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Starting with cold fact. 2024 was a tough year, for reasons of personal happenstance and the pervasive slump in the Film and TV industry. It was also a year filled with new places and people. I went to Canada and Albania, I had a protracted and up-close experience with UK law. I also watched a hell of a lot of Documentaries.
I think films are misunderstood. As much as the business of film, or film festival selections end up influencing what images and stories are made, films are a lot like relationships, they aren’t about meticulous objectivity, or a definitive assessment of quality, they’re about moments that stick to you and in some tiny way, change how you see the world. Here are some films that ended up sticking to me this year.
Three Identical Strangers - 2018
Three genetically identical teenagers discover eachother, and uncover an experiment that will cast doubt upon their whole lives.
If I ever have questions about narrative structure in Documentary, I will look back to this. This film strings you along with questions which it eerily anticipates are somehow in the process of forming on the tip of your tongue. The story, its energy, and the depth it juggles make this a masterclass in direction by Tim Wardle.
Archive is also used a lot like repeated rhyme, to recontextualise and add depth. Now I’ve seen this technique used once, I see it everywhere, but I haven’t yet seen it so cleverly integrated into structure, as this doc managed to do.
All of Us Strangers - 2023
A lonely man cautiously begins a relationship with a stranger who happens to live in the same block of flats.
What to say about this film? Andrew Haigh once again proving the emotional sensitivity of his writing and the discipline of his directing. A pure romance, and generational acting talent on display from Andrew Scott.
The techniques Haigh uses to dramatise childhood are weirdly humorous and strange, but also disarming and emotionally raw, it conjures something about the solitude of existing in the city that is true to life, and totally believable within the psyche of the main character.
Wham! - 2023
The story of Wham! As told by Wham!
I couldn’t have cared less about WHAM! before I saw this feature doc by Chris Smith, Ventureland and Passion Pictures, I dismissed them as an eighties cheese and cringe sandwich. But now I have a new respect for George and Andrew.
For a film that mostly uses archive and magazine clippings, it is as loud and sugary as Wham's catchiest hits, and its total commitment to weaving voices through archive instead of using talking heads pays off in spades, lending real vitality to George Michael, who passed away In 2016.
A Bunch of Amatuers - 2022
A film making club in Bradford is on the verge of closing down, what can the members do to save it?
My favourite film of the year. By Kim Hopkins, this Documentary doesn’t conform to any sort of slick elevator pitch, it’s simply about the most important things in our lives, love, friendship, community (live love laugh).
It’s hilarious too, if you have ever made a film or been part of a theatre production, you will relate to the on-set verbal sniping, to the work that you pour into polishing something really awful, for the love of it, for the deep love of cinema that can pull a hodge podge of flawed people together.
Hell is a City - 1960
In seedy, smoke-stained Manchester, a committed Detective faces a new threat after a spate of murders.
A seemingly under-the-radar Thriller classic from Hammer Film Productions. This film is very pulp and at times the performances are turned up way high.
But the camera and the setting set this film apart. Propulsive dolly moves, and theatrical staging straight out of a Sydney Lumet feature from Director Val Guest and Hammer Cinematographer veteran, Arthur Grant. Through Grant’s camera, Non-actors and post-war Manchester are a treat to see in wide screen format (below)
The Man Who Definitely Didn't Steal Hollywood - 2024
Lockerbie - 2023
A Sicilian business mogul and his associate make the reckless decision to buy Hollywood’s MGM Studios… but where did they get all that money?
This story is anticlimactic, but anticlimactic in the best way, and proves documentaries don’t have to take everything seriously. This doc delights in all kinds of deception and mistruth, it treats its access seriously, but plays with structure and archive in inventive ways. I am a fan of Director John Dower’s offscreen cross-examinations, and the way he steers us towards areas where truth is far from clear cut.
Lockerbie is another project he directed last year, and wove a similar narrative of deception, but this time, on an international scale. Affecting a dialectic structure, it convinces you of one point of view before undermining it with the next. Unlike ’Steal Hollywood’, Lockerbie produces really touching scenes between contributors, bridging the physical and archival gap between the USA, and the small Scottish Village of Lockerbie that still lives with the memory of a falling plane on a chilly Christmas night.
