alasdairm said:good call. another great documentary in which d.a. pennebaker was involved is the war room which documents bill clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.
alasdair

It's funny how one film can take you in directions you never imagined. When we began this project, all we wanted was to do an eye-opener on child labor. One that would remove the blinders from viewers so used to seeing child labor as part of the landscape of a developing country.
We started off trying to produce something to convince others. In the end, we came off the biggest converts.
You can't film these children's lives without looking deep into your own and the line of responsibility that links us all. In the end, we found ourselves becoming more than just documentarists; we had turned advocates.We became part of a network of NGOs working against child labor.
The kids we interviewed were articulate, child-like yet mature for their age. The hard life they led built extraordinary characters which translated so well in the documentary form. We marveled at how openly they shared their lives and thoughts with us.
Of course it helped that we were a small crew with very simple equipment. We operated as a two-woman team doing research, camera, sound, script, and PA work altogether. No heavy equipment, no lights, no big guys to intimidate them... This helped the children to open up.
And by simply being themselves, the children generate a tremendous amount of empathy from viewers who are invariably moved by their strength and stoicism, resilience and humor.
A group of legendary Cuban musicians, some as old as their nineties, were brought together by Ry Cooder to record a CD. In this film, we see and hear some of the songs being recorded in Havana. There is also footage from concerts in Amsterdam and New York City's Carnegie Hall. In addition, many of the individual musicians talk about their lives in Cuba and about how they got started in music.
yes, Motorcycle diaries was a great movie, loved it!! but it isn't a documentary.knight_marshall said:aww i'm more into nature documentaries... anything about big cats, dinosaurs, space... they're my favs...
i saw a bit of one about the Snow Leopard... omg i've never seen something look soooo damn cool... running full pelt down an almost vertical cliff after a deer, neither of them slipping until the leopard takes out the deers legs, at which point the deer falls 10 meters into a river, gets up and walks away, while the leopard sulks at its lost dinner... ahhhh i love it.
as for doco's about humans... well they're more of movies based on real events, but i guess the only two good ones i've seen recently where 'City Of God' and 'The Motorcycle Diaries'... the first being about a photographic journalist's rise from the slums of brazil, the second being about Che and the year he spent travelling South America.