I have seen two recent documentaries that I think are very pertinent to Ohio.

 

The first is a documentary on voting fraud in the 2004 election titled "What Happened in Ohio".  It's a good, if not a little sensationalistic.  Definitely worth a watch.

 

The other, while not about Ohio, features the famous and under appreciated Ohioan, Maya Lin.  Ms. Lin was the designer of the Vietnam memorial, as well as several other memorials and buildings around the country. The title of the documentary is "Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision", and it features Lin's childhood in Athens, OH prominently, as well as an installation she did at the Wexner Center in Columbus.  She is proud of her upbringing, and speaks positively about her time in Ohio.  The film won the academy award for best documentary in 1995 and is very well done.

 

 

Any other good documentaries out there either Ohio or non Ohio related?

If you like high school football i would suggest Go Tigers! about the Massillon Washington football team..........those people are lunatics!

I don't particularly like football, and I still loved Go Tigers! Very good!

 

I love, love, love documentaries, particularly social policy stuff. So here's a big looong list.

 

A great resource for Ohio documentaries is naturally Ohio film festivals. Not to play favorites (PLUG! PLUG! PLUG!), but the Cleveland International Film Festival has a really well-developed documentary film section, and numerous social issue documentaries also show up in the Greg Gund "Standing Up" section. Local stuff usually also shows up in the Local Heroes section. Usually something from Ohio in there. This year, you have a whole lotta Ohio documentaries to catch ... An Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist (Cleveland), The End (of the World as We Knew It) (Cleveland), Not Your Typical Big Foot Movie (Portsmouth), Poly Cultures: Food Where We Live (Cleveland) and They Killed Sister Dorothy (Dayton).

 

So consider visiting the Cleveland International Film Festival, March 19 - March 29, www.clevelandfilm.org  :-D

 

Otherwise, here are some of my favorite Ohio ones:

 

American Blackout. Disenfranchisement of African Americans in 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio. Brilliant. Will make your skin crawl. And some lovely footage of the late Congresswoman Tubbs Jones that will make you proud that she was fighting the good fight for Ohio. One of my absolute favorites.

So Goes the Nation. How Republicans took Ohio in 2004 and Ohio's historic role as a bellwether state.

No Umbrella. Local filmmaker Laura Paglin's look at voting irregularities in one Cleveland polling site. Crazy, crazy lines. One of the late Fannie Lewis's shining moments.

Swing State. Jason Zone Fisher looks at the 2006 Ohio gubernatorial race from the inside. What an election is like for a candidate's family. Really cute.

Flag Wars. A really thoughtful look at both sides of the gentrification of a Columbus neighborhood. Perspectives from existing residents (primarily African American) and in-migrants (primarily gay).

Real Low Calorie Diet. Low-budget production from the New Agrarian Center. Really nice look at the grassroots local food movement forming in Cleveland. Some beautiful footage, even if it is low-budget.

 

And then my "must-see" non-Ohio ones.

 

For starts, there are all the really high-visibility ones from Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me, and also check out his show 30 Days ... it's great ... and the 1st episode is about living on minimum wage in Columbus) and Michael Moore (I find Roger and Me particularly good), as well as the enviro-hits An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour.

 

Then you have:

 

Dark Dayz. My favorite documentary of all time. This is absolutely amazing, all the more so because no one who worked on it had ever made a film before. Make sure to watch all the extras. How and why the film was put together are equally fascinating to the actually film. An examination of the lives of homeless people living in abandoned subway tunnels in NYC.

Born into Brothels. Close runner-up in the favorite documentary columns. How a photographer tries to lift a group of children out of the poverty of the brothels of Calcutta. Also check out the cinematographer's work in the new "Project Kashmir".

The Thin Blue Line. Total classic about police corruption (I believe in Texas). An example of a documentary that catalyzed a shift in public policy.

7 Up. Another classic. Actually a series of (to date) seven films. Filmmaker chronicled the lives of British 7-year-olds from vastly different backgrounds and different education systems and checks back in with them with a new film every seven years. The last one was 49 Up in 2005 ... you can basically see footage of 42 years of people's lives. It's crazy. Space them out ... can be a little overwhelming to watch them all together since they recycle footage.

The Corporation. A really long documentary about the corporate form. This sounds like the most boring thing ever imagined, right? Actually, it's pretty fascinating, and by the end, they've made a pretty compelling case of how corporations are damaging the modern world.

Street Fight. Brutal mayoral race in Camden, NJ. Awesome.

See How They Run. Not quite as brutal but still pretty fascinating, this time on a mayoral race in San Francisco.

Deadline. Pretty amazing. Governor Ryan's ultimate decision to place a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois.

Capturing the Friedmans. Really disturbing look at the destruction of a family from both the inside and the outside. Warning ... big old focus on pedophilia.

An Unreasonable Man. An awesome retrospective on Ralph Nader.

