Parky at the Pictures (DVD 23/10/2014)

In the winter of 2007, while researching a book about the Portage Park area of Chicago, John Maloof acquired some 30,000 photographic negatives at an auction. He paid $380 for them, but could find nothing immediately useful and stored the box in a cupboard. Two years later, he examined the contents more carefully and discovered that the images were surprisingly well composed. He scanned 200 of the best and posted them on a blog, while contacting local galleries to see if they would be interested in hosting an exhibition. But a Google search brought up nothing on the woman who had taken the pictures and Vivian Maier (Mayer, Meyer or Meyers) remained an enigma until Maloof found an obituary in the Chicago Tribune in April 2009.

A few months later, he loaded more images to Flickr and was overwhelmed by the positive response to street pictures that not only suggested that Maier had a wonderful eye, but also that she was a deeply compassionate observer of the contemporary social scene. Suitably inspired, Maloof began digging deeper and learned that Maier had spent many years working as a nanny across the United States and he used clues contained within the obituary and his stash of negatives to track down a family that had helped her pay the rent on a storage locker.

On opening this treasure trove, Maloof not only found Maier's personal effects, but also the ephemera that she had hoarded since the 1950s. Among the items he found were hundreds of rolls of unused colour and monochrome film stock, reels of home movies, dozens of audio cassette tapes, and masses of documents and souvenirs, as well as the Rolleiflex box camera that Maier has used for the majority of the photographs. Suspecting that he had stumbled upon a gold mine, Maloof returned to the auction house and bought the other boxes of negatives that had been sold off to meet Maier's default payments on the storage space.

Keen to have Maier's work seen by a larger audience, Maloof contacted the Museum of Modern Art in New York. However, MoMA wanted nothing to do with posthumous images and Maloof decided to hire a room at the Culture Centre in Chicago to mount a modest exhibition. Such was the enthusiastic turnout that Maier made local headlines and even started cropping up on national TV news bulletins as experts began to acclaim her as an undiscovered genius.

Apparently untainted by the snobbery of the artistic establishment, feted photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Mary Ellen Mark declared Maier to be a gifted artist, with the latter comparing her to Robert Frank, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus and Helen Levitt in declaring that she would have become famous if she had opted to show her work in her lifetime. This desire for anonymity, coupled with Maier's prolificity, intrigues Maloof and he sets out to find some of the people who had hired Maier and grown up under her tutelage. Much to his surprise, they number TV presenter Phil Donahue, who recalls Maier snapping away for much of the year she served as his housekeeper. He felt she was a little odd because she had a habit of photographing the contents of garbage cans, but the majority verdict among the former employers was that Maier was a mysterious eccentric, who fiercely guarded her privacy and hoarded everything from newspapers to bus tickets..

In a series of talking-head clips, Zalman and Laura Usiskin declare Maier unusual, while Roger Carlson comments upon her hats. Karen Frank and Jennifer Rofé remember her being tall, while Jacqueline Bruni-Maniér and Cathy Bruni-Norris join Judy and Chuck Swisher in recalling her unflattering clothes and heavy boots. Ginger Tam reflects upon her austere hairstyle, while Duffy Levant suggests that she looked like a cross between a Soviet factory worker and the Wicked Witch of the West. His sister Jennifer, however, places her emphasis on the omnipresent camera and Barry Wallis concedes that he was always rather envious of Maier's box Rolleiflex.

Meyerowitz explains that this was something of a secretive camera as it shot from below and people weren't always aware that they were being photographed. Moreover, the lower angle tended to give subjects a power and dignity that was not always readily apparent in their daily circumstances. He commends Maier for having the gregariousness to coax certain sitters and the stealth to remain invisible to others. Carole Pohn concurs that Maier was a difficult person to read and joins with Maren Baylaender and Bill Sacco in remembering both her refusal to let anyone get too close and her insistence on a lockable door as part of her terms of employment. Pohn smiles sadly that her friend was so furtive and laments that she didn't live to see her achievement recognised. She also wonders how galling it must have felt to have been a domestic servant while concealing such a talent.

Now thoroughly hooked, Maloof travels to Southampton in New York state, where Maier took the earliest pictures in the collection at Tide's End in 1951. Laura Walker shows him round what used to be her grandparents' place and she is distressed by its poor state of repair. She recalls that Maier was with them for the summer, but Pohn got to know her much better after they first met in Highland Park in 1962. As she recalls how good Maier was with children, Maloof shows 8mm clips of her playing with her charges, while extracts from the cassettes suggest the easy affection they had for her. Baylaender avers that she made each day an adventure and Linda Matthews and offspring Joe and Sarah Matthews-Ludington remember her treating them to free candy samples at every store in town. However, Joe resented being made to wait around while Maier took her photographs and the Levants recall how she took pictures when their brother fell off his bike rather than summoning medical assistance.

By now, Maloof has convinced himself that Maier is a pioneering citizen journalist and he plays clips of her asking supermarket customers about Watergate and shows the footage she recorded while investigating an infamous 1972 mother and baby murder case. Yet, he is no closer to knowing anything about Maier herself. John Perbohner and Barry Wallis argue about the authenticity of her French accent, while shopkeeper Bindy Bitterman complains that Maier was a difficult customer who was reluctant to leave contact details whenever she ordered anything. Wallis concurs that Maier often used the name Smith to cover her tracks and he wonders whether she lived a Mittyeseque existence, as she had once informed him that she was a spy.

The Usiskins posit that Maier was a highly intelligent woman whose sympathy for the lower classes made her look down on her bourgeois employers. But, having once worked in a sweatshop, it's likely that she became a nanny because it offered her security and the freedom to do what she wanted, even if this meant taking off for eight months in 1959 to travel through Asia, Africa and Latin America. Maloof presents a sample of the thousands of images she took on her world tour, but Duffy Levant and Carole Pohn doubt whether Maier would have wanted her pictures to be seen. Some share their concerns, while others avow that Maier would probably have wanted the work recognised on the proviso that she could remain in the shadows.

