call, "journalistic ethics" at all. Then, it seems to me that, in general, that there is something about books which makes people arrogant and judgemental. And yes, there are plenty of examples of propaganda books.
- Blahah 13y ago
  I'm not saying it can't apply to books. I'm saying that the prevalence of bullshit is much greater in documentary films, making them in general a bad source of information. Of course I agree that there are many examples of propaganda, emotive and inaccurate books. Journalistic ethics do exist in print media, but the point is taken that they don't apply in many situations.
  - monkeynotes 13y ago
    Not all documentaries are subject to your sweeping judgement, just as not all books are bullshit. You have to seek out the good stuff, and that means occasionally watching some crap too.
- jerf 13y ago
  Books can't have a manipulative soundtrack. Books can't put a guy in front of you who triggers all your "this is a wise (wo)man and I should listen to whatever they're saying" brain routines, while the guy radiates honesty (which isn't that hard to fake). Books can't put together slick video presentations that gloss over all the problems while having nice special effects (or even merely "nice cinematography", an even lower bar). Books don't have access to any of a wide range of video-based manipulation techniques that I'm not listing here. Books have a much harder time reaching into your subconscious and bypassing your conscious mind with those techniques. I phrased that carefully. Books can sort of do those things, but it is much, much weaker. Books are generally much easier to engage on an intellectual, thoughtful level. Documentaries scare me, and I've nearly entirely cut them out of my intellectual diet. They are way too powerful, far out of proportion to the difficulty of making them or the assurance that they are even remotely connected to the truth.
danpalmer 13y ago
I mostly agree if you're talking about learning something in detail. But I'm never going to be a... marine biologist, for example, however, I enjoy documentaries about life in the sea because it gives me some basic knowledge that means I'm not totally ignorant of the issues, and could have a conversation with a marine biologist about their field, even if it is just me asking better questions rather than being able to hold up a scientific argument.
stiff 13y ago
If you are only interested in the hard facts, sure, but then most popular science books and even some textbooks are not much better either, in some sense I wish I could unread some of the stuff I read as a youngster about complex numbers, zeno's paradox, goedels theorem, various probability puzzles, physics etc. because in the shallowness of the description (and often the authors understanding) it was actively detrimental to understanding the topics. Full comprehension of complex topics requires years of sustained effort. Yet one still wants to get some sense of what is happening in different places of the world, to people in different disciplines or cultures, and you specifically do not want to get into too much detail, because nobody simply has the mental capacity to study every discipline out there, and this is mostly a form of reasonably intelligent entertainment, at its best an inspiration to get deeper in and read books etc.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  I can't believe I'm reading a comment that brushes off "hard facts" like some kind of nuisance.
  - stiff 13y ago
    That's because you clearly are unable to read at all.
pedalpete 13y ago
Sadly, journalistic ethics have followed the path of documentaries.
gmoore 13y ago
Oh yeah good point - no one every wrote a book that was just "outright activist propagada[sp]"
brownbat 13y ago
Charlie Brooker once provided a nice demonstration of emotional editing techniques, albeit in the context of reality tv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI Reality TV is just documentary filmmaking with a rapid production schedule and without the pretense of dignity. To crib from Bobby Shaftoe, it's really documentary filmmaking, but moreso.
Mikeb85 13y ago
Very true. The Zeitgeist films contain many horribly inaccurate 'facts' and outright lies (inaccurate understanding of the monetary system, complete lies/fabrications concerning Egyptian mythology in Zeitgeist 1), yet people believe them and hold them up as examples of 'good' documentaries... Edit - it also seems nearly anything that deals with mythology horribly misrepresents what the ancients actually believed and what we have discovered concerning their mythologies.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Counter example: documentaries about nature or other countries. Sometimes, nothing can quite replace moving images and sound. I'll go further and claim that in theory, documentaries can be every bit as factual as books, but not the other way around.
- Blahah 13y ago
  I agree about some nature documentaries, though I've seen a good number that are clearly manipulative (in that they have staged a situation or misrepresented the facts). The BBC stuff is generally excellent.
Tycho 13y ago
Now and again I like to watch one of those crackpot alien contact or religious prophecy documentaries, just to be amused at all the same techniques being employed on a message that you can never take seriously.

