Albania's last trains.

 

For the past 40 years, maybe even earlier if childhood stamp collecting is taken into account, I've been fascinated by the country of Albania. The Albanian coastline was visible in 1985 as the ferry stopped at Corfu, and finally in 1994 came the chance to actually visit. It's been the only time, but I've been wanting to return ever since.

It's a shame but understandable that Albania opted for automobile-centrism after emerging from Europe's most North Korea-like existence, and it's a head-spinner to consider communist-era Eastern European rolling stock still in use. 

This is an elegiac and melancholy documentary. I watched it twice, something that's very rare.   

We travel through Albania in a diesel locomotive at a leisurely 40 kilometres per hour. The aged trains make their way through the countryside on single-track lines. Travelling by rail in Albania is not always for the faint-hearted. The trains that are still running were once in the service of the former Deutsche Reichsbahn, the East German state railway before the fall of communism. Albania's rail network was never successfully connected to that of its European neighbors. In fact, it is even threatened with closure in favor of expanding the roads. There are said to be just 50 train drivers left in the country, and as mechanics they also take care of their decrepit diesel locomotives. The documentary accompanies one of them, Vladimir Shyti, and conductor Florida Kucuku on a journey to the north, south and east of the country, on the last remaining sections of track through an intact natural landscape. 

 
The wind whistles through broken windowpanes and branches whip against the 112-ton locomotive. It sounds dangerous and it is. The numerous level crossings have no safety precautions and pose a great danger to pedestrians, cyclists and animals. This often leads to serious accidents. The last trains in Albania all start their journey in Durres, also known as the "gateway to the Mediterranean," and that is where every journey also ends. Anyone boarding a train needs plenty of time and patience. Although rail travel is very inexpensive, it cannot compete for time with travelling by car, which is reflected in the low number of passengers. Hardly anyone takes the train these days. So how long will this form of transport continue to exist in Albania at all?

Union City Blue.

A very good 45-minute documentary film about Belarus; Dutch with subtitles, early 2019, probably filmed in 2018.

As for the song, has the incomparable drummer Clement Burke ever been more authoritative than here?

"Michael Moore is finally being vindicated. He hasn’t changed his tune. The political culture’s just catching up with him."

I exceedingly appreciate the spirit in which the morning paper referred to me today. Several years ago, they did not write so well of me. I presume I have grown more respectable. I suppose they see that my tribe is increasing. When the masses agree with a man, then he ceases to be an object of ridicule and abuse. After a while, some of these people who have abused us will be the ones who will be saying, “I told you so.”
-- Eugene Debs speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee (1905)

It's hard to imagine 30 years have passed since Michael Moore's Roger and Me. Although I didn't see the documentary until the following summer, it made a lasting impression on me.

Michael Moore Was Right, by Meagan Day (Jacobin)

Mocked and derided for his impassioned defense of poor and working people, Michael Moore is finally being vindicated. He hasn’t changed his tune. The political culture’s just catching up with him.

... I was thinking about the vindication of Michael Moore when I decided to watch his debut film Roger & Me, which turns thirty this year and which I’d never seen before. The film is an early exploration of the domino effect of deindustrialization and a premonition about the unraveling of the American dream — and it stands the test of time.

Roger & Me was personal for Moore. He grew up in Flint, Michigan, the town General Motors (GM) built, and his family worked for the corporate giant. They were also members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), which was forged in the furnace of struggle — Moore’s uncle had been one of the sit-down strikers who famously occupied factories in 1936–7, giving rise to the union.

By the middle of the twentieth century, UAW had been able to secure a remarkable degree of stability and security for GM workers and their families. Roger & Me features archival footage showing mid-century Flint as a kind of middle-class utopia, the living embodiment of capitalism’s promise. “We enjoyed a prosperity that working people around the world had never seen before,” says Moore in a voice-over, “and the city was grateful to the company.”

But the company felt no allegiance to the people of Flint. Hungry for profit and regarding the union as a pest and a hindrance, GM began searching for ways to lower labor costs. In the early 1980s, it began laying off workers in its unionized plants and opening new operations elsewhere, across borders and beyond the union’s grasp.

The film’s title refers to Roger Smith, chairman of General Motors, who came up with the plan to close eleven factories in the United States and open eleven in Mexico, where the company could pay the workers seventy cents an hour. The company would then use the money saved by underpaying workers to expand its operations into new industries, like weapons manufacturing.

“Maybe I’ve got this wrong,” says Moore in the film, “but I thought companies lay off people when they’ve hit hard times. GM was the richest company in the world, and it was closing factories when it was making profits in the billions.”

The film chronicles Moore’s efforts to secure a meeting with Roger Smith to discuss the unfolding devastation of Flint. Along the way, he introduces us to dozens of Flint residents whose lives have been upended by the layoffs and plant closings. The closest Moore gets to Smith is an ambush at a Christmas press conference, which in the film is cut with footage of Flint families being evicted from their homes just in time for the holidays.

