“The Grizzly Man.
A biography of one of nature’s foremost conservation enthusiasts, Timothy Treadwell, who has devoted his life to saving grizzlies from human influence and fostering responsible environmental stewardship. In 2003, he and his girlfriend, also a researcher, were killed by bears while filming a documentary about grizzlies preparing for hibernation: it is the fall hunt for food that makes grizzlies especially dangerous to humans.
“In Jackson Heights.”
In New York’s most cosmopolitan neighborhood, Jackson Heights, change is ripe: local landlords are jacking up prices and it seems that soon you’ll find the usual supermarket and Starbucks instead of convenience stores and eateries across every street. Diverse, chaotic, filled with people of all religions and backgrounds, Jackson Heights is slowly surrendering under the onslaught of global capitalism, and American documentary classic Frederick Wiseman is watching. For 50 years, he’s been documenting a changing America — with no voice-over or talking heads — filming the complex and inscrutable life around him, from UC Berkeley to high school students in the ’60s.
“Without Sunshine.”
Often called one of the best documentaries ever made, the ’80s experiment from French legend Chris Marker is a movie about the nature of memory, the freshness of impression and the constant inner monologue that accompanies the traveler and explorer. Marker’s essay depicts several geographic and aesthetic polarities — technologized Japan, commercial America, spontaneous Iceland and the still wild Guinea-Bissau — with a female voice reading out fictional letters from the film’s fictional operator with the fabled name Sandor.
“Monterey Pop.”
There were two major music event films in the ’60s, “Woodstock” and “Monterey Pop,” made one year apart. In “Monterey” (to the director’s credit, films about Bob Dylan, John Lennon and David Bowie) it is obvious that the “summer of love” crowd has not yet turned into a flood of undressed people dressed in hippie fashion. “Monterey Pop,” a festival attended primarily for the music and secondarily for the buzz and nature, registers a transition to another quality and a new scale of Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, The Who and Simon & Garfunkel.
“Good Old Frida.”
In a small British cottage, the filmmakers find the elderly Frieda, a girl who worked as a typist and, as a teenager, became the keeper of The Beatles fan club. From the band’s first day performing in the Liverpool cellars until the breakup, when tens of thousands of fan regrets were sent to the studio, Frida spent a lot of time with the Beatles: as the invisible heroine of Richard Lester’s comedies, accompanying them on their star-studded journey. “Good Old Frida” is a tender film about friendship, the juxtaposition of stardom and unremarkable living, and why the world, including Frida, was head over heels in love with The Beatles.
