The Battle of Orgreave
Mike Figgis, UK, 2001, 60 min

The artist Jeremy Deller organised a re-enactment, involving about 800 people, of a violent encounter between police and workers during the 1984 miners' strike. It was filmed by the celebrated director Mike Figgis and broadcast on Channel 4.

Courtesy of Artangel, London

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BIT Plane
Bureau of Inverse Technology, US, 1999, 15 min

The BIT plane is a radio-controlled spy plane equipped with video surveillance. Being small, it can enter territories inaccessible to other aircraft. On its maiden voyage in 1997 the BIT plane flew over the no-camera zone of Silicon Valley in California.

Courtesy of LUX, London

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Blinky, The Friendly Hen
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto in collaboration with Jeffrey Vallance, US, 1988, 15 min

In 1978 the artist Jeffrey Vallance ceremoniously buried a frozen chicken he had bought at a supermarket and named 'Blinky'. Ten years later, he returned to exhume the chicken's body to determine her cause of death. The film traces Blinky's journey from the frozen food section of the supermarket to Vallance's investigation of her death and her eventual ascension to Heaven.

Courtesy of Jeffrey Vallance, Los Angeles

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A Brief History of Errol Morris
Kevin Macdonald, UK/US, 2000, 48 min

This documentary spans the legendary film maker's career from the 1970s onwards. Errol Morris developed a very efficient non-interventionist interview technique, extracting candid confessions from people without their being fully aware of it. He will not fall into the same trap himself. The film is screened together with Morris's Gates of Heaven and The Thin Blue Line.

Courtesy of the Independent Film Channel, New York

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Cathy Come Home
Ken Loach, UK, 1966, 75 min

Cathy is a young woman who gradually loses her home, husband and children due to the malfunctioning British welfare system of the 1960s. Originally produced for the BBC Wednesday Play series, the film inspired the founding of Shelter, a charity for the homeless. It also eventually triggered changes to British law.

Courtesy of the BBC

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La Commune (Paris, 1871)
Peter Watkins, France, 2000, 345 min

This historical re-enactment emphasises the importance of the media in shaping history. Peter Watkins uses TV broadcasting, a deliberate anachronism, to stage his tale of the Paris Commune. Social inequality is illustrated through two TV channels: Commune TV discusses the problems in the poorest parts of town, whereas Versailles TV airs support for the Governmentís suppression of the Communards.

Courtesy of Peter Watkins and Doriane Films, Paris

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Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y
Johan Grimonprez, Belgium, 1998, 68 min

The artist Johan Grimonprez edits a non-linear visual history of airline hijackings and juxtaposes it with a narrative soundtrack inspired by Don DeLillo's novels. He remixes moving images from different sources – archival TV newsreels, period feature films and his own reconstructions – in order to 'highlight the value of the spectacular in our catastrophe culture'.

Courtesy of Zap-O-Matik, Brussels

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D'Est ('From the East')
Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France/Portugal, 1993, 107 min

The Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman documents her journey to Eastern Germany, Poland and Russia in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. The film is a highly visual account of half a continent poised for economic and social change.

Courtesy of Shellac, Paris

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The Eternal Frame
T. R. Uthco and Ant Farm, US, 1975, 24 min

This film, which examines how the media create contemporary myths, begins with a Super-8 film of President Kennedy's assasination in 1963, made by the bystander Abraham Zapruder. It continues with T R Uthco's and Ant Farm's re-enactment of the event 12 years later.

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

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The Fourth Dimension
Trinh T Minh-ha, US, 2001, 83 min

This is an examination of Japan through its art, culture, and social rituals. Like Trinh T Minh-ha's previous films, it is a multi-layered work that incorporates the experience of time, the impossibility of truly ëseeing', and the impact of the video camera on image-making.

