Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 2/1/2014)

In a break with tradition, let's start with the disappointments and the nadir. Without doubt, the biggest let down was Ken Loach's The Spirit of ’45, which drifted away from celebrating the achievements of Clement Attlee's Labour landslide administration to rehash socialist grievances against Margaret Thatcher and boost the leadership of Ed Milliband. The alternative agenda also proved fatal to Matthew Miele's Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's, which missed the chance to provide a behind-the-scenes look at a prestigious Manhattan store by opting to fawn over the celebrity designers corralled to sing its praises and present a slavish paean to naked capitalism.

Robert Pacitti's On Landguard Point was much more adventurous in its bid to capture the topography and personality of this characterful part of the Suffolk coast. However, the rattlebag approach often reduced this mix of the personal, the perfunctory and the pretentious to bemusing chaos. But nothing could top David Bond's Project Wild Thing for muddled thinking and misplaced enthusiasm.

The director's previous outing, Erasing David (2010), raised the hackles with its cynical self-promotion. But this attempt to coax youngsters into abandoning their televisions, toys and computers to engage with nature is so desperately naive and shamelessly smug that this critic felt too exasperated to review it on its release in October. Having appointed himself `marketing director of nature', the energetic, but centre-staging Bond consults with parents, children, academics and branding experts to make the great outdoors seem as irresistible to the couch generation as it did to its forebears. The enterprise is entirely laudable and it is pleasing in the extreme to see that the film has led to the formation of the Wild Network to capitalise on the media momentum it has generated. But Bond remains an acquired screen taste, while the activities devised by his preening gaggle of do-gooders and gurus are either woefully crass or sanctimoniously New Agey.

There was a marked dip in the number of eco-docs in 2013, with the best of those not making the Top 10 being Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel's visually striking whaling study, Leviathan. Instead, the focus turned to political topics, past and present. Shane O'Sullivan examined the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination in Killing Oswald; Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas commended an unlikely entrant in the space race in The Lebanese Rocket Society; Alex Gibney exposed the child abuse secrets of the Catholic Church in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God; Marc Wiese reflected on the barbarism of North Korean tyranny in Camp 14; Mark Cousins put a typically personal slant on recent Albanian history in Here Be Dragons; John Pilger denounced the continuing mistreatment of First Australians in Utopia; David France looked back on how the gay community rallied in the face of the AIDS outbreak in How to Survive a Plague; Anthony Wonke harrowingly relived the 1988 disaster aboard the Piper Alpha rig in the North Sea in Fire in the Night; and Jacqui and David Morris and Sebastian Junger respectively celebrated the work of a pair of acclaimed photojournalists in McCullin and Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.

National security correspondent Jeremy Scahill proved a distractingly larger than life character in Richard Rowley's Dirty Wars, but there was still much to fascinate and disconcert in this exposé of the nefarious activities of the Joint Special Operations Command. Similarly, Penny Woolcock's head-shaking presence didn't detract too much from her investigation into gang rivalry in Birmingham in One Mile Away, while octogenarian siblings Paolo and Vittorio Taviani managed to combine aesthetic artifice with stark reality in the monochrome Golden Bear winner, Caesar Must Die, which followed the efforts of theatre director Fabio Cavalli to stage a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with the maximum security inmates of Rome's notorious Rebibbia jail.

Completing the cultural slate are The Stuart Hall Project, John Akomfrah's profile of a Jamaica-born, Merton-educated intellectual; Tropicália, Marcelo Machado's survey of the role that the arts played in resisting the rule of the generals in Brazil in the 1960s; The Blueblack Hussar, Jack Bond's intimate encounter with a resurgent Adam Ant; Basically, Johnny Moped, Fred Burns's affectionate memoir of a wrongly forgotten punk combo; Very Extremely Dangerous, Paul Duane's eventful run-in with maverick musician Jerry McGill; Side By Side, Christopher Kenneally's in-depth comparison of photochemical and digital cinematographic processes; Love, Marilyn, Liz Garbus's conceptually arch, but affectingly well-meaning homage to Marilyn Monroe; and James Toback's often hilarious, but deceptively revealing Cannes odyssey, Seduced and Abandoned.

Perhaps the biggest personality to emerge in the human interest category was Helen Heraty, whose bid to convert an historic building in the centre of York into a bijou hotel was chronicled with acuity (if little tact) by Kim Hopkins in Folie à Deux. However, Peggy Roth and Brigitte Krafczyk (among others) also make a strong impression in Marc Isaacs's The Road: A Story of Life and Death, while the tennis-playing Williams sisters also prove highly engaging in Maiken Baird and Michelle Major's surprisingly up close and personal Venus and Serena, which is joined on the sporting roster by Ben and Gabe Turner's selective record of Manchester United's golden era, The Class of `92, and Lucy Walker's tribute to the courage of snowboarder Kevin Pearce and his family, as he recovers from the injuries sustained in a terrifying accident in The Crash Reel, which has taken on added poignancy following the trauma suffered over the festive period by Michael Schumacher.

Standing above these, however, are:.

10) PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER (Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin).

On 21 February 2012, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich donned baggy jumpers and pastel-coloured ski masks to perform `Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away' on the high altar of the cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. They were removed by security guards and were later charged with `hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' after complaints were made by worshippers that they had been prevented from praying by the protest against the closeness between Kirill, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, and President Vladimir Putin.

Presumably, little would have been heard of this incident had Nadia, Masha and Katia not been sentenced to two years each in a penal colony for their crime and had fellow artists like Yoko Ono and Madonna not taken up their cause in the West. As a result of the international furore that followed the instigation of what many compared to the show trials of the 1930s, Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin decided to chronicle proceedings in Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. Clearly released at the earliest opportunity, this always feels more like a piece of reportage than a considered documentary. Thus, while it bears a marked similarity to Cyril Tuschi's Khodorkovsky (2011) in its depiction of the Russian judicial system in action, it is much rougher and readier and will leave many wondering what this infamous performance troupe-cum-punk combo was actually seeking to achieve during its brief moment in the spotlight.

Opening with grainy, handheld footage of the cathedral stunt, Lerner and Pozdorovkin take up the story as Nadia, Masha and Katia face up to the prospect of spending seven years behind bars for taking a stand against a regime whose unpopularity had been made manifest during the street demonstrations before the 2012 presidential election that saw Prime Minister Putin swap places with his sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, who had occupied the Kremlin for a single term after Putin's initial entitlement to the highest office had elapsed. During clips from their interrogation as the Women's Detention Centre in Moscow, Nadia declares that the bond between Church and State has become too close and that she had stormed the altar to draw attention to this dangerous anomaly and the fact that women were excluded from presiding over religious services.

Her father, Andrei Tolokonnikov, tells the film-makers of his pride in his daughter's stance and confides that he had not only encouraged her since Pussy Riot played its first shock gig in a Moscow beauty salon, but had also helped her with the lyrics to some of their songs. The band had been formed as a direct response to Putin bending the rules of the constitution to run again for the presidency and they had denounced his nationalist approach to governance while calling for an uprising during a performance in Red Square. However, Andrei confesses that he had tried to talk Nadia out of the cathedral show, as religion was such a sensitive issue and the edifice had a special place in the hearts of believers, as it had been rebuilt following the collapse of Communism after the original had been demolished on 5 December 1931 to make way for a municipal swimming pool.

Katia's father, Stanislav Samutsevich, jokes that he thought they looked like bank robbers, and Masha's mother, Natalia Aliokhina, admits that she almost felt like disowning her. But, judging by the rehearsal footage of the song `Sh*t! It's God Sh*t!', the trio had clearly calculated that their protest was going to provoke and Andrei reveals that Nadia had wanted to call their first CD `Kill All Sexists' rather than `Occupy Red Square'. Once again, we are shown the images from inside Christ the Saviour, as Stanislav wishes that they had found a less contentious place for what he insists was a point well worth making.

The Moscow police didn't agree, however, and the members of Pussy Riot were forced into hiding and two managed to flee abroad before Nadia, Masha and Katia were eventually detained. Denied bail by the female magistrate, even though the first two were the mothers of young children, the threesome spoke courageously from the cage in which they were made to sit during the hearing, with Nadia suggesting that Russia didn't understand performance art or punk rock and that the nation needed to throw off its shackles and embrace the modern world if it was to take its place alongside the other civilised nations.

As the respective legal teams squabble unedifyingly in the corridor outside the courtroom, Nadia, Masha and Katia are photographed and bombarded with questions by a press corps allowed surprisingly easy access to such notorious prisoners. Nadia denounces Putin as a totalitarian leader and her father is accused by an onlooker of being the real brains behind the Pussy Riot phenomenon. Outside, lawyer Mark Feygin holds Nadia's daughter Gera as he gives a press conference about the denial of visitation rights and confides to the camera that, having been fined for the earlier song `Putin P*ssed Himself', he fears that they may be given custodial sentences as an example to any other would-be upholders of free speech.

The Pussy Riot Support Group declare the trio to be prisoners of conscience and plan a series of activities to keep them in the public eye. However, their opponents are also mobilising and there is a disconcerting ferocity about the way in which they are branded as witches at a prayer meeting at the cathedral. The Patriarch declares that Russia is doomed if its holy places are not protected from blasphemers and there is a danger that the situation might deteriorate as Pussy Riot activists mingle with the crowds outside Christ the Saviour and accuse them of being knee-jerk conservatives. In retaliation, white-bearded men in `Orthodoxy or Die' t-shirts scoff that the band's name means `Demented Vagina' and one avers that if they hate men so much they should go and live on an island and think themselves lucky this isn't the 15th century when the authorities knew how to treat their kind.

Footage follows of a press conference at which three masked woman demand a free society and a huge picture of Putin is torched in an abandoned factory. It isn't made clear whether this event occurred before the arrests, but it rather plays into Putin's hands, as he refuses to utter the group's name during a television interview, during which he implies that it is the duty of the secular government to protect Russian Orthodoxy after what its adherents had endured during the Soviet era.

Six months after the arrests, Nadia, Masha and Katia return to court. The first says she is ready to apologise for the distress her actions might have caused genuine believers, but she refuses to disown the sentiment behind them. Katia contents herself with saying that the charges are unconvincing before entering a plea of `not guilty', while Masha refuses to co-operate with the court because she fails to understand the ideology behind the charge being levelled at her. Having allowed them time to speak, a new female judge commits them for trial on the grounds of hate-based hooliganism.

In a rather clumsy bid to present them as victims of the society in which they were raised, Lerner and Pozdorovkin have Natalia say that Masha might have been an argumentative child and a huge fan of The Spice Girls, but her heart was always in the right place. Consequently, her support for the campaign to save the Utrish Forest had been based more on personal conviction than politics. Stanislav lauds Katia as a keen student of art history, who lost her sense of direction when her mother died and she ceased wishing to emulate her by becoming a painter herself. Furthermore, Andrei reveals how his happy five year-old daughter had changed when her mother had demanded a divorce and he was powerless to prevent her from later cultivating an interest in the conceptual art group, Voina. Indeed, it's evident that he disapproved of such antics as having women members give lesbian kisses to strangers on the street (including cops) and indulge in naked acts of unsimulated intercourse in the Biology Museum. As Nadia was eight months pregnant at the time, this had particularly shocked him, but he had never ceased to admire her courage or commitment.

Now joined by Violetta Volkova and Nikolai Polozov, Mark Feygin decides to base the defence case on the Church-State dichotomy. Nadia reiterates her regret at offending adherents of Orthodoxy, while Katia tries to point out that a combination of ignorance and culture shock had landed them in trouble, as too few people understood their brand of artistic expression and wonders whether they would even be here if they had asked the Virgin to protect Putin rather than remove him. Feygin points out that there is no formal blasphemy law in Russia and suggests that Pussy Riot are more Christian in their actions and attitudes than the majority of their accusers. But the prosecution counters by insisting that the right to worship had been violated by an act that was so brazenly anti-democratic that it has damaged the liberal cause. They also respond furiously to accusations that Putin himself is controlling the case and has already instructed the bench on its verdict and its sentence. At one point, they even claim that detention would be a kindness, as such is the wrath of offended zealots that the threesome would be safer inside prison than out.

In conclusion, the state lawyers demand three years of penal servitude and Natalia admits that she has been frightened since receiving phone threats from so-called Orthodox jihadists. Nadia's husband, Peter Verzilov, tells the media that it feels like they are living in Stalinist times and he lets his wife know that he is proud of her on the final day of the trial, when each of the accused is allowed to make a last statement. The guards try to keep the women quiet as they await commencement and they are singularly unimpressed that Madonna sang `Like a Virgin' during her Moscow concert the night before while wearing a Pussy Riot balaclava.