Yet, Maloof springs a surprise that calls into question just how well those who met Maier actually knew her. With the aid of genealogist Michael Strauss, Maloof discovers that Maier was born to an Austrian father (Charles) and a French mother (Maria) on 1 February 1926. But her birthplace was New York rather than Europe and Strauss admits that her parents and older brother proved so secretive that he has struggled to uncover tangible information about them. He did, however, discover that an aunt who died in 1965 left everything to a friend rather than her surviving niece.

On returning to the photo archive, Maloof realises that some of the pictures taken in France predate the 1959 odyssey and he starts comparing the steeples of village churches online. After much painstakinng research, he discovers a connection with the Alpine community of Saint-Bonnet-en-Champsaur and, ignoring the misgivings of some of Maier's more protective charges, he goes to meet mayor Daniel Arnaud in the neighbouring hamlet of Saint Julien. He points Maloof in the direction of Sylvain Jussaud, who turns out to be a cousin who possesses family snaps featuring the young Vivian. Much to Maloof's amazement, he also produces her mother Maria's camera and he forges another link in the chain when he tracks down the son of Simon Philippe, who had printed some of Maier's landscapes to sell as postcards in the late 1940s.

Maloof is particularly excited by this revelation, as it demonstrates that Maier was aware of the quality of her work and that she had once tried to profit from it. He notes her attention to the calibre of the paper and the gloss finish that Philippe had used and recognises that he has a duty to find the best laboratory to expose and print images that she had never seen herself. Yet, even though she had made no subsequent effort to develop, let alone market her pictures, Maloof convinces himself that his discovery justifies his endeavour to showcase Maier's work.

To this end, he enlists the help of gallery owner Howard Greenberg, who explains that the art establishment is reluctant to handle posthumous negatives, as a danger is always present during the developing and printing processes of imposing an interpretation that the artist may not have intended. Citing the examples of the late Garry Winogrand and Eugène Atget, Maloof dismisses this thesis out of hand and further claims that Henri Carter-Bresson and Robert Frank played little or no supervisory role in the printing of their work. However, while he protests that he wishes that Maier was alive so that she could enjoy the financial rewards of her brilliance, Maloof struggles conclusively to counter the arguments of the artistic hierarchy for which he clearly has such little respect.

But Maloof also disregards the advice of some of Maier's friends and acquaintances by embarking upon the commercialisation of images she had guarded to the grave and he further risks their ire by proceeding to probe the darker recesses of her character. He travels to Little Falls, Minnesota to meet Inger Raymond, who had Maier as a governess between the ages of five and eleven during the period 1967-74. Raymond's best friend was Jennifer Lavant and they both recall `Miss Maier' taking them on walks through the rougher parts of town so that she could capture the most evocative images. However, while Inger insists that Maier always caught people unawares, Lavant claims that she used to pose them and that some felt exploited.

Linda Matthews recalls how Maier used to hoard copies of the New York Times and clip stories that exposed human folly. She also opines (as Maloof shows a shocking image of a horse lying dead in the gutter after seemingly having been shot in the head) that some of her pictures also focused on the less appealing aspects of human nature. Her daughter Sarah remembers Maier chipping away at her confidence and becomes highly animated in relating an anecdote about Maier washing her collection of glass tchotchkes in a strong solution of ammonia. She also insists that Maier struggled to cope whenever her brother Joe acted up and recalls one occasion when Maier left her in an alleyway to pursue a picture and she had to be brought home by the cops.

Sarah also insists that there were numerous accidents that were nothing of the sort and Joe declares that Maier used to try and intimidate them into behaving with scary stories about children being abused. Raymond believes she had a phobia about men and remembers Maier drumming into her that they only wanted one thing and couldn't be trusted. Jennifer Lavant speculates about whether Maier was molested as a girl and whether this might have affected her attitude to men. Raymond remembers Maier once hitting a chap who tried to prevent her from falling over, but her own recollections have clearly been coloured by the fact that Maier used to force feed her and choke her to ensure she swallowed her food. She would also lose her temper and inflict physical violence upon her by swinging her round by her wrists or slamming her head into bookcases. Thus, while Raymond is ready to concede that Maier might have been an exceptional artist, she has no doubt that could also be cruel.

Jennifer Lavant takes Maloof to the Raymond house and they enter the room that Maier used to occupy. She shows him the dip in the floor where the weight of her stored newspapers had bowed the floorboards. Linda Matthews admits to being amazed by the ceiling-high piles of papers that she had found when she ventured into Maier's quarters and recalls having to squeeze along the narrow gaps she left between them. She has no idea why Maier kept papers dating back years. But Roger Carlson recalls that she used to rig books on her desk so that she would know if anyone had been snooping.

Joe and Sarah are adamant that Maier was suffering from a mental illness by the end of her stay with the Matthews family. Linda remembers having to dismiss her after she threw a tantrum because some of her papers had been given to a neighbour to cover his floor while he decorated. Yet, she regained her composure the moment that Linda fired her and calmly requested two months' notice and her pay in advance. Linda still doesn't know whether she knew what to say because this had often happened to her in the past or whether she knew that she had overstepped the mark and was ready for the bad news when it came. She gets tearful, as she admits that the whole family had missed her. But she also has little sympathy with her, as she feels she treated Maier well and that she had refused to smooth off the rough edges that would have enabled her to fit in.

