Recommend me a documentary

[Ivan Sorensen]

The topic doesn’t matter but military stuff is always fun.

I have Netflix and Amazon prime (in the US) so a documentary available on there would be perfect.

 

While we’re all wargamers I have wide interests. Last docu I watched was about prohibition and was actually pretty interesting stuff.

[Mike]

Dirty Wars.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Mike wrote:

Dirty Wars.

 

Looks interesting, thanks!

[Mike]

Its very good, scary but good.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Mike wrote:

Its very good, scary but good.

I’m a pretty hippie leftie kinda guy so looks right up my alley.

[venusboys3]

Fotoamator (1998) (Photographer)

A documentary centering on the photos and records kept by a German accountant working at the Lodz ghetto. His photos document the ghetto visually while the records and notes he kept show the mindset of banal bureaucracy behind the horrors… running the place in a very business like fashion.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Will add that to the list as well. Anything not terribly depressing? 🙂

[Jurgen Leistner]

If you can find it:

1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse

Really, really scary!

 

Jurgen

 

[Ivan Sorensen]

Jurgen Leistner wrote:

If you can find it: 1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse Really, really scary! Jurgen

 

About Able Archer? From a google search, apparently it’s on youtube. Might watch it while painting today

[Cerdic]

Anything presented by Mary Beard. She is a senior professor at Oxford and really knows her stuff. She also makes it entertaining.

Her documentary about Pompeii was excellent!

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Northern Monkey]

The Paras, a fly on the wall type documentary following a platoon through basic training and deployment to Northern Ireland, available on BBC I Player: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00hjtqj/the-paras-1-480-platoon

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[Ivan Sorensen]

So watched “Dirty Wars” last night while priming a platoon of Armies Army’s Rusks. Kind of grim but enjoyed it a lot.

[Bad Squiddo Games]

Anything Louis Theroux!

https://badsquiddogames.com/
@BadSquiddoGames
www.facebook.com/TheDiceBagLady

[John D Salt]

The boxed set of the series “The World at War” has for a long time been available very cheaply in the UK, and I’d be gobsmacked if it wasn’t in the US. Everyone should have one, whether WW2 is your period or not. Bags of original footage, many of the talking faces are the original participants, the historical research is serious, and suffers surprisingy little for being before the revelations of The Ultra Secret, and the whole thing is narrated by Sir Larry. Best of all, for me — even better than the brief shot of a Kartukov Ampulomyot being loaded — is the short interview with Ursula Grey, a German refugee from the Russians. When I knew her she was landlady of the Blue Anchor in Horsham; a small, personal link to events on a colossal scale.

It is no longer possible to produce documentary series of this weight and depth, so treat yourself, if you haven’t already, to an image of what good TV used to be like. I’d also recommend, if you can get them, Peter Watkins’ “The Wargame” and “Culloden” — not so much documentaries as exercises in subversting the then-new dicumentary form, but Peter Watkins has never been happy with prevailing media forms.

All the best,

John.

[Altius]

I really enjoy Ken Burns’ documentaries, and I’ve found they are good to paint with since they rely on dialogue and archive photos rather than film. The most recent one I saw was about the Roosevelts (you might still find this one playing on PBS). I also found his series on Prohibition fascinating in the detail it went into describing the US in the early 20th Century and how things even got to the point of prohibiting alcohol.

Of course, his series’ on the ACW and WWII were good too and I think both of them are on Netflix.

Where there is fire, we will carry gasoline

[Rod Robertson]

Love, Hate, and Propaganda. All versions are a good watch.

Rod Robertson.

[Rosebud]

Shoah, a 1985 French documentary about the Holocaust, directed by Claude Lanzmann was showered with prizes when first released and voted the second best documentary film of all time in a ‘Sight and Sound’ magazine poll of film critics this year. The version shown on British TV some years back was something like nine hours long. It mainly consists of Lanzmaann’s interviews with survivors, witnesses, former guards etc. and visits to Holocaust sites across Poland, and was criticised in Poland and by some US academics and critics for its anti-Polish bias. One way or another it is an epic masterpiece, even if flawed.

[Mike]

Some documentaries I enjoyed.

Ross Kemp: Back on the Frontline
Restrepo
Royal Marines Mission Afghanistan
Dirty Wars

[Ivan Sorensen]

The Ross Kemp ones were excellent. Watched them while painting.

[Mr. Average]

Marwencol

Homo Sapiens 1900

Countdown to Zero

World War III (German mock-documentary which might be hard to find)

The Battle of Chernobyl

Frontline: The Madoff Affair

The Race for the Hydrogen Bomb

The Cold War (24-part series)

The American Experience: Victory in the Pacific

The American Experience: My Lai

The American Experience: The Donner Party

The American Experience: The Lobotomist

[Spurious]

Vietnam: a television history

Cold War

Both of those are of that World At War school of documentary making with some serious length and detail to them. Highly recommended. Use the time to get some painting done.

Outside of that, this: The Battle of Long Tan

[Author]

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