Paste Magazine: The 100 Best Documentaries of All Time
Created by Rodolfo.
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In documentary filmmaking, truth is almost always filled with lies.
It’s just the nature of the form, really—of any filmmaking at all, for that matter. Even a home video recording, if you’ve ever made or watched or starred in one, is marred by manipulation: Whether you’re aware you’re being “watched” or not, your truth is a sort of surreal quilt of camera placement, cuts and atmosphere, totally mitigated by the lens and then, further down the food chain, the ultimate observer. If you know you’re being watched, you act accordingly; if you don’t, the recording may carry a subtle tone of voyeurism, of intrusiveness—the feeling that something isn’t quite right.
And yet, from direct cinema to Dogme 95, truth has always been an idealistic goal for many filmmakers, and not necessarily the purity of it, but the translation of its most deeply held essentials. Arguably, documentary filmmaking has always been at the forefront of that aim, though during much of its primordial beginnings—especially throughout the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s—documentary filmmakers trolled truth as if it was yet another stuffy branch of bourgeoisie power.
In Land Without Bread (1933), Luis Buñuel parodied the white guilt of popular travelogue docs of the time, pointing out that sadness and economical devastation existed in Spain itself—no need to travel to some faraway land. In Nanook of the North (1922), the life of an Inuit clan was notoriously messed with. And Man with a Movie Camera (1929) pretty much just made a bunch of shit up. Their goals weren’t to leave truth unfondled, but to say that an unfondled truth is an unexplored one: shallow and meaningless.
Once Jean Rouche, Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker and the Maysles, however, pioneered and then defined throughout the 1950s and ’60s what came to be known as cinéma vérité, documentary filmmaking shouldered the burden of truth, resolving to allow life to operate on its own, brushed only briefly by the manipulative fingers of the filmmaker. This was coupled with advances in filmmaking technology, notably that equipment became lighter, and more mobile. In turn, crews shrank, and coverage became paramount. That Nick Broomfield’s films are filmed with a minute crew on minute budgets, or that Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man (2012) was captured partly on an iPhone camera, means that today, as it is with most art, anyone can be a documentary filmmaker.
Which isn’t a bad thing. Because truth belongs to the people, by definition—it is ours to shape and hone and mold into something that enriches each of our lives and each of our worldviews however we see fit. That the following list leans heavily on films released in the past five years isn’t a coincidence, nor is it a factor of some shortsighted list-making. Instead, it points directly to our increased capacity to capture, reproduce and respect truth. If anything, we’re coming full circle.
Will the truth set you free? Probably not, but we believe the following 100 documentaries are the all-time greatest attempts to find out.
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97 +7
Fambul Tok
2011, in 0 top lists Check -
106 +7
Low & Clear
2012, in 0 top lists Check -
101 +7
L'amour fou
2010, in 0 top lists Check -
94 +7
Brooklyn Castle
2012, in 0 top lists Check -
72 +7
Actress
2014, in 0 top lists Check -
88 +7
12 O'Clock Boys
2013, in 0 top lists Check -
77 +7
Detropia
2012, in 0 top lists Check -
18 -
Handsworth Songs
1986, in 5 top lists Check -
57 +7
Calcutta
1969, in 1 top list Check -
99 +7
The Hellstrom Chronicle
1971, in 3 top lists Check -
74 +7
At Berkeley
2013, in 2 top lists Check -
50 +7
Muscle Shoals
2013, in 0 top lists Check -
65 +7
The Overnighters
2014, in 0 top lists Check -
107 +7
Deep Water
2006, in 0 top lists Check -
59 +7
Welfare
1975, in 7 top lists Check -
86 +7
National Gallery
2014, in 1 top list Check -
98 +7
Biggie and Tupac
2002, in 0 top lists Check -
100 +7
Koko, le gorille qui parle
1978 — a.k.a. Koko: A Talking Gorilla, in 1 top list Check -
47 +7
Tiexi qu
2002 — a.k.a. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, in 8 top lists Check -
53 +7
D'Est
1993 — a.k.a. From the East, in 5 top lists Check -
38 +7
Style Wars
1983, in 0 top lists Check -
19 new
Histoire(s) du cinéma
1989, in 8 top lists -
73 +7
Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait
1974 — a.k.a. General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait, in 2 top lists Check -
32 +7
Primary
1960, in 6 top lists Check -
46 +7
In the Year of the Pig
1968, in 4 top lists Check -
85 +7
Al midan
2013 — a.k.a. The Square, in 0 top lists Check -
71 +7
Marwencol
2010, in 0 top lists Check -
93 +7
How to Survive a Plague
2012, in 0 top lists Check -
36 +7
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
1968, in 7 top lists Check -
68 +7
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
2006, in 6 top lists Check -
104 +7
Dig!
2004, in 3 top lists Check -
30 +7
56 Up
2012, in 2 top lists Check -
90 +7
Dark Days
2000, in 1 top list Check -
10 -
Los Angeles Plays Itself
2003, in 5 top lists Check -
92 +7
Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
2004, in 1 top list Check -
80 +7
High School
1968, in 4 top lists Check -
75 +7
In film nist
2011 — a.k.a. This Is Not a Film, in 3 top lists Check -
103 +7
Murderball
2005, in 0 top lists Check -
55 +7
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
1997, in 2 top lists Check -
12 -
Le chagrin et la pitié
1969 — a.k.a. The Sorrow and the Pity, in 11 top lists Check -
95 +7
Helvetica
2007, in 0 top lists Check -
31 new
Leviathan
2012, in 5 top lists Check -
8 -
Titicut Follies
1967, in 9 top lists Check -
14 -
Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960)
1961 — a.k.a. Chronicle of a Summer, in 8 top lists Check -
60 +7
Taxi to the Dark Side
2007, in 2 top lists Check -
9 -
Hearts and Minds
1974, in 7 top lists Check -
29 +7
49 Up
2005, in 2 top lists Check -
51 +7
Lektionen in Finsternis
1992 — a.k.a. Lessons of Darkness, in 6 top lists Check -
28 +7
42 Up
1998, in 2 top lists Check -
27 +7
35 Up
1991, in 2 top lists Check
Last updated on Jan 10, 2022 by Rodolfo; source