According to Judy Swisher, Maier remained idiosyncratic into the late 1990s, as she had refused to co-operate with the estate agency when they decided to sell her elderly mother's house. Pohn recognised that Maier was suffering when they met for the last time in 2002. She was desperate for Pohn to stop and talk, but she was taking her grandchildren to Rogers Beach and couldn't linger. She regrets that she let her down and Maloof wanders around the neighbourhood asking if anyone remembers Maier. A unidentified woman claims she was someone to steer clear of, while a middle-aged man (with the most peculiar facial hair in recent screen history) recalls her being something of a dumpster diver.

He is surprised that the quirky old biddy he knew is a great artist, but he is glad to have known her. His companions remember how Maier had resisted getting into the ambulance after she had fallen in the park and they regret never having seen her again. Inger Raymond harks back to the times that Maier used to take her to the stockyards to photograph the sheep being herded towards their doom. As Maloof shows home-movie footage of Raymond in a red coat watching the hapless creatures being controlled with a stick, she realises that this had been her first brush with death. But she was also suitably touched by what she witnessed to start keeping sheep herself.

A montage follows of old people captured by Maier's lens before Pohn reveals that Maier was buried near the place where she used to take the children hunting for wild strawberries. Meyerowitz claims that it's obvious that Maier was a nanny because there is an unmissable tenderness and watchfulness in her pictures. However, he regrets that she lacked the courage to defend her achievement and questions whether she had an artistic soul, as it takes a certain kind of personality to submit work for public scrutiny. Greenberg states that her posthumous success reflects very badly on those who had the temerity to reject her, while actor Tim Roth waxes lyrical about the particular picture he bought.

Back in St Julien, the locals delight in recognising themselves and their loved ones in Maier's images. Mayerowitz applauds her ability to get people to be themselves in their own space, while the Matthews siblings concur that it was probably best that the fuss erupted after Maier died, as she would have hated it. Yet, Maloof concedes as his journey ends that he still doesn't understand why Maier took so many pictures while wishing to remain so anonymous

This is not the only time that the cinematic spotlight has fallen on Maier, as Jill Nicholls was producing Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures around the same time that Siskel was collaborating with Maloof. Clearly, this is more of an insider's account. But it is, therefore, more prone to the kind of problems that often come with official status, especially as Maloof so evidently feels the need to defend himself against accusations of cashing in on Maier's legacy.

Working in conjunction with editor Aaron Wickenden, Maloof and Siskel have made effective use of the moving and still imagery in the Maier archive to fashion a compelling detective story. It's not always clear why some of the talking heads are present (or what qualifies them to make such definitively dire pronouncements) and the contradictions in their testimony are often allowed to stand unchallenged. This is puzzling, as such clashes undermine the reliability of the evidence rather than deepen the mystery. It is also troubling that so many damning revelations are presented without corroboration and that so many suppositions are deemed conclusive. Maier was clearly a tormented soul, but her reputation as a human being is as thoroughly trashed here as her reputation as an artist is vaunted.

Many will question whether Maloof's dominion over Maier's artwork entitles him to such proprietorial control over her biography, personality and memory. Others will also wonder why Maloof so scrupulously avoids discussing the responsibilities attendant on assuming the ownership of somebody else's creativity. It's interesting to note that the stamp authenticating Maier's prints contain Maloof's name and there are moments when this feels as much like an infomercial as a documentary.

More might have been made of the fact that the cyber community made Maier a star. Maloof might also have explored what this says about viral culture and where it leaves the art elite that tried to deny Maier her critical due. Thus, while one should be grateful for the fact that we now have access to so many poignant, poetic and politically charged photographs, the nagging doubt remains that Maloof has gone about this eminently worthwhile enterprise in entirely the wrong way.

Despite the fact that it was directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 20,000 Days on Earth is very much a vanity odyssey, as Nick Cave puts himself in the spotlight in an achingly hip picture that is more a playful piece of self-promotion than an in-depth profile. Flitting between diary entries, archive clips, musical interludes and staged conversations, this will be essential viewing for fans of the innovative Australian post-punk. But it also provides a teasing introduction for newcomers, who will be intrigued as much by the man, as by his legend and legacy.

Following a split-screen rattle through the personal and historical events that have occurred during Nick Cave's first 19,999 days on the planet, he announces laconically in voiceover that he ceased to be a human being at the end of the 20th Century. Fortunately, he doesn't consider this to be a bad thing, as he is can still write, eat and watch television. Cave reckons himself to be something of a cannibal, who is forever looking for things to cook in the pot of his songs, and he wonders how wife Susie Bick can cope with his monstrous habit of turning every event and emotion into a lyric.

As Forsyth and Pollard show Cave jamming half-heartedly with Warren Ellis, he admits that he would struggle to define his style and concedes that many of the characters in his tunes are essentially crooked versions of himself. What he does know, however, is that songwriters have to take risks and if creativity requires the mental equivalent of placing a child in a room with a Mongolian psychopath and a clown (and, then, killing the clown), then so be it. Every now and then, however, Cave will realise that the melody he has been working on sounds uncannily like Lionel Ritchie's `All Night Long'.

Cave has lived in Brighton for many years and, as he drives around in his Jaguar, he both complains about the endless cold and rain and extols the virtues of the seascape and clouds. He has an appointment with psychoanalyst Darian Leader, who asks him predictable questions about his first memories of a female body (a 15 year-old with white Kabuki make-up named Janine, who used to conspire with her best friend to dress him in women's clothing) and of his father (a reading from the first chapter of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which exerted a profound influence on Cave's understanding of language).

Having cut away to an impromptu session in what seems to be a home studio, the focus returns to the therapy session, as Leader asks Cave if his father ever saw him play live. He fondly recalls his father's comment after a gig in New York that he looked like an angel on the stage and this reminds Cave that his father had a talent for being present when least expected (which he backs up with an anecdote about swearing in the darkness in a bid to cheer up his melancholic younger sister and realising too late that his father was still by the bedroom door after lights out). Cave recalls jumping off a railway bridge into a river as part of his happy childhood and wishes that modern kids were still as active. He muses on the importance of memory and suggests that his songs are a way of preserving priceless recollections.