Moore asks Smith about the evictions. “I’m sorry for those people, but I don’t know anything about it,” Smith retorts before giving Moore the cold shoulder.

The film ends with an ominous forecast. “As we neared the end of the twentieth century, the rich were richer, the poor poorer,” Moore narrates over footage of a dismantled factory in the former boomtown. “It was truly the dawn of a new era.”

Translation: it’s obvious what’s coming. The writing’s on the wall. And it won’t be good ...

A brief but solid video overview of France's "yellow vest rebellion."

Courtesy of Deutsche Welle's documentary series (in English).

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France's yellow vest rebellion - a movement against Macron

Who are the "yellow vests” that have plunged France into crisis? Hundreds of thousands have been demonstrating to demand lower taxes and higher pensions.

What began as a spontaneous protest against high gasoline prices swiftly evolved into a mass movement that has caused a major crisis in France. The "yellow vests” have become synonymous with the widespread anger at the reform policies of President Emmanuel Macron - and constitute his greatest challenge since he took office. The protesters accuse Macron of being a representative of the rich while ignoring the plight of ordinary citizens. The wave of demonstrations was triggered by Jacline Mouraud and her video tirade on social media. Her subsequent fame has enabled her to continue criticizing politicians on TV talk shows. The "yellow vest” demonstrations have been organized almost exclusively online and without the involvement of opposition parties or unions.

The protesters have a range of demands, from lower taxes to high pensions and a greater say in the running of the country. They feel neglected by the Paris elite, who they see as showing no interest in their economic duress and fears of social decline.

Belated R.I.P. Kenny Stewart, who revealed the trick to escape a straitjacket.

We finished dinner tonight and were talking about people who collect things. For the first time in a while I thought about Kenny Stewart, and wondered about him. Alas, he died just three months ago, on November 10, 2018.

He was hale and seemingly hearty on that evening in November of 2013 when the documentary film about him premiered at the Carnegie Center. 

What a long, strange trip it's been ... for all of us. Here's NAC's coverage from 2 November 2013. The links are active; enjoy.

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The world premiere of The Trick to Escape a Straitjacket was Wednesday evening at the Carnegie Center, and it was well attended, with perhaps 70 people filling all the folding metal chairs and requiring staff to bring more. The documentary profiles lifelong New Albanian resident Kenny Stewart, whose eclectic worldview defies description.

The Trick to Escape a Straitjacket - Official Trailer

An eccentric old man from a small town in Indiana recounts his passion for show business and the enchantingly bizarre stories of his life as he attempts to perform the one secret trick he’s always wanted to pull off: escaping from a straitjacket.

A feature length documentary film by Rosie Nakamura.

Note that if you watch the film, be aware that it took eight years to make, causing some references to dates and events to seem skewed. They're not. In fact, Kenny Stewart is alive and well and pushing 87 years of age.

Official web site

The Crusades, a video series about medieval holy warriors.

That dreaded word “journey” appears to have been banned: instead, we have proper, old-fashioned narrative history of the sort that TV has almost forgotten how to do, starting at the beginning and continuing until the end.
-- Robert Colvile

Indeed.

I vote in favor of old-fashioned narrative history, as with this series from a few years back.

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Holy War 1/3: How the first crusaders marched 3,000 miles from Europe to recapture Jerusalem from Islam.

Clash of the Titans 2/3: Dr Thomas Asbridge examines the lives of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.

Victory and Defeat 3/3: Dr Thomas Asbridge reveals how the outcome of the holy wars was decided in Egypt.

The official BBC Two site is The Crusades, with further background by Colvile:

The Crusades: holy warriors (The Telegraph)

Robert Colvile is inspired by a new BBC Two series telling the real history of the crusades.

A few years ago, I found myself standing on the ramparts of Krak des Chevaliers, Syria’s great crusader castle, just as a thunderstorm broke. As the wind howled through the slitted stone windows, I tried to imagine what would have gone through the heads of the knights who garrisoned this lonely fortress for more than a century, as medieval Christendom’s first line of defence against the Muslims to the east.

In BBC Two’s new three-part documentary series, The Crusades, Dr Thomas Asbridge of the University of London asks his viewers to make that same leap of imagination – to understand a world in which faith was so important that in 1095, Pope Urban II was able to convince anything up to 100,000 people to forsake their family lives and homes and answer his call to reclaim Jerusalem, even though the holy city had fallen to the Muslims centuries earlier. So alien is the devotion – the fanaticism – that was displayed that Asbridge has to spend almost a third of the opening episode easing us into the medieval mindset, making us understand how the Pope’s promise of salvation could outweigh any worldly good or blessing.

The resulting story, while gripping, is far from pleasant ...