Katia speaks first and says that the protest has served its purpose as it made people think and has proved that an unholy alliance exists between Kirill and Putin, as they have been so united in their statements about the affair. Masha agrees that they have embarrassed the government and compares their plight to that of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 after repeated run-ins with the Brezhnev Kremlin. She says she cares more about the fate of her child than herself and refuses to be intimidated by a tyrannical state, as she feels more free each time it tries to oppress her. Summing up, Nadia says that Pussy Riot have not been on trial, as the charges have all been made against Russia, and that Putin has lost because of the cacophony he has caused in trying to silence them. She ends by quoting a lyric about opening doors, removing uniforms and sampling freedom and calls upon all citizens to join them in open revolt.

All three manage a smile at the courthouse gates as they are led away and the police struggle to cope with the mask-wearing supporters venting their fury at the two-year sentences. However, eight months after the now globally infamous incident, Katia comes to the appeal court to ask the judge to look again at the footage and see that the had been busy getting her guitar out of its case and had not, therefore, actively participated in the protest. Her new lawyer, Irina Khrunova, goes on the attack and succeeds in securing a suspended sentence and Katia is embraced by her grinning bandmates before being reunited with her father in the middle of a media scrum. Closing captions reveal that Nadia and Masha have also since engaged Khrunova and plan to lodge their own appeals. However, little will change in Russia as a whole, as Putin looks set to remain in power until 2024.

Largely dependent on the found footage edited deftly by Esteban Uyarra, Lerner and Pozdorovkin deserve great credit for producing such a coherent profile in such a short space of time. They also make the best of the fact that they cannot speak directly to the members of Pussy Riot themselves by coaxing their parents into providing so much of their backstory. But, while they capture something of Nadia, Masha and Katia nascent personalities, they barely scratch the surface when it comes to their mature opinions or their motives for making such an audacious statement when they must have suspected the consequences. The fact that what was essentially a prank could provoke such a sledgehammer response exposes the insecurity of the post-Communist state. But, by presuming that most viewers will already be familiar with life in Putin's Russia, the co-directors struggle to contextualise the cathedral protest within either an historico-political framework or the band's own career arc. Similarly, no great attempt it made to explore Pussy Riot's status within the country before the trial or how much their fate has impacted upon ordinary Russians.

There is also little sense of the dynamics within the group and who provides its creative and, thus, its activist impetus. From the few clips of their music shown here, Pussy Riot are raw in the extreme, with the lyrics often being screamed over a discordant thrash backing track. But, as they demonstrated in the courtroom, each woman displays a poise, eloquence and courage that is truly humbling and their confidence in their rectitude leaves many of their more technically proficient and commercially successful contemporaries looking anodyne and toothless when their are so many pressing social, humanitarian, ecological and political issues to confront. The pampered British bands currently dominating the charts and complaining about the state of the music business should watch this and hang their heads in shame.

9) STORIES WE TELL (Sarah Polley).

The fine art of spinning a yarn is explored in Sarah Polley's teasingly self-reflexive Stories We Tell, which confirms the impression made with two earlier studies of marriage under pressure, Away From Her (2006) and Take This Waltz (2011), that this acclaimed Canadian actress is also one the country's finest directors. Revelling in the spate of ironic coincidences attendant upon her tale, Polley uses her own family history to explore how narratives shift focus according to the perspective of the teller. This may not be the most original topic and Polley borrows heavily from Michelle Citron's Daughter Rite (1978) to help examine it. But her confidence in both her subject matter and her technique ensures that this remains compulsive viewing, even during the more intimate revelations that often leave the viewer feeling uncomfortably like an intruder.

The focus of the film is Polley's mother, Diane, who is first seen in monochrome in the mid-1960s delivering a rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'" as part of a television audition. Super 8 home movies follow to explain how she was the life and soul of the party and husband Michael and children John, Suzy, Mark and Joanna all testify to her being a wonderful mother and an irrepressible spirit. However, we learn that she had earned a certain notoriety when she scandalised polite Toronto society by abandoning her affluent husband and losing custody of her first two children in order to romance Michael, an English actor with whom she had become besotted during a production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. Michael and Diane had married soon afterwards and had even appeared in a couple of plays together, including Eduardo De Filippo's Filumena, which provided the basis of Vittorio De Sica's Marriage, Italian Style (1964), in which Sophia Loren cons Marcello Mastroianni to the altar by refusing to tell him which of her three sons is his.

Unfortunately, Diane had fallen for the characters that Michael played on stage and was more than a little disappointed when he quit acting to get a regular job so that they could afford a large house and a comfortable lifestyle. She, however, continued to run a casting agency and appeared in such TV series as Street Legal, and remained the extrovert party girl even after having two more children. In 1978, she was offered a part in the Montreal production of David Fennario's Toronto at the Centaur Theatre. Reading from the letter he had written Sarah when her life had changed forever in 2007, Michael admits that he rather relished the prospect of a few months of respite and readily gave his blessing for her to go. However, on paying her a weekend visit, he was pleased to find their old passion re-igniting and was delighted when Diane returned from the engagement to announce she was pregnant.

Following a change of heart en route to the abortion clinic, Diane gave birth to Sarah on 8 January 1979. As her siblings left home, she found herself the centre of attention. But, when Sarah was 11, Diane was diagnosed with cancer and died soon afterward. Bereft, Michael and Sarah became closer than ever, although a family joke began to circulate around this time that she bore no resemblance to her father whatsoever. What is not mentioned here, but is crucial to know, is that Diane had launched Sarah as a child star and she had earned the nickname `Canada's Sweetheart' through appearances in films like Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and the Disney Channel's Road to Avonlea. Moreover, even after she fell out with the latter in 1991 for wearing an anti-war badge at an awards ceremony, she continued to act and won acclaim for her work in such pictures as Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me (2003).

In 2007, however, while preparing to shoot Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, in which a 118 year-old man tries to piece together his forgotten life under hypnosis, Polley decided to find out whether Michael was her biological father or whether, as family rumour suggested, it was really actor Geoffrey Bowes. John recalls overhearing an anxious phone call in which his mother had confided that she was pregnant in a way that made him suspect the hearer was the father of the child. But he had said nothing for 28 years and Diane's friends Ann Tait and Deirdre Bowen had similarly held their counsel. However, a few days after Sarah confronted Bowes and was assured that he was not her father, she received a message from film producer Harry Gulkin, who had scored a major hit with Czech exile Ján Kadár's Lies My Father Told Me in 1975. Happy to meet another of her mother's circle, Sarah was aghast to discover that the 79 year-old was her real father and he explained how they had been drawn to each other during the run of the play and how he had tried, on learning of the pregnancy, to persuade Diane to leave Michael and live with him in Montreal.

While still processing the news, Sarah was contacted by a journalist who wanted her permission to run the story and she recalls weeping on a park bench wearing Neanderthal make-up from Mr Nobody as she pleaded with the reporter to hold fire until she had had time to tell Michael. Naturally, he had been devastated by the disclosure and had tried to arrange his feelings in the long missive that forms the linking narration to the film (and which we see him recording under Sarah's impassive and exacting direction). He was even more distressed when the results of a DNA test confirmed Gulkin as the father, although Sarah was amused to notice that she shared a gummy smile with his other daughter, Cathy. The situation also impacted upon the lives of her other siblings, as all three sisters got divorced shortly after the truth emerged and it became headline news across Canada.

In an effort to come to terms with her mother's secret existence, Sarah decided to make this documentary and relations became strained for a time with Gulkin when he insisted that his was the only side of the story that mattered, as he alone had gone through the same emotions as Diane and had been forced to keep silent about his paternity after attending her funeral. Eventually, however, he was persuaded by Sarah's insistence on studying the way in which stories can become distorted and falsehoods can become accepted truths and agreed to be one of the many talking heads seen in the film. But it only gradually becomes clear that Sarah had also played sly visual games throughout the picture and that the photos and home movies had been leavened with grainily shot reconstructions in which Rebecca Jenkins had played Diane, Peter Evans had been Michael Polley and Alex Hatz had been Harry Gulkin.

With this realisation, comes relief that Sarah had not filmed herself breaking the news to Michael from several angles as he sat in anguish at the kitchen table and that the septuagenarian occupies the privileged position of being narrator, actor and interviewee and, thus, is allowed to blur the line between reality, memory and reconstruction in a unique manner. Michelle Citron had also staged vérité moments in Daughter Rite, which had also been accompanied by a poetic voiceover. But Polley potently shows herself talking through scenes with Rebecca Jenkins, as though she is discussing her own life with her mother, and promptly debunks this deeply moving incident by concluding with a shot of the sheepish Geoffrey Bowes admitting that he had slept with Diane after all.

Slickly edited by Michael Munn, ingeniously designed and photographed by Lea Carlson and Iris Ng, and cleverly costumed and coiffeured by Sarah Armstrong and Josie Stewart to complete the Super 8 illusion, this is probably no different from a thousand and one other domestic sagas in which families have managed to survive secrets and lies and renegotiated a new way of getting along. The fascinating aspect is that, while Diane is not there to defend her actions, nobody actually seems to blame her for her infidelity (as it is generally accepted that Michael wasn't the most demonstrative husband) and only John takes her to task for recklessly neglecting birth control arrangements while in the throes of passion. This could be taken as a comment on the status of women in the 1970s, but it also suggests that a family with a dramatic background is fully aware of the allure and power of the flawed heroine. Most of all, however, it confirms Polley's contention that the recollections of everyone in the film (including herself) are prone to reinterpretation by virtue of the circumstances in which they were recorded and their positioning in the final cut. Consequently, even the absolute truth (if it ever exists) can be brought into question by manipulation on the screen Operating with great sensitivity, particularly towards Michael (whom she clearly still adores), Polley refuses to soft soap and, while she allows John the odd breach of the fourth wall, she keeps a firm grip on proceedings to prevent the account becoming too sensationalist or sentimental. But hard facts remain at a premium and it is evident by the close that a fair amount of damage has been done by Diane's elaborate charade, with even some of her offspring betraying their disappointment at her conduct. What's more, it isn't ultimately clear why Polley wanted to make the film (and subject her loved ones to such public introspection) or quite what she got out of it. This vagueness is reflected in the odd digression and self-indulgence, as well as the decision to keep Diane as an elusive enigma. Moreover, Polley stubbornly avoids expressing many opinions of her own, either on camera or in her voiceovered emails. But whether it proved cathartic or not, this is an ambitious, lucid and accomplished piece of film-making whose conclusions on the ownership of an episode and the authentic and unreliable memories it accrues will cause many to cast a backward glance at their own past.

8) THE ACT OF KILLING (Joshua Oppenheimer).

Versions of the truth dominate Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing, a documentary about the massacre of around one million Communists in Indonesia in 1965 that was so lauded on its festival premiere that Errol Morris and Werner Herzog agreed to come on board as executive producers. Herzog called it `powerful, surreal and frightening' and claimed it was `unprecedented in the history of cinema', while Morris insists it `demands another way of looking at reality'. Yet, while there is no question that this is a courageous, ambitious and distinctive attempt to do something different with actuality while alerting audiences to shocking atrocities committed by killers who show no remorse whatsoever for their crimes, this is also a work without a crucial historical context and one that avoids any explanation of its rationale or methodology. Consequently, it is impossible to know what Oppenheimer was hoping to achieve through his endeavours after his attempt to profile some of the survivors fell through in the face of official pressure. Moreover, it is difficult to discern who devised the strategies employed, what arrangements were made between the makers and their subjects, or how long the shoot lasted and which episodes were filmed at which specific time. Without this information, this has to be regarded as a compelling curio that singularly fails to have the same intellectual or emotional impact of more sombre investigations into acts of genocide elsewhere in the region, such as Rithy Panh's S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003) and Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath's Enemies of the People (2009).

The picture opens with a quote from Voltaire: `It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.' This is followed by a series of captions explaining what the film is about. But the full story can only be gleaned on the official website (http://theactofkilling.com/), which should be studied at length by anyone planning to see the film, as only then can any semblance of sense be made of what it contains.