The significance of the past is readily evident, as Cave sings `Give Us a Kiss' at the studio piano. He wonders why some numbers have the power to make him feel godlike and Leader points out that responsibility appears to be a key theme in his work. Cave jokes about getting religion when he was a junkie and promising Susie that he would give up God once he had cleaned himself up. Changing the subject, Leader asks Cave if he feels like an outsider when he performs and he replies that he enjoys the communal element of transforming before an audience. In order to clarify, he remembers introducing Nina Simone and being struck by how quickly this demanding diva, who had stuck her wad of chewing gum to the piano while she sang, became a superstar as she responded to the audience's affection.

Leader decides to end the consultation when Cave is taken aback by a question about his father's death (Cave was 19 at the time) and he appears to drive away in the company of Ray Winstone, who asks if he worries about getting old. Now 56, Winstone reveals that he still enjoys the chance that acting gives him to become someone else. But Cave says a rock star is trapped by his persona and they wonder how much enjoyment The Rolling Stones still get out of playing live after all these years. Cave says he lives to perform, as he feels unbeatable with an audience in the palm of his hand. However, he recalls how dismayed he once felt when somebody on the front row had yawned and Winstone reveals that he felt the same way when his pleasure at playing Henry VIII was deflated by his agent's mother voicing her disapproval of his approach.

Cave drives to a house with white cliffs in the near distance and Ellis cooks him eels for lunch. Ellis remembers that `Dr Simone' (as she had insisted on being called) had wanted champagne, cocaine and sausages before her concert and segues into a reminiscence about a Jerry Lee Lewis gig and the force of his magnetism, even though he was so old and wasted that he had to be given a boost in order to play the piano with his feet. Cave leaves to keep an appointment at his archive. But the film actually cuts to Ellis translating for the choir of French children providing the backing vocals for `Jubilee Street'. This episode seems to confirm Cave's contention that it is vital both to know one's limitations and to enter into collaborations with those who can help improve ideas that have stubbornly refused to coalesce.

This theme is also taken up by former Bad Seeds guitarist Blixa Bargeld, who explains from the passenger seat of the Jaguar that he left Cave's band in order to save his marriage. Cave admits that he misses Bargeld, as he was always able to cut through the cant. But he still enjoys letting songs spiral out of control before finding their length and level, as he tends to lose interest in them once he has fathomed them out. He performs `Higgs Bosun Blues' in the studio and confides in voiceover that life makes no sense while it is being lived and only acquires its true meaning when its facts are being related to prevent them from dissolving into darkness.

Arriving at the archive, Cave looks at school photographs and jokes about his haircut. He is delighted to see a shot of Birthday Party bassist Tracy Pew being urinated on by a German fan and recalls, with some pride, that the band was once hailed the most violent live act in the world. But he concedes that gigs quickly became a trial, as people came expecting a fight rather than a show. As he rummages through the ephemera, he finds an early will that left all his money to the Nick Cave Memorial Museum and he is amused that he managed to keep his effects together in view of the chaotic nature of his peripatetic lifestyle.

He unearths a snapshot of his flat in Berlin and recalls how an upstairs neighbour named Chris had decorated his room with items relating to the Nativity. However, this act of innocent piety hid a secret, as when the lighting was changed, the holy pictures disappeared to be replaced by images of softcore pornography. Cave laments that the best he could manage to brighten up his digs were the long strands of hair he had affixed to the wall and he wonders what happened to the man upstairs who had achieved such sad beauty.

Following another musical digression, as The Bad Seeds rehearse `Push the Sky Away', Cave comes across his old weather diaries. He recalls the trepidation he felt when Susie was carrying twins and ruminates on the fact that he can be quite superstitious for such a rational man. As night falls and he considers the notion that Nature has sent weather to exact her revenge upon humanity, Cave is joined in his car by Kylie Minogue. She sits in the back seat and remembers the fuss that her management made when Cave asked her to sing on `Where the Wild Roses Grow' in 1995. Ultimately, Cave reached her through then-boyfriend Michael Hutchence and they appeared together on Top of the Pops.

Back in the archive, he thumbs his copy of Lolita and restates his views on songs being aides-memoires. The archivist shows him a slide of Susie and he plays an audio clip in which Cave described how she had epitomised every woman he had ever fantasised about when he first saw her at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's a charming and sincere litany and may well be the highlight of the entire film. He declares that ghosts from his past are crowding in on him at such a rate that he will have to squeeze some of them into the future in order to have enough time to deal with them. Kylie recalls seeing Cave live and compares him to the silhouette of a tree in an Alfred Hitchcock film. They laugh at the pomposity of her remark and share a concern about being forgotten. Kylie boasts that she once had five waxworks of herself (only the Queen had more) and Cave regrets that he cannot communicate with a crowd like Hutchence could.

However, he seems to be connecting with the girls on the front row of a concert as he performs `Higgs Bosun Blues'. As if to remind us that this is only a job, Forsyth and Pollard cut to Cave and sons Arthur and Earl eating pizza while watching Scarface on the settee. But the co-directors know what the audience wants to see and they switch back hurriedly to Cave in a shiny gold shirt belting out `Stagger Lee'. The roar at the end of the song contrasts with the more restrained welcome that Cave receives when he plays Sydney Opera House. But `Jubilee Street' goes down well and the screen fills with images from across Cave's career to chime with the phrase `look at me now' in the lyrics.

Cave proclaims that all our days are numbered and that it is better to act on a bad idea than not act at all. Sometimes, he continues, a tiny idea can grow into something world-changing. But it isn't always easy to tell the difference between the good and the bad, especially when one is trying to lure a monster from the depths to break through the placid surface. As the film ends, Cave claims that love and ideas come from the conjunction of reality and imagination and life and art are only worthwhile when everything aligns.

