The Devil and Daniel Johnston by Jeff Feuerzeig

I have a new number one, and it is about to burst out of me. The Devil and Daniel Johnston may quite possibly be the most well-developed documentary of the past decade. Why? First and foremost, the archive. This film may contain the greatest archive of one person’s life that I have ever seen in a documentary. That alone would earn it the top spot, but it does not even begin to touch the story of this fascinating human life. Told through the eyes and ears of this film, it made me want to jump straight into it and live even a small portion of it myself.

Making The Devil and Daniel Johnston must have been one of those rare moments where a documentary filmmaker finds themselves standing in absolute glory after uncovering a mine of archival gold. The stacks and stacks of material surrounding the making of this film must have created endless possibilities for story development, ultimately giving birth to a documentary that feels almost staged in its perfection. Of course, the other side of that gift would have been the painstaking process of sorting through it all and knowing what to leave in and what to cut. In the end, what emerges is a deeply compelling portrait of Daniel Johnston, supported by the footage and audio needed to truly understand what it was like to live inside his world.

Raised in Pennsylvania in a conservative home with strict values, Daniel Johnston struggled to fit in. Sometime in his late teen years, he broke free from it all in a collision of madness and music and hit the road. Gifted as an artist yet struggling with reality, his relationships with family grew tense. His outlets became art, music, and short films, mirroring his internal life back to the world. Obsessed with recording his existence on tape, he captured moments of personal thought, bursts of musical brilliance, and an astonishing archive of family secrets that reveal a household many of us can recognize.

The story of Daniel Johnston, like his mind, moved in two directions. And with Daniel, those directions were always straight up or straight down. Breaking away from his roots, he played his way to the top of the Austin music scene, creating a roar that rivaled anything the region had produced before. Rising toward what he believed was his destiny, Daniel found himself on the early stages of MTV, holding attention just long enough to leave a mark. With a growing legacy of cassette-recorded music, his agent worked tirelessly to get him recognized, eventually pushing Daniel into the center of a record label bidding war that left behind both legend and infamy.

But with Daniel, there was always a deal with the devil, and the devil never forgets. Everything eventually came crashing down. He lost his record deal, stopped making music, destroyed his artwork, and quite literally brought both himself and his father’s plane to the ground. Confronted with the reality of his collapsing mental health, Daniel began a long road back toward sanity, a journey that both saved him and erased parts of who he once was.

When the film jumps forward to the time it was shot, we find Daniel healthier and singing one of my favorite songs, Casper the Friendly Ghost. It is here, in both the film and this song, that Daniel appears at his most beautiful. He is softer, larger, and older. Less wire, more reflection. And if you listen closely to the lyrics, it feels as though he understands that he himself has become Casper, and that Casper was always who he was meant to be.

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TRAILER

Since its watching, I have fallen in love with this movie and with Daniel and his music.   I have researched more of his work, listened to more of his songs, and gained an understanding that, as the directors share in their commentary, Daniel quite possibly is one of the greatest songwriters and singers of our time, yet unknown.

I hope you will follow up with watching and I would welcome hearing your comments and thoughts.

DANIEL JOHNSTON LINKS:

CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrNT-4hXD3w

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.hihowareyou.com/ 

TWITTER: @danieljohnston  

FAN PAGE: http://www.rejectedunknown.com/

STORE: http://www.rejectedunknown.com/store/

FORUM: http://www.hihowareyou.com/messageboard/

FULL LENGTH MOVIE ON YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHsKByGW7JE

FURTHER LINKS:

True Love" appears in new Axe hair commercial!  http://youtu.be/NvX71ZbTk-E

Brother’s Keeper by Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

Brother’s Keeper landed in the mail from Netflix on the recommendation of a friend of mine, and within the first 20 minutes, it was already a top ten on my list. By the end, it had moved firmly into my top five.

Call me behind the times. The film was released in 1992, yet it feels as relevant and powerful today as it did when it was born. It took me a while to put it together, but after about 45 minutes I realized I was watching a documentary that felt like a hybrid of the novels To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath. The film uncovers a small town, backwoods way of life and explores a rare pocket of human nature, all while taking on a court case that flushes out the uniqueness of four brothers who had lived together in one house since birth. I found myself struck again and again by a quiet sense of awe, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Set on a farm in upstate New York, the brothers had lived their entire lives together in a run down, ramshackled house, described in the director’s commentary as a kind of personal sanctuary. One morning, they wake to find one of the four not breathing in his bed, with markings on his face that point to death by suffocation. After picking up the story in a local newspaper and following it from near its origin, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky worked quickly to secure the rights to film the events following the brother’s death, documenting what unfolded all the way to the courtroom.

