Doc Corner: The Best Documentaries of 2020

By Glenn Dunks

Before this column takes a few weeks break, it’s that time of the year to make lists! I have spent the last few weeks churning through screeners trying to ensure I saw enough of 2020’s documentary output to justify a list of the year’s best, although I do not have the time nor the inclination to watch 238 of the damn things! Nevertheless, below are 30 non-fiction titles (or non-fiction adjacent, but we’ll get to that later) that I believe are among the year’s best movies. I stuck to the 2020 calendar as much as possible because, like Nathaniel, I want to keep some order to it all.

If you were to sit down and watch every film below, you would be taken from rural towns in the heart of the Florida peninsula to rural towns in the heart of the Ukraine via the protests of Hong Kong and a nursing home in Chile. There are serious themes, important subjects, powerful ideas... and hand sanitizer.

There’s also a stripper named Nomi. Something for everything, I reckon...

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Doc Corner: 'Dick Johnson is Dead'

By Glenn Dunks

One of the heartiest laughs I have had in months comes towards the end of Dick Johnson is Dead during Dick’s funeral as his best friend pulls out a bugle to play a tune and bid his buddy farewell. Why is it funny? Well, you’ll have to watch the film to find out. But it’s a moment that epitomises what the entire film, directed by Johnson’s daughter, Kirsten Johnson, does so well. It confronts our own morbid idea of life and death and laughs in the face of the idea that we have any sort of real control over our mortality.

For a film about death and grief, Dick Johnson is Dead is also probably one of the funniest movies of the year.

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Doc Corner: 'Cameraperson' is Simply Extraordinary

Glenn here. Each Tuesday bringing you reviews of documentaries from theatres, festivals and on demand.

Cameraperson is the most extraordinary of documentaries. A compelling first-person visual memoir that intricately weaves some 15 years of filmmaking into a remarkably watchable cinematic patchwork quilt. A truly wondrous mix-tape that finds documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson taking directorial duties upon herself in the creation of a film about the creation of films. She utilizes b-roll footage, outtakes, and home movies to build, as if like free-form lego, a powerful portrait of not just herself, but the world we live in. Cameraperson is without a doubt the best documentary of 2016, and just maybe the best film of the year, period.

You have surely seen some of the films that Johnson has used footage from. Popular titles like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Citizenfour from Johnson's frequent collaborator Laura Poitras, the latter of which makes a wonderfully obscure and unexplained appearance yet which only proves how impressively that doc was filmed. We’ve even reviewed some of them right here at The Film Experience like Dawn Porter’s Trapped, which was the very first title we reviewed in the Doc Corner.

No matter how many of the 24 titles Johnson draws from that you have seen, you haven’t seen them like this. And any that you haven't will no doubt rocket to the top of your must watch pile...

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