Considering that this picture masquerades as a documentary, a considerable amount of legerdemain has been employed in its production. The implication is that much of the film takes place over 24 hours, as Cave drives around Brighton. However, the album Push Back the Sky was recorded at La Fabrique, a 19th-century mansion in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, while the Nick Cave Archive is actually in Melbourne rather than Sussex. Moreover, Warren Ellis has lived in Paris since 1998 and doesn't have a cosy cottage with a view of the south coast, while Darian Leader met Cave for the first time on the day that they recorded their scenes.

Although one shouldn't be surprised by such fashioned reality, the casual duplicity does make one wary about the veracity of Cave's more intimate revelations. If they are as manufactured as some of the images, they surely lose much of their value and, instead of being a poignant insight into the life and mind of a distinctive artist, this movie merely becomes another act of self-promotion by an insecure narcissist.

Cave has always given the impression that he is above such media/arty-farty games, while Forsyth and Pollard have made much in their previous outings (including the Do You Love Me Like I Love You project with Cave) of exposing the contradictions and humbug of the music business. But, while he is never anything less than good company, and notwithstanding Erik Wilson's confidential cinematography, Jonathan Amos's crisp editing and Joakim Sundström's beguiling sound design, this guyingly pretentious slice of docu-mythology simply isn't on a par with such supposed models as Jean-Luc Godard's Stones opus, Sympathy for the Devil (1968), or Joe Massot and Peter Clifton's Led Zeppelin homage, The Song Remains the Same (1976)..

The subject of Mike Myers's documentary debut doesn't appear to have an enemy in the world. Indeed, Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is a bromantic valentine to an entertainment legend who could party as hard as any of his clients and still be sufficiently compos mentis to clear up any collateral damage the next morning. Some big names fall over themselves to pay tribute amidst the splendidly chosen archive clips. But, while this is a largely uncritical appreciation, it also makes no secret of its subjectivity and is all the more enjoyable for its gossipy indiscretion and genuine affection.

Raised in Oceanside, New York and educated at SUNY in Buffalo, Ohio, Shep Gordon stumbled into show business in 1968 after Janis Joplin slapped him while he was staying in the Hollywood Landmark Motor Hotel. The following year, Gordon founded Alive Enterprises after Jimi Hendrix suggested that he should take up music management because he was Jewish. Among his first clients were Pink Floyd, but they decided to look for alternative representation after nine days and Gordon found himself devoting his energies to boosting the career of Alice Cooper. Stung by his poor reception while supporting The Doors and barred from entering the venue where he was sharing the bill with Ike and Tina Turner, Cooper was beginning to think he was wasting his time when Gordon swept him back to his native Detroit and began fashioning the mix of rock, vaudeville, sex and violence that would make kids adore Alice as much as their parents detested him.

Reminiscing while lounging on a boat and strolling around a golf course, Cooper avers that his fortunes changed the night that Gordon tossed a live chicken on stage and his reputation for grizzly mayhem was enshrined. Over the years, Cooper would take shock rock to new extremes, as he performed in a straitjacket and plastic wrapping, posed with snakes and subjected himself to nightly executions by noose, guillotine and the electric chair. One critic described his act as `neo-Dadaist', but Cooper was just glad to keep churning out the hit singles and albums and playing to packed houses.

But, while Gordon revelled in the rock lifestyle, Cooper turned out to be something of an aberration among his clients. Also on his books were Groucho Marx, Raquel Welch, Blondie, Manhattan Transfer and Anne Murray. The latter proved a hard sell, as the music press found little to enthuse about in the Canadian's gentle brand of balladeering. However, her image was transformed in a trice when Gordon had her photographed alongside such Hollywood Vampires drinking buddies as John Lennon, Harry Nilsson and Mickey Dolenz. Gordon also plucked Teddy Pendergrass off the Chitlin' Circuit and promoted him as `the black Elvis'. Indeed, he reinvented him as a sex symbol by having him play `women only' shows. But Pendergrass's moment in the spotlight was short-lived, as he was left paraplegic after a car crash and it took all of Gordon's powers of persuasion to coax him into making an emotional comeback singing `Reach Out and Touch' with Ashford and Simpson at LiveAid.

Gordon's acts were selling tens of millions of albums when he decided to change tack and enter the world of films. He got off to an auspicious start with Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977), which landed an award at Cannes, and he used the leverage to form Island Alive with Chris Blackwell, the chief of Island Records. In 1985, William Hurt followed the Best Actor prize at Cannes with the Academy Award for his performance in Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman and Gordon would go on to produce or distribute films by Lindsay Anderson, Alan Rudolph, John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Sam Shepard. He also befriended the likes of Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone and Tom Arnold, who extol the virtues of a loyal friend and a legendary ladies' man, who counted Sharon Stone among his lovers.

However, Gordon proves highly discreet in resisting the temptation to kiss and tell (although one suspects he is sufficiently self-aware to realise that he might not always emerge from closer scrutiny in this department with massive amounts of credit). Agent Carolyn Pfeiffer recalls his kindness when she lost her child and Gordon's cousin Patty and assistant Nancy Meola are quick to join the likes of Mick Fleetwood, Sammy Hagar, Fab Five Freddy and Willie Nelson in lauding his hospitality and generosity. Myers himself relates an anecdote about meeting Gordon while negotiating a deal to use Alice Cooper's `School's Out' in Wayne's World (1992) and reveals that he later helped him through a low period by letting him stay at his house on Mau for two months.

