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When You’re Strange
Love them or hate them The Doors left a legacy of hugely influential music with Blue Oyster Cult, Iggy Pop, REM and The Verve acknowledging the band as an inspiration. Today about one million CDs/downloads of Doors music are sold annually. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that The Doors notoriety and impact on…
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Inside Job
The topic of this Oscar-winning documentary affects us all. It gives us a truly accessible account of the 2008 US financial meltdown which triggered the collapse of banks and businesses and led to global recession causing soaring national debts and impacting upon the lives of many millions of people. Inside Job is so lucid in…
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The Cove
In a small bay on the Japanese coast near the fishing port of Tajii there is an annual mass slaughter of wild dolphins. Some eco-activists set out to capture the event on film to bring it to the world’s attention. This is the subject matter of The Cove, an eco-documentary. Not high on your agenda…
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Senna
The first thing to say about Senna is that you don’t have to know, or care, about driving round and round in circles very fast to enjoy this terrific film. Senna is a superbly crafted portrait of an exceptional individual who thrilled the world and inspired a nation. The film begins with Senna’s arrival into…
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Fire In Babylon
There is phenomenal cricket on show, but much more than that. A skilful documentary about how the West Indian champions became a magnificent symbol of success: a ‘yes, we can’ message to black communities in Britain and worldwide. Featuring stock footage and interviews with several former players and officials, the documentary describes the ascension of…
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Benda Bilili
Benda Bilili means See Beyond in English and is the name of a Congolese band of homeless disabled and able bodied musicians. This uplifting and moving film documents their daily struggle to survive on the streets of the Congo capital, Kinshasa, through to achieving global recognition as artists, with some riveting twists and turns along…
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Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Swedish documentary film directed by Göran Olsson, that examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in American society from 1967 to 1975 as viewed through Swedish journalists and filmmakers. It features footage of the movement shot by Swedish journalists in the United States at that time, with appearances by Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey…
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The Great White Silence
This stunning documentary, beautifully restored by the BFI, charts Captain Scott’s ill-fated Polar Expedition of 1910-12. Herbert Ponting (1870-1935) set sail with the British Antarctic Expedition on the former whaling ship Terra Nova, as the Expedition’s official photographer and cinematographer, both for documentary purposes and because the sale of photographic and cinema rights helped pay…
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Nostalgia for the Light
Breathtaking documentary that compares 2 groups of people searching for understanding of the past in the dry clear conditions of Chile’s Atacama Desert: astronomers study the universe and relatives search for remains of the Disappeared of Pinochet’s regime. A stunning, sad film with an end note of hope. Guzmán focuses on the similarities between astronomers…
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The Pervert’s Guide To Ideology
British documentary film directed by Sophie Fiennes and written and presented by Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek. It is a sequel to Fiennes’s 2006 documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. Though the film follows the frameworks of its predecessor, this time the emphasis is on ideology itself. Through psychoanalysis Žižek explores “the mechanisms…