In the North Sumatran town of Medan, ageing assassins Anwar Congo and Herman Koto go into a poor neighbourhood to find volunteers to help them recreate their actions of some five decades earlier when they responded to the assassination of six hardline generals by the PKI Party during an attempt to oust President Sukarno by beating, torturing and butchering hundreds of suspected Communists and their supporters. In all, around one million people were killed by these gangsters (who insist that the word derives from `free men') and Anwar and Herman have agreed to collaborate with the American-born, but Danish-based Oppenheimer because they want their deeds to be remembered. Indeed, Anwar is so proud of what he did that he takes the crew to the rooftop above what looks like a bag shop and demonstrates how he used a wire garrotte on his victims because it was less bloody and more efficient than other means of execution. He also does a little dance and explains how they often used to smoke dope while killing to make the experience more pleasurable. Syamsul Arifin, the Governor of North Sumatra, meets with Anwar and jokes that everyone used to be terrified of him because he was such a ruthless bandit. Yet, while Anwar is delighted by his reputation, he is happy to admit that he was making a living scalping tickets for the local cinema when the call to arms came. He deeply resented the fact that the Communists wanted to restrict the import of American movies like the Elvis Presley musicals that made him the biggest profits. But, as he and Herman get drunk in a bar, he concedes that he has started having nightmares about his crimes and wishes he could control them, as he knows what he did was necessary for the good of the country.

Newspaper publisher Ibrahim Sinik agrees that Anwar and his cohorts performed a vital national service and he recalls how he used to interrogate suspects in his office before dispatching them to Anwar for punishment. He admits his job as an editor was to convince the public to detest Communism and his efforts were supported by Pancasila Youth, a patriotic movement whose members still wear their orange camouflage shirts with zealous pride at rallies, such as the one addressed by leader Yapto Soerjosoemarno, who loves to play golf and follows a programme of `Relax and Rolex' when not denouncing his enemies.

Anwar and Herman readily acknowledge the debt they owe to the films of John Wayne, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and the former has his grey hair dyed black to re-enact a noirish scene of grilling a suspect, which he asks Oppenheimer to pause because they can hear the call to evening prayer coming through the window. Having completed the sequence, he lights a cigar and says human rights mean nothing to him and he hates hearing people droning on about how important they are. His dislike of restraint on his activities becomes clear when he discusses the crackdown on Chinese residents in 1965 and how many gangsters continue to exact protection payments from them to this day. As if to prove the point, Oppenheimer shows Safit Pardede on his rounds in the nearby market. Yet, at a Pancasila meeting, Jusuf Kalla, who is the Vice-President of Indonesia, says that intimidation is sometimes necessary and that the country needs `free men' to stand up and be counted.

Having looked through some old photos and reminisced about how smartly they had dressed to kill, Anwar and Herman rehearse their extras for a house-burning scene with the assistance of former comrade Sundardi and current neighbour Suryono. Such is the authenticity of the role-playing that some of the children begin to cry. Yet everyone congratulates each other on how well they have done, as Anwar confides that this kind of activity was small beer and that he was once more sadistic than the Nazis he had seen on the big screen. They mock up a Western scenario, with Herman donning drag to play a belle who is threatened with rape and murder unless she co-operates. But Oppenheimer cuts away from this highly stylised situation to show Herman singing to himself as he lounges in a pink frock and head-dress and some dancing girls emerge from the mouth of a giant piscine edifice beside the sea that had once been a thriving restaurant.

Reunited with old pal Adi Zulkadry, Anwar jokes about reporter Soaduon Siregar claiming to have been a big wheel in 1965, when, in fact, he was a minor figure in Ibrahim Sinik's office. Despite being in the middle of having scar make-up applied to their faces, Anwar beckons Siregar over and introduces him to Zulkadry before they recreate a scene in which a Communist is being drilled about giving land to farmers in the hope of winning them to the cause. They debate whether they were more sadistic than their foes and Zulkadry is surprised to hear during a fishing trip that Anwar is becoming increasingly disconcerted by his dreams. He admits that an apology might do something to heal old wounds, but proclaims that he feels no pangs of conscience about the necessary evil he committed and urges Anwar to see a psychiatrist with the helpful reassurance that they are not just for mad men. Indeed, as they drive through the streets and recall the 1966 `Crush the Chinese' initiative, it is evident that Zulkadry continues to derive great satisfaction from stabbing innocent victims (including his girlfriend's father) and having everyone be afraid of him.

Back in make-up, he explains to Anwar that the only way to avoid guilt is to find the right excuse for one's actions and stick to it come what may. Thus, he remains unmoved as Suryono describes how his Chinese stepfather was dragged from the house one night and later found dead under an oil drum. He recalls how nobody helped his grandfather and his 11 year-old self recover or bury the body and how they had to move to a shanty town soon afterwards, where the lack of facilities prevented him from learning how to read or write. Anwar and Zulkadry listen patiently, but decide the story is too complicated to merit a dramatisation and Suryono nods sadly before being summoned to play a torture victim in the next sequence. Looking on, Siregar says much of this is new to him, as he had no idea at the time that such atrocities were being perpetrated. Anwar and Zulkadry are highly sceptical that somebody working for a newspaper could have remained ignorant and accuse him of trying to cover his tracks. They return to the task of blindfolding Suryono prior to his demise and, as he sobs on being denied permission to see his family, a faint flicker of discomfort crosses Zulkadry's face, as though the tableau had revived a suppressed memory. However, he soon regains his edgy poise and frets that the documentary is going to make them look soft in comparison to the Communists. He admits they could be tough, too, but suggests that some things are best kept secret and, when Oppenheimer asks if he considers himself a criminal, Zulkadry says he was a warrior battling a very real enemy and if he contravened the Geneva Convention then he is entitled, as the victor, to rewrite history from his perspective to justify his actions. Unmoved, he avers that he would be cleared by any court in The Hague, but thinks there is little to be gained by raking over the past.

Meanwhile, Herman has been chosen to stand for election and he tries to pick up some oratorical tips from watching Barack Obama on the news. He canvasses for votes on the streets and finds it tougher going than he expected, as while he had hoped to make a quick buck by going legit, he finds that many of the people he approaches are only willing to support him in return for a bribe. Marzuki from the North Sumatran parliament says that Pancasila is involved in lots of illegal activity and acknowledges that the majority of those at party rallies are being paid to attend so that the function looks good on the news and seduces undecided voters. As Herman gets a crash course in Indonesian democracy, Anwar is teaching his grandchildren not to persecute an injured duckling. However, the focus soon switches to the filming of a nightmare sequence, in which a ghost with an elaborate costume and a black-and-white painted face stands at the foot of the bed and shakes its long, pointed fingers at him. For some reason dressed in drag, Herman directs the scene and criticises Anwar for exhibiting insufficient fear. In a bid to reconnect with his crimes, Anwar takes a train into the countryside and wonders whether his night terrors might stem from his failure to close the eyes of a man he had once beheaded with a machete. He sits in the nocturnal jungle, but the camera is too distant to know whether he is genuinely searching his soul or merely striking a photogenic pose.

Back in the studio, Anwar sits on a chair as Herman (once again in women's clothing) cuts into his neck with a hacksaw. He fakes a throaty rasp to convey his agony and goes to inspect the dummy head that will be used to complete the illusion. As the extras goad Herman into finishing the job, Anwar sits in disturbed silence He also protests during another set-up when he seems to be buried up to his neck in sand and a dragged-up Herman taunts him with what is supposed to be his plucked-out liver.

This grizzly sight comes between a guided tour of the material rewards for being a paramilitary and a shot of Herman and Anwar sitting in pink outfits while dancing girls emerge from the fish structure as they rehearse their musical routine. But things are about to take an even more bizarre twist, as Anwar appears on a chat show on the state-run Televisi Republik Indonesia channel and brags openly about his crimes, while the female presenter allows the various Pancasila supporters in the audience to shout slogans before she chimes in by declaring that God hates Communists. But, even before one has had a chance to digest this hideous digression, Oppenheimer cuts to Deputy Minister of Youth and Sport Sakhyan Asmara arriving on the location set to supervise the reconstruction of the 1965 torching of the village of Kampung Kolam. Once again, no background is provided as to why this may be an important event. But we see Asmara encouraging the extras to show proper fury, as this was a war in which no mercy could be shown. During a lull, some discuss with alarming relish the pleasure they derived from raping underage girls, while Asmara and Herman exhort the female extras to think positively as they improvise their reaction to the brutal assault befalling them.

Asmara reminds Oppenheimer that this all happened a long time ago and that more humane methods have since been found for dealing with opposition. Perhaps for this reason, the scene is presented as a blur with muffled sound to reduce the horror of what is being commemorated. But who knows what any scene in this perplexing picture is supposed to convey. Once again, everyone seems chatty and content with their contribution after Herman calls `cut!', although several more participating children seem traumatised by their experience and Anwar is forced to concede that he is distressed by how real it all looked and he briefly ponders the fate of those youngsters whose lives he had ruined in the mid-1960s.

Interestingly, Anwar again insists on playing the victim (complete with blindfold and oozing head wound) in the final reconstruction, as Herman essays an American-style gangster making a Communist lackey pay for trying to stamp out Hollywood movies. Anwar looks tense as he feels a rope being placed around his neck in imitation of his patented killing style and he tells Herman to get this in one take, as he cannot stomach doing it again. By contrast, Zulkadry stolls around a shopping mall with his family without a care in the world and there is deep irony, therefore, in the choice of `Born Free' as the song to which the dancing girls (including a blue-gowned Herman) gyrate before a gushing waterfall, as a Communist who has been murdered by Anwar presents him with a medal for putting him out of his misery and sending him to heaven.

Reclining at home, Anwar views this number with evident pride. He asks Oppenheimer if he has the throttling scene with him and gets his grandchildren out of bed to sit on his knee as he watches the playback. Naturally, the children are bemused and Anwar is alone again as he reveals that he felt a real sense of fear once his dignity had gone and wonders aloud whether that was how his victims felt before he killed them. Oppenheimer suggests off-camera that they probably felt genuine dread at the prospect of being slain, while he felt nothing more than a twinge of guilt because he was simply creating make-believe brutality. This blunt correction seems to effect Anwar and he begins to well up, as though decades of denial had suddenly been breached. Seemingly, as a result of this epiphany, Anwar returns to the rooftop where he had earlier strutted with such assurance and now retches piteously as the enormity of his offences appear to dawn on him. Despite being clad in a sharp mustard suit like a pimp from a blaxploitation thriller, he suddenly seems like a frail old man and he vomits profusely before slowly making his way back downstairs and out into the night.

Bizarrely, Oppenheimer opts to accompany the closing credits with more clips of the dancing girls on the jetty leading from the maw of the metal fish and, thus, takes the curse off Anwar's moment of truth. But is that really what is was or is this just another staged scene for a camera unwilling to make clear distinctions between what it is being asked to observe. And was this genuinely the last thing that Oppenheimer and co-director Christine Cynn filmed? Without a timeframe, the audience is left to suppose and surmise, with those familiar with the brand of manipulation perfected in Nanook of the North (1922) by Robert Flaherty being highly suspicious about the verisimilitude of much of what they have witnessed - especially as its maker has labelled this `a documentary of the imagination'.

It's certainly disappointing that Oppenheimer has eschewed any analysis of the political situation in Indonesia either in 1965 or in the present day and that he seems so uncurious about why so many mass murderers were immune to prosecution and remain at large and thuggishly active. But what most frustrates here is the way in which the shifts from vérité to fantasy facilitate Oppenheimer's evasiveness and leave us with many unanswered questions about the nature, process and purpose of this entire enterprise. There is a chilling story to be told here and Oppenheimer is to be applauded for uncovering it and for having the pluck to record and present it in his own way. But this slippery experimental riposte to traditional objective non-fiction film-making chooses only to tell a fraction of the sorry saga and, by doing so in the most arch and wayward manner possible, it mythologises the murderers and does a grave disservice to the very people it is striving to solemnise.

7) BLACKFISH (Gabriela Cowperthwaite).

Gabriela Cowperthwaite adopts a rather conventional style for Blackfish. But this investigation into the capture and confinement of killer whales by theme parks in North America has such a compelling story to tell that the blend of archive footage and talking-head interview keeps the focus on the grim facts surrounding Tilikum, a 12,000lb bull orca, whose notoriety is almost entirely down to the exploitative executives who put profit above the physical and psychological well-being of the animals in their care. It is hardly surprising that the SeaWorld organisation refused to co-operate with this picture, as the evidence is stacked so high against its practices that no amount of eloquent justification could satisfactorily counter it. But there is nothing triumphalist about this harrowing exposé. Indeed, an air of melancholy informs the testimony of trainers who deeply regret buying into a corporate ethos that they now realise flies in the fact of both science and plain human decency.

On 24 February 2010, emergency services in the vicinity of SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida received calls that there had been an accident at Shamu Stadium. As audio of these 911 exchanges play on the soundtrack, Cowperthwaite cross-cuts between footage of wet-suited trainers interacting with whales during public shows and former employees John Hargrove, Samantha Berg, Mark Simmons, Carol Ray, Dean Gomersall, John Jett and Jeff Ventre all expressing their surprise that a trainer as experienced as Dawn Brancheau had been killed in such an horrific manner.