Apocalypse: Never-Ending War: "A film about the years of fragile peace that followed the Fist World War, the collapse of empires, and the fateful rise of totalitarianism."

It comes as no surprise when two more documentaries about the Great War come through the YouTube pipeline and fascinate me.

The films are excellent, and the production is a joint venture between Canadian and French filmmakers (here's the link for the Canadian series home page), as broadcast and posted at YouTube by Deutsche Welle.

There have been two of these series about World War I, both using colorized archival footage.

Apocalypse World War I
1914-1918 (5 x 52’)

Apocalypse Never-Ending War
1918-1929 (2 x 45’)

I need to catch up on the first series. Meanwhile, here's the synopsis of the second, via Deutsche Welle.

Apocalypse - Never-Ending War 1918 - 1929

"Apocalypse: Never-Ending War" tells the story of the years of fragile peace that followed the Fist World War, the collapse of empires, and the fateful rise of totalitarianism. Years that foretell the coming of another disastrous war. For four years, from 1914-1918, the world seemed hellbent on total self-annihilation. The First World War was an apocalyptic war that claimed over 50 million lives, civilian and military. Those who survive come to realize the world of the past century has now disappeared into an abyss of suffering. Millions of soldiers, the shell-shocked, the amputees, the disabled, will spend the rest of their lives trying to make sense of their years in hell. Parents are in despair at the loss of their children, families destroyed, millions of widows and orphans left to survive any way they can. In 1919 at Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and in 1920 at Trianon, the victors forge peace treaties that they claim will restore balance. But those who have pinned their hopes on a transition from war to universal peace are to be deeply disappointed. Hatred, fear, and resentment re-emerge from the depths of societies traumatized by war and the tumultuous transformation that results from the world’s map being re-drawn. The vanquished, facing terrible reparations, look for promises of hope, stability and order, even at the cost of personal freedom. The climate is ripe for the emergence of authoritarian forces, exacerbating ethnic nationalism, and opening doors to the worst of human nature. Extreme ideologies take root in Germany and Italy, and spread from there.

I've already mentioned the latest sensation for documentary enthusiasts like me.

Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old: "A visually staggering thought experiment; an immersive deep-dive into what it was like for ordinary British soldiers on the western front."

The Economist uses precisely the right word: immediacy.

“They Shall Not Grow Old” brings archive footage to stirring life, by Prospero (The Economist)

The film applies modern production techniques to old film to achieve something poppies and pageantry cannot: immediacy

 ... The attention to detail was painstaking, and almost five years in the making. Mr Jackson trawled through hundreds of hours of video and audio footage, most of it collected by the BBC for their documentary “The Great War” (1964). Once these were stitched together into a storyline, each frame was colourised and digitally restored. Computer programs helped to move the video from the ten to 18 frames per second (fps) at which it was shot to the modern rate of 24 fps, doing away with the “Charlie Chaplin effect” (the jerky, disjointed movement that characterises old film). Forensic lip-readers were hired to work out what soldiers might be saying, and their words were voiced by actors.

Flight documentaries: An indispensable documentary about Mick Ronson, the under-appreciated guitarist and arranger for David Bowie.

Flight documentaries happen when we're flying home after a European sojourn. Eastbound flights are for sleeping, westbound for reading, writing and watching.

Movies? Not for me, although it's usually a good opportunity to explore new music via audio selections.

I readily concede to being only a lukewarm aficionado of David Bowie, but an addiction to music magazines during the early 1970s has assured my lasting familiarity (and belated listening) with Bowie, Mick Ronson, the Spiders from Mars, Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, and the other "glam" period British acts that so influenced personal fave, Def Leppard.

Hence, the vital importance of this snippet from the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in 1992: Bowie, Ronson, Ian Hunter, the surviving members of Queen with Joe Elliot and Phil Collen on backing vocals on "All the Young Dudes."

Ronson was terminally ill and died not too long after his appearance. If you're a fan of music of the period, this documentary is a must-watch.

"Beside Bowie-The Mick Ronson Story" Is a Flawed But Essential Documentary For Every Bowie and Mick Ronson Fan, by Michael Fremer (Analog Planet)

... After kicking around London for a few years and making little headway and less money, (Ronson) returned to Hull and became a municipal groundskeeper. One of his band mates in a group called The Rats returned to Hull to try to convince the contented gardener to travel back to London to become a member of David Bowie's backup band. Though hesitant after his previous experiences, Ronson made the trip and the rest, as they say, is a history in desperate need of telling, which this film manages pretty well so I'm not going to further synopsize it.

It's clear that Ronson was a masterful guitarist with a unique sound that's in part created by a partly open "Wah Wah" pedal that he matter of factly demonstrates on camera and that by the time Bowie's semi-breakthrough album Hunky Dory was recorded, he'd learned from Visconti the art of arranging and had become a brilliant one.

