Recently an Indian documentary ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ got an Oscar and made India proud on the world stage after decades. But still, it is a shame that documentaries are not able to make the markets as commercial films. We always talk about different movies and web series. But there are very few who watch documentaries. Some of us consider documentaries to be very boring because they consist of just dry facts and loathful information. We rarely watch National Geographic or Discovery on Television. Documentaries are indeed full of intellectual facts, but they are not as entertaining as films. But documentaries are good to learn and consume knowledge for those who do not love to read that much.
According to Vocabulary.Com, “A documentary is a film or video examining an event or person based on facts. The word can also refer to anything involving documents.” By the start of the 19th century, the definition of documentary as "about documents" emerged. In the future, it came to signify a factual account of something. So, we do not expect any fictional features from documentaries, they mainly recreate an actual era, event, or a person’s life with cinematography.
Here I am going to tell you about the three best documentaries that one should watch. They are The Salt of the Earth, Social Dilemma, and Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound/ available on online platforms like Netflix, and YouTube.
The Salt of the Earth
‘The Salt of the Earth’ is one of the most iconic documentaries ever made in the world. It created a sensation all over the globe when it was released on 15 October 2014. ‘The Salt of the Earth’ created an incredible record as one of the most liked documentaries in the history of cinema. The Documentary is available in four languages such as English, Portuguese, French, and Italian.
The story documentary is about Sebastiao Ribeiro Salgado, a Brazilian photographer, his lifetime works, his journey through all these years as an international photographer, and his transformation as an environmentalist. He traveled across almost all the countries that existed on this planet. There are 195 recognized countries in the world and Salgado tripped to more than 120 countries for his projects for 50 years. Through all these years of work, he had seen the people and nature very closely.
He got inspired by his works and transformed himself into an environmentalist in 1998. He and his wife Lelia together helped to revive a lost rainforest that spread over a huge area in Minas Gerais State. He was honored for his works by UNESCO and the Brazilian government several times.
All of Salgado’s best photographs and struggles were compiled and
presented beautifully on the screen by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, and Win Wenders. It was nominated for the prestigious 87th Oscar or Academy awards but unfortunately did not win one. But apart from that the documentary got numerous honorable film awards such as Cesar Award for best documentary (2015), Grande Prêmio do Cinema Brasileiro for Best International Feature Film (2016), Platino Award for Best Documentary (2015), and UN Certain Regard Special Prize (2014). The documentary was highly appreciated and liked by film critics around the globe. Today it is shown in many universities, colleges, and schools for educational purposes. The documentary is not just a mere biopic of Sebastiao Salgado, it is a documentation of the unknown parts of the world and the lower-class people we barely think about.
Social Dilemma
‘The Social Dilemma’ was released very recently 3 years back on 9 September 2020 on the popular OTT platform Netflix. It is directed by Jeff Worlosoki and produced by Exposure Labs. ‘The Social Dilemma’ is not just a documentary but more of a docu-drama that tells about the dark sides of social networking sites and apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and WhatsApp we use every day in our lives.
It shows us how Google and other networking sites are designed by tracking and recording the actions we do online. There is a line in this docu-drama “What I want people to know is that everything they’re doing online is being watched, is being tracked. Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded.” The film is an important document about how the psychology of us are being affected by websites and Social Media apps like Facebook or Instagram. The docu-drama even filmed the fake news being spread by social networking sites- “fake news spreads six times faster than true news”.
The director took interviews with the people who are directly connected with these online platforms and silicon valley of America where they revealed how the sites control our “real-world behaviors and emotions'. The experts talked about how online platforms create mass chaos, loneliness, more disintegration, and more inability to control who we are. All social networking sites are designed to trigger our emotions and engage with those as much as they can.
This documentary got two Emmy awards in 2021 such as the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Nonfiction Program, and The Primetime Emmy Award for Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program. The documentary has got outstanding responses from critics and has a 7.6 IMDb rating. So, we can understand it is an amazing docu-drama to watch.
Documentaries may not have the spice and entertaining elements but they have insightful storytelling styles and real-world facts about communities or an inspiring person or events which sometimes helps to make the world a better place in a few ways. So witness these two amazing documentaries this weekend and explore the newness of knowledge and unknowns.
Written by- Joy
Edited by - Kritika Sharma
.jpeg)
0 Comments