Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Episódios Disponíveis

5 de 267

"Mr. Scorsese" with Rebecca Miller
Mr. Scorsese is “Marty” to his friends and “Legend” to admirers and imitators. But he’s also still that kid, the "minuscule asthmatic”--as lovingly described by his ex-wife, Isabella Rossellini--who fervently loved both the movies he watched in Times Square as well as the characters that populated the Little Italy of his youth. The results were "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull", and "Goodfellas". But as Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”, “Maggie’s Plan”, “Arthur Miller: Writer”) compellingly shows, Scorsese’s triumph was not inevitable, nor is it simply the inevitable result of personal history yoked to directorial will. For while Scorsese has an anthropologist’s eye, his films are not documentaries (except for the documentaries, of course!) Rather, they are the product of his own prodigious preparation combined with a willingness to trust his actors (notably, DiNero and DiCaprio) to improvise–and, in the end, phenomenal editing shaped by deep learning from the French New Wave as well as his decades-long professional relationship with Thelma Schoonmaker. While his films are often grounded in fully formed literary works, he makes of them what director Ari Aster calls “total cinema”. And while the visuals putatively reign, the music often seems to take the lead, almost directing the camera’s movements. And in the end, in complicating the work of what may seem to be one of our most personal filmmakers, Miller suggests that Scorsese's wider purpose is to chronicle “the American project.” You can watch the 5-part series “Mr. Scorcese” on Apple+ Follow: @rebeccamillerstoryteller on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
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“Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” with Raoul Peck
It’s easy to glibly identify what’s happening as “Orwellian”: that we live in an era of “newspeak,” that we have reached the point at which the depths of the surveillance state of 1984 seems all too possible, maybe even already here. But in his new “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5”, Raoul Peck (“I am Not Your Negro”, “Exterminate All the Brutes”, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”) digs much deeper into these possibilities, demonstrating how Orwell’s words resonated throughout the first half of the 20th century, only to become all that much relevant in our own day. Drawing widely from Orwell’s corpus--not just the later novels, 1984 and Animal Farm but from earlier work and Orwell’s essays as well--Peck gives us a sense of a mind at work, seeking to bring together art and politics to reveal his world’s contradictions. And by fashioning as a spine to the film Orwell’s final months on the remote island of Jura as well as in sanitariums and hospitals and tuberculosis destroyed his lungs, all while striving to finish his final novel, 1984, Peck creates a sense of the mortal urgency facing Orwell then and us now. “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” is now playing in theaters. Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
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Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2025
It’s that time of the year! The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2025 runs from October 10-18th. Ken, who, in addition to his Top Docs duties serves as the Executive Director of the Festival, joins Mike to talk about some of his picks for the Festival including: “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone” “The Cowboy” “Move Ya Body: The Birth of House” “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” “The Perfect Neighbor” “Welded Together” “The Baloonists” And… On October 12th at 2:30, Join Ken and Mike and director Joshua Seftel for a very special live Top Docs featuring Johua’s short, “All the Empty Rooms.” For more info: https://hsdfi.org/ The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
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"Predators" with David Osit
As director David Osit describes his new film, “ ’Predators’ peels back the story of the TV show ‘To Catch a Predator’, which ensnared potential sex predators in a television hidden-camera sting operation and explores the fallout from the show and the legacy of journalism as entertainment that it helped create.” “Predators” (MTV Documentary Films) is now playing in select theaters, with more added every week. Hidden Gem: Look into My Eyes. Follow: @dosit on Instagram and @davidosit on X/twitter @predatorsfilm on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
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Emmy Winner Matt Wolf: "Pee-wee as Himself" (Re-release)
In honor of Matt Wolf's big wins at the Emmys this year--not only for "Pee-wee as Himself" as Best Documentary Feature, but for his own win as director of that documentary as well as picture editing for Damian Rodriguez--we are re-releasing our interview with him at Sundance earlier this year. As Director Matt Wolf shows in his insightful and fun 2-part HBO series “Pee-wee as Himself”, in Pee-wee, Paul Rubens found a persona that allowed him to both reveal and yet hide some core truths about who he was. Fascinated with television and show business since he was a boy, Rubens combined elements of his childhood’s pop culture with the art world of Southern California in the 70s and early 80s to craft a character that would both conquer the then punkish milieu of Melrose Avenue as well as create a nationally televised children’s TV show. To achieve this, Wolfe delineates how Rubens deliberately foreclosed both his potential love life as well as cast aside long-held friendships. Wolfe’s series demonstrates both the costs as well as the benefits of outsized talent and ambition. You can watch “Pee-wee as Himself” on HBO and HBO Max starting Friday, May 23rd. Follow: @mattpwolf on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
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