Czech film-maker Jan Švankmajer (1934-Present) is one of the great surrealist artists of the 20th century. His work combines animation, claymation and other cinematic wizardry into films that are evocative, emotionally resonant, beautiful and occasionally disgusting. These are his most recent short films, including some of his most accomplished work. It is a period where his art and technique are informed by the younger artists whose own careers had been inspired by Švankmajer - Terry Gilliam, Shinya Tsukamoto, David Lynch and Tim Burton to name but a few.
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is Errol Morris' electrifying 2003 documentary about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. It is one of the many anti-Iraq war films of the period, and in my opinion one of the best, and it has not dated one jot. The Philip Glass soundtrack is wonderful, and the archive materials are a real treat.
You may remember radio DJ and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Alex Jones from the 'Bush did 9/11' documentary Loose Change.
He's another loon, of course. He sees the US as the centre of the universe, and is both distrustful and ignorant of anything taking place off his own shores. This fucks up his world view and grasp of politics somewhat. Still, he has great talent as a documentary filmmaker, and his line of argument is often persuasive. Much like an American David Icke, he sees great patterns in the chaos of world events, yet lacks the ability to step back for a moment and realise that it is all bollocks.
It's very watchable stuff. However, if you've been daft enough to be convinced by Alex Jones and his ilk, I'd recommend watching some of the Adam Curtis documentaries, and realising that the truth is far more complex.
This unintentionally hilarious 1984 documentary warns Americans of the dangers of Hinduism, and attempts to show how the west has been infiltrated by New Age practices that have Hindu tradition at their core.
It is two hours of laugh-a-minute nonsense, as the Reaganite Christian filmmakers go from silly (suggesting that yoga and meditation fads are corrupting decent American values) to ridiculous (lumping in Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars as evil and heretical) to outrageously offensive (claiming that Hindu gods are in fact Christian demons).
1996: 25 Million Pounds a study of Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings Bank. Won the Best Science and Nature Documentary in the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival.
1999: The Mayfair Set looked at how buccaneer capitalists were allowed to shape the climate of the Thatcher years, focusing on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, all members of The Clermont club in the 1960s. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series or Strand in 2000.
2002: The Century of the Self (BBC Two) documented how the rise of Freud's individualism led to Edward Bernays' consumerism. It received the Broadcast Award for Best Documentary Series and the Longman-History Today Award for Historical Film of the Year. It was released in the US through art house cinemas and was picked as the fourth best movie of 2005 by Entertainment Weekly.
2004: The Power of Nightmares (BBC Two) suggested a parallel between the rise of Islamism in the Arab world and Neoconservatism in the United States in that both needed to inflate a myth of a dangerous enemy in order to draw people to support them. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series in 2004.
2007: Curtis provided a tongue-in-cheek version of his owndocumentary style for a section about television news reporters in the third episode of the fourth series of the BBC Four programme Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe.
2009: Curtis provided another mini-documentary for Charlie Brooker and his new current affairs programme Newswipe, this time focussing on the rise of "Oh Dear"-ism
2009: July 2 saw the release of a new mixed media documentary, called It Felt Like A Kiss.
