documentary Great Internet Documentaries

[Squee]

As some of you might remember I've posted a couple of short online documentaries before about sketchy people (anyone remember the one about the Japanese murderer who turned into a pornstar?) and weird places, groups of people etc. I love getting a peek into these weird worlds but often these documentaries can be really hard to find - so that's why I've started this thread so we can all post awesome documentaries about random shit just as long as it's interesting. Vice has a huge collection of cool documentaries but their site can be a pain in the ass to navigate so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of cool video features that a lot of you would enjoy as well.

 

Remember to tag them with a NSFW tag if necessary.

 

I'll start out by posting some of my favorite ones from Vice (www.vbs.tv):

 

Missile Silo Homes

In the 1960s, the US government built missile silos across the country to protect citizens against nuclear attack. Decommissioned years later, they now serve as shelters to the reclusive and gathering places to the adventurous. We went exploring.

 

The Ruins of New York

New York City is brimming with abandoned, hidden and forgotten spaces. Besides a select group of men who make their hidden living discovering their hidden value, few people are aware these places exist. We went exploring.

 

Issei Sagawa Part I + Issei Sagawa Part II (NSFW + Some disturbing content)

On the afternoon of June 13, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked to the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the outskirts of Paris, carrying two suitcases. The contents of those suitcases, to the lament of a nearby jogger, was the dismembered body of a fellow student – a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt, whom Sagawa had shot three days prior and had spent the days since eating various parts of her body.

 

He was soon arrested. According to reports, Issei uttered, “I killed her to eat her flesh,” when they raided his home, whereupon they found bits of Renne still in his fridge.

Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial and was institutionalized in Paris. His incarceration was to be short, however, as the French public soon grew weary of their hard-earned francs going to support this evil woman-eater, and Issei was promptly deported. Herein followed a bizarre and seemingly too convenient set of legal loopholes and psychiatric reports that led doctors in Japan declaring him “sane, but evil.”

On August 12, 1986, Sagawa checked himself out of Tokyo’s Matsuzawa Psychiatric hospital, and has been a free man ever since.

This is where the real story begins. VBS met up with him to find out what he’s been up to in the 30 years since.

 

 

Vice Guide to North Korea

Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. After we went back and forth with their representatives for months, they finally said they were going to allow 16 journalists into the country to cover the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang. Then, ten days before we were supposed to go, they said, “No, nobody can come.” Then they said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” We had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

 

North Korean Film Madness

You could say that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has two primary obsessions: maintaining nuclear weapons capability as a means of protecting his “hermit kingdom,” and thwarting pressure from outside forces like America and the rest of the industrialized world to open his country to modern things like electricity… and he’s obsessed with film. He loves movies. It’s rumored that he has one of the largest private film collections in the world. His favorite film is Gone with the Wind and his favorite actress is Elizabeth Taylor. He’s a film collector and bona fide cinephile, but he’s much more. He’s everything really. He’s a director, a producer, a financier, a costume maker, set designer, screenwriter, cameraman, sound engineer… and he’s also a film theorist. His masterwork on aesthetics and practice is “On the Art of Cinema” (written and published in the early 1970s). In it he gives himself the humble title, “Genius of the Cinema.” He built an extensive film studio in Pyongyang and when he couldn’t find someone to make his film he did what any self-respecting eternal leader and great president would do… he kidnapped one.

Vice founder Shane Smith visits North Korea to try and penetrate the Korean Feature Film Studio, the state-run film production facility west of Pyongyang: a sprawling lot that at its height produced around 40 films a year.

 

UNDERCITY

Urban Exploring in New York. It's a classic so if you haven't watched it before then do yourself a favor and sit back and enjoy.

 

I'll post more videos tomorrow if anyone is interested.

[Guest Z_B_Z]

dont forget the one on liberia. or 'true norwegian black metal.' vice tend to have a bunch of vacuous hipster cunts as interviewers and presenters, so its hit and miss when it comes to them imo. but they do indeed have some great content.

[SR4]

that shane guy in the north korea one is a fucking asshole. pretty sure some of his hosts were punished because he acted the way he did.

 

but yeah, thats a fascinating doc...there is a natgeo one thats fantastic too

[spacewrekker]

wow, that issei sagawa doc. is very very disturbing...

[chenGOD]

That Vice documentary on North Korea is horseshit - and the fact that it gets held up as a stellar example of documentary film making is depressing. Read the attached paper on how documentary film making on North Korea has been influenced by a modern form of Orientalism. If you don't want to read the whole paper (although it's very readable, not dry academia) the critique of the Vice documentary begins on page 11 of the PDF.

 

Here is a little sample of the critique:

Smith [the man filming for Vice] is at one point caught recording video in a place where they were expressly forbidden to do so, and then lying rather feebly about the size of his memory card in an attempt to cover it up—the guide merely looks at the card to see that it is ten times as large as Smith claims. The memory card was confiscated (pt. 2, 12 mins) and Smith apparently was threatened with further censure. This is not presented as an insensitive failure to respect the rules of the host country, but a legitimated case of “the rules are wrong, so I can break them.” No explanation of the rules is ever offered; they merely stand as symbolic characterizations of the misbegotten, invalid other.

USKI_WP11-2_Abrahamian.pdf

[Guest placidburp]

Thanks for these Squee! I'm a bit obsessed with New York at the moment so these are just great! Cheers!

