Question of the Day

What is your favorite documentary film?

I am a huge nerd for documentaries, and will watch a documentary film on just about any subject imaginable, though people-centered docs are generally my favorites.

Grey Gardens, which I love, was the first to come to mind, but my all-time favorite is probably the 1992 Ron Fricke (with Mark Magidson) film Baraka, which I believe is even better than his possibly more well-known Koyaanisqatsi. Fricke invented a camera specifically to make the film, which was shot across 24 countries in 14 months and was one of the last films shot in the TODD-AO 70mm format.

Baraka, which takes its name from an ancient Sufi word translated as "a blessing, or as the breath, or essence, of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds" (and is also the root of President Obama's first name), is the story of our planet, and its breathtaking beauty, and its amazing people, and the things we have created, and the destruction we have wrought. It has no dialogue; just a score comprised of music and song and natural sounds, and it is as close a thing to hymns as music gets for someone like me—the hum of the world and the people in it.

I first saw in the theater about fifteen years ago now; I walked in not knowing what to expect of a film which was described by friends who recommended it as stunning, poetic, life-changing. It was all of those things.