A clip from an old promotional film fronted by James Earle Jones boasts of the years of study and coaching required before a trainer could be entrusted with one of the most majestic and intelligent animals in the world. But all of the above contradict this claim, while readily admitting that they had all visited water parks as kids and been hooked on the mix of thrill and tranquility they seemed to offer. Gomersall remembers seeing one trainer performing a Wizard of Oz spoof as Dorky with a cowardly sea lion for company and had scoffed that he would never be caught doing something so demeaning and, yet, he was soon playing exactly the same role and having the time of his life. They all mention the awe they felt on being in the presence of such huge, but graceful and mostly friendly creatures and, while Berg enthuses about the first time she rode on a whale's back, Hargrove recollects the delight of establishing a bond with his animals and forming a unique team.

But the Tilikum-Brancheau incident seemed to make all of these trainers question the operational and zoological methods that they had been happy to extol in promotional films and television interviews to boost visitor numbers. But the fact that such a meticulous trainer could perish in such a manner forced them to rethink their attitudes, especially when the Occupational Safety & Health Administration sued SeaWorld and, amidst a montage of news clips, marine expert Dave Duffus explains that orcas are such unpredictable creatures that swimming with them should be outlawed. But, most revealingly, he says that Tilikum had previous form and that such a tragedy was almost inevitable.

In 1970, John Crowe had been part of a whale-hunting expedition to Puget Sound and he readily conceded that the experience shook him. Howard Garrett, the founder of the Orca Network, describes how bombs were used to herd the whales into coves so that the young could be captured. The males caused a diversion that allowed the females to swim north, but they were only spotted by surveillance planes and their babies were trapped in nets and hauled on to the waiting ships, as the parents hovered helplessly crying out in such a pitiful way that left a weeping Crowe feeling as though he was kidnapping a human child. He was even more distressed at being asked to weight the carcasses of three dead infants so that they could not be found by the authorities and, only then, did he realise the illegality of the mission. Garrett says water parks were warned off the Washington coastline after this, but they started sending expeditions to Iceland instead to ensure they had a ready supply of trainable beasts.

One of those captured in the North Atlantic in 1983 was Tilikum, who was 11.5ft long at the age of two and rapidly grew once he was ensconced in the highly inadequate pools at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia. Eric Walters was one of his first trainers and, along with Ken Balcomb (director of the Centre for Whale Research) and former company director Steve Huxter, he agrees that Tilikum was the star of the show. Huxter concedes that an early trainer had withheld food to punish the creature if he failed to perform his `behaviours' properly and this caused his two female companions, Haida II and Nootka IV, to rake him with their teeth, as they were missing out on treats because of his inadequacies. Moreover, this bullying continued at night, as they were confined in a pool just 20ft across and 30ft deep, which left them virtually immobile for two-thirds of each day.

Trainer Christopher Porter admits that the situation was far from ideal and that the whales could only be lured into this steel box by food. Moreover, Balcomb opines that such treatment would almost certainly have scarred Tilikum emotionally and led to him attacking and killing Keltie Byrne on 20 February 1991. Corinne Cowell and Nadine Kallen were in the audience that day and recall thinking how rundown Sealand was before they spotted Byrne trip and fall into the pool, where Tilikum pulled her under and his companions joined him in attacking her. She had called for help as she had bobbed back to the surface, but nobody had responded to what appears to have been a prolonged attack and Cowell and Kallen were hardly surprised when the park was closed down soon afterwards. But, as Duffus reveals, the verdict of accidental drowning meant that no lawsuits were brought against the owners and that Tilikum was sold to SeaWorld as a prize breeding and performing bull without a stain on his character. But the witnesses to Byrne's demise tell a very different story.

Although the staff at SeaWorld were never given a full explanation, Tilikum was not supposed to perform again. As Garrett explains, too little was known about killer whales at this time and the misconceptions about their nature had been reinforced by Michael Anderon's 1977 film,Orca, a crude hybrid of Moby Dick and Jaws that had starred Richard Harris as a vengeful hunter. But, in fact, there are few recorded orca attacks on humans in the wild, as they are gentle creatures who live in close-knit family groups that have their own distinctive communication patterns. Neuroscientist Lori Marino explains how orcas have a special part of their brains devoted to processing emotions, which enables them to bond more closely than humans and not only develop a greater sense of self, but also share it with the other members of their gam. This pack mentality explains why whales become stranded en masse. But it also suggests why there is antagonism when whales from different pods are forced together in captivity, as they don't necessarily share a language or behavioural systems.

Duffus explains that the Inuit peoples call them `blackfish' and revere them for their speed and power. He admits he would never leave his boat to swim with them, even in the wild, and their ruthless cunning is clearly shown in aerial footage of wild whales trapping a sea lion on an ice floe. But this is where they should be, as they gain so little from human interaction and certainly live longer in the sea than they ever do in water parks - with males reaching ages of 50-60 and females being known to tip 100, while they last for a mere 20-25 years in captivity.

Ventre recalls how enormous Tilikum seemed when he arrived at SeaWorld. But, as whale society is so matriarchal, he was bullied again by the females in his pool, and he was often kept in isolation when he was not being used for breeding. Eventually, however, he was introduced into shows to provide a big splash finale and Jett and Berg remember him always being happy to see his trainers in the morning and that he seemed to like learning tricks and getting a positive reaction from people. As they had been told that the females had killed Keltie Byrne, the staff always considered him a big softie. But Berg did notice that certain administrators were always nervous around the pool when Tilikum was there and Ventre recalls being ordered to destroy a tape of a show when he noticed that Tilikum had tried to snatch one of the trainers from the walkway.

Yet, when head trainer Kelly Clark was questioned by OSHA attorney John Black during the court case (presented as line drawings on lined A4 paper with typed dialogue), she said that orcas were as likely to pull someone under the water as he or any other man was likely to commit rape. The potential was there, but it doesn't mean it happens. Judge Ken Welsch ordered that her provocative remark be struck from the record, but Ventre says it was in the notes that accompanied Tilikum from Sealand that he had the propensity to attack. Carol Ray now feels ashamed that she trotted out SeaWorld propaganda about the whales being happy and safe, as she now realises they only performed for food and led miserable existences when left alone. Moreover, she now understands how traumatised Katina was when her disruptive daughter Kalina was taken away and is still haunted by the anguished cries that she recognises now as crushing grief.

Hargrove has a similar story about Kasaka being separated from her calf and reveals that experts were brought in to investigate the plaintiff sounds she kept making that differed markedly from her usual intonation. After much deliberation, they concluded that she was trying to contact her baby and he opines that it is morally unacceptable to put an animal of such sensitivity and intelligence in such a callously harrowing situation. Gomersall similarly regrets bitterly his failure to question the information his bosses kept feeding him, while Berg says she knew a lot about being a trainer, but next to nothing about the animals she was tending. Garrett debunks the myth that whales live longer in captivity and declares that only 1% of males suffer from dorsal fin collapse in the ocean, but almost all enclosed males are stricken. Ventre confirms the folly of mixing whales from different family units and Marino states that such a policy will inevitably lead to violence that would not occur in the natural world, as the whales would rather beat a retreat and find a new area of water than risk a confrontation.

In 1988, an orca named Kandu killed Corky by breaking its jaw so badly that it bled to death before anyone could help it. Berg insists that the trainers he knew always felt close to their animals, but there is no guarantee others will treat them so well and Dawn Brancheau fell victim to the damage that she never knew had been inflicted upon Tilikum.Ray remembers the shock she felt on hearing the news. But, Cowperthwaite reveals that there have been over 70 recorded attacks since 20 April 1971 at the various SeaWorld centres across the United States. In 1987, John Sillick was blamed for allowing a whale to crush him while riding on the back of another. Footage of the incident is shown and it seems clear this was a conscious attack rather than a case of trainer negligence or error. Berg says it is a miracle that Sillick survived the crushing, while quick thinking on the part of colleagues prevented a trainer named Tamaree being pulled under by Orkid and Splash, as she left a leg dangling over the pool edge as she chatted with them. By opening a gate that the whales knew let the older, larger Kasaka into the pool, the staff succeeded in driving the pair away and Tamaree was fortunate to only incur compound fractures of her arm.

Berg insists that she knew nothing of these attacks while working in Orlando and the other ex-trainers agree that an `ask no questions' culture existed and, if anyone made a complaint or was reluctant to go back in the pool after an episode, they would be informed that they could easily be replaced. But the case of Ken Peters and Kasaka on 29 November 2006 did make the headlines after the 5000lb whale grabbed his foot while preparing to do a `rocket hop' and held him at the bottom of the pool for between 60-80 seconds. As an experienced scuba diver and trainer, Peters remained calm and make the most of Kasaka resurfacing to gulp in as much air as possible before being dragged down for a second time. As Duffus says on seeing the footage, the beast was toying with him and it was remarkable that Peters had the presence of mind to calm her down and make a dash for the safety zone once she was sufficiently relaxed.

Yet, rather than admitting that this had been a near fatality, SeaWorld spun the story so it appeared to validate its methodology and the daily shows continued without further inquiry. But not everyone was as skilled as Ken Peters and Daniel P. Dukes perished in the Orlando pool on 7 July 1999 and it was presumed that Tilikum had killed him, as he had kept hold of the body like a doll. According to Ventre, Dukes was mentally disturbed and remained hidden after a show or climbed into the facility clearly tried to commune with the whales. Jett is curious as to why none of the many CCTV cameras around the place failed to capture his image or why the night watch trainer failed to notice any commotion. The management told the media that Dukes had died of hypothermia, but it seems as though Tilikum had stripped him, bitten off his genitals and mauled the corpse. But, rather than destroying him or letting him loose, the owners decided to keep him as he was too valuable at stud and it is estimated that 45% of SeaWorld orcas have Tilikum's genes.

Mark Simmons doubts that the gene count will prove significant, but he is less confident when Cowperthwaite asks from off camera about Loro Parque in the Canary island of Tenerife. Estefania Rodriguez is less reticent, however, as she recalls the fate of fiancé Alexis Rodriguez, who was killed by a bull orca named Keto on Christmas Eve in 2009. Suzanne Allee, the video technician at Loro Parque, claims that the attraction was an accident waiting to happen. Four young bulls had been flown over from the US and they were entrusted to inexperienced staff. As the pools hadn't been completed to standard, the animals had health problems and footage shows a clearly distressed whale being held down by several men so it could be treated. As in Orlando, it was the best trainer who succumbed and his mother, Mercedes, recalls the park authorities telling her that there was nothing they could have done. Yet, when Estefania was told about the incident, she was reassured that everything was okay. Instead, she had to go to the morgue and see that Alexis's chest had burst open with the impact of the attack.

Dave Duffus is certain that SeaWorld was responsible for the trainers at Loro Parque, even though it had no commercial interest in the company. Yet, when Kelly Clark was questioned on oath by OSHA, she denied any culpability and Cowperthwaite boldly dissolves from the blank-faced line drawing of the reconstruction to the real Clark emerging from the hearing. On the soundtrack, Duffus avers that if she didn't know about the SeaWorld link to Loro Parque, she should have done. But his suspicion is that she is lying and it does seem as though the curse of Tilikum's genes is very real.

John Jett explains that he knew by now that it would only be a matter of time before Tilikum attacked once more. Garrett and Berg explain how the show on 24 February 2010 had not gone well, as the whales were refusing to co-operate and Blancheau decided to perform a few additional behaviours in her Dine With Shamu segment to give the audience better value for their money. At first, Tilikum seemed to be enjoying himself. But he failed to hear a whistle at the end of a perimeter pec wave and went round a second time. When he came to the pool edge to collect his reward for doing a good job, Blancheau sent him away with nothing for ignoring his cue. Suddenly frustrated at being short-changed and aware from the sound of the ice in the fish bucket that supplies were running low, Tilikum seemed to switch off and his resentment grew as Blancheau pushed him into doing more tricks.

As Blancheau entered the water to enjoy some quiet time with Tilikum before his big finale, he seemed to lose his temper and grabbed her arm and rolled her over and mutilated her on taking her below the surface. He refused to relinquish her body after the attack and a shocking list of injuries are catalogued on screen from the autopsy report. When he was asked in court what lessons had been learned between Tilikum's first assault and this one, Duffus said he was pretty sure the answer was `none'. But what appalled him most about this tragedy was the way SeaWorld tried to avoid taking any responsibility for it. Initially, they informed the police that a trainer had slipped into the pool and drowned. When eyewitness reports contradicted this version of events, the PR machine kicked in and seized upon the fact that Brancheau's long hair had been loose in a ponytail and that she only had herself to blame for Tilikum grabbing it .Former executive Thad Lacinak spouted this story on ABC News and Brancheau's friends were furious when one of her spotters confirmed it.

