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Doug Block’s Shortlist

Published on August 9, 2011

The Shortlist article series is your opportunity to learn about the films that inspire intellectual, artistic and activist leaders – leaders like Doug Block. We asked Doug to share his favorite films and his thoughts on the power of documentary to change the world.

So what films make Doug’s Shortlist? Keep reading to find out.

Who is Doug Block?

Doug Block

Doug Block is a documentary director, producer and consultant. His most recent film, The Kids Grow Up, is now available on dvd. He’s also executive producer of the Sundance award-winner Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, which opens theatrically on September 2nd. He’s the founder and co-host of The D-Word, www.d-word.com, an online discussion forum for documentary professionals worldwide. Doug Block has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed documentaries in the past 15 years. His film 51 Birch Street was named one of the 10 Best Films of the year by the New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, and the Ebert and Roeper Show. Doug’s first film, The Heck With Hollywood! turned to be a worldwide broadcast premiering on channels including; PBS and Bravo in the U.S. Doug then produced and directed his second feature film Home Page, which quickly became an Emmy Nominee. Doug Block has also received awards by the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Peabody, Prix Italia, Sundance Special Jury Award, Emmy, Independent Spirit Award, and the Best Feature Film at NY Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

Doug Block on the Power of Film

I deliberately compiled my list of favorites (5 documentaries and 3 fiction films) quickly and instinctively. However, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern. Virtually all are stories of social realism, and yet are formally innovative and told with great cinematic flair. It’s the unusual combination of realism and lyricism that makes each of them unforgettable works of art for me.

Here’s my shortlist in alphabetical order…

Doug Block’s Shortlist

The Battle of Algiers 1966, Gillo Pontecorvo
This breathtakingly suspenseful account of Algeria’s independence from French rule wasn’t a documentary, but it sure looked and felt like one.

Iraq in Fragments 2006, James Longley
Three seemingly unrelated documentary narratives about life on the street in Iraq at the height of the American invasion. The cinematography, editing and sound design all work on the subconscious to create an unsettling atmosphere of stunning beauty and almost unbearable dread. Meant to be seen on the big screen, view it on a top-notch home system with great speakers.

The Natural History of the Chicken 2000, Mark Lewis
One of the funniest documentaries I’ve ever seen (a woman giving her chicken mouth-to-beak resuscitation after it gets lost in a blizzard is a particular highlight). At the same time, the harrowing scenes of chickens being housed in deplorable conditions remain seared in my memory.

Los Olvidados 1950, Luis Bunuel
Bunuel’s ultra-realistic fictional depiction of a gang of Mexican children living in poverty is spiced with occasional surreal touches (such as an orchestra playing in the skeletal frame of a bombed out building). Stunning and heartbreaking.

Sherman’s March 1986, Ross McEwee
Personal documentaries resonate more universally when set within a larger social context. Probably the most influential personal doc of the past 30 years, the films’ subtitle directly addresses that context: A Mediation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.

Silverlake Life 1991, Tom Joslin, Peter Friedman
The subtitle (The View From Here) once again speaks volumes. This video diary of a longtime gay couple (one of whom was the original director, Tom Joslin) living with and dying of AIDS was an urgent first-person cry from the heart. After Joslin’s death, the footage was inherited by his former film student, Peter Friedman, who turned it into one of the most powerful love stories in documentary history. I’m a bit biased, perhaps, because I’m one of the producers, but anyone who’s ever seen Silverlake Life will understand.

Special Bulletin 1983, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz
Made a decade before the internet took cultural root, if a nuclear attack were to ever happen in the U.S. this formally ingenious docu-drama, shot entirely in video, predicted exactly how we’d experience it: entirely through the numbing filter of television news.

Spellbound 2002, Jeffrey Blitz
The film follows eight young competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee and seemingly created its own documentary genre overnight: the competition doc. The fact that almost all of the contestants were children of immigrants widened the scope—and stakes—of the film immeasurably. As each (but one) goes down to defeat, your heart goes out not just to the kids but to their parents, as well, whose outsized American dreams are dashed, in the process.

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