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)

The recent films we have been reviewing; “Collapse”, “The World According to Monstanto” and “Death of Suburbia” all deal with the end of the infinite growth paradigm. And while films such as “Food Inc.” shows some light at the end of the tunnel for food production, the Dutch film “Food = Waste” flips on a 10kw spotlight for industrial production.

Michael Braungart, a chemist, and William McDonough, an architect, have come up with a new method for production. Their philosophy is easy to understand: the waste of one cycle of production should feed the next cycle of production. Who couldn’t have thought of that? What makes this super-team different is that they got Ford, Nike and China (!) to listen to their ideas.

In the realm of save-the-plant documentaries, this is one of the most enlightened and inspiring you’ll find. Enjoy:

Official site (Dutch) / Icarus films
Directed by: Rob van Hattum

Monsanto, in case anybody was in doubt, is pretty far from winning the love of the people. Former producers of Agent Orange, they now produce pesticides and Genetically Modified seeds and growth hormones. They have a horrible record and seem to leave misery and poverty in their wake.

French investigative journalist Marie-Monique Robin pulls no punches as she digs deep into Monsanto’s past and present. The result is a well-researched film about a very scary company and industry. So far, so good. Unfortunately the film is also dull. A day after first viewing and I practically forgot what I saw even though it’s possibly one of the most important subjects of our time. Personally, I don’t believe that film is a good medium to teach, but it’s a fantastic medium to touch and “The World According to Monsanto” focuses so much on being credible that it forgets to move us emotionally. If you want to be touched, watch another Monsanto-critical film, “Food Inc.”. But if you’ve seen that already and want to dig deeper, this film’s for you.

IMDB: 7.9 (400 votes) / Rotten Tomatoes: 66% (3 reviews) / Greenpeace article
Directed by: Marie-Monique Robin

Watch the film here:

Youtube: 5 out of 5 stars (1030 reviews) / 13 minutes

Fantastic short doc aimed at showing the breadth and depth of Getty’s Hulton Archive. The challenge for this director has been “how can you show photographs that don’t exist?” Watch the short below and witness the amazing solution to this challenge.

Youtube: 5 stars (137 reviews) / 7 minutes
Directed by: Laurie Hill

I was browsing through Youtube’s documentary movie list and started watching “We Are Wizards” which I had never heard about before. It’s a cute and honest film about the fan culture surrounding the Harry Potter universe. “Wizard rock” is one part of that culture, rock music with Potter-themed lyrics. Perhaps not the most innovative music, but obviously a style which has its place and audience.

Overall it’s a feel-good documentary with some loveable characters. It did seem incomplete in some areas – sometimes the (unrelated) archive footage worked, sometimes not. And why was there no interview with anyone from Warner Brothers?

Still, an enjoyable film about an unusual sub-culture… and about fitting in.

Trailer:

Watch the full movie:

IMDB: 6.2 (82 votes) / Rotten Tomatoes: 48% (21 reviews) / Official site
Directed by: Josh Koury

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)

A violently honest shortdoc featuring home video footage taken by the director’s late father, a man who had a few things to hide. Although the editing is very rough and has a distinct “home made” feel to it, the effect of the film is nonetheless haunting.

IMDB (awaiting 5 votes) / Official site
Directed by: Marina Lutz

Short doc winner of CPH:DOX 2009. “Three Pilots” is a beautiful doc about flying and the people who enjoy it. Visually the film is quite poetic, but it didn’t really get to me.

7 mins.
Directed by: Philip Leaman

Unrated / Youtube: 4.5 stars (199 reviews) / 10 minutes
Directed by: Casimir Nozkowski