Rick Wakeman, who plays piano on that Ken Scott-David Bowie produced classic, says in his on-screen interview that Ronson, not Bowie, was the real co-producer and that his string arrangements on tracks like "Life on Mars" were, as all listeners know, nothing short of brilliant. While "Michael Ronson" receives arranging credit, it's kind of buried ...

Turns out I'm not the only person favoring flight documentaries.

Speaking of airplanes, I watched this on the flight back from Amsterdam so I can't get into the technical aspects of the film or the sound, though I did listen on my Jerry Harvey Layla in-ear phones, which are amazing. My conclusion is that while this is a somewhat flawed presentation, it's one every Mick Ronson fan should see as should every Bowie fan. In fact, it's indispensable. When it was over, having "met" onscreen, Ronson's wife and family I was left beyond sad by how this super-talented man, who was never a money-grubber, left this planet too young, under-appreciated and with little money to leave his family.

Flight documentaries: Inside the mind of Robin Williams.

It's a fine overview, and as one reviewer wrote, "tantalizingly incomplete." The basic challenge isn't hard to pinpoint; how does one narrow the man's body of work to snippets capable of being fitted into two hours, much less interpret them?

Come Inside My Mind: star-studded documentary honors Robin Williams, by Jake Nevins (The Guardian)

Director Marina Zenovich talks about translating Williams’ comedy to the screen, his inner demons, and what compels her about complicated men

 ... Fashioned from archival footage, old audio tapes, interviews with Williams’ contemporaries and clips of the comic’s stand-up, Come Inside My Mind is the first documentary to comprehensively examine Williams’ life and art since his suicide in 2014. It includes virtually no narration, save for Williams’ own, which can have an eerie, almost ghostlike effect (if only ghosts were as charming and exuberant as Robin Williams). “Every person is driven by some deep, deep, deep, deep secret,” he says in voiceover about halfway through the film.

It’s a question Williams scarcely addressed, preferring to bare his soul by way of performance. “Steve Martin says in the film, when Robin was on stage, whether it was theater or standup, he was in charge,” says Zenovich. “But in his life he was trying to hold himself together.” Still, the comic’s embattled sense of sense worth threatened to impose itself on an otherwise supremely confident stage persona. As he says in voiceover, recalling advice from a shrink: “Be careful what you talk about, because you may be on stage in front of so many people and start talking about something you’re not able to deal with” ...

Flight documentaries: Mister Rogers and Won't You Be My Neighbor?

For what it's worth, I can't recall watching Mister Rogers when I was a kid, not even once. But this documentary is well worth your time.

How a Documentary About Mister Rogers Turns Him Into a Rock Star for Our Time, by Owen Gleiberman (Variety)

'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' has become an indie sensation by viewing Fred Rogers as a smiling force of goodness who can fight the darkness.

It’s difficult, and always has been, for a documentary to break through the clutter and beam itself onto the radar of mainstream moviegoing. When one succeeds in doing so, it’s revealing to look at why. “RBG,” an incisive portrait of the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a major documentary hit, but it doesn’t take rocket science to grasp the reasons for its success. The film presents Ginsburg, quite rightfully, as a feminist superhero of progressive action — a crusader who’s become an icon of the resistance.

Yet who would have guessed that “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” Morgan Neville’s transporting documentary about Fred Rogers and his quirky oasis of children’s television, would also turn out to be a tale for our time? Audiences lining up to see it are probably having the same experience I did: You walk in thinking that you’re going to take a nostalgic museum tour of a TV moment you grew up with, and maybe get a glimpse into the mystery of the man who created it (key question: was he really like that? short answer: yes). When you walk out, though, you realize that you’ve seen something much, much bigger. In 2018, Mister Rogers has become the last thing anyone might have expected him to be: a countercultural figure, a radical who can show us the way. You probably think I’m kidding (or deluded), but after you see “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” you’ll realize I’m not.

Michael Moore interview: "The director’s latest film, Fahrenheit 11/9, is a broadside against both the president and the Democratic establishment that failed to defeat him."

Moore's documentary film didn't last long locally.

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9: "The film is as much about how the left and the media have failed us as it is about the dangers of Trump."

My guess is it will have greater success abroad, where people tend to understand realities that we can't, or won't, face here in Merica.

Interview: Michael Moore: 'We have the power to crush Trump', by Owen Jones (The Guardian)

The director’s latest film, Fahrenheit 11/9, is a broadside against both the president and the Democratic establishment that failed to defeat him. He explains why a leftwing comeback is on the cards

 ... For young leftists, myself included, Moore’s work was something of a political life-raft back in an era when the traditional left was all but sunk. Fahrenheit 9/11 – his indictment of George W Bush’s so-called war on terror – courageously advanced otherwise marginalised ideas: it suggested that a proposed gas pipeline through Afghanistan may have played a role in the war, and noted links between the Bush administration and the Saudi regime. Moore has called for Bush administration officials to be put on trial. All this strays from the respectable centrist critique of the invasion, that it was simply the wrong war at the wrong time, or a “dumb war”, as Obama put it, rather than a crime.