This unnamed individual (although he is shown on screen) was criticised by the OSHA during the trial. But Simmons suggests on camera that the arm grab was playful rather than aggressive and that captivity does not send whales insane. SeaWorld's expert witness, Jeff Andrews, said much the same thing on oath and he is outed here with a freeze frame, as he leaves the courtroom. Morino insists that all whales held in such confined spaces are potentially ticking time bombs and Jett disagrees profoundly with Simmons's contention that water parks are vital to raising public consciousness about marine conservation issues. Indeed, he even goes so far as to call them evil places.

Eric Walters cries as he states that Tilikum kills because he has no outlet for his frustrations and Jett confirms that he spends long periods alone, with one clip seeming to show that he remained motionless in the same point in the pool for three hours. All he does now is the big splash finale and it is clear from the footage that his dorsal fin is hideously deformed and that he seems to be going through the motions. Over images of the Free Tilly campaign, Duffus proclaims it a tragic state of affairs and Berg and her fellow born-again trainers do the rounds of news bulletins calling for the end of such barbaric practices. On 30 May 2012, Judge Welsch made a number of recommendations, including one that all trainers had to remain behind a barrier away from the orcas. But SeaWorld appealed his findings and it remains open for business, as before. As the film ends, Ray, Berg, Ventre and Gommersall take a boat trip to see whales in the wild, where they should be, and any viewer who isn't left with a profound sense of outrage either has a vested interest in a water park or an incurably hard heart.

There is little left to say at the end of this emotionally draining film. Cowperthwaite (an experienced producer of small-screen wildlife documentaries) and co-scenarist Eli B. Despres lay out their case with a simplicity and clarify that is supporting by admirable restraint and a devastating sense of authority. It might have been useful to have had more dissenting voices on hand, as Simmons lacks charisma and conviction. Moreover, it is never made clear what (if any) scientific contributions aqua centres make along the lines of zoos. But Garrett and Duffus do such a good job deflating any theories that would have been advanced that it is hard to say how useful such a pro-park contribution would have been. Furthermore, the sheer weight of evidence provided by so many disillusioned, angry and self-recriminating ex-employees is overwhelmingly damning and it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the marine entertainment industry is willing to disregard humane treatment to make a blood-stained buck.

6) I AM BREATHING (Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon).

In I Am Breathing, Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon convey the true feeling of what it is like to be alive and suddenly confronted with the shocking inevitability of death. Filmed during the last few weeks of 34 year-old Neil Platt's battle with Motor Neurone Disease, this follows the example of Peter Friedman and Tom Joslin's landmark actuality Silverlake Life (1993) in recording the courage of both the victim and their carers, while also providing a quiet celebration of an extinguishing existence. But, what is most noteworthy in this humbling and genuinely moving memoir is the affection and unaffectedness that all manage to sustain at this most distressing of times.

A few weeks after he and Scottish wife Louise had welcomed the arrival of their first son, Oscar, Neil Platt began noticing a loss of co-ordination. After undergoing tests, he was diagnosed with the same Motor Neurone Disease (or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's Disease) that had killed his father David at the age of 50. Mother Lynne, brother Matthew and auntie Jill all knew what to expect. But the speed with which Neil lost control of his limbs surprised them all and he decided to purchase some voice recognition software in order to start producing a blog to share his experience with fellow sufferers and their families.

In an hilarious sequence, Neil has great difficulty in getting the programme to understand the phrase `at our end' in his Yorkshire accent and his frustration provides the first inkling that this is not going to be a sanitised study in saintly courage. Indeed, Neil is angry at being stricken and deprived of the opportunity to enjoy happy times with his wife and child. But he is also fully aware that he can do nothing to resist the onset of MND and that his duty lies in making things as easy as possible for the devoted Louise and in leaving some sort of testament so that Oscar can get to know his father in the years ahead.

Reliant on breathing and lifting apparatus to enable him to participate in family life, Neil often accepts assistance with tetchy resignation and his irritation spills over when he calls to cancel his telephone contract and is given a sales pitch by the person at the other end of the line, who singularly fails to appreciate the reason why Neil is making the call. Yet, even though he cannot understand why a cardboard coffin is more expensive than a wooden one, he discusses his funeral arrangements with much greater sang froid, as he wishes to spare Louise as much of the administrative side of his demise as possible. In return, she tries to ensure everything remains as normal as it can be and lets him sample Oscar's baby food and props him up in his armchair so he can see the toddler playing on his garden swing.

Anxious to leave Oscar with reference points, Neil begins looking through old photo albums with his mother. Louise is amused by a snap of him looking like Chuck Norris on his motorbike and we see home movie footage of Neil in more carefree times. Feeding him jelly babies, Louise tries to keep Neil up to date with his blog and reassures him that he has much to be proud of in his short life.

Narrating from his letter to Oscar, Neil reveals that he first encountered Louise in 1993 while studying architecture at the University of Edinburgh. She was playing pool, but he shied away from speaking to her and it wasn't until they met again at a party in 2003 that he realised this was his soulmate. The feeling is evidently mutual and the pained expression on Louise's face as she watches Neil enduring his treatment is as heart-rending as her throwaway remark to Oscar as he watches a horse in the field abutting the garden that he had better not get too attached to the house, as she won't be able to afford to stay there once she is alone.

Just a few weeks after footage was taken of the family strolling in the grounds of Greenwich Observatory, Neil began having walking difficulties and started using a stick. The damning diagnosis came soon afterwards and he worried that he might not live to see Oscar's first Christmas. But, while he got to savour the youngster's excitement at seeing all his presents, Neil was surprised by how quickly he lost the ability to do the most basic things. Within six months, he could no longer use his hands and had to quit his job. Just three months later, he had to accept that he was unable to walk and soon became dependent upon a ventilator to help him breathe. Yet, while his motor skills declined, he retained the majority of his other bodily sensations and explains how infuriating it is to have an itch you simply cannot scratch.

Neil can only look on, therefore, as Louise and his friend Rick play Wii tennis. But his mind remains sharp and he compiles a list of tasks for Oscar's uncles to undertake in his absence. Moreover, there is often an edge to his banter and his remarks while watching The X Factor over a fish supper are cutting in the extreme. Yet, while she is occasionally stung, Louise always makes allowances and the shot of her absent-mindedly playing with the hairs on his wrists as he drinks while gazing at the television is utterly charming. She proves just as attentive the next morning, when she relieves Rick, who has been sleeping in the cot beside Neil's bed in case he needed anything in the night. Having changed his oxygen mask, she gets his arms out from under the duvet and brings Oscar to see him and he is evidently relieved that his boy will be in good hands.

Neil reveals the extent to which his outlook was shaped by his father's innate sense of decency and decides to prepare a box of mementoes that will allow Oscar to gauge his personality. Needing to work quickly before losing the power of speech, he includes a teddy bear, a tie pin from work and his leather jacket among the treasures and, over footage of his younger self playing the guitar, Neil also tells Oscar about the sheer joy of making music. The child clearly adores being around him and sits opposite his father in his high chair, as Neil wonders whether being stung in the eye by a bee while out on his motorbike exacerbated his condition. He laments that the illness is beginning to define him and contemplates the meaning of life and the swift passage of time on his blog. He no longer wears a watch, but a projection clock beams the time on to the ceiling above his bed and, when the display turns red, he declares it to be his personal countdown.

He wishes he had started the blog earlier and wonders if it is actually helping anybody. But, while he is feeling down about himself, he remains proud of Louise, especially when she appears on the local news to raise funds and awareness about MND. In his next post, Neil wonders whether the diseases has brought out the best in him and receives a boost when he garners some positive feedback. He marvels at how humans can adapt to anything and Louise opines that Neil's determination to keep going somehow make it easier for herself. But there are still moments of tension, such as when he blows bubbles in his drink while watching a Chuck Norris movie with Matthew and Louise wanders into the kitchen stressed by his childishness, but also aware that the situation is infinitely worse for him because his time is running out.

Davie and McKinnon cut to the couple's wedding day four years earlier, when Neil wore a kilt and they pulled faces at the altar in a bid to steady their nerves. He confides in his blog that he loves her strength more than ever and, as a result, opts to issue an advance directive that the ventilator is to be switched off after he loses the ability to speak, as he says that communication is the most potent freedom we possess and that he couldn't stand to become a clockwork brain.

Neil is shown having a bed bath and being fed a dunked biscuit, as the machines keeping him alive whirr in tandem with the sound of his measured breathing. At another point, he tries to focus on Oscar playing in the snow and Louise films everything so she can show him later. She jokes that the mush he is now eating is disgusting and, over footage of an idyllic holiday, she shares his wish that he could have been himself for a little bit longer. Neil continues this theme in his blog by urging people to make the most of every minute. But, suddenly, one morning, he finds it almost impossible to speak and Louise is upset that she cannot understand him. Davie and McKinnon capture close-ups of their lips as they try to make contact and, soon afterwards, Neil admits online that his growing inability to swallow is making life very difficult and he signs off with the message, `time at the bar, ladies and gentlemen'.

He now has an artificial night sky projected on to the ceiling and he gazes at it trying to remain upbeat, even though he knows his time is almost up. He insists that the cameras keep rolling, however, and Louise helps him with his 100th Plattitude blog. But he is aware that the strain of nursing him is getting too much and they have a final night together before he is transferred to a nearby hospice. She strokes his face and cries, as her husband struggles for words. He has been through a devastating and degrading experience, but never once tried to hide and the room seems huge without his bed and life-support machinery. Oscar wanders in, as though not really sure of the significance of the sudden space around him and the film ends poignantly with close-ups of the labelled items in the memory box that will bind him to his father forever.

When assessing a documentary with such powerful emotional content, it's often easy to overlook the technique employed in its making. In this case, however, the strategies employed by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon (who knew Neil Platt at college) afford viewers unprecedented access to a dying man's last days, while also keeping them at a discreet distance that prevents them from feeling they are intruding voyeuristically upon private grief and allows them to reflect upon what they are watching from a personal perspective. This merging of the specific and the universal represents a remarkable achievement, as it not only reinforces the film's educational and artistic value, but also its philosophical and spiritual potency.

In collaboration with editor Peter Winther and senior editing consultant Janus Billeskov Jansen, Davie and McKinnon leaven the footage taken in Neil's sickroom with home movies, screen grabs, views of the changing seasons and point-of-view shots taken from a vehicle speeding along the country roads that used to give Neil such pleasure. Such a metaphor for the journey we are all on towards a destination we cannot envisage should seem corny. But it chimes in with the sincerity of Neil's desire to make the most of his ebbing time and his exhortation that we should do likewise makes this already affecting film truly inspirational.

As if to emphasise how quickly things change, it is worth noting that Louise has married Robin Oswald since Neil died in February 2009 and has embarked upon a new life in Edinburgh, where Oscar has now started school. She continues to campaign for MND charities and no one would begrudge her a chance of lasting happiness. But the fact that her story is continuing confirms the merit of Neil's decision to make this film, as this is never simply an intimate record of one man's fortitude. It's a reminder to us all of the fate that awaits us and we can but hope that we are afforded the opportunity to depart with such love surrounding us and with the knowledge that we have done everything possible to make the future easier for those left behind to mourn and move on.

5) ¡VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS! (Victor Kossakovsky).

Ever since his debut feature, The Belovs (1994), Russian documentarist Victor Kossakovsky has opted for a lyrical observational style. He is best known for Hush! (2003), which he filmed from the window of his St Petersburg apartment. But he surpasses that eavesdropped snapshot with ¡Vivan las Antipodas!, a compelling travelogue that reveals the anticipated differences and unexpected similarities between places that are literally situated at the opposite end of the Earth to each other.

Apparently, any tunnel through the planet's core would be 7926 miles long. However, as two-thirds of the surface is covered in water, the majority would come out in the middle of an ocean or sea. But Kossakovsky has identified four pairs and makes stunning use of location photography and post-production trickery to compare and contrast them.

