As reported over at The Dissolve, highly respected British film magazine Sight & Sound is famous for its list of the greatest films off all time released once every decade. Since 1952, Citizen Kane held the number one spot until Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo dethroned it in the 2012 poll. Now for the first time Sight & Sound has released a list of the 50 greatest documentary films of all time. The list was compiled after polling from over 200 critics and curators and 100 filmmakers, including “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”.
The top 10 are:
Man With A Movie Camera, (Dziga Vertov, 1929) Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Sans Soleil, (Chris Marker, 1982) Night And Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1989) Chronicle Of A Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin,...
The top 10 are:
Man With A Movie Camera, (Dziga Vertov, 1929) Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Sans Soleil, (Chris Marker, 1982) Night And Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1989) Chronicle Of A Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin,...
- 8/1/2014
- by Max Molinaro
- SoundOnSight
(Humphrey Jennings, 1944-51, BFI, E)
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
- 7/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
(Humphrey Jennings, 1944-51, BFI, E)
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
- 7/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Film-maker whose documentaries allowed the subjects to speak for themselves
The documentary film-maker Michael Grigsby, who has died aged 76, strove to convey the experiences of ordinary people, and those on the margins of society. His subjects ranged from Inuit hunters in northern Canada and North Sea fishermen to Northern Irish farmers, Vietnamese villagers and, most recently, ageing American veterans of the Vietnam war.
He made more than 30 films – many of them for Granada TV's World in Action and Disappearing World – which were marked by the way in which they allowed their subjects to speak for themselves. Taking his films back to the communities he had filmed for their approval became a vital part of Grigsby's process of securing trust. Some – like the Inuit – would subsequently use his films to explain their lives to outsiders.
Grigsby's questions were never heard and he abhorred commentary, preferring brief captions or the overlaid voices...
The documentary film-maker Michael Grigsby, who has died aged 76, strove to convey the experiences of ordinary people, and those on the margins of society. His subjects ranged from Inuit hunters in northern Canada and North Sea fishermen to Northern Irish farmers, Vietnamese villagers and, most recently, ageing American veterans of the Vietnam war.
He made more than 30 films – many of them for Granada TV's World in Action and Disappearing World – which were marked by the way in which they allowed their subjects to speak for themselves. Taking his films back to the communities he had filmed for their approval became a vital part of Grigsby's process of securing trust. Some – like the Inuit – would subsequently use his films to explain their lives to outsiders.
Grigsby's questions were never heard and he abhorred commentary, preferring brief captions or the overlaid voices...
- 3/21/2013
- by Ian Christie
- The Guardian - Film News
After World War Two, just as the Us was getting hot under the collar about imaginary left-wing plots to seduce the nation via hidden messages in the movies, by a remarkable coincidence British cinema was infiltrated by a genuine socialist conspiracy.
Late in the war, as victory began to seem graspable, people started thinking about what kind of United Kingdom they wanted to live in: Winston Churchill may have led the nation through the conflict, but now something different was required. Sir Michael Balcon, head of Ealing Studios, was part of a group of filmmakers and creative types working behind the scenes to prepare the ground for a Labour government and the introduction of socialist programmes like the National Health Service.
Humphrey Jennings' eloquently understated propaganda short A Diary for Timothy looks at a new-born baby and wonders what kind of world he'll grow up in: as critic Raymond Durgnat observed,...
Late in the war, as victory began to seem graspable, people started thinking about what kind of United Kingdom they wanted to live in: Winston Churchill may have led the nation through the conflict, but now something different was required. Sir Michael Balcon, head of Ealing Studios, was part of a group of filmmakers and creative types working behind the scenes to prepare the ground for a Labour government and the introduction of socialist programmes like the National Health Service.
Humphrey Jennings' eloquently understated propaganda short A Diary for Timothy looks at a new-born baby and wonders what kind of world he'll grow up in: as critic Raymond Durgnat observed,...
- 11/28/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
The book behind the Olympic opening ceremony
Didn't we all love the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics? And didn't we all hate the closing ceremony? There was a reason for this: the opening ceremony was actually more coherent than it seemed, because it was underpinned by intellectual foundations – namely, Pandæmonium. The screenwriter and children's author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who worked with Danny Boyle on the ceremony, gave him a copy of this book early on in the project, and its ideas percolated, with splendid results, into the finished result. (In his excellent foreword, Boyce writes: "When I first held this book in my hand, I swear I could feel it shaking with its own internal energy.")