His documentaries are designed not simply to inform, but to mobilise people. “Yeah, I was hoping to stop the Iraq war, hoping to end gun violence, to ensure every American has health insurance,” he explains. But he is keen to emphasise that his new film, Fahrenheit 11/9 (9 November 2016 being the day Donald Trump was declared US president-elect), is different. “It’s not some single issue, it’s not just about Donald Trump,” he says. “There’s nothing I can tell you about him that you don’t already know. You’d be wasting time and money to watch that.”

(snip)

For me, one of the strongest elements in the film was his J’accuse against the Democratic party establishment. He seethes with profane rage when he talks about their failures. He makes a parallel with his documentary – he’s down a rabbit hole again: if it’s a great film, if the critics like it, then he’s done his bit as a director, he hands his raw materials to Vertigo, the UK company in charge of distributing the film, it’s on them to make it a success.

It’s an allegory for the Democrats, he suggests. The polling shows that on the key issues, such as progressive taxation, or abortion rights, or healthcare, or gun control, most Americans side with the progressive side of the argument. In the past six out of seven presidential elections, he notes, the Democrats won the popular vote. “So the Democratic party are handed a population which agrees with their entire platform,” he says; they even have more voters. “Yet they’re still unable to put themselves and us in power.” If his film distributor kept doing that, it would go out of business. But here is what happens, his film posits, if the Democrats become too much like the Republicans, too in hock to a corporate agenda ...

How I learned to stop worrying and appreciate Mark Twain.

Mark Twain Part I Ken Burns from LYNN MADSEN'S VIDEOS on Vimeo.

Mark Twain Part II Ken Burns from LYNN MADSEN'S VIDEOS on Vimeo.

The only piece by Mark Twain that I can recall reading after completing high school graduation requirements is "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," evidently the last story published by Twain during his life (in 1909).

Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks, running and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans and English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their new outfits; and when they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and took a look in the glass, I could have jumped over a house for joy, I was so happy. “Now this is something like!” says I. “Now,” says I, “I’m all right—show me a cloud.”

The late Bob Youngblood may or may not have had an acerbic comment to make about this revelation, but I'll press on and further confide that my attitude toward Twain has tended to align with Ignatius J. Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces."

“It smells terrible in here.'

Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.”

Likewise, until two weeks ago I hadn't viewed Ken Burns' documentary film about the life and work of Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens; having done so, I found myself deeply and surprisingly moved.

Samuel Clemens was a country boy who yearned to be a city slicker, and largely succeeded in becoming one, but couldn't completely evade his origins.

It's an apt metaphor for America, and maybe even me.

Clemens created a fictional mirror image of himself called Mark Twain, a name borrowed from steamboat jargon for a navigable depth of the river. Predictably, the man and his role eventually merged and became inseparable. We see it all the time now in this hyperbolic media age, but Clemens knew all along.

The creative process is endlessly fascinating, whether pertaining to a writer like Clemens or Burns as a filmmaker. Both display immediately recognizable stylistic templates, and both have been known to bend the truth a bit in pursuit of art. My guess is that Burns would be troubled by articles like this one, but Mark Twain the master storyteller far less so.

Mistakes and Misrepresentations in Ken Burns' film MARK TWAIN

PBS Broadcast - January 14 and 15, 2002

The following is a list of mistakes and misrepresentations in the documentary MARK TWAIN by Ken Burns. In many cases, accuracy has been sacrificed to artistic license. Other errors were made at a point in the production when corrections were impossible to make.

A worthwhile documentary: "Eva Braun: Life and Death with the Führer."

There's not much to be said about Adolf Hitler that hasn't been said before, and hundreds of thousands of times. However, Eva Braun's rare color film footage makes this Deutsche Welle documentary worth watching.

It might not be up for long, so if you're interested, watch it soon.

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Eva Braun: Life and Death with the Führer

Eva Braun was Adolf Hitler's secret mistress for more than 13 years. To this day she is viewed as a naïve, apolitical appendage to the dictator and mass murderer. This two-part documentary calls into question the image of the vapid young woman at the Führer's side. Eva Braun met Hitler in 1929 and became his lover when she was just 17 years old. During the years of their relationship, she evolved from an average middle class girl to the uncompromising partner of the mass murderer. She remained true to Hitler until death. On 30 April 1945 Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. A day earlier, the dictator had married her. But who was this 'bride of evil' really? Hitler's architect Albert Speer referred to her after the war as one of the "disappointments of history". Kept out of the public eye, she spent most of her time in Munich or at Hitler's Berghof residence in the Alps. There she lived officially as the dictator's private secretary. Historian Heike Görtemaker has tracked down and assembled the puzzle pieces of Eva Braun's life in a groundbreaking biography. Behind the assumed gaiety, the author finds a resolute woman who pursued her goals with tremendous toughness right up to her death. For this documentary, filmmaker Michael Kloft conducted detailed interviews with Görtemaker and evaluated the many private films made by Eva Braun as well as the countless photo albums she compiled.

