Comments on: Documentary equivelants of informative history/science books?

Question: Documentary equivelants of informative history/science books?

the other side — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:10:01 -0800

Looking for good documentaries that are truly informative (i.e. a kind of textbook in movie format). What are the best documentaries you've seen that left you much more informed about basic history and human knowledge?

I'm talking about really good, but also highly informative documentaries somewhat (or perhaps exactly if you were lucky) like the ones you'd watch in school. Kind of like a history or science* book condensed into a movie format.

What I'm not looking for are documentaries like Wordplay, Spellbound, or other "human interest" kind of movies, or documentaries with an excessively esoteric subject matter. I'd also like to avoid movies that try really hard to push a specific agenda.

*Note: I say history/science, though this could include things like economics, law, art, etc. (as long as it's sufficiently informative and not too esoteric).

By: diogenes

diogenes — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:22:50 -0800

Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

By: -harlequin-

-harlequin- — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:26:58 -0800

Connections by James Burke. Youtube
Watch the first two episodes, and the first is more of an introduction and not quite like the rest. (And by the time you finish the second, you'll be hooked anyway.)

By: mandal

mandal — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:32:55 -0800

The Ascent of Man
Civilisation: A Personal View

I haven't seen either since childhood, but they made a very big impression at the time.

By: philip-random

philip-random — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:39:53 -0800

The Ken Burns stuff. Civil War, Jazz, Baseball. When's he going do one about Apple Pie?

And if you want to get "serious" - Manufacturing Consent, The Corporation, Enron (The Smartest Guys in the Room) ...

By: mannequito

mannequito — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:44:13 -0800

The Human Face, with the bonus of John Cleese narration !

By: BobbyVan

BobbyVan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:48:30 -0800

BBC's "A History of Britain"
PBS's "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy"

By: RogerB

RogerB — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:49:31 -0800

Some obvious choices:
Shoah
Anything by Frederick Wiseman
On a lighter note, Mondovino

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:58:01 -0800

Planet Earth

By: bprater

bprater — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:01:32 -0800

I really love Fog of War. Directed by the same guy that started those crazy Apple commercials.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:05:52 -0800

An obscure but wonderful Australian documentary, First Contact, is my favorite documentary film.

The PBS documentary of Guns Germs and Steel is better than the overrated book.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:39:14 -0800

Pretty much any of the documentary series by David Attenborough.

By: hot soup girl

hot soup girl — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:03:21 -0800

Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:49:14 -0800

Previously:

Blow my Mind
Help me nourish my brain.
Documentaries

These had similar enough criteria that you might find them of interest.

By: kookywon

kookywon — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:55:03 -0800

-seconding commanding heights. It is excellent!
-There was a series I saw about 10 years ago. It was about the history of oil. Empire something. That was really good. I believe it was a book turned into a series, but I can't find it right now.
-Chicago: city of the century.
-Definitely Cosmos.
-american visions about amercan art history. There was another set which I think was all of art history.

By: kookywon

kookywon — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:01:00 -0800

The oil documentary is called 'The Prize'

By: watercarrier

watercarrier — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:13:51 -0800

Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Road - very - very good.

By: mcbeth

mcbeth — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:29:58 -0800

Grass.

Not Ken Burns, but informative nonetheless.

By: ob1quixote

ob1quixote — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:39:00 -0800

Seconded for Connections, but also James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed which is equally fascinating in a different way.

Incidentally, YouTube user JamesBurkeFan seems to have put up every James Burke series and even took the time to playlist the episodes.

By: southof40

southof40 — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:26:39 -0800

Seconding "Civilisation: A Personal View" - it's great.

Also enjoyed what I saw of Sister Wendy's American Collection in which she tours US Art Galleries/Museums and talks about the pieces - she discusses some beautiful works and is able to talk about them very well.

By: MattScully

MattScully — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:58:19 -0800

There was recently a really good one on Discovery about the space program called "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions"

On the same subject, though its not a documentary, they went out of their way to get it right and its just as informative and very entertaining, "From the Earth to the Moon."

I also second the Ken Burns recommendation. "The Civil War" was incredible.

By: girlmightlive

girlmightlive — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:05:05 -0800

Eyes on the Prize.

By: Riverine

Riverine — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:26:31 -0800

The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.

American Masters profiles of James Baldwin, Ahmet Ertuguen, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald.

The Up Series.

All of these have been aired on PBS at some point.

By: troy

troy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:23:36 -0800

China A Century of Revolution (3 disc set) was an excellent survey of 20th century China, much better than the upper-div China class I took twenty years ago.

I'm watching NHK's Silk Road, a zillion-part series that moves pretty slow but has got interesting travelogy historical progress.

Speaking of travelogues, Michael Palin's travel series are all uniformly excellente.

By: troy

troy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:24:39 -0800

oh, and nth-ing "The Day the Universe Changed". I saw this when it first came out and was completely blown away. Immensely educational, must-see viewing for anybody who desires to learn how we learn and invent.

By: the other side

the other side — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:41:01 -0800

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. Looks like I have many hours worth of good stuff to watch.

By: snuffleupagus

snuffleupagus — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:56:18 -0800

Bosnia Hotel (occasionally aired on LinkTV.)

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:18:14 -0800

The Day the Universe Changed: James Burke proves 1+1=3, and then he blows your mind!

More previous threads on Documentaries.

My more recent favorites are Simon Schama's Power of Art, and The Private Life of a Masterpiece.

Cosmos is completely missable.

By: nooneyouknow

nooneyouknow — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:43:53 -0800

The video programs produced by Annenberg Media. They've made a lot of programs designed to be used as teaching resources. Some examples:

America's History in the Making
Explore American history from the Pre-Columbian era through Reconstruction.

Art of the Western World
A video instructional series on art history.

Bridging World History
A video course that looks at global patterns through time, seeing history as an integrated whole.

Economics U$A
Explore the fundamentals of economic history, theory, and practice, including microeconomics and macroeconomics, through interviews with Nobel Prize-winning economists. The series features Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Heller, and others