Most people will be familiar with Shanghai, the poster city of the Chinese economic boom with its population of 18 million and the world's biggest bridge spanning the vast expanse of the Yangtze River. By contrast, the bridge over the trickling stream at Entre Ríos in Argentina is considerably less spectacular. But there is no smog or traffic congestion here. Instead, fiftysomething brothers Abel and Orlando Perez have plenty of time to shoot the breeze as they man a toll that is lucky to get a couple of customers a day. No wonder they joke that a dog jumping into a passing vehicle will probably see more of the world than they will However, these porch philosophers know their patch and can tell from the increased croaking of the frogs and scurrying of the ants that a deluge is imminent. The rain does indeed come and the shot of the ramshackle three-house settlement (which has no electricity) suddenly being surrounded by a flood tide is not only visually striking, but also very much the `crazy metaphor' that Abel proclaims it to be.

Further south in Chilean Patagonia, René Vargas lives a solitary life with his sheep and cats. He has acquired the nickname `The Condor Man' on account of his fascination with the gracefully gliding birds who share his remote habitat. But on the flipside of his idyll, Tatiana Frolova finds life lonely on the banks of Lake Baikal in Russia when daughter Alina Gajdukova is away at boarding school. The chatter happily while going about their daily chores and feast on fresh cranberries as Alina asks her mother what to do when you're in love with somebody who doesn't know about your feelings.

Kossakovsky uses the placid waters to reflect the craggy Baikal scenery that has its mirror image in Vargas's eyrie-pocked outcrop. But there are few geographical similarities between Big Island in Hawaii and the village of Kabu in Botswana. A longtime resident of the former, Jack Thompson watches in relief as the red-hot lava flow emanating from the volcano Kilauea passes a safe distance from his house. Leaving his dog Alias behind, he sets off on his motorbike to check on his neighbours and is distraught to find Alias missing on his return. A magnificent match cut shifts the scene from the mottled grey lava to the hide of an elephant seen in close-up near to Lilian's kiosk. Bathing hippos and basking lions can also be spotted in the bush. But business is obviously slow and Lilian wishes those congregating outside did a bit more shopping and a bit less gossiping. Back in Hawaii, however, Jack calls on caravan dwellers Joe, Ginger, Luke and Noah Esposito in the hope that they have seen Alias. But his search seems destined to end in disappointment, as Kossakovsky makes another majestic cross-cut from the glowing lava to the magic hour sky over Entre Ríos.

The final pairing takes us from Miraflores in Spain to Castle Point in New Zealand. At the former, Kossakovsky alights on a rock that has occupied the same spot for millennia and shows it paying temporary host to a variety of ants, geckos and caterpillars. However, a fledgling butterfly seems reluctant to stray too far from the familiar landmark and its reassuring solidity contrasts tragically with the expiring carcass of a whale that has become beached on the Wairarapa coast. Measuring over 20 metres, the mammal is too big for the locals to move, let alone coax back into deeper waters and they simply have to stand around and watch it die.

Diggers hover as volunteers fire up a chainsaw and start preparing the beast for burial. It's a sad end to a journey that has enthralled and inspired. But the message is not lost that no living creatures are immune from either the caprices of nature or the passage of time and Kossakovsky uses this interconnected fragility to remind viewers of the responsibility they have to each other and to future generations to ensure that the legacy we pass on is as pristine and sustainable as possible.

4) BEWARE OF MR BAKER (Jay Bulger).

South Africa provides the starting point for one of the best music documentaries of recent times, as first-time director Jay Bulger goes in search of the wild man of drumming in Beware of Mr Baker. Two years after blagging his way into Ginger Baker's compound to write an article for Rolling Stone magazine, Bulger returns to Tulbagh in the Western Cape and is first seen being rapped on the nose with his host's walking stick for daring to include interviews with some of his past collaborators in the film. However, it soon transpires that such behaviour is entirely normal and even seems moderate in comparison with some of Baker's more excessive antics since he first burst on to the music scene in the early 1960s.

According to Johnny Rotten, everyone viewing this profile should prostrate themselves in gratitude for what Ginger Baker has achieved. However, a montage of celebrity drummers and former bandmates suggests that Baker's greatness has come at a considerable cost to himself and others and it quickly becomes clear as Bulger starts to interview him in his favourite armchair that age has not mellowed Baker in the slightest. He was born in Lewisham on 19 August 1939 and lost his war hero father four and a half years later. Looking back, Baker realises he enjoyed the excitement of the air raids and still has a thing for explosions. But the absence of a role model led to him going off the rails as a teenager and he joined a gang.

During a shoplifting expedition to a record shop, however, Baker heard the Charlie Parker album Quintet of the Year and he suddenly discovered something to which he could relate. His mother beat him for stealing the disc and his former gangmates sliced him with razors for desertion. But Baker started fighting back after he read the advice to stand up for himself and be a man that his father had written in the letter he left to be opened on his son's 14th birthday. Sister Pat Wallis says he inherited the Baker temper, but he also had a natural sense of rhythm and timing and was playing in jazz bands almost as soon as he left school. Unfortunately, following a meeting with Phil Seamen in the Flamingo club in London, he also became a regular heroin user, but absolved himself because he felt the drug enabled him to play with the freedom that he heard on the records of African drummers in Seamen's collection.

It would take 19 years for Baker finally to conquer his addiction, by which time he had fathered three children with first wife Elizabeth Finch. Daughter Ginette laughs off the fact that she survived a botched abortion and siblings Leda and Kofi also agree that Baker was always closer to his drums than he ever was to them. They were certainly key to his fame and fortune, as replaced Charlie Watts in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated in the early 1960s and reunited with bassist Jack Bruce, who had once impressed him when he jammed with one of his earlier combos. He was less taken with Mick Jagger when he guested on one number, but he struck up a friendship with another charismatic frontman when he joined The Graham Bond Organisation in 1963.

Hailed by their peers as one of the decade's most significant groups, this distinctive quartet cropped up in movies like Robert Hartford-Davis's Gonks Go Beat (1965). But they didn't quite fit into the contemporary pop scene, while chemicals fuelled the tensions between Baker and Bruce that finally erupted when the former pulled a knife during a fight and the latter was fired. With Bond also invariably under the influence, the band fell apart and Bruce was astonished when Baker invited him to play alongside Eric Clapton in Cream.

Drummers Neil Peart (Rush), Bill Ward (Black Sabbath), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Max Weinberg (The E Street Band), Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge), Lars Ulrich (Metallica), Stewart Copeland (The Police) and Nick Mason (Pink Floyd) all proclaim they owe their careers to Baker. Yet, as clips play of `I Feel Free', `Sunshine of Your Love' and `White Room', he insists he is not a rock drummer and never has been. Moreover, he complains bitterly that his crucial role in the arrangement of tracks on the albums Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears and Goodbye brought him little financial reward, as the songwriting royalties were shared by Bruce and lyricist Peter Brown. But there were perks, with Elizabeth and roadie Bob Adcock recalling the groupies who swarmed over the trio, while Denny Laine reveals that they were idolised by Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana and Mickey Hart from The Grateful Dead remember the impact they had on America with their supersonic `Holy Ghost' music.

But after just two hectic years together, Baker, Bruce and Clapton went their separate ways. Bruce regrets that they couldn't work things out, as they had such amazing musical chemistry. However, the easy-going Clapton couldn't take the feuding within the rhythm section and was horrified when Baker turned up on his doorstep as he was putting together his next supergroup, Blind Faith, with Steve Winwood and Ric Grech. This enterprise proved equally short-lived (1968-69), but Baker had a greater freedom to play and revelled in the trappings his success brought him. He was even unfazed when he heard on the radio that he had been found dead in a hotel room of a heroin overdose. But he knew he was pushing his luck and tried to clean up his act in Hawaii and Jamaica (where the temptations came thick and fast) before arriving back in Britain to discover that Clapton had quit to tour with Delaney & Bonnie and that Winwood was in the process of reforming Traffic.

Baker tells Bulger he has no hard feelings about Clapton twice walking out on him and insists he remains his best friend on the planet. But Clapton isn't sure he ever got to know Baker and concedes that there are whole areas of his life about which he knows nothing. He kept his distance, therefore, as Ginger Baker's Air Force harked back to the big band era. Denny Laine recalls the thrill of being part of such an ambitious jazz fusion project alongside Winwood, Grech, Seamen and Bond. But it also fell apart after some 18 months and two albums that Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch reckons cost Baker a small fortune to record and promote.

Reminiscing about this period leads Bulger to compare Baker to contemporaries like The Who's Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin's John Bonham. However, he is furious to be branded a rock drummer and Clapton rallies to his cause by describing him as a proper musician, who could compose and arrange as well as play. Indeed, Baker prefers to compare himself with Elvin Jones, Phil Seamen and Art Blakey, with whom he had famous drum jousts in the early 1970s (which are recalled in a slick montage of footage and stills that is brilliantly cut to a rapid fire beat). But Baker was in no mood to rest on his laurels and decamped to Africa, where documentarist Tony Palmer filmed him motoring across the Sahara. However, it was only when he reached the Nigerian capital that Baker finally found what he had been searching.

Fela Kuti was the driving force behind Afrobeat and, from the moment Baker saw him at the Afro Spot in Lagos, he recognised a kindred spirit. Sandra Izsadore, Remi Kabaka and Michael Veal all insist that Baker was lucky to play with such a cultural icon. But his son, Femi, remembers they were like brothers and Baker risked his life by spending six years in such an unstable country to increase his understanding of African music. He even opened his own studio and became a part of his political party, Movement of the People. However, the friendship was doomed when Baker became obsessed with polo and started mixing with the very elite that Kuti wished to sweep aside. Thus, when the army attacked his headquarters in 1977, he severed his ties and Baker only just managed to escape when his studio was raided and he lost every penny he had invested in it.

Returning to Blighty, Baker joined Adrian and Paul Gurvitz in the Baker Gurvitz Army, largely because no one else would play with him. He was also hit with an enormous tax bill after the Inland Revenue saw a BBC film about his polo stable and Elizabeth and the children were evicted from their home just as he eloped to Italy with an 18 year-old named Sarah, who was the sister of Ginette's first boyfriend. Baker was off drugs at this point, but began using again during the recording of the Hearts on Fire album and footage shows him falling off his drum stool while preparing for a TV performance. Yet he remained in demand and Johnny Rotten sent producer Bill Laswell to find him to play on a Public Image album. However, Baker was in a dark place after the bored Sarah dumped him for a younger man and he accepted an offer to star in the third-rate TV series, Nasty Boys (1990).

Baker now considers this the stupidest thing he has ever seen. But worse was to follow when he was reduced to placing an advertisement in Music Connection magazine in the hope of finding a new band. Visiting around this time, Ginette barely recognised her father, as he had gone to look so old. However, he married for a third time after meeting Karen Loucks, who felt he needed looking after. She sufficiently bolstered his confidence to join Masters of Reality in 1992 and the Sunrise on the Sufferbus album was widely admired. But the kids in the audience had no idea who Baker was and threw things at him during gigs.

Tired of playing the rock star, Baker and Loucks opened a polo club in Colorado and jammed after games with Ron Miles and his band DJQ20. Now also a drummer of some repute, Kofi started playing with his father, who got to meet one of his heroes when Max Roach came to a gig in New York. But, Ginger being Baker, it was only a matter of time before things went awry. When one of his English grooms was arrested for not having a visa, Baker launched into an anti-American tirade on the Lewis and Floorwax radio show and was promptly deported. Before he left, he hurled a volley of abuse at Kofi and the pair have never spoken since. He also broke up with Karen (whom he refuses to discuss) and relocated to South Africa.

Now married to Zimbabwean Kudzai Machokoto (who is very hesitant when Bulger asks if Baker is a good stepfather to her 12 year-old daughter Lisa), Baker tried to replicate the polo-jazz combination, but couldn't find musicians of a sufficient calibre. He reunited with Clapton and Bruce at the Royal Alber Hall in 2005 and blew the $5 million he made from the concerts on 24 British horses. Stricken with degenerative osteoarthritis and occasionally forced to wear an oxygen mask, Baker was broke and on the point of selling the ranch when he bashed Bulger on the nose at the end of the shoot. Yet, Clapton and Bruce remain loyal to the cantankerous maverick and reaffirm his greatness as an artist. Thus, they can hardly have been surprised when, 18 months after filming ended, Baker made a comeback. Bulger films him on stage in Salzburg in 2011 and Baker can still belt it out with the best of them. So, maybe Johnny Rotten has it right when he concludes that being a madman is a small price to pay for being able to play such perfect music.