anigbrowl 13y ago

I like documentaries, but life's too short to watch 300 of them from some random list. You might as well just search for documentaries on Netflix and go by the ratings.

dredmorbius 13y ago
This is actually a pretty good selection based on the sampling of videos on it which I've already seen. The point isn't to watch all 300. But if you do find a topic you're interested in, this list is a good place to start your search. There are a few stinkers as well, so caveat youtube-dl'er.

stiff 13y ago

Looks like a random sampling. My personal favourites: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman Little Dieter Needs to Fly by Werner Herzog

dredmorbius 13y ago
A good list, at least based on the first three (which I've seen and/or heard a great deal about).
ordinary 13y ago
The Ascent of Man is amazing. It's old, somewhat outdated, very slow... but amazing. I rewatch it at least once a year.
- 3stripe 13y ago
  My parents have the book at home. Loved reading it when I was a kid. In another career...
cypherpunks01 13y ago
The first thing I did was search the 300-item list for "The Power of Myth". Little Dieter is really great too, thanks for the list.
- hansjorg 13y ago
  Interesting aside, much of TPM was filmed at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. From Wikipedia: > Campbell and Lucas became friends when Lucas publicly acknowledged the influence Campbell's writings had on the development of his hugely successful film "Star Wars." Campbell expresses great enthusiasm for this film; a film that he says conforms to classical mythological legends.
WickyNilliams 13y ago
I love The Ascent of Man. Bronowski's presentation style and the camera work (e.g. a wide shot of some landscape with Bronowski narrating then you notice actually he's a couple of hundred metres in the distance walking by) amuses me to no end, but it's a great watch. I haven't heard of the others you list, so I'll check them out, thanks. Some of my favourites: Microcoosmos Anything by David Attenborough Capturing The Friedmans Anything by Louis Theoroux The Music of the Primes (this was technically a 3 part series, but it's a great look at the mathematicians who have tried to find the secret to the prime numbers, most of whom drove themselves insane) The (R)evolution of Immortal Technique - a documentary about political activist/musician, great watch

VMG 13y ago

From the site: > Zeitgeist II > Capitalism is the Crisis > The Pyramid Code And a bunch of other pseudoscientific conspiracy bullshit I see this tendency with all documentary collections, subreddits, playlists etc - somehow people love to see made up shit

danpalmer 13y ago
You can add Collapse to that list as well, some hints of truth, but mostly extreme libertarian FUD.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I've been puzzling over Ruppert for quite some time. I think his history's pretty solid. His projections are where things start to fall apart, and in several of his predictions he's clearly jumped the gun (but then: prediction is hard, especially about the future). He's in pretty good company there. My own sense is that a collapse is likely to take rather longer, though it's also likely to be highly nonlinear -- things can limp along for a quite a while before suddenly falling to pieces. And while not inevitable, I fail to see how a highly complex technological civilization predicated on massive energy flows and high levels of stability can survive the curtailment of both. I also suspect 2007 was a lot dicier than many people realize.
dredmorbius 13y ago
I wouldn't be so fast to knock Capitalism is the Crisis. Chris Hedges is absolutely worth taking a good listen / read of. My apologies if your particular worldview happens to get shaken.
- VMG 13y ago
  Either way, the list is clearly heavily biased. At least put Free To Choose on there as well.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago

dredmorbius 13y ago

People learn through stories and pictures. The documentary is a powerful teaching tool. Not perfect, and it can mislead, but powerful. I've spent more hours than I care to admit over the past year going through a range of material from slick and well-prepared documentaries (including several on this list: "Inside Job", "The Four Horsemen", "Capitalism in Crisis", How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth", "The Fog of War", "The Ascent of Money" (well, I read the book). "Collapse" with Michael Ruppert. And a few which aren't on the list: "The Prize", on the story of petroleum, based on Daniel Yergin's book of the same name. James Burke's "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed". And numerous conference presentations, interviews, and various other presentations. What's particularly useful is watching these not online through a crappy video player, but by downloading the videos, where I can stop and start playback, and by checking up on points (did that really happen? is there documentation of that fact?), and taking notes. Sometimes I'll breeze through a light topic at 140% realtime, in others it may take me most of a week to get through a 90 minute lecture. Yes, books have their place, but a well-made documentary or series which mixes spoken word, visual imagery, demonstration, and other effects, hits on the keys your mind uses to form memories. I'd watched "Connections" decades ago as a child, but bits stuck with me, and it was interesting to watch myself anticipating Burke reciting "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", which I'd last heard some 30 years earlier. Yes, there's material that tends toward the bogus, but sometimes watching good bogosity is decent training, or you can simply skip over that part of the list. I tackled an instance of this a few weeks back with an RT interview that was posted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905655 Dissecting the elements of conspiracy (or finding out that the conspiracists were right -- reading up on COINTELPRO and Operation HOODWINK (an attempt to set the Communist Party of the US and La Cosa Nostra against one another) from the FBI's own website a couple of days ago was sobering in context of Snowden and related allegations: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink). Ruppert's a case of one of the shakier videos. His history's pretty solid, his near-term future somewhat bleaker than I suspect is strictly accurate. If you read on background, the director notes that the story is as much about a man unmade by his own pursuit of an idea: "What I hoped to reveal was ... that his obsession with the collapse of industrial civilization has led to the collapse of his life. In the end, it is a character study about his obsession." (Ruppert's since continued to have a pretty hard time). Still, anyone not planning to be dead within fifteen years had better consider what happens on the energy, resources, population, and sustainability fronts to be the biggest factors in their lifetime. Dismissing the documentary format out-of-hand as some have done here, is simply uncalled for. Actually, it's pretty much straight out of the old FBI playbook. Perhaps even the current one.

saykou 13y ago

It's always nice to find a fellow documentary watcher, and here in hacker news, just proves to me that there's no better way to end an hard day, than to watch a nice documentary in bed. Everything is soothing in a documentary to watch in bed, soothing voice of the narrator, and the interesting facts that are brought to threw the screen. Of course that it's not the best way to learn. but after an hard day, there is no better way. thanks for sharing the list ... :D

neals 13y ago

I too love documentaries and used to love Discovery Channel before they turned into the disgrace they are now. However, it's a really showstopper for me when a documentary is dated and with the subjects that I find interesting ( tech, economy) documentaries are dated pretty fast. Watching anything on these subjects more than 1 year old is like whaching a documentary on ancient history.

DanBC 13y ago
The BBC has the long running tv documentaries "Horizon". Some of these are excellent. I would really like to see the BBC making use of this archive material by re-running old episodes, perhaps with discussion from the scientists involved before hand talking about advances since the programme was made or where they went right / wrong. Or perhaps the BBC could have a topic and collate clips from all the previous episodes to show how acience has tackled that topic over the years. There's. Brilliant radio programme called "The Reunion" which does something similar for news and current affairs. Here's their episode about Dolly the Sheep. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mhsdw http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mhsdw Here's their episode about the centre for alternative technology http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s393k http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s393k The format works well for the political stuff because the presenter (Sue MacGregor) is a respected journalist and was working at the time, and distance from events means people explain and explore without being so invested in a political position.
- jwmoz 13y ago
  Horizon is great. Got the series on record along with Dispatches and Panorama.
- timthorn 13y ago
  BBC Four does exactly what you suggest re:exploring a topic through past Horizon episodes.

drblast 13y ago

Cosmos is wonderful. But I'd mostly rather read to learn, it's faster. I'm a huge fan of documentaries that aren't mind-expanding and focus on quirky subcultures: King of Kong - Never cared about professional video gamers, but this film made me care deeply for 90 minutes. Spellbound - The incredible varied backstories behind the kids in the national spelling bee Grizzly Man - Don't even know how to describe this one. See Alaska through the eyes of a crazy person. Monster Camp - About people into live-action roleplaying. The culture clash with the couple on a leisurely stroll through the park that has no idea what's going on around them is one of the all-time great moments in documentaries. American Movie - Couldn't tell if this was real or Christopher Guest at first. It's real. It's awesome.