Courtesy of BFI, London

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Gates of Heaven
Errol Morris, US, 1978, 85 min

Errol Morris began his first non-fiction feature after reading a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle: '450 Dead Pets To Go To Napa'. He set out to document how hundreds of animal remains were transferred from one pet cemetery to another. Pet cemetery proprietors, embalmers, pet owners and others speak about their lives, work, and feelings. This film was suggested by Jeffrey Vallance.

Courtesy of the Independent Film Channel, New York

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De Gevangenen van Buñuel ('The Prisoners of Buñuel')
Ramón Gieling, The Netherlands, 2000, 73 min

In 1999 Ramón Gieling retraced Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel's steps and showed a copy of his classic documentary Las Hurdes – Tierra sin pan ('Land Without Bread', 1933) to the villagers of Las Hurdes. In this harsh film, Buñuel portrayed life in Las Hurdes at its worst. The first public screening took place in France in 1937, as the film was banned in Spain before its release. The villagers are upset about how the film portrays them, since much of it was staged.

Courtesy of Pieter van Huystee Film, Amsterdam

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Harlan County, USA
Barbara Kopple, US, 1976, 103 min

This film chronicles some of the bitterest labour violence in American history: the fight, in the 1970s, for dignity and fairness by 180 coal mining families in Harlan County, Kentucky. The director skilfully intertwines archival footage and traditional songs in order to put the strike against the Eastover Mining Company into historical perspective. This film was suggested by Jeremy Deller and will be screened in conjunction with The Battle of Orgreave.

Courtesy of Cabin Creek Films, New York

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The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife
Nick Broomfield, UK, 1991, 80 min

Nick Broomfield spent five weeks in South Africa trying to get an interview with Eugene Terreblanche, the leader of the Neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Somewhere along the line what seems to be a failure turns into a surprisingly penetrating portrait of the Leader. Broomfield uses the persevering journalistic style for which he has become famous.

Nick Broomfield will be discussing this film on 17 March.

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Man With a Plan
John O'Brien, US, 1996, 89 min

In 1996 John O'Brien asked his neighbour, the 79-year old farmer Fred Tuttle, to play a farmer running for Congress. Tuttle's other neighbours and friends took part in the film, in which he wins the election and moves to Washington. After the release of Man With a Plan Tuttle was asked to actually run for office and did so successfully. TV reports from these real events will be screened in conjunction with the film.

Courtesy of John O'Brien, Tunbridge, Vermont

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Nothing So Strange
Brian Flemming, US, 2002, 78 min

This is a story about the murder of Bill Gates and the following cover-up by the Los Angeles Police. Brian Flemming follows a group of activists who call themselves 'Citizens for Truth' in their search for what really happened. When the film was first released, it was accompanied by news websites stating that Gates had been shot, causing great fury among Microsoft staff and others.

Courtesy of Brian Flemming, Los Angeles

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On the Seventh Day In Waco
Kevin Booth, US, 1993, 60 min

The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, on 28 February 1993. It ended with several fatal shootings. Bill Hicks and Kevin Booth drive to Waco to investigate this sequence of events first hand. They sneak past checkpoints and join the press on the seventh day of the siege. The film is based on footage given to Booth anonymously, which shows another side to the story that was reported in the mainstream news media. This film was suggested by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.

Courtesy of Sacred Cow, Austin, Texas

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Pumping Iron
George Butler and Robert Fiore, US, 1977, 85 min

This is a legendary portrait of a group of bodybuilders preparing for the prestigious Mr Olympia competition. Among the contestants we find a highly determined, arrogant and self-confident young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Today, as the Governor of California, he dismisses various parts of the film as pure fiction.

Courtesy of HBO, New York

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Raw Iron: The Making of 'Pumping Iron'
Dave McVeigh and Scott McVeigh, US, 2002, 70 min

A documentary on the making of Pumping Iron, made for the 25th anniversary of the original film.

