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SundanceNow Doc Club, a documentary-only streaming service from the cinephiles at AMC Networks, has officially nabbed the exclusive streaming rights to Alex Gibney‘s Academy Award-winning film Taxi to the Dark Side. To celebrate the 2007 film’s welcoming to the digital age, Gibney has curated an exclusive list of some of his favorite documentaries available to watch on SundanceNow Doc Club.
The fearless director, who’s stirring up controversy once again with this year’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, may see himself back in the Oscar race nearly a decade later. Going Clear, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival last January before landing on HBO and its subsequent streaming services in March, has already made the Academy short list for Best Documentary, despite making many Hollywood elites squirm. Perhaps the success of his latest endeavor helped lift the digital barriers, but after years of legal obstacles, Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side is finally available to watch. Using one taxi driver’s torture and killing as a harrowing backdrop, Gibney investigates the military’s gruesome procedurals for acquiring information from terrorists and alleged threats in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay. Still hauntingly relevant eight years later, Taxi to the Dark Side is a must-watch account of never-before-seen war footage and confessionals.
Below, Gibney comments, in his own words, the documentaries he admires and others that influenced him to make films in the first place. But before you delve in to Gibney’s cinematic world, watch an exclusive clip of the director commenting on African music documentary, Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon.
'The Atomic Café' (1982)
“Hilarious and inventive,” says Gibney of this essential black comedy about Cold War paranoia and propaganda that swept 1980’s America. Directed by Kevin and Pierce Rafferty, tonally, The Atomic Café can be compared to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Stranglove.
'Deep Water' (2006)
“A fantastic film about lying, cheating and self-deception. This is a gem that somehow disappeared beneath the surface charm of so many less worthy films. Put on your wet suit and take a dive into the mind of Donald Crowhurst.”
'Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon' (2013)
“Sometimes it’s a miracle that documentarians are in the right place at the right time with cameras willing to shoot. Such was the case with Laura Poitras in Hong Kong and such was the case with Stéphane Tchalgadjieff in Lagos, Nigeria. He arrived there in 1982, with a camera, a nagra and some 16mm film intending to do a short profile on a musician named Fela Kuti. He ended up staying for weeks and weeks, filming Fela and his 27 wives in Fela’s club, The Shrine, and in his ganja-filled commune, called The Kalakuta Republic, as if it were a separate country. Stéphane went broke shooting but we are the beneficiaries of the riches he captured: a portrait of one of the 20th century’s great musicians and bandleaders as well as a revolutionary political artist. I used outtakes and clips from this film in ‘Finding Fela!'”
[Stream Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon on SundanceNow Doc Club]
'Five Broken Cameras' (2012)
“The most important thing about this film is the poignant way it shows the unjust and cruel occupation of Palestine by Israeli forces. It’s also an inspiration for impecunious filmmakers looking to make an impact. The filmmaker couldn’t afford fancy graphics packages or the latest 4K camera. Instead, he used five “point-and-shoot” consumer cameras – each one smashed by Israeli forces.”
'Guerrilla — The Taking Of Patty Hearst' (2004)
“Fantastic archival film with attitude,” says Gibney of the unbelievable account of the Symbionese Liberation Army’s kidnapping of teenage newspaper heiress, Patty Hearst. A frenzied look at revolution and the effect media has on the cause and effect of vigilante justice, Guerrilla — The Taking Of Patty Hearst has an outcome so unreal, you’ll have to crosscheck with Google as you watch.
[Stream Guerrilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst on SundanceNow Doc Club]
'Hell & Back Again' (2011)
After being shot down in Afghanistan, 25-year-old Sergeant Nathan Harris must learn to readjust to the normalcy of his South Carolina suburb while recovering from an injury that would have killed most. Gibney believes the film achieves, “Great first person cinema in a war zone.”
'Last Train Home' (2010)
And you think traveling home for the holidays in New York is bad? Try leaving a city at the same time as 130 million people. Last Train Home chronicles the annual struggle Chinese migration workers face while trying to make it home to their rural villages in time for the New Year. “Like many of the best films,” Gibney comments, “This is a simple story that tells a complex truth with images that tattoo the mind.”
'Pina' (2011)
“I really don’t like 3D. I hate the glasses and find the effect off-putting. I have only liked two 3D films, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, and Pina. While Frankenstein is a bit of a grand-guignol joke, Pina is a transporting aesthetic experience, in which Wim Wenders manages to use 3D to create the sense of space needed to understand dance. Like Fancesco Rosi’s ‘Carmen’, Wim takes a theatrical performance into the streets and even the streetcars of Berlin. A wonderful film.”
'Sherman's March' (1985)
“I bring this film up over and over again as a tribute to first-person cinema. Ross McElwee was supposed to make a straightforward historical documentary about Sherman’s March to the sea. Instead, on the eve of commencement of principal photography, McElwee breaks up with his girlfriend. In the opening shots of the film, we see him sweeping up in an empty NY loft and wondering what to do. The answer, it turns out, is to make a movie about finding a new girlfriend. Now that’s a pivot! My two favorite parts: 1) McElwee’s old teacher telling him he’ll never get a girlfriend as long as he’s looking at his prospects through a viewfinder; 2) McElwee sets the camera running in the corner of a motel room, lies on a bed in the far corner, and drunkenly confesses his loneliness to the camera.”
'The Sorrow and the Pity' (1972)
“This was one of the key films that inspired me to make documentaries. It takes a sacred myth – that France’s Vichy government resisted the Nazis – and dismantles it brick by brick. Owing to its length of over 4 hours, it was affectionately mocked by Woody Allen in Annie Hall. I am grateful for that length, not only because I find the sense of Ophuls’ discoveries so hypnotic, but also because I can tell people how short my films are… compared to Marcel Ophuls’!”
'Stop Making Sense' (1984)
“Concert films are mostly crap now. Full of swooping crane shots and lights so bright they would bleach every wrinkle off of Keith Richards’ face. But this is one of the very best. The concert was designed with a dramatic structure in mind. David Byrne starts off on his own with ‘Psycho Killer,’ and then Tina Weymouth joins for ‘Heaven,’ then Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and then more and more — including key Parliament Funkadelic alums — until it seems like there’s 100 people on stage (really only 9) rocking ‘Take Me to the River.’ Jonathan Demme was in the zone for this film. It includes David Byrne’s ‘big white suit,’ which grows with the size of the band. Rather than using quick cuts to accelerate the tempo, the camera glides around the stage emphasizing the proscenium and interplay between musicians. I have personal connections to this film because I was in the audience at the Pantages Theater when this was shot. I can also remember getting really drunk with friends and dancing to this at my sister-in-law’s apartment in Tokyo. But that’s another story.”
'The Thin Blue Line' (1988)
“This film is so influential to me and to so many others. It started the ‘recreation’ rage, but it did so with such wit, intelligence and aesthetic purpose. I remember listening on the radio to Errol Morris talking about the rules he set for the recreations in this film. Basically, he used recreations (someone please come up with a better term) for all the stories he thought did NOT happen; he never showed how he thought the murder really happened. A former private eye, Morris’s inquiry into this murder set a man free and got him sued. That means he was doing something right! An essential documentary.”