zalew 13y ago
You will enjoy these then: Confessions of a Superhero - wannabe actors working on Hollywood streets as costumed superheroes for tips. The Great Happiness Space - Japanese male prostitutes entertaining girls in pubs. Suprising twist in the end. Indie Game The Movie, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope - titles say it all. I guess these two are well known around here, like King of Kong you mentioned.
- drblast 13y ago
  Thanks! I forgot about indie game... is that the one about fez and super meat boy? That was fantastic.
netghost 13y ago
If you enjoyed "King of Kong", "Chasing Ghosts" is pretty entertaining as well.
postscapes1 13y ago
American Movie is one of my favorite films ever. "Jesus told me so". If you haven't seen it, Kevin Kelly's True Films site is a great resource for other gems like it http://truefilms.com/ http://truefilms.com/.

lowmagnet 13y ago

The College Conspiracy has some interesting 'information', but I wouldn't call it data. Most colleges are for-profit scams with massive sport programs. The backers of this video are gold-and-silver nuts inflation trolls. Their list of recommended stocks (unbiased they say; worldview is bias I say) are mostly for precious metal mining companies and other bubble industries. Here's one of the stocks, picked at random and overlaid with DJIA: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EXK+Interactive#symbol=exk;range=my;compare=%5Edji;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined; http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EXK+Interactive#symbol=ex... Bubble in 2012 corresponds with a peak in silver, which has been down since.

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rossjudson 13y ago

I don't see "Marketing through Hacker News" listed. That's a great documentary.

wowsig 13y ago

This is going to be the list to finish this year!

JacobIrwin 13y ago

FYI, Video 7 under '[25] Science' is now a dead youtube url

badman_ting 13y ago

Check out Zizek's new one, The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. The structure of the stories we tell ourselves can be just as interesting as the content.

riffraff 13y ago

since I don't see this listed, I cannot recommend "Enemies of the people"[0] enough. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_People_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_People_(film)

acd 13y ago

Down The Rabbit Hole We Go a quote from Alice in Wonderland. The book Alice in Wonderland was written by a Oxford Math professor Charles Lutwdige Dodgeson under the pseudonym Lewis Carrol. Now comes the fun part, the book is supposed to be about holographic universes. One could say the author was quite ahead of his time. http://emergent-culture.com/alice-and-the-rabbit-holographic-universe/ http://emergent-culture.com/alice-and-the-rabbit-holographic...

Myrmornis 13y ago

Just listing / watching these things without making it clear who the authors are is crazy. Many of these topics are the sorts of things that the usual perverters of objectivity (lefties, conservatives, religious people, etc) are interested in.

dominotw 13y ago

I watched about 200 documentaries last year and my favorite was The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2nNtynZAiI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2nNtynZAiI

johnohara 13y ago

I found the documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga to be well worth the 90+ minute investment. No spin or agenda, just the hard truth about life in Siberia. Free on Netflix.

placeybordeaux 13y ago
What do you mean by free?
- johnohara 13y ago
  I meant to say readily available. Apologies.

elwell 13y ago

I assume as an attempt to avoid copyright issues, "The Life of A Young Entrepreneur" [0] was changed from it's original title "The Startup Kids" [1]. Meh, not fair to the producers of the film. [0] - #1 under "Digital Entrepreneurship" category [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Kids-Brian-Wong/dp/B00BQRJ8I6 http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Kids-Brian-Wong/dp/B00BQRJ8I6

corny 13y ago

I'm not a sports fan by any means but I've been enjoying many of the ESPN sports documentaries. My favourites: Muhammad and Larry The Two Escobars Into the Wind Once Brothers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_for_30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_for_30

mathattack 13y ago

Holy Moses - I am not going to be able to sleep tonight. Thank you for sharing!

aaron695 13y ago

Pretty much most movie style documentaries are just plain wrong or misleading. And this list seems to have some of the more nuttier ones, probably due to the requirement they be stream-able. But that's cool, I like watching nutty docos, they can be entertaining, but just don't think you'll come out smarter. If you want to learn, read or better yet do a structured course with lectures. ie. https://www.coursera.org/ https://www.coursera.org/

eruditely 13y ago

zzz the mention of kurzweil makes me disbelieve the author has the ability to make documentary suggestions, that mention alone falsifies a lot to me, i hope someone can point him to more serious discussions on technology future

dsego 13y ago

Shock Doctrine not on the list? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