1921: Manhatta

This silent ten-minute documentary, if you want to call it that, portrays a day in the life of Manhattan. Watching completely silent films (without music) is an experience I'm only getting used to, but it helps to look at the film as a series of animated photographs. "Moving pictures", you might say. (7.5)

1935: Triumph des Willens

Riefenstahl's supposed masterpiece of propaganda filmmaking turn out to be surprisingly pedestrian. Though there are some nice shots, there's nothing that is truly spectacular apart from the sheer mass of people in some scenes. Not in the same league as Eisenstein, but recommended for fans of people marching. (5.5)

1965: The War Game

Fiction-documentary about what it might look like if Britain suffers a nuclear attack. Given that the outcome is rather dreadful anyway, I felt that the film might have been more effective if it had tried less hard. (6)

1989: Thrash Altenessen: Ein Film aus dem Ruhrgebiet

Watching the late-80s documentary about Essen's then-not-yet-famous metal band Kreator and their social and architectural surroundings was an all-around weird experience. That is all.

1942: Listen to Britain

Mashup of sounds and moving pictures recorded in wartime Britain. Meant as uplifting in a patriotic way and considered a classic, but strikes me as pointless. (3.5)

1954: Thursday's Children

Not only is Lindsay Anderson's documentary about a school for deaf children boring, it also has voice-over narration that alternates between the usual third-person view and taking the (inauthentic) voice of the children ("We are deaf."). Bonus: Contains the remarkable assertion that if you don't have words, you cannot think. (4)

1929: Chelovek s kino-apparatom (The Man with a Movie Camera)

Dziga Vertov's silent experimental/documentary film about life in The Modern Russian City attempts to cover all central aspects of life - work and play, birth and death - and time and again puts the filmmakers themselves into the frame, perhaps in an attempt to alert the audience to the subjective nature of the seemingly objective medium, perhaps out of vanity. Despite an undeniable stylishness of the whole movie and quite a feeling for rhythm in particular, the film could still be somewhat boring with the wrong music, I guess, but Michael Nyman's 2002 soundtrack is not only cool music in and by itself, but fits perfectly with the pictures. (7.5)

1922: Häxan

Benjamin Christensen's educational silent film which uses feature-type scenes to argue against the existence of witchs, witchcraft and the devil, isn't nearly as fucked up as I had hoped, though the writer-director in the role of the devil looks really very good. For stoners. (6)

1999: Il mio viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy)

Martin Scorsese's very entertaining tour through the history of Italian cinema up until the 1960s, featuring all the films you might expect in such a documentary. Though I wish he'd bashed a famous director's film from time to time rather than criticizing by omission (Le notti di Cabiria gets about a third of a sentence), one couldn't imagine a more affa- and knowledgeable tour guide than Scorsese. And those eyebrows! Those eyebrows do me every time. (7.5)

1962: Vive le Tour

Louis Malle's eighteen-minute documentary explaining the Tour de France is not particularly interesting. (5.5)

2002: The Mysteries of Love

A well-done documentary about the making of Blue Velvet, based on old and new interviews with the main people involved. (6)