Something of an obsessive labour of love, Pandæmonium is a compilation of writings from 1660 – specifically, the section in Book I of Paradise Lost in which Milton describes the building of the capital city of Hell – to 1886, describing,...
Didn't we all love the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics? And didn't we all hate the closing ceremony? There was a reason for this: the opening ceremony was actually more coherent than it seemed, because it was underpinned by intellectual foundations – namely, Pandæmonium. The screenwriter and children's author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who worked with Danny Boyle on the ceremony, gave him a copy of this book early on in the project, and its ideas percolated, with splendid results, into the finished result. (In his excellent foreword, Boyce writes: "When I first held this book in my hand, I swear I could feel it shaking with its own internal energy.")
Something of an obsessive labour of love, Pandæmonium is a compilation of writings from 1660 – specifically, the section in Book I of Paradise Lost in which Milton describes the building of the capital city of Hell – to 1886, describing,...
- 11/6/2012
- by Nicholas Lezard
- The Guardian - Film News
(1934-40, E, BFI)
A pupil at Cambridge of the great critic I A Richards, Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a surrealist painter, a poet and a documentary moviemaker. He died in a freak accident while scouting locations in Greece, and in 1954 he was famously called "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced" by his admirer Lindsay Anderson. His great period was the second world war when he directed Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy. This first volume of an invaluable three-volume edition of his work covers his career from joining the Gpo film unit up to his first four wartime movies, culminating in the influential classic on the 1940 blitz, London Can Take It!, co-directed by Harry Watt and narrated by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds. Most of the prewar films are fairly impersonal but all are of interest, most especially perhaps a colour film on his Cambridge contemporary,...
A pupil at Cambridge of the great critic I A Richards, Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a surrealist painter, a poet and a documentary moviemaker. He died in a freak accident while scouting locations in Greece, and in 1954 he was famously called "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced" by his admirer Lindsay Anderson. His great period was the second world war when he directed Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy. This first volume of an invaluable three-volume edition of his work covers his career from joining the Gpo film unit up to his first four wartime movies, culminating in the influential classic on the 1940 blitz, London Can Take It!, co-directed by Harry Watt and narrated by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds. Most of the prewar films are fairly impersonal but all are of interest, most especially perhaps a colour film on his Cambridge contemporary,...
- 10/8/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Deep End
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute:
Make film your New Year resolution
BFI Southbank – BFI Distribution – BFI Festivals – BFI IMAX – BFI DVD – BFI Membership BFI Online – BFI Filmstore – BFI Mediatheques – BFI Gallery – Sight & Sound 2011 is set to become a landmark year for the BFI and this will be reflected in the broad and diverse range of film offerings for audiences across the UK. From film and television premieres and seasons at BFI Southbank, the most eclectic range of DVDs and nationwide theatrical releases by the most influential artists of British and world cinema, to a free insight into the BFI Archive via the Mediatheques around the country and online, there is something to entertain, educate and inspire anyone who loves film. BFI Southbank Great Auteurs – seasons include Howard Hawks (Jan/Feb), Francois Truffaut (Feb/March) Nicolas Roeg (March), Terence Rattigan (April...
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute:
Make film your New Year resolution
BFI Southbank – BFI Distribution – BFI Festivals – BFI IMAX – BFI DVD – BFI Membership BFI Online – BFI Filmstore – BFI Mediatheques – BFI Gallery – Sight & Sound 2011 is set to become a landmark year for the BFI and this will be reflected in the broad and diverse range of film offerings for audiences across the UK. From film and television premieres and seasons at BFI Southbank, the most eclectic range of DVDs and nationwide theatrical releases by the most influential artists of British and world cinema, to a free insight into the BFI Archive via the Mediatheques around the country and online, there is something to entertain, educate and inspire anyone who loves film. BFI Southbank Great Auteurs – seasons include Howard Hawks (Jan/Feb), Francois Truffaut (Feb/March) Nicolas Roeg (March), Terence Rattigan (April...
- 12/29/2010
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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