Courtesy of HBO, New York

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Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet
Lenka Clayton, Germany, 2003, 20 min

Lenka Clayton's concept is a simple one: take the 4,100 words from George W. Bush's infamous 'Axis of Evil' speech, and put them back together in alphabetical order. The result is a powerful and mesmerising analysis by the filmmaker of the posturing, rhetoric and obsessions dominating current American politics.

Courtesy of Lenka Clayton, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK

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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain, Ireland, 2003, 74 min

In September 2001 Bartley and O'Briain began a documentary on the charismatic and unorthodox Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. They were still shooting in April when they found themselves in the middle of a coup. The media played a major role in the drama, as private television stations actively supported the coup by spinning the truth for the world press.

Courtesy of Power Pictures 2002 Ltd, Galway, Ireland

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Roger & Me
Michael Moore, US, 1989, 91 min

This documentary chronicles how the world's largest corporation, General Motors, turned Michael Moore's home town of Flint, Michigan, into a ghost town. 30,000 jobs were lost and all Moore wants is a comment from GMís director Roger Smith about why he thought it was a better idea to move production to Mexico than to keep it in the city. The film is a detailed documentation of Moore's attempts to meet Mr Smith.

Courtesy of Warner Bros, London

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The Rumour of True Things
Paul Bush, UK, 1996, 25 min

Paul Bush develops new narrative structures, using a wide range of material: scientific films, surveillance camera tapes and computer generated images. The result is a film poem, constructed from found footage, which becomes an 'accidental' portrait of our civilisation.

Courtesy of Paul Bush Films, London

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A Sense of History
Mike Leigh, UK, 1992, 22 min

A portrait of the 23rd Earl of Leete, pottering around his woodland estate and guiding us through his family's history. With aristocratic eloquence and minute accuracy the Earl addresses a range of subjects: the beauty of the British countryside, the importance of history, and his decision, taken at the age of seven, to get rid of his older and therefore inheriting brother, knowing that the younger you are the easier it is to get away with murder.

Courtesy of Thin Man Films, London

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Sherman's March
Ross McElwee, US, 1986, 157 min

Ross McElwee set out to make a documentary on William Tecumseh Sherman, a Northern Civil War General who was particularly detested by the Southerners. As he retraces Sherman's 1860s march through Georgia, he just can't seem to help focusing his camera on a succession of Southern women he meets along the way. This film was suggested by Jeremy Deller.

Courtesy of Ross McElwee

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Suicide Box
Bureau of Inverse Technology, US, 1996, 13 min

A documentary about the Suicide Box – a motion-triggered camera developed by the private information agency Bureau of Inverse Technology. The camera was first installed in 1996 within range of the Golden Gate Bridge. It captures on video anything that falls from the bridge and thereby provides one accurate measure of San Francisco's suicide statistics. The city is the US capital of both information and suicide, and during a period of 100 days the Box recorded 17 events.

Courtesy of LUX, London

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Ten Thousand Years Older
Werner Herzog, Germany, 2001, 10 min (from Ten Minutes Older – the Trumpet)

Werner Herzog returns to the land of his films Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1973, and Fitzcarraldo, 1982. In the depths of the Brazilian rain forest he meets the remaining members of a tribe that was first introduced to the modern world two decades ago by a documentary film crew. The community fell victim to modern diseases and many of their young abandoned the forest for the city.

Courtesy of Blue Dolphin Films, London

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Terrorister – en film om dom dömda ('Terrorists – a Film About the Condemned')
Stefan Jarl and Lukas Moodysson, Sweden, 2003, 85 min

After the riots in Gothenburg during an EU summit and visit by George W. Bush in 2001, over 40 young activists were convicted to imprisonment. Stefan Jarl and Lukas Moodysson interview a group of the convicted activists about their reasons for demonstrating, their views on capitalist society, and their doubts about democracy. The documentary is by no means objective, since no judges, police officers or politicians were interviewed. The filmmakers made this documentary as a response to media coverage at the time.