Further proof of Gordon's philanthropy is provided by his involvement with four orphaned children. When he was 27, Gordon went on a blind date with African-American model Winona Williams. They got along famously and Gordon doted on her eight year-old daughter, Mia. Even after he split up with Williams, he continued to pay for Mia's education and was devastated to learn in 1991 that she had died from her drug habit. Without hesitation, Gordon stepped in to prevent Mia's four children - Monique (nine), Chase (six), Amber (three) and baby Keira - from being fostered out and bought Williams a five-bedroom house in upstate New York to keep the family together. Chase, Amber and Keira testify to the debt they owe Gordon, who admits that surprised himself by being able to invest emotionally, as well as financially, in their well-being.

NBA coach Don Nelson concurs that Gordon is a peerless pal and we learn that he issues coupons to remind him to pay back favours. At one point, Gordon shared a cat named The Sensitive One with Cary Grant, while he also got to make yak butter tea for the Dalai Lama through his involvement with the Tibet Fund. But, while he retained a few favourite clients, the novelty of the bright lights was beginning to wear off. Through his friendship with Emeril Lagrasse and Dean Fearing, Gordon, however, became increasingly intrigued by cookery. He was particularly taken by the philosophy of nouvelle cuisine maestro Roger Vergé, who convinced him to abandon the misery he consistently witnessed in the music business and do something that made him genuinely happy.

On learning that Vergé was not allowed to eat in top-end restaurants because he was classed as a domestic servant, Gordon set about inventing the `celebrity chef' and used television and product sponsorship to turn the likes of Vergé and Lagrasse into household names. In the process, he met and married raw food specialist Renee Loux. But they drifted apart after discovering that they couldn't have children and Gordon began to spend more of his time alone on Mau. In 2012, he suffered a small intestine trauma and underwent an operation that had only a 20% survival chance. Consequently, Gordon was able to take in his stride the fact that Pendergrass wrote him out of his autobiography and he continues to enjoy the good life with those who matter to him.

Considering the lengths to which he has gone to secure fame and fortune for his clients, there is a sad irony in the fact that Gordon no longer believes that celebrity has any intrinsic value. But this is never a study in regret, and, even though Meyers rather gallantly glosses over his evidently chequered love life, Gordon is prepared to stand by his mistakes and apologise for those he cannot laugh about. Abetted by cinematographer Michael Pruitt-Bruun and editor Joseph Krings, Meyers makes adept use of exclusive and archival material and clearly has a gift for putting interview subjects at their ease and lulling them into divulging the good stuff. He sparks particularly well with Gordon, whose willingness to be the butt of his own jokes makes him all the more engaging. That said, he is evidently a man of contradictions and one suspects that a far less flattering account of his wheeler-dealings could be produced by some of those outside his charmed inner circle. But the man who emerges here clearly seems to deserve his `supermensch' moniker.

A companion piece comes in the form of The Last Impresario, Gracie Otto's starstruck profile of Michael White, the producer who not only enjoyed a string of hit plays in the West End, but who also did much to revitalise the performing arts in Britain in the 1960s The Australian model-cum-actress first met White at Cannes in 2011 and was so taken by the fact that he seemed to know absolutely everybody that she asked if she could make a documentary about him. Despite the fact that Otto (who hails from a famous acting dynasty) had no previous directorial experience, White agreed to let her tag along as he prepared for a sale of some of his correspondence and memorabilia at Sotheby's. However, the combination of Otto's unwillingness to ask awkward questions and White's readiness to hide behind the debilitating effects of three strokes means that this is rarely more than a whistlestop celebration of celebrity.

According to actress Greta Scacchi, Michael `Chalky' White is the most famous person no one has ever heard of. Yet, as Otto quickly discovers, the great and the good of the arts and entertainment worlds are more willing to enthuse about White than say anything particularly revealing about him. However, White's eldest son Joshua confides that his maternal grandparents came to Britain from Russia and that the Glasgow-born Michael was sent to a Swiss boarding school at the age of seven to help him cope with his chronic asthma. As he explains in a clip from Desert Island Discs, he often felt very lonely. But he learned to speak several languages fluently and, moreover, the experience taught him to be open minded and culturally curious.

Director Jim Sharman concurs that White's education made him an internationalist, although he first became aware of world theatre while working for Lucille Lortel and Pete Daubeny at the White Barn Theatre in Connecticut. He returned to London in 1961 and caused a minor scandal with his first independent production, a play about drug addicts entitled, The Collection. Spike Milligan kept him in the headlines by ad-libbing in front of the Queen in Oblomov (1964) and White continued to fight a running battle with the Lord Chamberlain until his role of theatrical censor was abolished in 1968.

Critic Michael Billington dubs White `the Diaghilev of the Permissive Society', while John Cleese and Bill Oddie proclaim him the champion of alternative comedy, as he brought their Cambridge Footlights show to the West End in 1963. Yoko Ono also admires his willingness to take a chance, as he discovered her at the Indica Gallery and curated her `Music of the Mind' show. Rupert and Lucinda Lycett Green, Jean-Jacques Lebel and first wife Sarah Hillsdon join the chorus of approval and credit White with promoting Swinging London's first `happening', which was closed down by the police after a solitary performance.

But White was also prepared to push the envelope in other fields and, in addition to inviting the Comédie Française, the Moscow Art Theatre and the Berliner Ensemble to London, he also introduced UK audiences to dancer-choreographers Merce Cunningham, Gracelia Martinez, Yvonne Rainer and Pina Bausch and composer John Cage. Legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour declares that White had a genius for leaking the fringe into the mainstream and he agrees that he delighted in mixing the serious and the frivolous and taking risks with new material and artists.