"Cologne Cathedral marks the zenith of cathedral architecture and at the same time its culmination."

Been there, seen that -- and it's amazing.

This is another fascinating Deutsche Welle documentary, and a companion piece of sorts to this recent post at NA Confidential.

Ever wondered how those huge medieval cathedrals were built? Watch this and find out.

"The great cathedrals were the wonders of the medieval world - the tallest buildings since the pyramids and the showpieces of medieval Christianity. Yet they were built at a time when most of us lived in hovels."

At the 34:25 mark of the Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) film, we arrive at a lingering point of dispute: Why wasn't the church bombed during the WWII?

According to DW, it actually was. To learn more, go here.

As the others mentioned, the cathedral wasn't spared deliberately - it was both targeted deliberately (probably not on orders, though, as it wasn't worth the effort) and hit by near misses. You see, the cathedral happened to be built right next to the main train station and repair yards, and the biggest railway bridge across the Rhine - both very important targets.

That it didn't suffer more damage than it did isn't pity by the Allies, nor was it luck - it was due to the ingenuity of the medieval architects and the courage of the air raid wardens.

Here's the video preview.

Cologne Cathedral on the Rhine is one of the tallest churches in the world. Germany's most-visited landmark hosts royalty, politicians and celebrities.

In the course of its history Cologne's majestic cathedral (known in German as 'Der Kölner Dom') has repeatedly been used for political and commercial ends. The documentary shows how the gentle giant has always retained its dignity.

Home to one of the largest church treasuries in Germany, even today the cathedral continues to play an important role in the city's economic life. It attracts 20,000 visitors a day and its silhouette is used to promote the sale of all manner of products and souvenirs, from bottle openers to cookie cutters. As a powerful and distinctive symbol, it is also used to ensure publicity; the cathedral has seen environmental activists chaining themselves to scaffolding around its spires and a feminist protester appearing topless during a Christmas mass, while skaters and buskers also use the cathedral square for performances.

The cathedral provides a backdrop for heads of state, international music stars and party events, but is exposed on a daily basis to wear and tear - from vandalism, street urination and the weather. The maintenance bill alone runs to around €20,000 a day. There have even been break-ins - the most spectacular being the Cathedral treasure robbery in 1975, described in the documentary by former public prosecutor Maria Therese Mösch. And one thing is certain: Cologne Cathedral and its powerful cardinals will always play a key role in Germany’s Catholic church.

LIVE TO EAT: Two tasty documentaries about street food the world over.

I appreciate the sedate, measured pace of these two documentaries, as opposed to some of the more frantic Food Network extravaganzas. This comes as no surprise, given the documentaries are produced by Deutsche Welle (German public television), circa 2016.

Asia - Cradle of street food tradition

Asia is famous for its street food delicacies - especially scorpions and insects. Every region has a specialty, every street vendor a story to tell. Explore Asian culture through a culinary journey to China, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam.

The English language voice-overs are almost seamless, although in one of these films some German sneaks through -- and you'll notice the texting is in German, albeit spoken in English. 

Street food -Tales of Tacos and Burgers

A cross-continental street food journey – from Oregon in the USA to Peru via Mexico. On every street corner, chefs are busy frying, grilling and roasting. Each region has its own culinary delights and the filmmakers are keen to try everything.

An excellent four-part documentary film about recent Russian history called Moscow's Empire.

It has been only 26 years since the Soviet Union dissolved, which is a blip in the overall timeline of history. Absent context, little can be understood with respect to what this span really means.

Conceding from the outset that this four-part documentary film is very Eurocentric -- it includes nothing about what has been happening east of the Urals and in the various -stans -- it remains a valuable overview of the past two and a half decades of Russian history.

Moscow’s Empire (Deutsche Welle)

The four-part documentary Moscow’s Empire shows how the former Soviet nations faced an anarchic decade marked by military conflicts and the search for new national identities and a new self-awareness.

In the late 1970s the Soviet empire began to crumble. After the fall of the Iron Curtain it fell apart completely in 1991 - bankrupt, traumatized and humiliated on the world stage. The former Soviet nations then faced an anarchic decade marked by military conflicts and the search for new national identities and a new self-awareness.

The end of a decade of upheavals saw the rise of a ”new tsar” at the helm in Russia, determined to guide the ”old” empire” back to former global power. After becoming president in 2000, Vladimir Putin began undoing the internal chaos that had beset the country, while at the same time restricting newly won freedoms. His leadership style was authoritarian and arguably autocratic. Moscow became an increasingly confident player on the international stage, aiming to limit on western influence.

