Documentaries I need to see

People who like personal documentaries will dig this. This is about the director chasing after his ex-wife and making her the subject of his work after their divorce. It isn't really direct cinema since the sound is out of sync, calling the verisimilitude of dialogue into question, which might benefit the film because what happens in front the camera is so personal and traumatic. It would be better if Hara puts more of himself into the film instead of only rarely appearing and intruding into it. It contains perhaps the most harrowing birth scene since Window Water Baby Moving.

Holy shaiza, this is top tier Marker. Following in the steps of Rouch/Morin's Chronicle of a Summer and even surpasses that in its expansiveness and its effortless integration of personal, social, and political to present a snapshot of the state of uncertainty in the minds of the Parisian population at the end of the Algerian war, and its critique of the isolation of bourgeois, their racism and materialism (all in good Markeresque humor). The first half of the film consist of Marker and the cameraman interviewing people from various strata of the population on what they consider happiness (and a whole slew of other topics) to be while adding their own opinions to the conversation. The second half places the interviews within the broader frame of contemporary politics and social concerns with newsreel footage. The associative editing prefigures that of Sans Soleil. Also, Marker, who provides plenty of screen-time to his favorite animal, meets his match when he interviews a costume designer who dresses her cat like a barbie doll.