10. Ballets Russes
Had to include this because of the article in the Times Sunday Magazine a few weeks ago bemoaning the lack / difficulty of preserving dance. Yes, it’s a conceptually difficult prospect, but there are a number of efforts underway that the author neglects to mention, including the work going on at the Dance Heritage Coalition. Also, as Ballets Russes so beautifully shows, preservation is not always in the maintenance of the “object” itself, but also of its context and its experiential nature, which can be maintained through oral histories, written records, and audiovisual recordings.

9. We Jam Econo / End of the Century
Like watching home movies, not of a family but of a subculture that has just as tight of bonds. As we mature we leave behind those life & death emotions that we connected to music or other art forms and it’s fascinating to be reminded of those years. At the same time, it wasn’t just a connection of personal upheaval, but of cultural upheaval. As the subculture becomes mainstream, we forgot how original or dangerous it once seemed, and the repercussions it had in the wider culture. One of the powers of archival material is to help us reconnect or understand past states of mind. Finally, being able to see these rock and roll heroes behind the scenes or in personal moments helps remind us that they aren’t gods, but are just normal people like us who were just able to express what many people felt in a better way.

8. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
I can’t really sit still to watch a sporting event, but I’ve always loved sports journalism, documentary footage (Hear Hear for NFL Films!) and the subsequent narratives from the event. A good story is a good story.

7. Bowling for Columbine
It was difficult to figure out where to place this one because of the conflict between my memory of seeing it when it came out (at a special screening in the student lounge basement at University of Virginia, because it wasn’t really playing anywhere else in Virginia) and my questioning of how well it has stood up over time, a judgment clouded by my assessment of Michael Moore’s subsequent movies. Though I have my doubts about the long term cultural impact of Moore’s mishmash style of talking heads, political theater, news footage, and humorous use of sponsored films & other archival footage, I have to remind myself that at the time it all felt fresh, fun, rebellious, and that it was actually doing serious work.

6. Capturing the Friedmans / Tarnation
We tend to have warm fuzzy associations with home movies, those gateways to the past that reconnect us with memories we have lost or that we want to share with others. But what happens when those memories are full of pain or questioning, or reflect something more sinister when viewed with some post facto knowledge? All families go through troubles, but they don’t always have the camera recording it all. There is something fascinating and disgusting about passively watching these problems play out, thus we talk about the exploitation of the subject in documentary by the filmmaker. But that seems to be negated by the fact of a family member documenting it all. What was the Friedman son thinking as he videotaped things, and why did he want someone else to edit and produce it for wider distribution? As Tolstoy says, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

5. The Five Obstructions
Perhaps a bit of stretch to include here, but this playful and entertaining documentary deserves to be on some list, especially since it reminds us that Lars von Trier is quite the trickster whose other work should be reviewed with that in mind. Von Trier’s challenge to his former film professor Jørgen Leth is in effect an argument in favor of the power and importance of archival material. Dig into the past. Let the memories retouch you and remind you, and use their inspiration to create anew. The results are something more than a mashup because of how they reengage Leth into the original creation and meaning of his images, developing meaning in the present by refinding it in the past.

4. Los Angeles Plays Itself
This has been sitting in my Saved Netflix queue for years with very little hope of it moving into Available. A delicious riff on the City Symphony sub-genre that incorporates too much copyrighted material to be commercially released any time soon. Perhaps an extreme example, but a beautifully made one that underscores the many problems low budget and documentary filmmakers have in repurposing material and releasing their films. Unless you feel like getting elected to Congress and rewriting American copyright law you should be scanning regional film festivals for the next time this screens.

3. The Case of the Grinning Cat
Uses Marker’s own stockpiled footage and archival materials from news and television as clues in an almost facetious mystery. “Almost” because, despite the slight smirk and guided Socratic method inherent in the film’s structure, the use of footage is truly engaging to the viewer. I found myself scanning the frame for glimpses of the grinning cat. When Marker “misses” one (i.e., tacitly lets the moment in some protest footage pass before going back to comment later) I felt myself light up and eagerly want to point it out to him. He leads the viewer to this Aha! moment, but a mark of great filmmaking is causing the audience to feel participatory in the story, not manipulated into reactions. Marker achieves this masterfully through his playful exploration of images.

2. Fog of War
Morris excels at exposing the human side of oddballs, geniuses, and monsters. Depending on your views, he’s potentially captured all three with Robert McNamara. I normally have problems with archival materials being used for aesthetic purposes that ahistoricize them, but Morris always does more with his imagery, whether archival or original. Something about being able to create a mood simultaneaous with the means for analysis through editing, repetition, and minimal narrative transcends my concerns through its combined expression of beauty and intelligence.

1. Grizzly Man
Another example like Friedmans of a filmmaker being hired to create a documentary from someone else’s materials with unanticipated and perhaps not happy results. The difference in this case is that there was plenty of back history to search through that should have given fair warning when engaging Werner Herzog. Good thing they did, however. Instead of some subpar basic cable hagiography they got themselves a masterpiece of the genre, and one that took Timothy Treadwell more seriously than it seemed to. Though almost confrontational, Herzog truly engages Treadwell’s theories, his life choices, and his filmmaking, trying to unpack it all and understand it in ways that a blandly positive documentary would not. Though Herzog may disagree with much of what he finds, his questioning, thoughtful approach is honest, personal filmmaking at its finest, and the resulting documentary approaches closer to truth than to history.