Spellbound. For something a bit lighter but still a pretty interesting look at American children from a variety of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

 

I'm gonna bump this thread and submit some suggestions of documentaries of my own (all on Netflix btw). Hopefully there are some good suggestions from others too.

 

Crossing The Line (2006) - This movie discusses the people who, while serving in the US military, crossed over the DMZ into North Korea. Really fascinating story

 

Burma VJ (2008) - Follows reporters in the second most secretive country in the world who are documenting the protests in Burma and the country's crackdown on it. It was nominated for an Academy Award.

 

Somm (2012) - Follows four people who are studying to become Master Sommeliers (wine steward). Only 214 in the world have ever passed the test. These people must know everything about wine (history, location, taste, etc) to pass the test and some years go by with only one or two successful applicants.

Just saw A Band Called Death. Pretty good documentary about an all black band from Detroit who started playing protopunk two years before anyone else.

I'm going to shamelessly promote this here.

 

http://outofplacemovie.com/

Just saw A Band Called Death. Pretty good documentary about an all black band from Detroit who started playing protopunk two years before anyone else.

 

My friend had this on and I think it was halfway into the film.  I wasn't really paying much attention to it as I was having a conversation with someone but it seemed interesting.  Is it worth watching though? My friend tells me it was "Okaay" but I sometimes doubt his taste. 

^ I started it but didn't finish it. It is definitely interesting, but didn't hold my attention over time. I don't regret watching the first 45 minutes or whatever I watched.

 

It's an interesting story, especially if you are a fan of punk, or if you are black and into rock. On a marginally related note, I watched Punk in Africa and made it through the whole movie.

^^ its one of those docs that had several logical conclusions, but kept on going.  you can stop watching once the mother dies *spoilers*

^ I started it but didn't finish it. It is definitely interesting, but didn't hold my attention over time. I don't regret watching the first 45 minutes or whatever I watched.

 

It's an interesting story, especially if you are a fan of punk, or if you are black and into rock. On a marginally related note, I watched Punk in Africa and made it through the whole movie.

 

Well, I'm not really a fan of punk but I can say that I'm interested in anything that deals with rock. Thanks.  I'll give it a try and see if it is interesting enough and I'll also check out Punk in Africa. 

One thing that I'm not sure they emphasized enough in A Band Called Death is how appropriate-but-strange it was for this band to emerge from "Motown" in an era pretty much immediately after the Motown heyday. I couldn't help but think of the name "Death" as a symbol of the death of Motown -- and the sort of "innocence" of music that also died with that era. I know that wasn't intentional, but it was striking to me. Everyone notes that they were "before their time," but I think this context helps to explain why. (Not that this takes away from the band's prescience. I think it merely adds to the story, how appropriate it was that they figure these things out before everyone else.)

"Los Angeles Plays Itself".  Interesting. Very, at times.  But insufferably long.

For you video game fanatical types :-)

 

http://watch.arcademovie.com/

For you video game fanatical types :-)

 

http://watch.arcademovie.com/

 

hey the chinatown fair. thats a cool place. was a lot better when they had the live tic tac toe chicken though haha. but arcade looks good, i want to see that.

 

if you like arcade also check out king of kong if you haven't seen it yet, these two characters are really something else:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/

 

***

 

a friend of mine and i have been talking about room 237. its fantastic. its about people who see all manner of conspiracies in stanley kubrick's movie the shining. you can watch it on youtube. it's a lot of fun and makes for good conversation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_237

 

For you video game fanatical types :-)

 

http://watch.arcademovie.com/

 

hey the chinatown fair. thats a cool place. was a lot better when they had the live tic tac toe chicken though haha. but arcade looks good, i want to see that.

 

if you like arcade also check out king of kong if you haven't seen it yet, these two characters are really something else:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/

 

***

 

a friend of mine and i have been talking about room 237. its fantastic. its about people who see all manner of conspiracies in stanley kubrick's movie the shining. you can watch it on youtube. it's a lot of fun and makes for good conversation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_237

 

The Chicken!!!

 

Arcade should be out very soon. The director, Kurt Vincent, produced and edited Out of Place. Kurt's a perfectionist schooled at the Maysles Documentary Center, so I'm trying my best to get him to finally "surrender" Arcade for release haha. It's going to be a wonderful film.

 

And you won't have to be a fan of video games to appreciate it either. It's a wider social commentary on human interaction more than anything.

I just found this documentary--which apparently just came out in September--of a documentary documenting Vietnam today from the perspective of the war--done by a Cleveland photographer. I just ordered it. Its called "Vietnam: 35 Years After the Fall of Saigon"  http://www.vietnam35yearsafter.com/ 

^Just wanted to follow up on the above post. The book is a truly fascinating book and pretty amazing coverage of the country. If you were in Vietnam or are just interested in the country or war and reconciliation in general, I truly recommend it.