Adeptly edited by Abhay Sofsky, this is a compelling portrait of a wayward genius. Musically, Ginger Baker is in a league of his own and even the children he has so callously neglected seem prepared to make allowances for his eccentricities and derelictions. But, while Bulger chronicles the career capably enough, he is much less interested in drum technique, classic tracks and band break-ups than he is in the man behind the notoriety. Consequently, the most important moment in the whole film comes at the end when he asks Baker to remove the sunglasses he has worn throughout the interview sessions and a pair of sullen, exhausted eyes squint in the glare of the spotlights. The toll taken by the ravages is plain to see and, instead of a rock titan with a thousand anecdotes and a bad word to say about everyone, Baker suddenly seems like a very old man.

True to form, however, just as he appears beaten, Baker bounces back off the canvas and prepares to slug it out one last time and his exhilaration after the Salzburg gig proves a more than fitting finale. It also brings Bulger's own story full circle and he deserves enormous credit for coaxing Baker into being so candid about his triumphs and disasters. At times, he bigs up his own part in proceedings and interviews too many famous faces with nothing useful to say. He also overdoes the animated inserts produced in a stark charcoal-like style by David Bell, with the repeated image of Baker rowing in the bowels of an ancient galley to map his peregrinations rather hammering home the notion that he has always been a slave to the rhythm. But his rapport with an ever-tetchy, chain-smoking subject enables him to elicit several acidic gems, including Baker's jaundiced views on heavy metal, his supposed drumming rivals and his own demons and tendency to self-destruct. Moreover, Bulger's refusal to be starstruck ensures that this is never anything less than honest in its appraisal of the man, his myth and his music.

3) FIRE IN THE BLOOD (Dylan Gray). .

The subcontinent plays a crucial role in Dylan Mohan Gray's Fire in the Blood, a documentary designed to provoke outrage as it provides an unflinching tribute to the unlikely alliance of activists, doctors and high-profile champions that challenged the capitalist system and the patent laws it hides behind and forced the avaricious American pharmaceutical industry into making life-saving anti-retroviral drugs available at affordable prices to the developing world's most impoverished HIV victims. The courage, selflessness and ingenuity of the campaigners is humbling. But it's the arrogance and greed of the drug tycoons and their political lackeys that leaves the lingering impression, as they conspired to allow 10 million to perish in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the name of maximised profits.

The debuting Gray, who also serves as his own editor and narrator, opens his case by introducing doctors Peter Mugyenyi and Noor Jehan Majid, whose despair at being unable to treat patients in the Ugandan capital Kampala and the town of Machava in Mozambique came to the attention of HIV+ Cape Town judge Edwin Cameron, who felt it was unfair that he could experience the Lazarus Effect produced by ARVs when others less fortunate than himself were condemned to die. He found allies in fellow South African Zackie Achmat and Ugandan journalist Elvis Basudde Kyeyune, whose campaigns to raise awareness of the chemical apartheid being defended by Big Pharma insiders like Jan Raaijmakers of GlaxoSmithKline and Andrew S. Natsios from the United States Agency for International Development aroused the indignation of intellectual property expert James P. Love, who set out to discover how much a course of treatment actually cost and why US-based multinationals refused to reduce their prices to prevent a calamity.

Back in 2000, Achmat had tried to import a Thai generic version of Flucanazole, which cost only $1 per tablet rather than the $40 charged by Pfizer at a time when the average African weekly wage was $68. However, South African patent law meant that the cargo was contraband and it was impounded. As a consequence, Achmat announced that he would not take ARVs until everyone in the world could afford them and Nelson Mandela visited his home to salute a stance that also inspired Love, who was informed that the conglomerates refused to offer discounts to Africa in case the gesture caused the drugs to under-perform in the expanding markets of India and China.

Love was far from convinced by the arguments that scientists were afraid that people in the developing world would misuse the drugs and cause AIDS to mutate and once again become a deadly threat to affluent Westerners. Indeed, as doctors Suniti Solomon (from Kousalya) and Eric Goemaere (from Doctors Without Frontiers) point out, women like Nomvuselelo Kalolo (who is caring for her ailing daughter Lisa n Mfuleni in the Western Cape) and Chennai resident Kousalya Periasamy (who was infected after an arranged marriage with an older man) are more likely to follow instructions to the letter as they are aware the drugs offer the sole chance of survival.

However, as former Pfzer vice-president Peter Rost and New York Times business reporter Donald McNeil confirm, corporations are much more interested in making money for their stockholders than in sponsoring humanitarian programmes. Moreover, as they hold such sway in Washington, the status quo was unlikely to change, even when it attracted such notable opponents as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former president Bill Clinton. Ironically, however, it was another onetime Washington big-hitter, William F. Haddad (who had been an advisor to John F. Kennedy), who proved to be the game changer, as he not only backed Love's bid to expose the callous cynicism of Big Pharma, but he also found a willing ally in Yusuf K. Hamied, whose father had been encouraged to study pharmacology by Gandhi in the 1930s and whose Cipla company had enabled Indira Gandhi to rewrite the Indian patent laws governing medication in 1970.

In league with Haddad, Love and Denis Broun of the World Health Organisation, Hamied attended a closed-door conference of pharmaceutical giants in Brussels in the autumn of 2000 and announced that he would provide free help to any country prepared to fund its own ARV initiative. None of his competitors rallied to his call. Indeed, some leading manufacturers even started marketing cocktails of drugs in order to protect brands coming to the end of their period of patent exclusivity. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called for such prejudicial patents to be scrapped and Donald McNeil backed his intervention by revealing that only 12% of Big Pharma's profits is invested in research, even though it receives generous funding from governments and public sources. McNeil also discovered that many companies held patents on drugs they had not invented and took out advertisements in the so-called Third World questioning the purity of generics even though their own ingredients often came from the same suppliers.

Despite the global outcry that only one in 2000 Africans could afford ARVs five years after the triple therapy breakthrough was announced in 2001, the situation remained unchanged. So, James Love urged Cipla to come up with a dollar a day regime and Hamied responded with an annual course of treatment that would cost $350 instead of the $15,000 being charged by Big Pharma. Yet, even though its rapacity had been exposed, the industry still tried to block the supply of Cipla generics and threatened to press charges against Peter Mugyenyi when he placed an order. However, he hit back by indicating that American companies had suspended patents on anti-anthrax drugs following a spate of post-9/11 attacks and he was backed by the Ugandan government, who waived patent laws to admit the delivery. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also entered the breach by announcing the formation of the UN Global Fund to help pay for generics in the world's poorest states and even George W. Bush called for cheap ARVs in his State of the Union address on the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2002.

However, Bush was soon forced to distance himself from his own policy, as ex-Eli Lilly CEO Randall Tobias was appointed AIDS czar and he ensured that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief purchased the drugs it donated from US companies. Unsurprisingly, the budget was soon exhausted by the inflated prices and PEPFAR's self-interest was exposed when the Clinton Foundation bought Cipla generics and sparked a worldwide defiance of patent laws that saw a vast increase in the numbers being treated. Among the lucky one was bodybuilder Pradip Kumar Singh, who managed to win the Silver Medal in the Mr India pageant despite contracting HIV from shared heroin needles in the provincial town of Aurangabad. But, as Tutu Foundation medic Linda-Gail Bekker and Noerine Kaleeba from UNAIDS disclose, there were still shortages and they often had to decide who would be treated on the basis of a person's potential usefulness to their family and/or community.

Once again demonstrating a commitment to commerce over compassion, Big Pharma joined forces with the World Trade Organisation to coerce nations into accepting the TRIPS Agreement that closed the loopholes relating to other profitable drugs. Hamied considers this action to be genocidal, while Stiglitz notes that it means more Americans than ever before are unable to afford their pills. Furthermore, the subsequent rise in the cost of benefits packages helped contribute to the economic downturn, as employers could no longer meet their healthcare obligations.

An emotional William Haddad says that it makes no sense that millions are still dying from AIDS when a course of generics now costs under $100 per annum. But, as Peter Rost reminds viewers, nobody benefiting from a flawed system is going to change it voluntarily and he concedes that Big Pharma is essentially punishing the world for challenging its right to print money with ARVs. He hopes that Gray and his film can bring about necessary reform and prevent the 18 million deaths that the World Health Organisation claims occur each year because cheaper drugs are not available. However, both he and we already know that even a picture as righteously furious, meticulously compiled and impassionedly eloquent as this one stands next to no chance of persuading the rich to think of anyone but themselves.

Stylistically, this is a pretty basic offering. But content matters much more than form in cases such as this and Gray cogently states the facts while wisely allowing his talking heads to push the message. The juxtaposition of ordinary people, celebrities and experts is shrewd, but it might have been useful to include a few more self-condemnatory remarks from industry bigwigs or find another Damascean voice to back up Rost. But these are small quibbles with a film of great intellectual and emotional integrity that achieves everything it sets out to do and one can but hope it fares better than David France's Oscar-nominated How to Survive a Plague (which has still to be released in this country) in finding the audience it deserves.

2) THE MOO MAN (Andy Heathcote and Heike Bachelier).

There has been a spate of films in recent years about the production of food. Some have focused on genetic modification, others on animal rights. But many have concentrated on the eco impact of getting an item from farm to plate and the cynical manner in which the major corporations exploit producer and consumer alike. In the midst of such frustration and resentment, therefore, it's nice to find a documentary that celebrates the bucolic and demonstrates that there is an alternative to Big Agriculture. Co-directed by Andy Heathcote and Heike Bachelier, The Moo Man may be short on the kind of melodrama one gets in Ambridge or Emmerdale. But it presents a dedicated man going about a business he loves with characterful cattle who have become much more than mere commodities.

Stephen Hook took over Longleys Farm on the Pevensey Levels in Sussex from his father Phil, who still helps out around the place with Paul Vidler. Wife Claire also does her bit, along with children William, Giles, Joseph and George. But Stephen is the driving force behind Hook & Son and his passion for every aspect of his long daily routine is evident throughout this affectionate profile.

He is first seen bringing in the cows for milking and taking a calf to its new pen before he spends the rest of the morning hand bottling the raw, unpasteurised milk that he insists at the local farmers' market tastes better than anything available from a commercial outlet. But his pride in his product pales beside his fondness for the 72 mostly black-and-white Holsteins in his herd, the majority of whom live between nine and ten years, compared to the average six in the industrial sector. As dawn breaks and the lowing beasts totter into the holding pen, Stephen consoles a mother missing her offspring before slipping into an adjoining shed to coax the calf into taking milk from a bucket for the first time.

On returning from his round in the village, he introduces 12 year-old Ida, the queen of the herd, who is about to become a poster girl during a photo shoot in Eastbourne. She quite likes the fuss of having her coat clipped, but is less enamoured of the idea of travelling in a trailer and has to be lured in with food. Once she arrives on the esplanade, however, Ida revels in the fresh sea air and the attention of the small crowd gathering to watch the shoot and reminisce about the olden days when milk was delivered in bottles with a thick layer of cream at the top. Consequently, Ida is highly reluctant to return to her box and much pushing and pulling is required (to the ironic strains of `Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside' on the soundtrack) before she is safely onboard and heading back to a charmingly warm welcome from her sisters.

Stephen affords each creature the same attention and he is deeply concerned by the condition of a heifer who has been paralysed in a rear leg since delivering a still-born calf. He tries to nudge her upright using his vehicle and, as he sits with her as she eats contentedly, he explains that stockmen on bigger concerns are unable to develop such intimate relationships as they are often responsible for 150 head. But it also means that he becomes emotionally attached to each animal and, when he discovers at the end of the week that the injured cow has managed to walk 100 yards up the field, he uses his tractor to steer her back towards the farm and his fear that this may be a fatal condition is palpable.

This humane approach is also extended to bull calves, as, unlike many of his competitors, Stephen refuses to shoot them at birth, but allows them to enjoy 30-odd months of life before selling them for beef. This may seem a harsh topic for discussion as a mother cleans her newborn and it takes its first unsteady steps to nuzzle in search of sustenance, but there is no room for sentiment when feeding costs are so high and margins are so tight. As if to prove the point, Heathcote and Bachelier cut from this adorable sight to a shot of Stephen chopping the carcass of a bull that has just been slaughtered and reminiscing about his grumpiness as he bags cuts for the freezer. Yet, when another bull is born in the field and the mother shoos away a snuffling dog named Tinky, Stephen looks on indulgently, even though he is clearly disappointed not to have another more profitable heifer. The cows also relate to Stephen and almost lollop with excitement as they follow him across the pasture. One mother regards him with suspicion, however, as he is forced to carry its calf through some long grass, while another pair stray off the path and disappear through the undergrowth and past some parked caravans in an adjoining field. But the chase merely amuses Stephen, who likes his animals to have spirit. They also show attachment to each other, as when an Australian vet confirms that the distressed cow has dislocated her hip and will have to be put down, another animal comes over to nuzzle her. Stephen is also upset, as he knows he is about to lose eight years of healthy production. But, as he lets the stricken creature lap water from a bucket, it's evident that he feels imminent loss much more personally and admits back in the shed that the pain will be almost unbearable when Ida's time is up, as she has become a pet and will be kept long after she ceases to produce milk.

