Fortean Documentaries

[Bigphoot2]

I've been watching Boogeymen: Monsters Among Us on Prime which isn't as bad as its title and theme music suggests. It covers a whole range of cryptids - Bigfoot, Nessie and other lake monsters, The Yowie, Jersey Devil etc to some less well-known ones and has a fairly balanced mix of witnesses, believers and non-believers.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

BBC Scotland produced this documentary on the early days of television, when the Web was just one year old!

I had never seen it before tonight. Is it Fortean? It contains many tantalising hints that in watching the development of this technology, we are viewing the wrong side of the magic carpet. It takes a pro-Baird stance, though there is a weird blurring of the mechanical-electronic issue between his trip to Germany and return, as an unswayed advocate of his own mechanical system and his reappearance, years later - in Australia - as creator of colour television! The burning of the Crystal Palace becomes a key event in this hall of mirrors.

One contributor, at least, dangles the possibility of many more revelations to come. Those do not seem to have come to pass.

Meanwhile, Youtube gives us the chance to see this programme, which contains some astonishing archive footage.

 

[Eponastill]

I'm fussy about the rubbish I watch

"The Unwonted Sasquatch", which is on Amazon at the moment (free with prime) is worth your time. It features the lovely Jeff Meldrum amongst others. You'll find a distinct lack of hyperbole, running about, or silly sound effects and music. It's just a good documentary I think, and I guess much of that is down to the way it's been put together. Whether you Believe or not. It has people talking intelligently about the evidence they believe is convincing. Much on gait and foot anatomy.

(I see the latest episode of 'Mysteries and Monsters' on youtube has an interview with the filmmaker, Darcy Weir, but I've not listened to that yet).

Also, I see he's made films about other fortean things like alien abduction. So that will be interesting to see. Because personally I don't really believe people are being abducted by actual aliens (although I'm not saying they're all lying when they say something happened to them). And I expect that film will have the same approach of not really laying out an argument, but rather getting a selection of people to talk on camera. If you see what I mean.

 

[sherbetbizarre]

Coming to HBO...

https://ew.com/movies/hbo-max-class-action-park-documentary-trailer/

This is on Sky Documentaries at 9pm Saturday night,

 

[skinny]

Sure wouldn't the entire story of MH370 make for a brilliant 2hr doco by one of the big boys. Only shortish overviews on f2a currently. Anybody seen a full production around?

 

[skinny]

Grim. Grim.

Updating that dead link on the Donner Party. Terrible folly.

Here's another doc, Australia 1860, of human endurance and the will to survive in extremis, akin to a journey to another planet sans comms. No lives lost on any of Stuart's 6 ventures through hell.

The book, Mr Stuart's Track by John Bailey, is a highly-recommended companion to this locally produced video. Incidentally, I met and had a long lunch quite by chance with Cyril Dixon, the actor who played the bearded Waramungu warrior that halted Stuart's penultimate and second unsuccessful attempt to cross the Australian continent south to north from Adelaide to near Darwin.

 

[FrKadash]

Another one for our classic documentary archive. I'm just watching it now. I just found it after doing the usual search on YouTube and I hadn't seen it before.

 

[FrKadash]

Another one here worth watching, an old Australian documentary. I don't recall the Telly Savalas ghost story, very interesting stuff.