Worth Watching

(Image via Wikimedia Commons.)

I love documentaries and I’ve seen a few really good ones recently.  But the thing is, I have to be in the right mood to watch them.  Some are uplifting, but most aren’t, and I come away feeling discouraged, or sad, or just unsettled.  The student in me always hops online after watching a documentary, so I can try to find out more about the subject matter or the people in the film.

Netflix has a great collection of documentaries, and here are a few worth watching.  I’m also including information I found after watching each piece, in case you’re like me and can’t get enough.

Jig is the happiest documentary on my list, and it follows several young dancers competing in the Irish Dancing World Championships in 2010.  There are children from the United States, a group of young women from Russia, and dancers from across the world competing in this very small niche.  The film is fun and fascinating, and I learned a lot about Irish Dancing.

Paris is Burning is a 1990 documentary that profiles the “Ball Culture” of New York City, in which members of different houses compete for prizes based on their clothing, style, and walk.  The film also examines “voguing” (think Madonna) and follows various house members in their daily lives and as they compete at the balls.  I found this movie fascinating and heartbreaking, too.  Ball Culture is specific to the LGBTQ community, and many of the young people profiled lived on the edges of society, fighting hatred and oppression on a daily basis.  Some had happy lives, and others met tragic ends.

Bully is a recent documentary following children across the United States who have been victims of bullying.  It is tragic from the beginning and especially hard to watch as a parent, but it’s really well-made, too.  The stories of the students are heartbreaking, and one boy in particular, Alex, will probably tug at your heartstrings.  His issues aren’t resolved with the film’s end and it’s easy to become frustrated with his parents and the school administrators who appear completely clueless, but I did find this article with a happy update on his progress.

Girl Model follows the experiences of a model scout as she looks for new models in Siberia.  The girls she picks are as young as eleven, and they’re sent to Japan, alone, to work for several months.  This film is also hard to watch, and it’s painful to see adults putting children in such difficult situations.  Girl Model raises awareness about underage models working in countries across the world, and shows the very blurred lines that go with it.

The Imposter is probably the most fascinating of the documentaries on my list.  It takes place in San Antonio, my hometown, during the time that I lived there, but strangely, I wasn’t very familiar with the story at all.  The Imposter recounts the 1994 disappearance of a young boy from San Antonio, and his surprising reappearance three years later in Spain.  The film recreates much of the story with actors, and fills in the gaps with interviews of all the major players: the missing boy’s family, the FBI agent assigned to the case, a local private detective, and the “missing boy” himself.

This film is nothing if not bizarre, and I seriously can’t believe I knew so little about the case.  Without giving much away, this story is proof that life is stranger than fiction.  Two interesting articles about the case appeared in The New Yorker and on The Guardian. Also, the British director uses shots of Arizona to pass for San Antonio, along with actual footage of the city.  There aren’t any mountains down here, but I’ll forgive him that one small detail because the film is so good.

And finally, I read about this TED Talk over the weekend and found it very interesting.  It’s certainly more fascinating than some of the other talks I’ve heard.

Have you seen any of these films?  What did you think of them?  I’d love to hear!