Following a montage of monochrome photographs from some of the more notable successes among his 250+ shows, Otto accompanies White to his Notting Hill apartment, where he is in the process of selecting items for the auction. Second wife Louise has a sizeable collection at her house and White shows Otto some of the 30,000 pictures he has snapped with an ever-handy camera. He keeps them in 40-odd albums and Wintour, Alan Finkelstein, Naomi Watts and Alan Yentob gush that White is a man of few words who anticipated selfie culture without cheapening the images or insulting their subjects by publishing them. Long-standing friends Lyndall Hobbs, Gael Boglione and Rachel Ward purr about the easy rapport that White had with the likes of John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, David Bowie and Roman Polanski, as well as Princess Margaret and Prince Charles. But what was most amazing, according to Sabrina Guinness, is the fact that he managed to comingle high society and celebrity without press too much press intrusion.

Producer Robert Fox concurs that White knew how to party and kept his office well stocked with drugs and pretty girls. But he also worked hard and Tracy Tynan remembers the gamble he took in backing her critic father Kenneth's erotic revue, Oh! Calcutta!, which opened at The Roundhouse in 1970 and ran for seven years in London and 13 in New York. Producer Barnaby Thompson revels in the fact that the avant-garde nudity in the infamous show irked the moral majority. But, while he scored further hits with Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth and Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (both 1970), White let the odd gem slip through his fingers.

He is most clearly hurt by the loss of The Rocky Horror Show, which he found at the 60-seat Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court in 1973 and transferred to a disused cinema in the King's Road for a seven-year run. Jim Sharman, Richard O'Brien, Nell Campbell and Patricia Quinn reminisce about the thrill of turning cult kitsch into a behemoth. But White still feels cheated by American producer Lou Adler, who wanted to premiere the musical at the Roxy in Sunset Boulevard. Caught between smiles and tears, White concedes that he over-indulged in drugs while in Los Angeles, but feels that sharp practices were employed to deprive him of his cut of the stage and screen glory.

Back in the present, White joins with daughter Liberty and assistant Miriam Haleyi as they prepare for his day at Sotheby's. Gabriel Heaton waxes lyrical about the lots, but White feels melancholic at parting with his past. He also feels aggrieved at the way he was treated by Barry Humphries after he backed the London production of Edna Everage Housewife Superstar in the mid-1970s and took something of a bath when the show flopped in New York. According to White, Humphries promised to repay his faith by allowing him to back his next outing. But the pair fell out in the interim and Humphries rather fudges his explanation why White was not involved with the award-winning A Night With Dame Edna (1979).

White could certainly have done with a box-office success around this period, as rising costs and falling attendances meant that crowd-pleasers like A Chorus Line (1976) and Annie (1978) were becoming rarer. Consequently, he decided to try his luck in cinema and John Cleese (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975), John Waters (Polyester, 1981), Wallace Shawn and André Gregory (My Dinner With André, 1981), Greta Scacchi (White Mischief, 1985) and Julian Sands (The Turn of the Screw, 1992) all have reasons to be grateful for his intervention. Waters and Robert Shaye recall with some glee the effect of the Odorama scratch`n'sniff cards on the audience at Cannes. But White's greatest screen success was probably The Comic Strip Presents..., and Peter Richardson and Nigel Planer applaud his subversive attitude to the zeitgeist.

Despite returning to the boards with Crazy for You in 1993, White realised that much had changed and that making money now mattered more than taking artistic chances. He was disappointed by the commercial failure of the critically lauded She Loves Me (1994) and he found solace in his playboy image and betting on horses. Yet, while Kate Moss, Miranda Darling and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels coo about White knowing every soul in every nightclub, Fox avers that White made too many poor decisions while on drugs. O'Brien and Richardson also lament that the high life caught up with White before he ever had the chance to grow up.

But, while Jack Nicholson helped save White's life by getting him the best care after his first stroke, Jessica De Rothschild reveals that it left his memory seriously impaired. A subsequent episodes left White unconscious for six days and he became convinced that he had come back from the dead Even more remarkably, he beat odds of 1/100 to survive an aortic rupture. Yet, while he recuperated quietly with Leonie Van Ness, White remained addicted to nightlife and youth and Sarah and Joshua shake their heads as they discuss his determination to rage against age. Sarah suggests that his inability to express his feelings and his aversion to isolation are rooted in his childhood.

However, by acknowledging White's reluctance to talk about the bad things that have befallen him, Otto highlights the central weakness of her otherwise slick and enjoyable film. To an extent, Myers was faced with the same problem in profiling Shep Gordon. But the anecdotes here are much less amusingly outrageous and the talking heads are a lot duller because the majority can't bring themselves to consider White's flaws as an impresario and as a human being.

Alan Yentob typifies the non-judgemental loyalty as he explains how close friends have kept an eye on White as he struggled with his health and a downturn in his financial affairs. But, while it's impossible to doubt the sincerity of the good wishes, they don't always make for compelling viewing and one is often left wondering how different the picture might have been had Otto managed to coax such celeb pals as Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Bowie, Jagger, Paul McCartney, Michael Caine, Michael Douglas and Johnny Depp in front of her camera.

George Hencken's debut documentary, Soul Boys of the Western World, chronicles the musical odyssey of Spandau Ballet. Once again, outsiders have been excluded from this record, which is narrated off-camera by Gary and Martin Kemp, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman and John Keeble. But this is never entirely a glossy survey with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, as the bitterness that led to the band breaking up in 1990 and later going to court over songwriting royalties still lingers during the much-vaunted 2009 reunion.

Emerging from working-class Islington childhoods that were contented, if never quite idyllic, teenagers Gary Kemp and Steve Norman were the first to join forces in a band called The Cut in 1976. Realising he would never fulfil his ambitions to play for Arsenal and keep wicket to England, drummer John Keeble, another student at Dame Alice Owen's School in Potters Bar, signed up shortly afterwards, along with bassist Michael Ellison. However, they struggled to find a singer and were surprised when beanpole classmate Tony Hadley turned out to have a fine set of pipes. Richard Miller soon replaced Ellison, as yet another school friend, Steve Dagger, became the group's manager after finding them a couple of early gigs.