The war in Georgia, and above all the recent conflict in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea exacerbated the divide between East and West. A new Cold War appears to have emerged, returning conditions to the 1980s. The four-part documentary Moscow’s Empire looks for answers to these developments, and provides a variety of perspectives on life in the former Soviet block countries - from the people who have experienced events at first hand and in some cases shaped them.

Following are the four parts.

1


2


3


4


Part four of the documentary ends with Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, 2014, and the subsequent imposition of sanctions by the USA and EU. Nothing is said about Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine (presumably by Russian irregulars) on July 17, 2014.

Fighting has continued in Ukraine since then, and of course there is an ongoing investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 American election. This article from August is an update in the vein of Deutsche Welle's fine documentary film.

The punishment continues: America’s new economic sanctions may hurt Russia’s recovery (The Economist)

But whether they will change Vladimir Putin’s behaviour is another matter

 ... As Mr Putin looks towards his fourth term (he is expected to win next year’s election), Russians are more concerned with their wallets than with Crimea. Growth this year is projected to be 2% or less. For the elite, the prospect of long-term stagnation and endless standoff with the West raises questions about the country’s direction. “The sense of an historic dead-end evokes panic,” writes Vladimir Frolov, a Russian analyst. Sanctions will not cause Mr Putin to reverse course, but they do make it harder for him to drive his way out.

"The End of the Sublime Porte" and other recommended documentaries at Deutsche Welle.

Deutsche Welle is Germany's public international broadcaster. The DW archives are a treasure trove of viewing (in English) for history, geography and world news junkies like me.

In the course of reliving my 1987 travel experiences in Sarajevo and Mostar (now independent Bosnia-Herzegovina), I watched this excellent documentary, which offers uncommonly clear context about the Ottoman Turks and what happened in Europe and the Middle East when the empire disappeared. It's highly recommended.

The End of the Sublime Porte: Part 1 - Multi-ethnic States in the Ottoman Empire

The End of the Sublime Porte: Part 2 - Crumbling Middle East

For 600 years, the Ottoman Empire was a superpower. This two-part documentary tells the story of how this vast empire vanished in less than a century.

The Ottoman Empire extended across three continents and the seven seas. Over the hundred years from Greek independence in 1830 to the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, the Ottoman Empire withdrew from Europe for good after a presence in the Balkans lasting almost 500 years. The shared past is often downplayed by national historians, but the Balkan states are strongly influenced by the complexities of Christian, Muslim and Jewish peoples living together, says Mark Mazower from Columbia University. It was more of a ‘side by side’ existence based on the Ottoman Empire’s "millet” system, where non-Muslims enjoyed the protection of the sultan but had to pay special taxes in return. Over the course of the 19th century, the region’s religious identities slowly became clear national ones; people now saw themselves as Serbs, Greeks, Armenians and Bulgarians. This rising nationalism, along with attempts by the major European powers to get their hands on the region’s resources and the inability of the Ottoman Empire to implement reforms, brought about the end of Ottoman rule in Europe. Using rare picture and film footage and with contributions by international historians, this two-part documentary analyses the last century of the Ottoman Empire and tries to understand its demise.

"Life Behind the Berlin Wall" and other documentaries about East Germany, all of them ideal for history obsessives like me.

At some point this winter, the next stage of Roger's three-decades-too-late slide film digitalization will begin. The photos will be from 1989, and while this journey has been the subject of a fair number of past essays, tying together a seven-month hiatus isn't going to be easy.

Until then, nothing has occurred for my fascinations to abate; searching the NAC archives for East Germany yields at least 125 matches. I've never been able to get the experience out of my mind in the 28 years since.

The short video above was released by The Economist a few years back. It's called "Life Behind the Berlin Wall," and depicts photos and narrative by Thomas Hoepker. Here are some of the stills, chosen by me.

Recently I uncovered a handful of previously unseen documentaries about East Germany.

First, subtitled in English, "Die 50 Tage des Egon Krenz" (The 50 Days of Egon Krenz). It's from the German TV channel ZDF. The leader-in-waiting Krenz replaced longtime East German leader Erich Honecker just before everything fell apart, and took Krenz with it.

Next, "Honecker's Secret Files," also from ZDF. Honecker, arguably the east Bloc's least likely Lothario, was in poor health when the DDR's end came. He eventually was allowed to leave Germany and died in Chilean exile.

The keeper of Honecker's files -- and the head of the ubiquitous state security police, the Stasi -- was Erich Mielke, profiled in "Goodbye DDR: Mielke and Freedom."

After the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunified, Mielke was charged, tried and convicted in 1993, though not of crimes committed during the East German era. Rather, he was found guilty of murdering two policemen in 1933, six decades previously, when the German Chancellor was a guy named Adolf Hitler.