[ChrisRyder]

Intresting stuff

[mcbpete]

Cheers for the links man, certainly give some of these a go. Already seen Undercity so if that's the benchmark of the quality of the others I should be in for a treat !

[Squee]

Cheers for the links man, certainly give some of these a go. Already seen Undercity so if that's the benchmark of the quality of the others I should be in for a treat !

 

Oh, the Vice Magazine ones are no where near as pretty to look at as the Undercity video but the subjects are at least just as cool

[Guest Ominous]

I've been getting mindblowned by Michael Woods' documentaries recently.

[youtubehd]D33m1_9uL8s[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]aQ2fjSUEFVo[/youtubehd]

 

Also a documentary about the Frankincense Trail (Boner/Bonus:some amazing-looking Saudi ladies on pt. 2 ): [youtubehd]X2Etg6p2IuE[/youtubehd]

 

Probably old news to people with BBC access though..

[Guest Deep Fried Everything]

The Ruins of New York

New York City is brimming with abandoned, hidden and forgotten spaces. Besides a select group of men who make their hidden living discovering their hidden value, few people are aware these places exist. We went exploring.

 

this guy needs to learn how to be interesting on camera. his observations are just plain stupid most of the time! i know i'm hatin' but it is what it is.

[Guest mrx]

the confessions

http://video.pbs.org/video/1637166286/ or netflix

 

a 83 min frontline special about the norfolk four. One of the better documentaries i've seen recently and i'd recommend not looking anything up about the case beforehand.

[Guest Z_B_Z]

i found this to be pretty interesting, if very sad.

 

http://video.google....991172883873966

 

Adult businesses in Lowndes County, Mississippi (the "Buckle of the Bible Belt") are being unfairly harassed by local law enforcement. Record label owner Shane Ballard, 22, plans to change that. He is a Republican candidate for sheriff. This documentary follows Ballard on and off the campaign trail during his controversial bid for public office. Along the way, we learn about his strange music, his even stranger hobbies, and his friendship with Charles Manson. We also discover some unsettling truths about his mother's mysterious death in Lowndes County. Can an obscene, porn-loving political unknown change minds in a small southern town? If anyone can, it's "Citizen Shane"

[chenGOD]

As I said, the Vice guide to North Korea is a disgrace - if you want a much less sensationalist documentary, try "A State of Mind". Not available for free but easily available.

 

Two great sites for lots of documentaries (quality of documentaries may vary lol):

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentaries/watch-online/festival/films.php

 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/

[Guest Z_B_Z]

i didnt read the link you posted (maybe i should) but arent you being a bit melodramatic? is it really that bad? ive seen it before and its your typical vice fair, interesting and a little skewed. .

[chenGOD]

It's just fucking irritating that it gets passed off as a great documentary on North Korea, when it's simply a sad excuse for a white guy to act like an ass on camera. All he does is create a big barrier between us and them. if the Mass Games are weird, then what is the superbowl? At the end when he's singing "Anarchy in the UK" and he goes on about "how they have no way of dealing with it" all it does is solidify his initial assumption that they are "other", and leaves no room at all to "bridge the gap between the cultures" (to paraphrase from the paper).

Read the link. It will take you 20 minutes, max. And who knows, it might offer an insight here or there.

[Guest Z_B_Z]

i will certainly give it a read tomorrow when im not so tired.. but at the end of the day i guess maybe i find a western douche in north korea to be worth watching. i dont know, maybe that article will sway me in a different direction..

[Morpheus]

It's just fucking irritating that it gets passed off as a great documentary on North Korea, when it's simply a sad excuse for a white guy to act like an ass on camera. All he does is create a big barrier between us and them. if the Mass Games are weird, then what is the superbowl? At the end when he's singing "Anarchy in the UK" and he goes on about "how they have no way of dealing with it" all it does is solidify his initial assumption that they are "other", and leaves no room at all to "bridge the gap between the cultures" (to paraphrase from the paper).

Read the link. It will take you 20 minutes, max. And who knows, it might offer an insight here or there.

 

The critique is spot on and certainly necessary. It definitely pointed our some things/relationships/framing that I didn't realize before but now seem ridiculous and alienating (or "othering" as the other says).

 

But anyway, thanks for the links and descriptions Squee, I love threads like this.

[SR4]

The American govt. has killed over one million innocent casualties since 2001.

 

 

No End In Sight might be a good documentary but you might just shrug it off...in that case, I would not recommend it.

[chenGOD]

The American govt. has killed over one million innocent casualties since 2001.

 

 

No End In Sight might be a good documentary but you might just shrug it off...in that case, I would not recommend it.

 

how can one kill a casualty? ;)

I'll check it out.

 

A really insightful documentary is "Fog of War" which is a biography of Robert McNamara.

[Guest rumbo]

I started watching No End In Sight. Those bastards.

[Gretsky 3D]

[huzur]

http://vimeo.com/17566836

 

For three years Dr Jonathan Howard has dedicated himself to finding a solution to our energy crisis. In the spare room of his South London flat he's constructed a fusion reactor from bits of recycled scrap, and parts bought from ebay.

Scientists say that 'Fusion is like trying to put the Sun in a box – but we don't know how to make the box'.

Can Jonathan put the Sun in a box without getting burnt?

[SR4]

shane probably endangered the lives of his hosts for such disrespectful behavior. the guy was a cock, end of.

[Guest futuregirlfriend]

I haven't watched this just yet

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrjNTd8w_zU