documentary
Tom Birchenough
Cartel Land opens with a group of crystal meth cooks at work somewhere in the dead-of-night Mexican wilderness. They boast about the quality of their goods: they have the best production equipment, and were even taught their expertise by a visiting American father-and-son team. They know the harm their drugs do, but what, they ask, are they going to do? They come from poverty. If life had gone another way, “We would be like you.”Matthew Heineman’s powerful documentary challenges our assumptions of loyalty – like you, like us? – as well as of good and evil. What happens when people rebel Read more ...
howard.male
Oliver Sacks, peerless explorer of the human brain, has today died of cancer aged 82. Inspired by case histories of patients suffering from neurological disorders, Sacks's eloquent musings on consciousness — which he termed 'neurological novels' — included The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and Awakenings, the former adapted into a Michael Nyman opera, the latter an Oscar-nominated film. His combination of intellectual rigour, philosophical expressiveness and powerful compassion illuminated numerous conditions for a readership extending far beyond the medical Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A few months ago I saw a documentary called Ming of Harlem: Twenty-One Storeys in the Air, about a man who kept a tiger and an alligator as pets in his tiny New York apartment. It was a staggering thing to comprehend, not just because of the logistics involved, but the blithe cruelty in doing that to an animal, even a savage one. Then I saw The Wolfpack.No, this doesn’t concern cruelty to wolves, but to children, and not just any children, but a man’s own. I’m beginning to wonder what they put in the water in Manhattan.This is a fascinating film, often difficult to believe, about six brothers Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
This programme was a puzzle. It didn't quite work, and it should have worked an absolute treat, as Buddhism is in some respects the religion, or rather the way of life, that has more and more caught the attention of the West in terms of scholarship and practitioners. It was an hour-long visual history, tracing in a trip through the subcontinent the life of the Buddha, presented by the charming and knowledgeable historian Bettany Hughes.It was the first instalment in a trilogy examining the life, times and thought of three philosophers: Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, all of whom Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Indian documentarist Anand Patwardhan is far less known outside his native country than he deserves to be, and his 2002 film about nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent War and Peace (Jang aur Aman) is a good introduction to a filmmaker who has been tackling issues of fundamentalism for more than four decades.There’s no direct link to Tolstoy here, although War and Peace’s opening scenes reprise the assassination of the Russian writer’s Indian disciple, Mahatma Gandhi. The episode serves as a reminder of how Gandhi’s vision of independence has been hijacked by the growing nationalism of Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There can’t be many American public figures who are welcome on Russian television these days, but Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage is one of them. In Hunted: Gay and Afraid we saw him sitting in on legislative gatherings too, and when the World Congress of Families (WCF) holds its assemblies in Moscow – which it seems to do quite often – the atmosphere is of a meeting of minds between leading Russian politicians and the ideologues of the conservative, Christian-aligned American organisations that, through their emphatic upholding of traditional values, effectively reject Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“Say your last words before you leave this life.” Somewhere in the so-called Islamic State, a woman was accused of adultery. Her father joined her accusers, then, as her shrouded body was lowered into a pit, picked up a rock and hurled it at her. We didn’t have to watch her die, but Moona, an Iraqi activist using the internet to spread the truth about IS, did. It’s remarkable that Moona is still alive. IS gunmen turned up at her flat to confiscate her laptop and threaten her family. She now lives in exile in Turkey.Escape from Isis was profoundly harrowing, geopolitically urgent and, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Wilko Johnson’s ecstasy started to fade when he was resurrected. The ex-Dr Feelgood guitarist seemed to be living out a surreal final chapter with an unavoidable end when his January 2013 diagnosis with inoperable cancer flooded him with the wonder of life, leaving him content for perhaps the first time. This reaction ironically raised his career to a new peak, as radio and TV queued to hear the dead man talking, and an album with Roger Daltrey hit the Top 10. Then, in a dizzying turn, he didn’t die. It’s a strange, thought-provoking tale.Johnson, like his old band, was largely forgotten when Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The clinically white buildings of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Medicine, nickname Dick Vet, are just outside Edinburgh, with departments for wildlife, exotic animals, domestic pets and large animals, from horses to cattle. It was founded by William Dick, a human anatomist, in 1823. It is among the top 10 such schools in the world, and came to worldwide fame by cloning Dolly the sheep.This octet of short programmes looking at the life of the school over the past several years examines just what animal medicine can mean, and at a level of expertise that most of the human world would Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I don’t think I could handle it, I think I’d go mad.” It’s the sort of answer given by anyone asked how they’d react to fame. With the possibility looming of recognition beyond jazz circles, Amy Winehouse, who was then not so well-known, responded with something which could have appeared trite; the humble words of an aspirant not wanting to seem too big for her boots.What came later is well known. Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning on 23 July 2011 after a too public decline which seemingly realised her prediction. Those off-the-cuff words in an interview took on a resonance few would have Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Rumour has it that there's a proposal floating around Hollywood to remake Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, his enthralling 1973 masterpiece of love, grief and death foretold. Anyone foolish enough to contemplate such a move should be made to watch this skilful and absorbing film about Roeg's career and work. It was a vivid illustration of how a singular artist pursuing a distinctive vision goes about his business, as opposed to being a mere component in a commercial clone-factory increasingly bereft of original ideas. On the other hand, what it didn't show us was Roeg's debilitating struggle Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Station to Station documents the transcontinental American rail trip taken by a group of musicians, visual artists, and performers in 2013. Local artists and marching bands also contributed to the series of "happenings", often enhanced by light shows and pretty effects, which included rock concerts staged at each of the 10 designated stops on the westward journey. Organised by the artist Doug Aitken, the marathon must have brought the contributors and audiences much pleasure. His film of it is underwhelming.It's not for the want of big names, indie rock being particularly well represented. Read more ...