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Documentaries

Documentary Classics
The University of California at Berkeley's excellent collection of information.

International Documentary Association
A non-profit member service organization that provides publications, benefits, and a public forum.

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
Providing distinguished fiction, documentary and animated films and videos since 1997.

Bullfrog Films
The leading US publisher of independently-produced, educational videos.

Recommended Books:

Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film by Erik Barnouw
Seminal historical review of the documentary.

Non-Fiction Film: A Critical History by Richard Meran Barsam

Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of the Documentary edited by Kevin MacDonald and Mark Cousins
An excellent collection of essays covering the history of the documentary. (Out of print.)

Key documentaries (a partial list):

1920

1922 Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, US)

1926 Moana (Robert Flaherty, US)

1927 Berlin: Symphony of a City (Walter Ruttmann, Germany)
October (Ten Days That Shook the World) (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR)

1928 British Empire Marketing Board
The Bridge (Joris Ivens, Netherlands)

1929 Rain (Joris Ivens, Netherlands)
Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, USSR)
Drifters (John Grierson, UK)

1930

1930 A propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, France)

1932 Land Without Bread (Luis Buñuel, Spain)

1934 Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty, US)
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, Germany)
The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, US)

1935 The March of Time (US)
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, UK)

1936 Night Mail (Harry Watt and Basil Wright, UK)

1937 The Spanish Earth (Joris Ivens, Netherlands)
The River (Pare Lorentz, US)

1938 Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl, Germany)

1939 The National Film Board of Canada
The City (Willard Van Dyke and Ralph Steiner, US)
The 400 Million (Joris Ivens, Netherlands)

1940

1942 Why We Fight (Frank Capra, US)

1948 Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty, US)

1950

1955 Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, France)

1960

1960 Jazz on a Summer's Day (Bert Stern, US)

1961 Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch, France)

1962 The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran)
Point of Order (Emile de Antonio, US)

1963 Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker, France)

1965 Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa, Japan)

1966 Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, US)

1967 Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, UK)

1968 Summer at Narita (Shinsuke Ogawa, Japan)

1969 Salesman (David and Albert Maysles, US)

1970

1970 The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, France )
Hiroshima Nagasaki August, 1945 (Akira Iwasaki and Erik Barnouw, Japan and US)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, US)

1972 A Sense of Loss (Marcel Ophuls, France)

1973 F For Fake (Orson Welles, US)

1974 Hearts and Minds (Peter Davis, US)

1976 Harlan County, USA (Barbara Koppel, US)

1980

1982 Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, France)
Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, US)

1985 Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, France)

1987 Hotel Terminus (Marcel Ophuls, France)

1988 Heshang (River Elegy) (Xia Jung, China)

1989 American Dream (Barbara Koppel, US)
Roger and Me (Michael Moore, US)
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, US)
Siddheshwari (Mani Kaul, India)

1990

1990 Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran)
The Civil War (Ken Burns, US)

1992 In the Land of the Deaf (Nicolas Philibert, France)
Brother's Keeper (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, US)
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, Canada)
Visions of Light (Todd McCarthy, US)
The Panama Deception (Barbara Trent, US)

1993 The Last Bolshevik (Chris Marker, France)

1994 Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, US)
A Perfect Candidate (R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor, US)
Hoop Dreams (Steve James, US)

1997 Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (Errol Morris, US)

2000

2000 Dark Days (Marc Singer, US)
The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, France)

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