Part of being a film-lover is often finding something in a film that you can relate to. I have always managed to try and find some small part of every film that relates to me in some way, even if it is minuscule and completely insignificant. I have found so many films that bear a…

Being a documentary filmmaker can be the most exhilarating, fascinating career in the movies – but it also comes with tremendous responsibility. Unlike narrative filmmakers, documentarians have a responsibility to reflect real life – reality needs to be told through the lens of their camera, and the world they portray needs to be truthful. Whether…

The documentary is undeniably one of the most popular forms of filmmaking, because there is something about the truthful conveyance of real events that attract audiences, as evident by the popularity in true-crime documentaries, and stories of amazing human feats of strength or endurance. We are drawn to these stories because it feels like we…

I have recently, as you’ll know, been looking at various cinematic genres and their origins in the history of filmmaking. It is a difficult task, because the very nature of art is that there isn’t really any way to determine which film was the “first” of its kind, so sometimes its better to just leave…

There are two things I love in this world – the films of Jim Jarmusch and the music of Iggy Pop. Also, the universe can be extraordinarily kind every now and then, and in this case, we were blessed with a combination of the greatest independent filmmaker of all time making a documentary about the…

If there is an award for most bizarre documentary, the 2016 award would most certainly go to Tickled. However, I have managed to find a documentary from 2015 that is equal parts strange as it is wonderful. That film is The Babushkas of Chernobyl, one of the most delightfully weird and touching documentaries of recent…

In his masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow, literary icon and comical genius Thomas Pynchon wrote what is called “Proverbs for Paranoids”, and the first proverb is “you may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures” – and until now, that quote hasn’t fully resonated with much as much as it did after…

Werner Herzog is nothing if not utterly audacious. Ignoring his incredible career as a narrative filmmaker, we can isolate his career just to his documentaries and still see an incredible filmmaker at work. He has covered some vast subjects, such as criminals on death row (Into the Abyss), explorers in Antarctica (Encounters at the End…

Two weeks ago, the world was absolutely shaken by the loss of two incredible artists – Carrie Fisher, the iconic actress and writer known for her star-making turn in the Star Wars series, and Debbie Reynolds, one of the last remaining connections between the Golden Era of Hollywood and the modern world of entertainment. They…

There are some stories that are just too absurd and ridiculous to be true. Then there are some true stories that are so outrageous, there doesn’t seem to be anyone imaginative enough to actually make this stuff up. One such story is that of Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is one of the most overtly strange…