Documentaries aka Entertaining Education

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So I thought it might be a fun thread to recommend documentaries to each other, we all have various interests outside knives, and why not give people some suggestions on what might be entertaining and educating at the same time.
Some of them might be more difficult to track down but google generally helps. I'll start first, a good layout would be: Year, Title, Topic and ideally a Trailer. My first picks:

The Art of Flight, 2011, Snowboarding, Trailer
Why I like it: Great nature shots, love the soundtrack, visually striking. I briefly snowboarded too and like winter, so there is that connection.

We are Blood, 2015, Skateboarding, Trailer
Why I like it: Again, visually well done, good soundtrack, I skated for a number of years in my teenage years, brings back some memories in that regard.

We Write The Streets, 2012, German Drifting/Import Tuning Scene, Full Documentary
Why I like it: I like cars and again great visuals.

Black Air The Grand National Docu, 2012, Backstory on the creation of the GNX, Trailer
Why I like it: Cause I think the car is really underrated and doesn't get the fame it deserves.

Love the Beast, 2009, The Story of Eric Bana and his Ford Falcon Coupe, Trailer
Why I like it: Just a great story of a man who has a love for his first car.


Anybody got some?
 
I really like documentaries that accompany films that are based on actual events. Like "Damnbusters", or "The Great Escape", or "Windtalkers". Often these films can be even more interesting than the great film (like the first 2 I mentioned) based on those events, or are far better and do the story more justice than the film did ("Windtalkers"). Sometimes they're included in the special features of the DVDs for the films, sometimes they're presented by the History channel at the same time a blockbuster movie is in the theaters (like "Real Pirates of the Caribbean").
 
Ken Burns, the Civil War. The toys that made us on Netflix. Outlaws and gunslingers.

The Toys that Made us seems like my thing. I'll have to check that out :thumbsup:

I really like documentaries that accompany films that are based on actual events. Like "Damnbusters", or "The Great Escape", or "Windtalkers". Often these films can be even more interesting than the great film (like the first 2 I mentioned) based on those events, or are far better and do the story more justice than the film did ("Windtalkers"). Sometimes they're included in the special features of the DVDs for the films, sometimes they're presented by the History channel at the same time a blockbuster movie is in the theaters (like "Real Pirates of the Caribbean").

You're right, documentaries that give the backstory on those "True Story" Movies can often be more interesting/entertaining than the movies that followed. What I don't like is the recent fad of ...Docu Dramas where they try to inject documentary footage into dramatized storylines, it just comes across weird having some archive footage inbetween (usually mediocre) acting bits. If you do something based on historical events either make it really good and take some liberties like Netflix did with Narcos, or make it very accurate. But don't try to mix acting and real life.
 
The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié), 1969 French TV documentary, in theaters 1972, on disc/streaming 2001, runtime 251 minutes. Marcel Ophüls documented the occupation of France 1940–1944 with historical artifacts — English, French and German newsreels, Maurice Chevalier serenading the German troops, clips from the anti-Semitic film Jud Süß — and many, many excellent interviews with resistance fighters, repentant and unrepentant collaborators, German occupiers, and post-war leaders Pierre Mendès France and Anthony Eden.

Ophüls described his interpretation of history as the "process of recollection, in things like choice, selective memory, rationalization" and he elicited powerful emotions from interviewees and contemporary audiences.

 
I watched this yesterday:
Gave some nice context to his disaster relief foundation as well where he really wanted it to be about the work and help and not about him or good PR.
 
Nat Geo is running a good one on agricultural practices during the Russian Revolution. Neil DeGrasse Tyson hosts.
 
Alone in the Wilderness

richard-proenneke4.jpg
 
The documentary that went along with City of God was pretty good, the movie was good also. The doc is about the favellas in Sao Paulo
 
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