Daniel Tammet is a young man with “high-functioning autistic savant syndrome”. In other words, he’s smart as hell. We follow him to the States where scientists get baffled at his extraordinary mental abilities. For example, he has a stop-over in Iceland where he learns the language in a week, he does calculations to 100 decimal places and remembers pi to 22,500 digits. How? The numbers just come to him.

He spends an afternoon with Kim Peek (the inspiration for Rain Man). It’s a wonderful scene where Kim says to Daniel: “Some day you will be as great as I am”. Perfect!

On the form side this doc is very much in the British documentary style. Enjoy:

IMDB: (awaiting 5 votes) / 47 minutes
Directed by: Steve Gooder

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- “Fermat’s Last Theorem” (1996)

7 long years. That’s how much time Andrew Wiles spent fighting a mathematical problem to which no one knew if there existed a solution. The film is a beautiful, little gem about human endurance represented by a very modest man. Who knew mathematics could be this exciting?

The doc is not available on DVD anywhere, but it can be seen online:

IMDB: 5.9 (6 votes) / 45 minutes
Directed by: Simon Singh

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- “The Boy With The Incredible Brain” (2005)

Before I google the fuck out of this film, let me say a few unresearched words. I wouldn’t be surprised if this “Hearts of Darkness” meets “The Big Blue”-documentary is a total fabrication. Probably Martin Strel never swam a single river, over-weight and over-aged. Never drank a single bottle of whiskey while swimming down the Amazon river. Never had a larvae crawl into his brain, never even existed. Maybe the film is just a handful of crazy Slovenians with a wild idea for a mockumentary.

Or maybe every minute is the purest truth.

For the first 30 minutes I was giggling at the movie. After that, the laughs were on me. These filmmakers know exactly what they are doing.

“Martin likes American ambassadors and they like him. They like each other because Martin loves America and they like America too.”

It’s a great movie. I couldn’t help think how it’d be totally different if a Danish editor, composer and text writer had had their hands on the raw material. It’s fantastic to see this completely unexpected piece of documentary film-making coming out of Slovenia.

IMDB: 7.1 of 10 (189 votes) / RT: 92% fresh (25 reviews)/ official site / 100 minutes
Directed by: John Maringouin

“Karima”, by Clarisse Hahn, is a film about a young, French dominatrix. We see Karima having dinner, laughing with her family, talking with friends, and – surprise! – fist-fucking her domestic slave and then pissing in his mouth. You don’t just “kinda see”. You see. I didn’t expect that in a cinema full of people. 10 mins. into the film the first people started leaving.

But when I left half-way through the film, it wasn’t because I couldn’t take the sexually explicit material anymore, because there wasn’t much more of that. It was because the narrative wasn’t very strong and the production was weak. One thing I am wondering though: how did they get away with all the scenes where The Cure’s music was playing in the background?

Directed by: Clarisse Hahn

The film is maybe a little too long, but offers any film-maker both inspiration and discouragement. You’ve been warned.

Related dox: Overnight (2003), The Burden of Dreams, Hearts of Darkness.

IMDB: 6.1 (23 votes) /Official site / 72 minutes
Directed by: Martin Degrell and Jesper Ganslandt

A Brazilian documentary about Silvino Santos, an early film-maker. The reconstructed protagonist speaks directly to the camera which can be interesting. The production value is very high, but unfortunately that doesn’t prevent the film from being boring.

Silvino Santos just doesn’t seem like a very interesting individual (yikes!).

IMDB: 7.5 (17 votes) / 87 minutes
Directed by: Aurélio Michilis

david lynch documentary 2007 teaser

2 stars / IMDB: 7.0 (229 votes) / Rotten tomatoes: 58% (19 reviews) / Official site / 84 minutes
Directed by: blackANDwhite

Vashti Bunyan is a singer/song-writer with an interesting story. As a young woman she made a beautiful album and was then forgotten for 30 years. Freak-folk artists like Devendra Banhart and Vetiver brought her back from oblivion  a few years ago and Bunyan is now making music again. She is very delicate, soft-spoken and gentle and while this makes her a compelling person it unfortunately doesn’t make her a compelling character. The narrative centers around a horse-and-carriage trip Bunyan and two friends made while she was composing the songs of the first album. We re-visit the places while understanding how the album came about.

It’s an ok structure for a documentary, but something goes missing along the way. For me, anyway.

IMDB: 7.7 (6 votes) / Official site / 87 minutes
Directed by: Kieran Evans

I like Bob Marley and so does the director of this film. The film is a portrait of the album “Exodus” and of the year it was made, 1977. Unfortunately it’s also a weak film – it’s exceptionally difficult to understand Bob’s dialect and with no sub-titles most of the audience lost the central points when I watched it at CPH:DOX 2008. The narrative is centered around a completely unremarkable event; the unveiling of a plaque on some street in London where Bob did something.

Part of the mission of Lovedox is to spread the love for documentary films and I’d love to say something good about this film, but it’s just not very good.

IMDB: 7.6 (10 votes) / 90 minutes
Directed by: Anthony Wall

We follow the poet-president Vaclav Havel through his career. Filmed over a 13 year period, this documentary seems to have its commitment as being a historical document, rather than a personal view of the Czech republic’s most colorful character. I personally found the film interesting, but also lacking a coherent narrative.

2 stars, form:5, content:6 / IMDB: 8.0 (218 votes) / Official site / 119 minutes
Directed by: Miroslav Janek and Pavel Koutecký