So much for the intermediate level. If you have the patience for it, watch Erich Honecker's evasive 1991 interview filmed in Moscow, when he was "a head of state without a state" awaiting trial, exile, death or all three.

Finally, there's a 1.5-hour CSPAN2-BookTV discussion from 2004 at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, in which scholar Hope Harrison, author of the book "Driving the Soviets Up the Wall," analyzes the Cold War geopolitics of the Berlin Wall's construction. Turns out it wasn't as simple as we always thought.

Video documentary: The Dubliners -- Live in Germany, circa 1995.

Five Beards on the Road (2005; re-released in 2007 as On The Road - Live In Germany) -- originally filmed for release in Germany in 1995.

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Between this discovery ...

THE BEER BEAT: A pint of bitter, please, because it's The Dubliners at the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, 1977.

... and this lamentable news item ...

R.I.P. Eamonn Campbell, Irish musical legend, 1946-2017.

... I've been cast into another Dubliners vortex, something that happens once a year like clockwork, and sometimes more often.

There were eleven primary members of The Dubliners over a period of 50 years (1962- 2012), with various other musicians plugging holes when necessary.

When this documentary was filmed circa 1994, three decades into their run, founding members Luke Kelly and Ciarán Bourke were long dead, though Sean Cannon and Eamonn Campbell were excellent players, too, and in my estimation, this period probably was the peak of the post-Kelly period.

The film itself is part travelogue, part concert. It's a German production and takes place almost entirely in Germany, testifying to the popularity of the band in northern Europe and Scandinavia. From the 1980s forward, while The Dubliners remained beloved in the group's native Ireland, tours of Europe were an annual ritual.

Ronnie Drew mentions this in the documentary, noting that The Dubliners were the first Irish "folk" band (not all of its members agree with the use of the term) to gain a following in places like Germany.

There are many good insights here, as well as songs both well known and obscure. If you are a fan of music in the universal sense, it's a good way to use two hours of your day.

"Remembering Harry Nilsson: American Beatle, filthy drunk, and the great lost music genius of the 1970s."

The video is available at various for-pay portals. It's inexpensive and worth the time. Older readers may recall Harry Nilsson's heyday in the early 1970s. If all this is well before your time, the film may yet have value as documentation of a not-so-quaint era of rock star excess.

A review of the documentary in the New York Times:

In 1968, when asked to name his favorite American rock group, John Lennon replied “Nilsson,” which was of course not a group at all but a Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter named Harry Nilsson.

This is an excellent long read from 2013, although the merit of watching the documentary lies in hearing the songs:

Deconstructing Harry, by Sean Fennessey (Grantland)

Remembering Harry Nilsson: American Beatle, filthy drunk, and the great lost music genius of the 1970s

... In the years before the Lost Weekend and before Pussy Cats, Nilsson established himself as a kind of pop culture Zelig, a figure who was around greatness or creating it on his own, landing in shocking good fortune only to squander it over and again. His drinking is legendary; he soaked himself with the best of rock’s worst drunks. He also possessed one of the purest voices of his generation, and was often described as the most gifted white male singer of his time. It’s hard to overstate its dramatic, breathtaking quality, and at its best, his songwriting. His is a career that feels both forgotten and deeply embedded in modern pop. He sang standards and rock and jazz and winding conceptual songs and tiny little kids’ tunes and commercial jingles. He wrote, voiced, and spearheaded an animated film starring Dustin Hoffman. He played Dracula in a movie. He soundtracked a sitcom and nearly fought Jackie Gleason in a nightclub. He was “the Beatle across the water.” He tore up London bars with Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. He invented the remix album. He also invented the mash-up.5 He dropped acid with Timothy Leary. He sang of moonbeams and fire and coconuts and puppies. He was a prodigious songwriter whose two biggest hits were covers. He made his father’s abandonment the centerpiece of his songwriting, and yet rarely acknowledged its importance publicly. He performed live in concert in his prime exactly zero times. He lobbied for a songwriter named Randy Newman and is responsible for the career of Three Dog Night. He composed scores for Otto Preminger and Robert Altman. He wrote a musical about the Wright brothers. He had no. 1 albums and pop smashes and disastrous failures. He won Grammys. He was hilarious, and such a sad man. His voice can be heard as Jon Voight gets off that bus in New York City in Midnight Cowboy. He sang “You’re breaking my heart, so fuck you” on the follow-up single to his masterpiece breakthrough. He was married three times and had seven kids. He snorted heroin and hitchhiked across America. He was a renaissance man and a get-along guy. A carouser and a crusader. He failed well and succeeded poorly. He did everything before most, and nothing in moderation. His songwriting career began about 50 years ago. It almost ended 40 years ago. He died nearly 20 years ago. But his songs — and that voice — go on and on and on.