Documentaries that have stuck with you.

[LetsGoCrazyPurpleBanana]

I remember in the early 9Os watching a documentary about 2 men who were partners, living with and ultimately dying from AIDS. Found it on YouTube and watched it again at the weekend. I've not stopped thinking about them. It's called "Silverlake life,the view from here" 😭

Also another one,again early to mid 1990s called "The dying room" about China's orphanages.

These are such an amazing and heart wrenching documentaries all well worth a watch.. but may I just lower the tone..

If you are having a dull /down in the dumps day can I just recommend the truly awful.. hide behind a cushion and squeal ..'dogging tales' from Channel 4 ... about people who like .. you guest it. Names in the title..

Honestly my (adult) daughter and I still laugh until we cry. It's not for little peeps though.. nowt as strange as folk ...

Extraordinary story.

I think it’s easy to judge, to imagine we would never be in that situation but it does seem he was an extremely manipulative man. I was abducted in plain sight by the family GP. My mother worked with sexual abuse survivors yet she did not suspect a thing. Life is weird.

Paris Is Burning - I can't forget Venus Xtravaganza, who was murdered during the making of the film. So young and so vulnerable and met such a terrible end.

One that's always stuck with me was one I first saw at school called 7 up , they did a study on group of kids from different back grounds and from all over England, one cheeky cockney lad called Tony stood out , the documentary returned to them every 7 years the last one was either 49 or 56 up , there was only a few that took part last time but fascinating keeping track on their lives , the quotation was give me a child at 7 and I will give you the grown up or something like that

Fourteen Days In May

anyone who still agrees with the death sentence should watch this it’s harrowing

I initially enjoyed Dreams of a Life but when I thought about it, the makers missed out key people who'd been in her life at the time she died. I want to know why they didn't check on her. It wasn't the whole story.

Murdered by my Boyfriend- harrowing, including one scene I'll never forget but wish I could 😢

It’s based on a true story. she was friends with one of my daughters when she was at primary school and used to come to my house. She was always very bubbly and not at all timid. Just shows it can happen to anyone. Yes that scene is harrowing. I couldn’t watch it again. Watched it with all my daughters and it’s something that should be shown at school.

As others have said “Rain in my Heart” so sad 😢

If you'd done it previously and got away with it you might

Dreams of a Life was a really good watch. I'd heard about the case of Joyce Carol Vincent and to listen to the people who knew her bring her back to life gives you an insight into the person and not just her tragic death. She had a remarkable life. It also gives insight into how she managed to fall through the cracks of society.

I've heard about Dear Zachary but don't think I can bring myself to watch.

One I would recommend is The Seven Five about police corruption in late 80's/early 90's New York.

Black Fish

Dead Mums Don't Cry. About maternity care - or lack thereof - in Chad. About a week after watching it my own son was born in a complicated birth with a huge amount of medical intervention. I have never forgotten the contrast.

Tigers - about the immoral and illegal marketing of infant formula by Nestle to Indian women which resulted in the deaths of millions of babies (and still happens today)

So many I have loved on here, and so many suggestions. So many people mention There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane- that's one where the true situation was very different to what the people involved- in that case her husband- try to portray.

There should be more mentions of Shoah- a nine-hour documentary about the Holocaust, made in 1970 (I think). There is no archive footage of concentration camps, just talking heads (and one bit of secret recording, and one "doorstepping" of a former guard who by 1970 was working in a bar). Just the words are enough. So so shocking.

The Up series is incredible- following participants from age seven to currently 63. The director, Michael Apted, has now died, and was I think suffering from dementia when he made 63 Up. From what I've read, the participants are up for doing 70 Up if the rest of the team that make it stay on. Then I think it should bow out- 84 Up wouldn't be a good idea I feel.

Two that haven't been mentioned- on Iplayer there is a series of documentaries from the 60s/70s called Man Alive, and there is one called Gale is Dead which I think about all the time. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p055sys5
It's about a girl who grew up in care in the 50s and 60s, who died of a heroin overdose in early 1970, aged 19. The only consistent person in her life was a lady from one of the children's homes she'd been in, but then Gale was sent away, though when she ran away she always went to this lady's house. By 19 she saw no point in her life and it was only a matter of time before she overdosed. Part of my fascination is how different the ethics of documentary-making were then (Gale had featured on an earlier documentary, and a farming couple in Devon contacted the BBC and invited Gale to spend holidays with them and their young kids!). It is so bleak. I Googled the main children's home she was in, Beechholme in Surrey, and there was a lot of sexual abuse there. It's not mentioned in the film- it rarely was in 1970- but I can't help wondering if that happened to her. She was so bright and had so much potential, but she felt she had nothing to live for.

A recent one which is full of such joy- tinged with sadness- is Get Back on Disney+, about the Beatles recording the Let It Be album. They go from an uncomfortable week in Twickenham studios, where they bicker, John is off his head on heroin and George walks out of the band, to the joyful concert on the roof of the Apple building in Savile Row. The smiles between them as they play live again are a joy to see, although as a viewer you know that it would all fall apart later the same year.

I'd love to watch Tigers - where did you see it?

Thank you to the poster who recommended Documentary Heaven. I used it to track down the one that had stuck most with me (Bulgaria's Abandoned Children), and from there I found an update on YouTube. That's made my day.

Has anyone watched Our Father, on Netflix, about a fertility doctor secretly using his own sperm? Must be so weird for the (endless) siblings living in that town. How could they even meet a partner…?

This is next on my watch list.

If you watch it soon let me know what you think @LetsGoCrazyPurpleBanana

I remember watching it with my Mom. It stayed with me for a very long time

Definitely :) Got a long car journey tomorrow so will watch then(I'm not driving btw😁)

13th is a really good one. It's about racial inequality in America.

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in America except as a punishment for crime, this documentary looks into how the system has been used to 'control' certain sectors of society from post slavery to Jim Crow to the present day.

I knew race is a huge issue but this really shocked me. It covers Kallif Browder and Central Park 5

I don't think I ever watched Dying Rooms in full before, I think I watched the intro and couldn't finish, like someone else.

Absolutely sickening. I do t get how regular people can do such things, those children at the end looked dead, like their bodies were gone already.

Whoever can treat children like that is evil. Splaying them over a toilet all day.. fucking hell. Poor babies. I had no clue this was so common. I'd seen European ones where healthy children became mentally handicapped due to atrocious conditions. I can't believe babies were being left to die like Roman times in living memory.

I remember that one too. It was so sad to think she ended up that way.

One that sticks in my mind is from the 80s about a zoo that had to close for some reason and they had to euthanise the animals they couldn't re-home. I remember a lovely lion being scooped up into the bucket of a JCB. I cried for hours and hours and my then boyfriend couldn't console me.