Documentaries

A Chinese company builds a road in Congo. Lots of interesting intercultural exchanges and insights into how development aid works in practice.

HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments.

Deserved it! just watched and it was really good!

Mr Nobody against Putin follows Talankin in his job at a school in Karabash a poor mining town near the Ural Mountains. While recording his students, Talankin also documents the Putin administration movements to control public perception during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Nobody_Against_Putin

Documentary on a guy who was sanctioned by the government to kill in indonesia in the 1960's

Built around real audio recordings, The Voice of Hind Rajab is a haunting docudrama that focuses on the final phone calls of a young Palestinian girl, using her recorded voice to bear witness to civilian suffering and the human cost of war. It has earned the Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film. Writer-director Ben Hania’s tour de force has creatively encapsulated the gobsmacking misery that has been unleashed since October 8, 2023, upon the children of Gaza, where “a staggering 64,000 children have reportedly been killed or maimed . . . including at least 1,000 babies,”

https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-killing-of-hind-rajab

You could probably release that remarkable footage in full, completely unedited and unstructured, and still have a good documentary; every piece is now, 50 years later – the same distance to us as the Harlem Renaissance was to them – a bridge to a time no living person can remember, each face and gesture informed by decades of aftermath no straightforward nonfiction film on the period could capture. But Once Upon a Time in Harlem, directed by Greaves’s son David, who was one of four cameramen that day, manages to seamlessly clip and contextualize the party into 100 mesmerizing minutes. It’s both a sublime hang-out of a film and a celebration of individual achievements, a fascinating map of a long-ago scene and a referendum on legacy.

The Share Our Wealth: Every Man a King campaign advocated for:

• Cap personal fortunes at $50 million each — equivalent to about $950 million in 2025 (later reduced to $5 - $8 million, or $95 - $152 million in 2025 dollars)
• Limit annual income to one million dollars each (about $19 million in 2025)
• Limit inheritances to five million dollars each (about $95 million in 2025)
• Guarantee every family an annual income of $2,000, or one-third the national average (equivalent to $38,000 in 2025)
• Free college education and vocational training
• Old-age pensions for all persons over 60
• Veterans benefits and healthcare
• A 30 hour work week
• A four week vacation for every worker
• Greater regulation of commodity production to stabilize prices

This winner of the 1993 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature details the case that the 1989 invasion of Panama by the US was motivated not by the need to protect American soldiers, restore democracy or even capture Noriega. It was to force Panama to submit the will of the United States after Noriega had exhausted his usefulness.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/52845025

Ten years ago, this guy made a sandwich with ingredients completely from scratch. Growing, slaughtering, and preparing every ingredient just for one sandwich. It took months, cost thousands of dollars, and tasted kinda okay.

He retries the sandwich quest after a decade, but now even more from scratch.