There is a stunning scene with a Media Lecturer who uses her experience with Lockerbie to teach students about press coverage, I felt that should have been developed more, but otherwise, a strong recommendation.
Glas - 1958
Just men and machines makin’ glass.
In a dark Danish factory, stifled by noise, infernal heat and fug of sweat, this 10 minute short by Bert Haanstra still looks and sounds fantastic.
Uses exuberant rhythm and beautifully lit shots to show us what this work is and what machines do. With experimental modular synths, tape delay effects and Jazz music. It’s so fun and playful with the form, and harkens further back to Dziga Vertov and Kino-Pravda.
Industry people would refer to shots in this class as “B roll”. At work I see hasty snatches of “B Roll” caught between interviews. Glas is case in point, that we should give this type of footage more respect.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts - 2006
2005, a freak storm hits New Orleans leaving this historically black community bloody and scattered. What went so wrong?
Bold, uncompromising and musical in a way that’s so true to Spike Lee. This opened my eyes to a damning event in US history, and the voices of residents who's lives were altered by the storm and the Government’s shocking neglect of its own citizens.
This Documentary is repetitive, but that’s part of the point. It’s shouting at the top of its lungs for direct change.
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) - 2021
Black American music royalty performed in Harlem New York for one summer, and one summer only, 40 hours of footage lay in a basement, unseen for over 50 years.
There’s something about the fidelity of the sound, the vibrance of the image, the rhythm of the edit Summer of Soul deploys that makes you feel like you’re actually living in a moment in History. To think that this footage had laid inert for so long, wiped from the networks and the history books by Woodstock.
It’s footage of Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and Mahalia Jackson, as it happened, at a point of American cultural and technological supremacy but also a time riddled by poverty, war and political fracture.
Children of the Cult - 2024
A middle-aged woman hunts down the perpetrators of child sexual abuse in the cult of Rajneesh
This Buddhist cult, and subject of a hit Netflix True Crime series recruits adherents from the west, and coaxes parents to separate from their children. Using funds from its members, the organisation makes large real estate purchases in the UK and the US to house and educate children, where in relative isolation, they are routinely abused.
This is a beautifully made and personal documentary made by and featuring Maroesja Perizonius. She is a powerful woman who takes control over the narrative of her childhood, and helps others do the same. Perizonius shows how compassion can be a demonstration of strength.
Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher - 2024
40 years ago, Brighton’s Grand Hotel was blown apart by a man, who now asks for forgiveness.
Revealing documentary with amazing access to the people directly involved. Surreal as it may be, this is a time in the not distant past, when full scale war was being fought a stones throw across the Irish Sea, and the Conservative Government had grown complacent, blind to the potential for violence to arrive at their door.
This doc leaves you with deep questions about the difference between the emphasis of political action over lives. It brings you close to the mind of a terrorist, and what he believes to be just.
There is a direct line from this to another project by 'Keo Films' ‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’ which uses similar archive, mixed with intimate ‘Interrotron’ interview techniques.
Girls State - 2024
In the state of Missouri, high school girls gather every year to elect and form a government of their own.
From married Co-Director /forward slash/ Producers Jesse Moss and Amanda Mcbaine, this is a competition about teens doing capital P-Politics, it’s a P-Pressure cooker, a competitive situation, but because of that you also see so much change and growth in such a short amount of time.
“Girls State” follows 4 years after another documentary called “Boys State” about the male side. they both complement one another, but to call Girl’s State a “Sequel” is insulting, because it gravitates towards new, sometimes more interesting and reflective areas.
Competition is a magic-wand for any Documentary, but in this film there’s a new focus on extremely real and gendered issues that are affecting American women, such as abortion, and the defeat of Roe v Wade in the Supreme Court, which was in progress as this documentary was shot.
For me these films are up there with the great American election themed Documentaries e.g. The Life and Times of Harvey Milk and Street Fight.