Over the ensuing one hour and forty five minutes, the film reveals the fascinating lives of these four brothers, the farm they grew up on, and the conflicting elements of the legal case. Together, these layers show just how confused the legal system, law enforcement, and state government can become when they collide with a closed, independent small town culture in the rural countryside of a major state.

At first glance, the average viewer may set this film aside without stopping to see why it is so remarkable. Looking closer into this small subculture challenges our ability to understand natural non conformity. It is far easier for a trained, modern mind to dismiss the brothers as strange or out of touch. But if you look deeper, you begin to see something rare and deeply human.

What emerges is a sense of self and simplicity, a way of life that does not seek approval from larger systems of thought. It is this independence that defines these men and their town’s belief in the right to make their own choices, even if that means being damned by a system that believes it knows better. That independence is both beautiful and dangerous in an age shaped by fear and suspicion of small, self contained groups.

This way of life is disappearing rapidly from the public eye, and Brother’s Keeper offers a fleeting glimpse into a world that may soon no longer exist. It is that glimpse that makes this film a top five for me, a moment we may not be able to look into again.

TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDSGMAyUrE

FULL LENGTH ON YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvroFeisc9k&feature=related

Manufacturing Consent directed by Mark Achbar

Just over a year ago, I had the opportunity to interview Mark Achbar about his documentary The Corporation, a film that rightfully earned its reputation as a cultural and intellectual lightning rod. Since that conversation, I had been eager to finally sit down with another of his original works, Manufacturing Consent, and this week I was able to do just that. After watching the film three times over the course of six days, I’ve fallen completely in love with it, and these are a few thoughts that continue to linger.

Manufacturing Consent is, in many ways, a blast from the past assuming you consider its 1992 release date to be “the past.” Yet despite its age, the decades since its release have not dulled its relevance or impact. In fact, time has only sharpened it. Watching the film today feels much like rereading George Orwell’s 1984 in the present era. What once felt speculative now feels disturbingly familiar.

Centering on Noam Chomsky, the nearly three hour documentary is structured in a linear, categorical fashion that lays out his biography and body of work without the use of traditional narration or authored text. Instead, the film relies almost entirely on archival footage and sound bites from Chomsky’s public lectures and interviews. It is a rare editorial choice and one I both admire and fear.

From beginning to end, the film is packed with compelling clips drawn from Chomsky’s speaking history. I found myself captivated not only by his perspectives on society and media which are globally original and intellectually sharp but even more so by his method of exposing the premeditated and manufactured influence of American media since its earliest foundations. He carefully outlines how those in power use media to steer public opinion toward their own interests. It is a viewpoint rarely articulated with such precision, and I found myself continually drawn in by his ability to present complex ideas in a way that is both enlightening and deeply challenging.

Despite being a respected scholar and a devoted family man, Chomsky has remained steadfast in beliefs that have marginalized him within mainstream culture and, at times, threatened his professional standing. He openly speaks about freedom of speech, selective media coverage, military power, and political manipulation topics most public intellectuals avoid. As a result, he exists largely outside pop culture visibility and political favor, despite the immense value of his work. Ironically, this exclusion only reinforces the film’s central argument: that limiting exposure to dissenting perspectives helps streamline public thought and effectively “manufacture consent.”

What I respect most about Noam Chomsky is his ability to see outside the box in a way most people simply cannot. It is the kind of perspective that might make others want to scream, “You’re all going the wrong way.” Yet Chomsky, rather than shouting, calmly invites you to look again and decide for yourself.

That said, both the film and its subject are not without their weaknesses. The documentary is edited almost entirely through tightly matched sound and image bites, stitched together to form its narrative. While this approach is artistically compelling, it also restricts the range of information presented and subtly guides the viewer toward a specific conclusion based on what is included versus what is omitted. Some might argue that this is simply the nature of documentary filmmaking, but in doing so, the film arguably employs the same selective techniques it critiques within mainstream media.