Courtesy of Folkets Bio, Stockholm

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The Thin Blue Line
Errol Morris, US, 1988, 103 min

Errol Morris presents the controversial story of the arrest and conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976. Billed as 'the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder', the film is credited with overturning Adams's death sentence. With its use of expressionistic re-enactments, interview material and music by Philip Glass, it pioneered a new kind of non-fiction filmmaking.

Courtesy of the Independent Film Channel, New York

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Unmade Beds
Nicholas Barker, US, 1997, 95 min

The story of four New York singles in their desperate quest for a partner. The main characters, chosen from 400 replies to a newspaper ad, were filmed during seven months. Nicholas Barker transcribed what they said and edited it down to a film script. He claims that 95% of the film is constructed around real material, with the characters playing themselves.

Courtesy of Chelsea Pictures, New York

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Videogramme einer Revolution ('Videogrammes of a Revolution')
Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Germany/Romania, 1992, 106 min

Documentary filmmaker Harun Farocki and media philosopher Andrei Ujica have put together this account of the 1989 Romanian 'revolution' using only authentic TV and amateur video footage from the events. They follow a strict chronology, beginning with Nicolai Ceausescuís last public speech and ending on the night when the first images from the Ceausescusí trial were shown on TV.

Edward Lucas, Britain Correspondent for The Economist, will be discussing this film on 30 March.

Courtesy of Harun Farocki Filmproduktion, Berlin

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Vinyl
Alan Zweig, Canada, 2000, 110 min

This film is about obsessive vinyl record collecting. Alan Zweig investigates the subject very seriously. He interviews collectors, among whom we find the man who has set out to collect every song ever produced. It is a film about records but also about obsessions, about women and about Zweig himself. This film was suggested by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.

Courtesy of Alan Zweig, Toronto

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Waiting for Guffman
Christopher Guest, US, 1996, 84 min

Under the eyes of a documentary crew, celebrated director Corky St Clair has agreed to undertake the monumental task of creating a musical to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Blaine, Missouri. The script proudly dramatises the founding of 'The Small Town With a Big Heart' and its reputation as 'Stool Capital of the World'. As rehearsals begin, St Clair contacts some people he knows from his time on Broadway. They agree to send a representative, Mort Guffman, to see the show.

Courtesy of Independent Film Channel, New York

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The War Game
Peter Watkins, UK, 1965, 48 min

Peter Watkins documents a 'limited' nuclear attack on Kent in England. Through his terrifying vision of the consequences of such an attack, Watkins exposes the inadequacy of the nationís Civil Defence programme and questions the whole philosophy of the nuclear deterrent. Made for BBC TV in 1965, The War Game was conspicuously absent from TV screens until 1985. It did, however, gain a following among peace activists, and it won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967.

Courtesy of the BBC

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War Photographer
Christian Frei, Switzerland, 2001, 96 min

James Nachtwey is considered to be one of the best war photographers of our time. Documentary maker Christian Frei followed this inexhaustible American on his trips to war zones for two years. We get to know Nachtwey at work through a micro movie camera attached to his photo camera, which reveals the events before and after the shutter clicks.

Courtesy of Christian Frei, Zurich

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The War Room
Chris Hedegus and D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1993, 96 min

Chris Hedegus and D. A. Pennebaker take us inside Bill Clinton's presidential campaign of 1992, shadowing his spin-doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. The directors initially planned to follow the presidental candidate himself, but at the Democratic Convention they were restricted to the strategic office, also described as the War Room. This film was suggested by Daniel Baker.

Courtesy of Pennebaker Hedegus Films, New York

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We Wuz Robbed
Spike Lee, US, 2002, 10 min (From Ten Minutes Older – the Trumpet)

A documentary on the 10 minutes of uncertainty about who had actually won the US presidential elections of 2000. Spike Lee interviews Al Gore's closest staff. He mixes in archival footage from the election. The film creates an angry, compelling and subjective view on how America was robbed of its rightful president.

Courtesy of Blue Dolphin Films, London

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