Joshua Oppenheimer names his eight favourite documentary movies
When the Joshua Oppenheimer documentary The Act of Killing was released back in 2012, the world of factual cinema was given a bolt of adrenaline. Recalling the events of the Indonesian mass killings that occurred in 1965 and 1966 when those against the New Order regime of the country were killed, the documentary focuses on the killers who enacted the onslaught, with many of whom becoming high-profile gangsters.
Yet, Oppenheimer isn’t at all interested in telling the story with a bunch of talking head interviews. Instead, he approaches the topic with an experimental eye, asking the blasé murderers to reenact their killings in the form of elaborate Hollywood musical numbers. Fact and fiction come to blows, and the perpetrators, for just a moment, become the victims, bringing the terror of the situation to the surface once more.
As a result of the film’s success and its semi-sequel, The Look of Silence, documentary fans began to look at Oppenheimer as if he was the second coming of Werner Herzog, remaining a prominent voice in the industry to this very day. Treating movie fans to an insight into his personality, the director shared his eight favourite documentary movies in an interview with NonFics.
Speaking of Herzog, who also helped finance the release of The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer has repaid the favour by mentioning two of his works, Even Dwarfs Started Small and Land of Silence and Darkness, as two of his all-time favourite documentaries. Speaking about the latter, he stated that the project was “perhaps, the most profound film about human perception ever made”.
Clearly not afraid of taking on bleak topics, elsewhere, Oppenheimer picks the seminal holocaust documentary Shoah from director Claude Lanzmann. “Despite what everybody says about it, part of what makes this film great is that Lanzmann has the courage to make it intimate,” the director states, “A chamber piece about something unimaginably vast and horrible — and a film about now, the time of its making and not then”.
Frederick Wiseman’s influential 1967 documentary Titicut Follies also makes the list, telling the story of Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater and the conditions the patients are kept in. Loving the movie “Because [Wiseman] patiently translates the vast and minute terror of modernity, in all its ecstasy, into a single, condensed and immersive experience for viewers,” Oppenheimer affirms his fondness for frank documentaries that tackle the human condition.
Take a look at the full list of Joshua Oppenheimer’s favourite documentaries of all time below.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s favourite documentaries:
- Animal Love (Ulrich Seidl, 1996)
- The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998)
- Even Dwarfs Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970)
- Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1971)
- Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
- Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev, 1974)
- Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967)
- WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)
