Sight & Sound's Top 50 Documentaries

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Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Introduction from bfi.org:

The new Sight & Sound documentary poll is the result of a ‘why didn’t we think of that before’ moment. In the light of the amazing recent success and cultural impact of several nonfiction films, a group of curators, myself included, were chewing over what the BFI might do specifically for documentary films and television. It soon became obvious that we were not sure exactly what it was that we were trying to discuss.


I’m usually loath to do anything that takes lustre away from Sight & Sound’s ten-year poll of the Greatest Films Ever but a new poll seemed to me the most obvious solution to getting a full view of the documentary canon. Approximately four months later I’m delighted with the quality of what more than 200 critics and curators – including many documentary specialists – and 100 filmmakers (the likes of John Akomfrah, Michael Apted, Clio Barnard, James Benning, Sophie Fiennes, Amos Gitai, Paul Greengrass, Jose Guerin, Isaac Julien, Asif Kapadia, Sergei Loznitsa, Kevin Macdonald, James Marsh, Joshua Oppenheimer, Anand Patwardhan, Pawel Pawlikowski, Nicolas Philibert, Walter Salles and James Toback) have come up with in terms of choices and commentary and I’m very proud of the team of advisors, BFI colleagues and S&S editors who have worked so hard to produce this poll edition.

What’s remarkable about the Top 50 documentaries list is that it feels so fresh. One in five of the films chosen were made since the millennium, and to have a silent film from 1929 at the top of the list is an absolute joy. That allusive essay films feature so strongly throughout demonstrates that nonfiction cinema is not a narrow discipline but a wide open country full of explorers. The current print edition of S&S contains only the highlights of our results; the real explorers among you will want to browse the full results and commentaries which goes live online on 14 August.
Top 10:
1. "The Man with a Movie Camera" (1929), Dziga Vertov
2. "Shoah" (1985), Claude Lanzmann
3. "Sans soleil" (1983), Chris Marker
4. "Night and Fog" (1955), Alain Resnais
5. "The Thin Blue Line" (1988), Errol Morris
6. "Chronicle of a Summer" (1961), Edgar Morin/Jean Rouch
7. "Nanook of the North" (1922), Robert J. Flaherty
8. "The Gleaners and I" (2000), Agnes Varda
9= "Dont Look Back" (1967), D.A. Pennebaker
9= "Grey Gardens" (1975), Ellen Hovde/Albert Maysles/David Maysles/Muffie Meyer

Full list:

http://thefilmstage.com/news/sight-s...s-of-all-time/

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound-ma.../greatest-docs



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
A good list with some interesting choices, however, it's far less cohesive than their general decennial poll. Much more than that list, this one suffers from a recency effect, canonizing films like The Act of Killing and Leviathan so early is dubious at best, and somewhat of a disservice to the list. Also, the definition of documentary is a bit loose (as it sometimes is in films). We're convinced that Life, And Nothing More isn't a documentary because Through the Olive Trees exists, but I think Close-Up borders that line even more than that film, as does The Quince Tree Sun.
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I agree with bluedeed, I was a little surprised at some of the choices, although overall its a nice compendium of documentaries, especially those that are important and innovative as you would expect from S&S, so I look forward to exploring most of the films on there. Most of the odd choices seem to come in the lower positions and the point system system coupled with the 'recency effect' as bluedeed described. I am sure there are quite a few films missing that most would argue are stronger than some that appeared on the bottom half.

I have seen The Man With a Movie Camera, Night and Fog, F for Fake and This House Is Black.

Edit: Looking at the list, it's not clear to me how the voting system works, it says they had over 200 people, including lots of famous documentary film makers, yet the films at the bottom of the list have very few points (or votes, as it says), 8 is the lowest, which doesn't seem like a lot.

Also I recall reading an article in the S&S magazine about essay films sometime this year ot last, quite a few of the films were mentioned in there: Sans Soleil, F For Fake, Histoire(s) du Cinema, This House Is Black.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
"Recency Effect" be damned. I'm glad it's there, but The Act of Killing should be higher. On the other hand, where's Olympia?
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Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Number 17. is that obscure 9 hour long flick I watched 4 hours of today.
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Nice to see Man on Wire on 37th place that list:

Man on Wire – James Marsh, UK 2007



Sans Solei and Shoah in the top 3 are on my top 100 favorite live action films list as well. There is also another one that is in my top 100 that is not there: Anvil, the History of Avil, about a failed heavy metal band.

I only watched a few more from this list. Though I didn't actually like the 1st place very much, it's a Soviet propaganda film though it is notable for being perhaps one of the first attempts to make a feature length non-narrative film.



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
I absolutely love James Benning's ballot for the poll:

“Titanic (Cameron). This is my only vote: an amazing document of bad acting. And, I might add, all films are fictions.”



Much more than that list, this one suffers from a recency effect, canonizing films like The Act of Killing and Leviathan so early is dubious at best, and somewhat of a disservice to the list.
It's voted on. ****. Disservice? **** that. Recency effect? What the ****?
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