Category Archives: Documentary Film

Silent Film Footage of Destroyed San Francisco in 1906

by Cimaxion

As neighborhoods in the United States begin to explode and disappear off the face of the earth due to a rapidly disintegrating infrastructure, distract yourself for moment and watch this film of how San Francisco looked just after the earthquake and fire of 1906. Incredible footage. These days stuff like this happens without even having an earthquake. You’re just sitting at home in America watching your TV and suddenly your children are on fire in their bedrooms and your entire neighborhood is an inferno.

A Film About the Secrets of Alchemy

by Cimaxion

With all of the talk recently about religions that forbid the fundamentally human act of drawing, it is perhaps refreshing to think about a spiritual pursuit that not only encourages the act of drawing, but expresses itself almost entirely through drawings. Alchemy is the subject of this fascinating film. It’s in eight parts and well worth clicking through all the way to the end. The later part of the film features some comments by Carl Jung and there are tons of illustrations to puzzle over. If you can get past some of the slightly amateurish narration, you will be well-rewarded with a presentation of ideas that might be completely new to you.  The film gets more interesting toward the last three parts.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

What I like about alchemy is the sense I get of people working toward something. The entire history of alchemy is one of people searching for what amounts to a spiritual understanding of themselves through constant questioning and investigation. This seems to me to be superior to most religious practice which primarily involves people accepting instructions from an outside and unverified source.

Thinking About Underground Film – Part 1

by Cimaxion

If you live in Los Angeles you’ve probably seen it many times: the caravan of white trucks parked along the block and around the corner, diesel generators roaring, cables strung along the gutters, piles of lights, rolls of cables, racks of costumes, makeup trailers, bored extras, bored crew members, bored motorcycle police, and fascinated passersby.

That’s all you need to see to know that something mainstream – feature film, TV show, or commercial – is being made.

But what’s an underground film?

Bad Lit, my favorite site devoted to underground film, has an article about the problem of defining something as slippery as ‘underground film’ in which several definitions are offered by different people. Mike Everleth, the site’s editor, defines underground film this way:

Essentially, I believe it is a film that is a personal statement by one person and a film that dissents radically in form, or in technique, or in content, or perhaps in all three. However, that dissension can take on any number of forms.

I agree with that, but would add the requirement of hostility. There should be an element of combativeness which attempts to counter a much larger established force.  There must be some rebellion in the work.  It can be very subtle – nearly imperceptible – but it’s usually there somewhere.  In fact, I think the hostility should even tend to include the general culture surrounding the filmmaker/s.  Dissent, by itself, can be rather subdued, soft-spoken and shy.  I think underground film requires a willingness not only to dissent but to kick apart.

While thinking about all this mainstream versus underground stuff, I went searching around on YouTube for something that might fit the discussion.  I found this peculiar British documentary film about filmmaker Donald Cammell who co-directed, along with Nicolas Roeg, the 1968 film Performance. The film is one of those odd mixtures of underground and mainstream.  It features Mick Jagger and involves a lot of mind-bending drugs, sex and criminal underworld shenanigans.  It’s actually impossible to forget once you have seen it.

This film contains adult subject matter, language, nudity and sexual situations.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

The documentary, Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance, describes a time when a group of intensely creative artists from various disciplines could operate on the fringes of the mainstream to create an essentially underground film with something resembling support from a mainstream production company. It’s a scenario that does not exist today. If you watch all 7 parts of the film, you will be immersed in that strange hybrid world of the ‘popular underground’ that defines much of what was happening in the 1960s and 70s. Today, if it cannot be jammed into a mall and sold with Sour Patch Kids, it won’t get any money.  That holds as true for ‘independent’ films as it does for summer blockbusters.

Watching this documentary makes me wonder why so many filmmakers seem to have such trouble making the films they really want to make.  After all, one can purchase a cheap camera and make exactly what one wants regardless of what one’s career and money-earning responsibilities might be. Tormented filmmakers who are battling studois for creative freedom should simply make films with video cameras during their spare time. This would not only foster a healthy underground, but it would quite possibly prevent a few tragic endings.

Documentary Film: The Century of the Self

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

The Century of the Self is a 2002 British documentary by Adam Curtis that explains how the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud were used by those in power to control the dangerous masses in democratic countries. Many of the most basic ideas behind American marketing and public relations during the 20th century, including the focus group, were invented by Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. The American economy was converted into a consumer economy that relied upon people wanting things and feeling a need for things that were designed to increase the feeling of want.

The idea underlying this entire documentary, its fundamental observation is simply that in a democracy nearly the entire population is made up of stupid cow-like people who can be very easily controlled into thinking of themselves as unique individuals who are making their own decisions. The fact is that people, for the most part, are cannon fodder. They are willing to throw their sons and daughters into the meat grinder of war for the pretense of defending an economic structure completely dependent upon people earnestly believing that they really really need the new version of the iPhone. The mind control has worked. You can tell from the lines in front of the Best Buy at midnight waiting for the new Xbox. If you find yourself standing in line to buy the first new iPhone, you are simply mindless meat strung between bones without the slightest capacity for self-direction.  You are one of the people in the crowd being laughed at by the guy in the window at the top of the skyscraper.

But it gets even worse.  If you are making a call on your iPhone you are very likely the same mindless meat as the person waiting in line to buy the phone.  Phone calls don’t exist anymore.  They are now just pools of water where you throw your quarters and make a wish.

The series consists of four episodes. Each episode is presented in six parts on YouTube. You can find all the related parts if you click through to YouTube.

Episode 1: “Happiness Machines”
Episode 2: “The Engineering of Consent”
Episode 3: “There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed”
Episode 4: “Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering”