Notables of the Noughties: 35 documentary films, 2000-2009
January 4, 2010
It’s a special time that comes around every ten years in which we take a moment to reflect back on the past decade and make our “favorite” and “best-of” lists. It was a good decade for documentary films, here’s my own idiosyncratic list of thirty five notable documentaries released between 2000 and 2009 (in chronological order).
- The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000, French title: Les glaneurs et la glaneuse)
- Dogtown and Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta, 2001)
- In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Martina Kudlácek, 2002)
- A Kalahari Family (John Marshall, 2002)
- Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2002)
- The Kid Stays in the Picture (Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen, 2002)
- Winged Migration (Jacques Perrin, 2002, French title: Le peuple migrateur)
- The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Errol Morris, 2003)
- My Architect (Nathaniel Kahn and Susan R. Behr, 2003)
- Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003)
- The Corporation (Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, 2003)
- The Weather Underground (Sam Green and Bill Siegel, 2003)
- Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004)
- Darwin’s Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, 2004)
- March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, 2005, French title: La marche de l’empereur)
- Grizzly Man (Wener Herzog, 2005)
- Al otro lado (Natalia Almada, 2005)
- The Cats of Mirikitani (Linda Hattendorf, 2006)
- Mirror Dance (Frances McElroy and Maria T. Rodriguez, 2005)
- Favela Rising (Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary, 2005)
- Havana — The New Art of Making Ruins (Florian Borchmeyer and Matthias Hentschler, 2006, German title: Havana – Die Neue Kunst Ruinen Zu Bauen)
- An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006)
- Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (Jennifer Fox, 2006)
- When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Spike Lee, 2006)
- Shadow of the House (Allie Humenuk, 2007)
- Helvetica (Gary Hustwit, 2007)
- Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, 2007)
- Made in L.A. (Almudena Carracedo, 2007)
- Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
- Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)
- The Garden (Scott Hamilton Kennedy, 2008)
- Intimidad (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, 2008)
- King Korn (Aaron Woolf, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney, 2009)
- Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (Llewellyn Smith, 2009)
- Shooting Beauty (Courtney Bent and George Kachadorian, 2009)
It was tough reducing the list down to thirty five, there are some really good films that fell off the list simply because I made an arbitrary decision to limit myself to thirty five. And so it goes.
Two grievious omissions:
The Cove
Food, Inc.
No room for Air Guitar Nation?
Jesus Camp
Baraka
The Great Happiness Space
Dear Zachary
Capturing the Friedmans
Those are some of my all time favorites, sad they couldn’t make the list
T_T
‘Fathead’ was the best from my POV. I’d also include ‘March of the Penguins’ and the documentary on the making of behind the documentary.
I would have liked to have seen IOUSA and Food Inc on this list, but I am not sure of the exact date they were released. Both were excellent and address current issues.
Super Size Me is a great one for kids to see today. I showed it in my health class that I was teaching to 8th graders. I used the educational version which is cleaned up some of Morgan Spurlock’s comments. Nice to see it on the list.
2 other documentaries I saw this year via Netflix that were incredible were King of Kongs and Man on a Wire. It is amazing how far this genre has come. It is good to see Man on a Wire on the list. Amazing story and hearing it from the participants makes it even better.
Uh, this is 30 films, not 35.
Genuinely surprised to see Bowling for Columbine not here. Appreciate everyone has their own opinion but I cant think of any other film thats made America take a long hard look at itself.
“The Power of Nightmares” and “The Century of Self” by Adam Curtis both belong on the list. Maybe somewhere near the top.
Not your typical bigfoot movie!
Every list has it’s inconvenient bias. I was a little disappointed that there were not links to these films. Given the current state of perspective I would have included “the powers of ten” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z53wTtGGA0 although I don’t ascribe to all the thinking people want to attach to its meaning. Thanks for the list; some of these are new to me.
[...] friend David Tames at Kino-Eye puts up his list of the top 35 of the [...]
In my opinion, you guys forgot to mention the “Bus 174″, a Brazilian documentary produced on 2002 and directed by Jose Padilha (the same director of the movie Elite Squad).
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I appreciate all the comments on my list and I’ve added several titles to my “to be watched” documentary list, and I guess I should expand my list to 50 to do justice to so many other amazing documentaries that were made in the past ten years, and by the way, this is a list of notables, not necessarily the “best” films of the past decade, some omissions are simply due to the fact that I’ve not seen a film,
Karin, I fixed the list, it’s now 35. Somehow five movies got chopped off.
Sean, Ron Fricke’s Baraka (1992) is a wonderful film, but it was not released in the past decade. I’ve not seen The Great Happiness Space, Dear Zachary, Capturing the Friedmans so I don’t know if they would make my list or not. So many documentaries, so little time.
Gui, José Padilha and Felipe Lacerda’s)Bus 174 is an amazing film, I guess I should squeeze it in and drop a film…
Cliff, I’ve not yet seen Food, Inc. so perhaps I was premature in making my list, I suspect it will be very good, it’s on it’s way to me right now from Netflix.
Andy, as far as “Bowling” not being on the list, well, Mr. Moore’s films are not my cup of tea, great entertainment, excellent box office revenue, but not my idea of the documentaries I like to watch and recommend to others…
Cliff and Patrick, I just finished watching Food, Inc., in terms of both the importance of the message and excellence in filmmaking craft, it’s certainly a notable film of the past decade.
A few more stellar documentaries:
Hell House
Devils Playground
Outrage
I agree with Sean:
Jesus Camp
Capturing the Friedmans
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[...] Documentary at the Hollywood Black Film Festival, Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness has been named one of the top 35 movies of the last decade by David Tames of the New-England, documentary-friendly Kino-Eye [...]