Here are some of my other favorite documentaries:

The Times Of Harvey Milk
Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt
Michael Apted’s Up Series
The Corporation
Murderball

with Grizzly Man, I see a portrait where you just want to yell at him for the risks he puts not only himself but others through, or his own delusions about what he’s doing. but then theres the scenes with him and the dead fox. i mean, wow. that scene is so complex – it shows him both as completely unprepared to deal with the reality of nature even though he immerses himself in it, while at the same time gives so much insight about why he was probably still overall a good person people deeply cared about. he’s tragically flawed, and thats interesting, and horrifying in the end.

Herzog: “what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.”

I think there is a truth in that statement which is quite profound.

Didn’t you find the movie funny though? And beautiful? I think you’re being a little harsh on it. I don’t think it’s necessarily the ‘if you only see one doc, see Grizzly Man’-movie that some people have made it out to be, but definitely a good documentary. Like I said, the comments on filmmaking alone would have been enough, but Treadwell did capture some pretty awesome stuff as well.

I forgot about Murder On A Sunday Morning. Excellent Doco. Good call.

I wonder if The Staircase counts?

but i’m also scratching my head how a Documentary Association ended up putting Super Size Me on the list, or even how someone as divisive as Moore who people always say is not a ‘real’ documentarian, got all of them on there. this list either intends to legitimize the value of the ‘pop doc’ or yes, a lot of the members may simply have not seen as many docs as they think they have.

personally, Gates of Heaven and Murder on a Sunday Morning deserve to be on there much mroe than a number of those movies.