documentary
DVD/Blu-ray: German Concentration Camps Factual SurveyTuesday, 02 May 2017
This is an impeccably restored presentation of the 1945 feature-length documentary that was intended to be shown in German cinemas in order to counter any remaining support for Nazism. Backed by the British Ministry of Information, it was overseen... Read more... |
I Am Not Your Negro, review - 'powerful portrait of James Baldwin'Saturday, 08 April 2017
The Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro is a chronicle of the pioneering writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin. Its director Raoul Peck mirrors the intellectual challenge that Baldwin set his audience: the film demands that you... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: One More Time with FeelingFriday, 07 April 2017
“But when did you become an object of pity?” Nick Cave asks himself. Brighton’s streets have become an obstacle course of concerned strangers and acquaintances, in the arms of whom he may find himself collapsed, crying. Such indignity was his grief’... Read more... |
How To Be a Surrealist with Philippa Perry, review - 'exhilarating'Tuesday, 04 April 2017
Anyone with even a passing interest in surrealism should watch Philippa Perry finding out How to Be a Surrealist and, in the process, creating an exhilarating and richly informative BBC Four film. In October 1924 the Surrealists opened an office in... Read more... |
DVD: Revolution - New Art for a New WorldMonday, 03 April 2017
Revolution - New Art for a New World film starts well: the opening shot (main picture) is of young women painting white letters onto a red banner. “We all knew what to paint,” says the voice-over. “Bread, Work, Vote, but the message was ‘... Read more... |
Syria’s Disappeared review - 'must-watch can't-look record of Assad's atrocities'Friday, 24 March 2017
“The following images are extremely graphic.” The words appeared in white lettering against a black background, two-thirds of the way in. For the next minute, the screen filled with photographs of naked, emaciated corpses, some with crude writing... Read more... |
Puerto Rico: Island of Enchantment – Natural World, BBC TwoTuesday, 21 March 2017
The soothing voice of David Attenborough narrated this cautionary tale, which is improbably heading not for a happy ending but a happy new beginning. Puerto Rico, the so-called island of enchantment, overwhelmed early western visitors with its... Read more... |
DVD: ResetWednesday, 15 March 2017
The curious thing about Reset, the documentary that tracks the making of a new ballet by Benjamin Millepied at the Paris Opera Ballet, is that it clearly had another agenda. Millepied, a Frenchman nicely named for his profession, was a left-field... Read more... |
War Child, Channel 4Monday, 13 March 2017
In the mindset of Nigel Farage and his biddable followers, the route from Asia into Europe throngs with undesirables. Their threatening faces can be plastered on a vote-winning poster. In this calamitous failure of empathy, young men – hordes of... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Creeping GardenMonday, 13 March 2017
The creative, organisational and intellectual properties of slime mould are outlined in loving detail in Tim Grabham and Jason Sharp’s engaging documentary The Creeping Garden, though even this peculiar organism seems a little colourless when... Read more... |
Mutiny, Channel 4Tuesday, 07 March 2017
The masochistic reality show heralds a culture with an inferiority complex. There have been documentary re-running the race to the South Pole. Countless series place modern Britons in historical contexts where the dietary, sanitary and heating... Read more... |
Dispatches: Under Lock and Key, Channel 4Thursday, 02 March 2017
Five years ago BBC Panorama went undercover, sending in a reporter with a hidden camera to expose the horror going on at Winterbourne View, a hospital for people with learning disabilities and/or autism. There was outrage as the nation watched... Read more... |
