@mirrorman Great find on Sex and Fury - some great stuff there. How do you find these films that I never heard of? (you too @maxr , you seem to find gems all the time, I'm curious how you find your films as well!).

@Suresure123 you're stepping into a political territory which I don't think is the point of this thread. Much of the films and filmmakers quoted here are indeed films that have inspired other filmmakers and are not being quoted for obscurity sake. For example Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys” was directly inspired by Chris Marker's “La Jetée”. Besides there are bucket loads of big budget Hollywood films that were famous for a minute before being shelved into obscurity because they failed to be anything more than an expenditure on some entertainment executive's account.

OK, let's look at "learning by watching" from a slightly different perspective using a less obscure director, say Quentin Tarantino. His film Pulp Fiction was seen as "original" and "groundbreaking" back when it came out, yet in the wider sense, wasn't that "original" at all. Much to his credit he pulled off one of the greatest mash-ups in film history, by pulling together hundreds of bits and pieces from all sorts of music/TV/film relics and weaving them into a classic caper story. All the references were so much a part of the film that people have meticulously cataloged them with the hope of shedding some light on those being referenced (the film list at the bottom has some real gems): http://wiki.tarantino.info/index.php/Pulp_Fiction_Movie_References_Guide

Honestly I'm not a big Tarantino fan because of how much he "borrows" references, but in reading into the references I have found a trove of good classic films to watch (although quite a few I've known before they appeared as a Tarantino remake such as Norifumi Suzuki's "Sex & Fury" which in my opinion is everything that Kill Bill wants to be and Jacopetti and Properi's "Goodbye Uncle Tom" because its far more controversial than Django Unchained could ever be).

an obscure fest of movies that are nearly unwatchable and no one ever does.

...everyone wants a free lunch....at mcdonalds ! Visual literacy is like any other discipline.

...this is where it started ...

once you learn the language ...

This thread shoulda been called the "unsafe list"

Thanks @All for the recommendations, will check out lots of those :)

@Suresure123 The intention of this thread was for people to talk about visual material that they have learned from, and to share their experiences about that content, so that others may wish to view.

In the initial post I mentioned that it would be useful for folks to; rather than pick holes in the choices of others.. just add your own comment on the same content, this will allow other forum members to decide for themselves if they want to search out recommended material, rather than be told by a particular member that they should not watch somebody else's recommendation.

I appreciate ALL contributions to this thread, but be sure that your views on other's recommendations tell us more about you and your interests, rather than the content.

I believe that I can learn from watching a very wide range of content (I'd be interested in your thoughts on "The Goonies" and modern doc's too) so please post away..

What I am hoping for, is to build up a range of viewpoints about a wide range of content, that will be interesting to a wide range of viewers, I think it would be presumptuous to think that there is some content people shouldn't watch, to help develop their skills. But I would also like to hear other's thoughts on content in the interest of determining who's viewpoints we value on future recommendations.

I agree with what you say about being more focussed on particular aspects of filmmaking in recommendations, and I think the whole site would benefit from more posts on analytical discussion of technique/process/creativity to live alongside the more gear based discussion. Let's help ourselves, rather than wishing things were different :)

@kurth +1 for that piece of obscure shit, only known by some perverts, I mean intellectuals as La Jetée.
Sans Soleil also... though I barely know Marker's production. Didn't know Leacock at all, very curious about it, thanks =)

Last year I had the opportunity of seeing a retrospective of Michel Auder and wow, I was blown to a million pieces.

 
BILL VIOLA
 
Hatsu Hume 1981

Why is it whenever you get into learning film you end up with people recommending obscure Foreign documentaries and ends in a competition to post the most obscure then can think of. And the truth is if you made a doc or movie using any of the styles of these movies they would be terrible. They are art house movies, 90% of the time for the pretentious and even if they were ground breaking in some way 30 years ago they certainly aren't now. You are actually better off watching a bunch of well made aclaimed modern docs Like Exit through the giftshop 2010, Iraq in fragments 2006, Finding Vivian maier 2013.etc.

The fact is you can learn about films from watching any movie, good, mediocre and downright awful ones. You can learn from the latest Avengers movies even if your budget is zero IMO. You can learn from adverts, from photography, from painting, from books.

What I don't like about these kind of threads is they turn into oh this movie is wonderful and has a really good script or this movie has great visuals. Its about as useful as reading a review on Rotten Tomatoes. Filmmakers should highlight certain scenes or techniques that were used in a scene or movie. If you took one great movie, for example The Godfather or a Kubrick movie and analysed it to death and learned everything you could from it you probably would know more than some film schools. My point is everyone passively watches movies but to learn from movies you have to be much more analytical.

farocki's work is incredibly challenging.....and incredibly relevant. Rouch leads us to the americans...pennebaker maysles etc. Interesting the work of Leacock at mit in collaboration with super8 sound. And it's not a coincidence that these guys...leacock and the maysles were early adopters of minidv. This brings us back to rouch and the connection with early 20th century anthropology. Leacock's early work was all anthropology based. And films like salesman and grey gardens was pure 19th century anthropology , only using 20th century technology. 20th century documentary filmmaking wouldn't have existed w/o 19th century anthropology .

I'd love to find the whole film.

I suggest looking into the work of Jean Rouch who is often overlooked because he wasn't trained as a proper "filmmaker", and hence didn't care much about the "rules" of filmmaking, but he single handedly influenced the French New Wave and launched the cinéma-vérité documentary movement. "Chronicle of a Summer" is a good place to start but the films he made in Africa in the mid-50s like "Les Maîtres Fous" and "Jaguar" are bold and intriguing even to this day.

I don't think I can learn much from watching a blockbuster mega-budget film because pigs will grow wings before anyone will give me 100 million dollars and say "here, make a film. knock yourself out." Watching masterpieces of cinema isn't necessarily the best way to learn either, in my opinion, because they're too sophisticated and complex. Well, for me, anyway, who is starting out.

I think the best way to learn is to watch low-budget films (ie indie films that are within your means to create) with only a couple of actors and a fairly simple storyline, no complicated special effects. Like this one:

Lord of the Rings sagas.

Visually great. I kinda thought that 60fps thing was just for publicity. Maybe somebody can explain why that was necessary, or at least what it was trying to achieve. If something beyond that, I mean hearing about it made me think about framerates (as, yes I am an amateur filmmaker-sort-a-wanna-be).

I saw the green screen-making-ofs somebody posted on this forum. Really well-done results; use of depth of field makes it look really convincing.

Two Towers pacing really dragged at the end. Kinda sabotaged the climactic battle at Helm's Deep.

Full disclosure: I didn't see the last 2 Hobbit movies. 1st one only.

I heard about the changed ending. I read the Hobbit book so long ago: I only realized the significance of it recently. It's relation to technological convergence is especially significant now with all these dang smart phones and potential self-learning AI.

Not that I dig the aquarian hippie movement.

Side-note: don't know if anyone saw this on youtube:

@maxr....saw tokyo story but i'll have to give it another shot....saw force as well - how'bout....the white dawn p kaufman ....kusturica underground ..... m leigh's naked ....alain tanner Les années lumière

Uff, the suburb drama. I wish you the best mon ami and as hard as it is for me to say, you gotta jump to the Ninth Configuration ASAP

Far from sol, pozuelo nightmare, Grey Gardens for the greasy summer