In reality, limited information shapes perception in all forms of programming. As the film itself points out, when news entered television, it left the realm of journalism and entered show business. This truth applies universally. And while I am a strong supporter of Chomsky’s work and a genuine admirer of Manufacturing Consent, it is a film best watched with awareness and a critical eye.

Perhaps the most valuable takeaway is not agreement or disagreement with its thesis, but a heightened awareness of the information we consume, the motives behind those delivering it, and the stories that never make it into the mainstream at all.

For viewers with access to Hulu, Manufacturing Consent is available to stream there. A full length version can also be found on YouTube.

Thanks for reading.

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For viewers who can access Hulu you can watch this doc online here at Hulu.

Also Youtube has a full length version available here on Youtube.

DOC THIS SPOT LIGHT: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967 - 1975

DOC THIS is SPOTLIGHTING The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975, a documentary directed by Göran Hugo Olsson that brings to life a remarkable trove of archival material from one of the most transformative eras in modern American history.

The film isn’t a traditional linear narrative. Instead, it is a cinematic mixtape of material shot by Swedish journalists between 1967 and 1975 who came to the United States to document stories of racial injustice, urban unrest, and revolutionary change at the height of the Black Power and civil rights movements. Thirty years later, this 16mm footage was rediscovered in the archives of Swedish Television and thoughtfully reassembled into a documentary that feels fresh, raw, and immediate.

What makes The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 so compelling is its blend of visually rich historical footage with contemporary voiceover commentary from influential artists, scholars, and activists. Through this combination, the film captures both the look and feel of the era — the music, the fashion, the streets, and the personalities that defined a movement — while offering insight into what those images meant then and what they mean now.

The documentary features intimate and unguarded moments with key figures of the Black Power movement such as Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver, giving viewers insight into the evolution of ideas about Black autonomy, self defense, and cultural pride that challenged the dominant narratives of the time.

Complementing the archival footage are the voices of artists and thinkers like Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Questlove, and Harry Belafonte, whose reflections bridge the historical struggle with its ongoing resonance in culture and politics today. This treatment turns the film into more than just a historical document; it becomes a living conversation about empowerment, resistance, identity, and the costs of systemic oppression.

The mixtape format — a series of visual chapters tied together with music and narration rather than strict chronology — gives the film an almost rhythmic quality, reminding us that these years were not just events on a timeline, but moments in lives lived with urgency and passion. The Black Power Mixtape doesn’t try to offer a complete history of the movement, nor does it shy away from its contradictions and controversies, but it does open a window into the era with unprecedented access and emotional clarity.

Ultimately, the film stands as both a historical time capsule and a reminder that the issues it explores — racial justice, power structures, cultural identity, and resistance — are still deeply relevant. Watching it is not only an education in the past but an invitation to reflect on today.

Go look it up, check it out, and let us know what you think when you do.

If a Tree Falls, directed by Marshall Curry

Just finished watching If a Tree Falls, directed by Marshall Curry, and it is a knock your socks off piece of filmmaking.

If you have ever wondered what drives environmental activists to chain themselves to trees, fight the system, and earn labels that leave corporate couch potatoes dazed and confused, this film lays it out with clarity and restraint. Told through the capture, trial, and prosecution of Daniel McGowan, the documentary explores how a thoughtful and seemingly grounded individual became involved in acts that would ultimately label him an environmental terrorist and arsonist.

MARSHALL CURRY

The film is edited masterfully, using linear interviews that carefully unfold the story while blending reenactments, archival footage, and amateur video into a seamless and emotionally driven narrative. The post-production recreations are effective without being sensational, supporting the story rather than overpowering it. The result is a heartfelt and unsettling look at how frustration with the system can push someone from protest into direct action, even when that action results in millions of dollars of destroyed private property.

What makes the film so effective is its balance. From beginning to end, it allows both sides to speak. It does not excuse the crimes, nor does it flatten the motivations behind them. By the time the film reached its conclusion, I was surprised to find myself conflicted. While fully aware of the severity of McGowan’s actions, I still found myself wishing the punishment could somehow just go away. That emotional tension speaks to how successfully the film humanizes its subject without asking the audience to agree with him.

This is a powerful and thought-provoking documentary that stays with you long after the credits roll.

The film is currently available to stream and rent online, including on Netflix. Watch it when you get the chance and let me know what you think.

This was a DOC THIS report by Barry Walton