Ending this sobering sequence with a splendid shot of Ida sticking her nose into the camera, Heathcote and Bachelier cut to a misty morning some months later, as Stephen cajoles his charges into their winter shed. As frost coats the meadows and icicles hang from the water trough, he confides that TB has been found in Oxfordshire and hopes that t doesn't head south while his livestock are so closely confined. He states frankly that cows are more valuable animals than badgers and urges the government to be more proactive in culling them. A tense visit from the vet follows, as the herd is tested in a trap cage. However, it passes with flying colours and there is evident relief as it is led back into the fields to graze.

Ida is expecting for an eighth time and Stephen has to bring her into the shed, as she is having difficulty. The calf is awkwardly positioned and ropes are tied around its hooves so that Stephen can pull it out. After much effort, it turns out to be a bull and he is clearly dismayed at not getting another Ida. But, as he leaves the mother licking her baby, he is slightly cheered by the fact that another newborn is a heifer. This scene emphasises the sheer physical exertion of dairy farming and the effort involved in clearing the slurry from the night shed and wheeling sacks of feed is also readily evident. As he toils, Stephen explains that while he receives 27p for every litre of milk, each one costs him 34p to produce. He is currently claiming family tax credit and wonders why subsidies are paid to help supermarket chains maximise their profits while he struggles to make a living. It distresses him that a family farm closes each day in the UK and that the skills that have been passed down through the generations will soon be lost, as so few kids are keen to succeed their parents, as they would have done without question in the past.

Direct selling alone keeps the Hooks afloat, but it can't be all doom and gloom, as they have just purchased some automated bottling equipment and the entire family take turns at loading the trays with empties that are filled in a fraction of the usual time. Back outside, however, it is very much business as usual, as Stephen assembles the cows in the yard before leading them back into the field for the first time that spring. The anticipation among the animals is a joy to behold and they frolic in the grass, in spite of the rain. But, as balmy summer days approach, the moment Stephen has been dreading finally seems to arrive.

Anxious that Ida has eaten a length of wire, Stephen fits her with a halter to calm her during an examination by a female vet, who is concerned by her irregular heartbeat and prescribes an anti-inflammatory in the hope that it will enable Ida to start eating again. But she is obviously in pain and there is harrowing pathos in the shots of her lying beside a stream at the far end of a beautiful meadow. Stephen tries to feed her, but she moans with distress and he calls a friend with a metal detector to see if they can find any clues. Sadly, they get bleeps around her neck and Stephen calls the vet after deducing that she must have swallowed a long length. Yet, when the vet reaches into her throat, she finds nothing but the mud Ida has been consuming in a bid to dull the pain.

The next day, Stephen gives Ida her jabs and tries to tempt her with a rich yoghurty milk. But she isn't interested and nuzzles his hand and he strokes her nose and ears as she makes pitiful grunting sounds. Leaving her with great reluctance, Stephen knows he is about to lose a close friend and, following a mournful shot of the wind rustling some reeds and storm clouds gathering in the distance, he is seen phoning to have Ida's carcass collected and he just about holds his emotions in check as he describes how she passed away in the marsh with the other cows gathered around her. He wipes away a tear and laments the end of an era, but also vows to keep going, as Ida had been the symbol of everything he is trying to achieve and he has to succeed in order to honour her devoted service. Eventually, he will be able to look back on happy memories and a new character will emerge to lead the herd. But, for now, Stephen is distraught and he wanders out to see his cattle with a heavy heart and an inclination that Ida's sisters will need consoling every bit as much as he does.

As in their previous outing, The Lost World of Mr Hardy (2008), which presented a compelling insight into handcrafted fishing tackle company, Heathcote and Bachelier maintain a discreet distance as their subject goes about his daily chores and engages with both the camera and the audience beyond. While he is keen to make points about the state of British agriculture and the advantages that seem to be stacked in favour of the retail giants, Stephen Hook is more concerned with extolling the virtues of traditional dairy farming and sharing his love of animals like the imperious Ida. But what emerges is the hard work it takes to form such enduring bonds and that there are many moments of heartache to set against the simple pleasures.

Attuning to the rhythms of the daily routines, Heathcote's leisurely views of both grime and the sublime are delightfully counterpointed by Stephen Daltry's jaunty score, which helps set this apart from Raymond Depardon's more sombre studies of French farms facing their own EU-foistered crises. But the film-makers never settle for pastoral prettification and, while they might have made it clearer that they spent four years amassing their footage, they do well by both the Hooks and their cattle and this low-key charmer deserves to find a wide audience.

1) MUSCLE SHOALS (Greg 'Freddy' Camalier).

Music producer Rick Hall was very much the product of his environment, as the sounds he brought the world reflected his upbringing in the Alabama backwoods. Indeed, the songs he heard the cotton pickers singing as they toiled in the fields prompted him to open the fabled FAME Studios. However, as the debuting Greg `Freddy' Camalier points out in Muscle Shoals, this region around the Tennessee River was synonymous with musical greatness.

According to Tom Hendrix, the Yuchi Indians believed that a woman sang in the waters of the river to ward off evil spirits and, thus, there is something in Bono's contention that the songs recorded in this burgh of 8000 souls `came out of the mud'. The U2 frontman becomes something of an irksome presence as he waxes lyrical about the energy of a place that spawned WC Handy (the father of the Blues), Helen Keller and Sam Phillips, who would sign the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash to his Sun Records label in Memphis. But, while he packs the early stages of this enjoyable documentary with Terrence Malick-like magic hour shots of the Colbert County countryside, Camalier never quite nails why Muscle Shoals generated so much exceptional music.

He is more successful in identifying what drove Hall to rise from an isolated shack with no amenities to mixing with musical royalty. Forced to live with his father after his mother drifted into prostitution following the scalding death of his toddler brother, Hall saw both his father and his first wife killed in vehicular accidents (he under the tractor his son had bought him to celebrate his success and she in the car that Hall himself was driving). However, he was also determined to prove wrong those who had crowed that he wouldn't amount to much and to exact a measure of revenge on Billy Sherrill and Tom Stafford, who had fired him from his first studios in the nearby town of Florence for taking music-making too seriously.

But, from the moment he recorded Jimmy Hughes's `Steal Away', Hall knew he had found his calling and he scored his first solo hit with `You Better Move On', which was written and recorded by local hotel busboy Arthur Alexander and became a major UK hit for The Rolling Stones in 1964. However, the first house band Hall assembled - comprising Norbert Putnam, Peanut Montgomery, David Briggs and Jerry Carrigan - didn't stay with him for long, as they were whisked away to open for The Beatles at their first American concert in Washington, DC. Undaunted, Hall put together another crew and David Hood (bass), Jimmy Johnson (guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums) and Barry Beckett (keyboards) became known as The Swampers, whose `greasy' sound convinced those not in the know that these four young white boys were seasoned black veterans.

They were often joined in the studio by songwriting session players Spooner Oldham, Donnie Fritts and Dan Penn and they attracted the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records after hospital orderly Percy Sledge topped the charts with `When a Man Loves a Woman' in 1966. Suddenly, Hall was playing in a different league and he forged an unlikely bond with the notoriously temperamental Wilson Pickett, who brought the best out of The Swampers on tracks like `Land of 1000 Dances' and `Mustang Sally'. Recorded at a time that Governor George Wallace was still advocating segregation, these hits should have become theme tunes for the campaign for equality. But not even Aretha Franklin knew that she would be working with white folks when Wexler signed her from Columbia and redirected her flagging career with `I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)'.

This session ended with Franklin's husband, Ted White, getting into a fight with one of the brass section and Wexler and Hall fell out when the latter went to the singer's hotel to have it out with the controlling spouse. Yet, while he lost his contract with the label, The Swampers were invited to New York to finish such legendary cuts as `Respect', `(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman', `Chain of Fools' and `Do Right Woman, Do Right Man'. Undaunted, Hall contacted Leonard Chess in Chicago, who entrusted him with Etta James's next album and he talked her into recording `Tell Mama', which became a huge hit. She admits being a difficult customer, but was soon seduced by the Swamper mix of blues, hillbilly and rock, in which the heavy bass and drum grounding allowed for a little more surface finesse.

Shortly afterwards, Duane Allman arrived in Muscle Shoals after quitting his band, The Hour Glass. As brother Gregg recalls here, he had recently damaged an elbow in a horseback fall and had been inspired to play slide guitar with a bottle of Coricidin pills after hearing the debut album by guitarist Taj Mahal. Welcomed with open arms by Hall and The Swampers, the long-haired Allman was viewed with deep suspicion by the locals and it was a reluctance to face the lunch counter crowd that led Allman and Wilson Pickett to concoct a version of `Hey Jude' that was to prove crucial to the evolution of Southern Rock. However, for once in his life, Hall's ear failed him and he let The Allman Brothers Band slip through his fingers.

Camalier doesn't quite explain the extent to which this misjudgement persuaded Hood, Hawkins, Johnson and Beckett to decamp and join Wexler just as Hall secured a big deal with Capitol Records. Instead, he lets Percy Sledge reminisce about the time Jimi Hendrix played in his backing band and his conclusion that time changes everything is left to justify the decision to open the Muscle Shoals Studios at 3614 Jackson Highway. Cher was among the first clients. But, as Hall guided Clarence Carter to the top of the charts with `Patches' (which he wrote in memory of his recently deceased father), the new facility got off to a slow start and the Swampers were growing concerned that they had made a dreadful mistake when The Rolling Stones checked in.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards recall their brief stint at the studio with evident relish. Indeed, Richards reckons that the recording of Fred McDowell's `You Gotta Move' and their own compositions `Wild Horses' and `Brown Sugar' was perhaps the funkiest highlight of the band's 50-year career. But, while his erstwhile colleagues were spinning rock gold, Hall was melding session stalwarts like Clayton Ivey, Jesse Boyce and Harvey Thompson into The FAME Gang, who played on albums by a bewildering variety of artists over the next decade. Indeed, such was the growing reputation of the two studios that they got to host acts of the calibre of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Candi Staton, Bobbie Gentry, Lou Rawls, Joe Tex, Joe Simon, Bobby Womack, Tom Jones, The Osmonds, Carlos Santana, JJ Cale, Boz Scaggs, Bob Seger, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez, Leon Russell, The Staples Singers, Otis Redding, Kris Kristofferson and Mark Knopfler.

The list is as astonishing as it is impressive. But what is most notable is the diversity of the artists and the fact that the two house bands always seemed to catch the vibe of whoever they were backing, whether it was Jamaican Jimmy Cliff on `Sitting in Limbo' (which did so much to popularise reggae) or Steve Winwood and Traffic, whose `headless horseman' style was slicked into shape by The Swampers on tracks like `(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired'. As Donna Jean Godchaux (who sang backing vocals for Percy Sledge before joining The Grateful Dead) avers, they were just a bunch of freakishly talented musicians who just all happened to be in the right place at the same time.

This is, in effect, the key to the Muscle Shoals story and Camalier rather misses in allowing Bono to ramble on with pretentious earnestness and cinematographer Anthony Arendt to shoot so many evocative images of riverbanks and main streets. But this is less a forensic study than a fond shuffle down memory lane, with the anecdotes mattering as much as the archival footage ably edited by Richard Lowe and even, perhaps, the music itself. Thus, the picture winds up with what is essentially a digression about Lynyrd Skynard's passing association with The Swampers that earned them a mention in the lyrics of `Sweet Home Alabama'. But, as Jimmy Johnson divulges, the combo played a key part in helping the Van Zant siblings find their sound and it was his refusal to cut the nine-minute `Freebird' down to under four minutes for radio play that led the label to snatch them away from his studio.

Although his rift with Wexler has never healed, Hall bears no grudges against Hood, Johnson, Hawkins and Beckett (whose 2009 death goes curiously unmentioned) and Camalier opts to end his overview with the old gang reuniting to accompany Alicia Keys on `Pressing On' rather than chart the fortunes of the complementary rivals over the last 30 years. Such decisions may be frustrating, but they don't detract from the excellence of what Camalier has chosen to include. Some may cavil at his leisurely approach, but many more will be scrambling to acquire some of the countless gems contained in an affectionate actuality that leaves one longing to see Dave Grohl's paean to Muscle Shoals, Sound City.