— Joshua Ranger

10. Metropolis (2009)
I suppose this has to be included because of the cultural importance of the discovery of new footage (and the corresponding obsession about finding the “complete” film), but I have to rank it last because Metropolis has just had too many most-complete-restorations. This position also represents many of the honorable mentions below which, for the most part, while important films or impressive restorations that were a long time coming, are ones that have not lacked critical acclaim/demand or previous restorations/reissues over the years.

9. The Monster Squad (2009)
It’s about time. My 20 year old VHS copy ain’t doing too good.

8. The Leopard (2004)
First, a display of the powerful toolset that home video can embody. The DVD release includes the original Italian version of the film and the dubbed, edited American version for comparison’s sake, as well as a whole bevy of information/education materials. Second, a fascinating quiet reworking of the idea of an epic film in the story of a man who participates in great historical events but ultimately shrugs at his role while acknowledging that history is much larger than one person. For all the films that pretend to a bottom up view of events by telling the story of an individual within an epic event, The Leopard does it more truly by avoidance of raising the individual’s importance to a level on par with that of those events.

7. King Kong (2005) / Baby Face (2006)
Mark these under Know Your Film History, Know Your Cultural History. The restored pre-censor versions of these films help defray the myth that the past was a more innocent, less savvy time. Conversely, they are also a lesson in the use of restraint and suggestion in story-telling that very well could have created a more engaged, better “reading” audience even at the level of B movies. On top of this are all the pretty faces: Barbara Stanwyck, Fay Wray, and a beautifully expressive King Kong. Outside of what Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis have done together, I really haven’t seen any digital f/x that create the same emotion and attachment as Willis O’Brien was able to instill in his stop motion work. What was a surprise revelation in the 16mm print I first saw this as captured the emotional core of my monkey brain in the restoration.

6. 36th Chamber of Shaolin (2007)
Not the first kung fu movie, but could be considered the ultimate expression of the genre that has spawned so many more and influenced countless other genres… and one of the ur texts for the Wu Tang Clan to boot! There’s something to the social connection made through the collective memory of poorly dubbed/translated kung fu movies – something that can run through Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker to RZA-ODB-GZA is pretty powerful – but being able to see a clean print in the original language takes the film out of the realm of grindhouse sensibility and easy parody and into its proper place as a well made studio film that engages a long cultural history in new ways.

5. The Girl Can’t Help It (2006)
Frank Tashlin has had a long delayed, well deserved renaissance of late with the restoration or reissue of much of his oeuvre. He has always been one of those people who created images that everyone knows, but no one knows where they came from or who made them. Like a Gene Krupa album, a Raymond Chandler novel, or EC Comics, Tashlin belies the belief that the 50s was a boring, culturally monolithic period without anything odd or dark or inventive being produced in the mainstream. Despite the comedy and the early rock music, I watched it with a tinge of sadness, knowing that the quality/style of color captured on film then will probably never be reached again.

4. Yakuza Papers (2004 American release)
I could have chosen any number of Japanese genre crime flicks that have finally been released stateside the past few years, but there’s something about the extent and cultural signifiers in this series that struck a chord in me. The way the crime syndicates were born out of the postwar upheaval. The old world meets new world (in the same world) with the mix of gangster cool and more traditional tattooing and Japanese garb. The way guns are used or thought of in a very different way than in American movies, re-imbuing them with the dangerous power that they hold, but also the reality that a single bullet (or even more poorly placed ones) will not kill someone immediately. And finally unmasking the engrained conception that the Japanese are all unfailingly polite businesspeople who don’t have any violence or upheaval in their society. It maybe doesn’t match up to The Godfather in our minds because it doesn’t feed our love of high melodrama, but the series certainly equally creates a full world of events and characters that reflect the wider aspects of society.

3. I Am Cuba (2005 restoration)
I still feel my jaw drop open in awe when I think about the stunning tracking shot through a rooftop cigar rolling workshop, out a window, floating several stories above the street and then gliding down amidst a crowd at street level. More so in the pre-digital days, there is a daring confrontation to keeping the camera rolling through a long take. Someone like Cassavetes uses these shots to expose a dramatic/emotional realism, forcing the viewer to watch as conversations play out through tension and mundanity. Kalatozov uses it to capture a social/temporal realism – this is happening here while this other thing is happening here – while also displaying a technical virtuosity/inventiveness that amazes.

2. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (2007)
Wow. I dragged a friend along to this in the theatre without giving much explanation of the film, just that it was some odd Yugoslavian movie from the 70s that was partly a documentary about a new agey / cultish doctor. That was pretty much all I knew about it too because I tend to only skim reviews so I keep a film a little fresh for first viewing. We arrived a little late to the theatre and walked in during the opening minutes… to the image of three naked people cracking open eggs and letting the raw egg run through their hands in an orgyish fashion. It just keeps going from there. An audacious mix of genres peppered with a dry black humor, it’s like an Eastern Bloc version of a Russ Myer movie. Also captures a cultural moment and ideology that is quickly succumbing to nostalgia and lingering mis-perceptions.

1. Killer of Sheep (2007)
Far and away the best of this decade and would have been stiff competition for many others. Simply one of the all-time greats. Precious is a pale derivative of Burnett’s unpacking of the ups and downs of everyday life that accompany the numbing pressures and failures of poverty. Even the heavy-handed flights of fancy in Precious are bettered by the almost surreal set pieces (the road trip that goes nowhere) and images (just try to get the image of the dog-masked girl or of the slaughterhouse out of your head) that are both original but also fit into the long history of film. I was so shaken after seeing the restored print that I had to walk home from Manhattan to Brooklyn just to soothe my emotions.

Honorable Mention: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; The Red Shoes; The Exiles; A Woman Under the Influence; The King and I; Once Upon a Time in America; The Sorrow and The Pity

— Joshua Ranger