Like his brother, Martin Kemp had attended the drama club at Anna Scher Children's Theatre and the brothers had appeared in commercials from the late 1960s. Martin has also appeared in David Eady's 1972 Children's Film Foundation drama, Hide and Seek. But he attended the Central Foundation Boys' School and felt a bit like an outsider watching the band develop, as he embarked upon a printing apprenticeship. So, he exploited the family connection to take up the bass guitar around about the time the name changed to The Makers and a shift in musical direction saw the quintet embrace punk. But, despite an early gig at The Roxy, the new combo failed to cut the mustard and the boys reinvented themselves as a power pop outfit called Gentry.

This proved to be a retrogressive step, however, and it was only when Dagger discovered such happening London clubs as Billy's and Blitz that the newly dubbed Spandau Ballet (a name journalist Robert Elms saw daubed on a wall in Berlin) would discover the New Romanticism that would become their trademark. Steve Strange and Rusty Egan were the driving force behind Covent Garden's countercultural shift, but it was Dagger's decision to play a gig on HMS Belfast that got the Spandaus known and sparked a bidding war to sign them to a major label. Chrysalis won out and `To Cut a Long Story Short' saw the band debut on Top of the Pops and make a decent showing on the charts. As the album Journey to Glory went gold, Gary Kemp assumed responsibility for the songwriting chores and modest hits followed with `The Freeze' and `Musclebound'. However, `Chant No.1' proved even more popular, as did the second LP, Diamond.

But, while `Chant No.1' broke Spandau Ballet in America,`Paint Me Down' failed to make the Top 30, while `She Loved Like Diamond' missed the Top 40. Determined to keep the dream alive, Gary Kemp penned `True', `Gold' and `Pleasure', which all peaked in the upper echelons of the hit parade and helped make True their bestselling album. The follow-up, Parade, spawned `Only When You Leave' and `I'll Fly for You' , which earned them an invitation to appear on the Band Aid single, `Do They Know Its Christmas', and a slot at Live Aid in the summer of 1984.

They also remained firm favourites with producers of children's television programmes and promoted their singles with guest appearances and banal interviews that soon began to lose their appeal. However, they took their showdown with Duran Duran on a Christmas edition of Mike Read's Pop Quiz very seriously and were devastated to lose. The release of The Singles Collection brought to a close five years of whirlwind success But a change of label and growing tensions within the line-up meant that Beyond the Barricades was a less happy experience for all concerned. Thus, even though the title track and `Fight for Ourselves' did well in Britain, Europe and Australia, Spandau Ballet had fallen from grace in the United States and the fault lines began to widen.

Hadley, Norman and Keeble could only look on as Peter Medak cast the Kemps in The Krays (1990) and the reunited combo only just made it through the recording of Heart Like a Sky in 1989. Thus, even though `Raw' and `Be Free With Your Love' did well enough in the singles chart, the time had come to go separate ways. The Kemps continued acting, with Gary (who was then married to actress Sadie Frost) playing heavies in a handful of mediocre Hollywood thrillers and Martin bouncing back from surgery on two brain tumours to play Steve Owen in Eastenders.

Gary also released his first solo album, Little Bruises, in 1995. But Hadley, Norman and Keeble resented the fact that he claimed sole authorship of the band's songs and sued for their share of the credit and the royalties. However, they not only lost the case, but also their share in the band's corporate identity, as Gary bought them out to help them settle their legal debts. The ousted trio continued to perform together, but Hencken prefers to skate over this period in the group's history (possibly at their insistence), even though it witnessed such interesting developments as Martin making his directorial debut (with Stalker, 2010), Gary work on the musicals The Bedbug and A Terrible Beauty, Norman relocate to Ibiza and form the band Cloudfish, and Hadley release three solo albums and win the reality show, Reborn in the USA (2003).

Instead, the focus shifts to the 2009 reunion, which was announced aboard HMS Belfast. Plentiful jokes were made about money and feuds, particularly by Jonathan Ross on his BBC chat show. But the five friends put a brave face on it and rediscovered the enjoyment that had driven them to success in the first place. In addition to playing several sell-out gigs, they also released the album Once More, which included two new songs, as well as revised versions of their older hits. Subsequently, they got back together to promote Hencken's documentary, which premiered at the Royal Albert Hall.

Already destined for a DVD release, this will be vital viewing for Spandau Ballet devotees and those yearning for a little 80s nostalgia .In truth, however, while it relates the tale with polished efficiency, this documentary is too keen to tell the official story rather than provide a warts`n' all account. Much more might have been made of the group's place within the Blitz scene and the extent to which they created their own look or simply borrowed it from more radical clubbers. Moreover, allusions to the sex and drugs are not enough to enliven the rock`n' passages, especially for those who consider them a lesser act than such contemporaries as fellow New Romantics Duran Duran or electronica bands like Depeche Mode, Ultravox and The Human League.

Considering the fact that Hencken has produced some of Julien Temple's recent work, it's surprising to note the conventionality of his approach. It is also disappointing that, beside a passing mention to Thatcher and The Troubles, he resists placing the Spandau story in its wider socio-political context, while far too little time is spent analysing the blend of soul, glam rock and punk that informed the essential guitar and drum sound that was eventually inflected with some strident saxophone. Editor Chris Duveen does a solid job in snapping the pieces into place. But this too often feels like a Spandau Ballet album, as while the odd moment is memorable, too many others are makeweights.

Regardless of its misinformational title, Ilian Metev's Sofia's Last Ambulance is a compelling and compassionate documentary that follows doctor Krassimir Yordanov, paramedic Mila Mikhailova and driver Plamen Slavkov on their rounds across the Bulgarian capital. A combination of under-funding, incompetence and corruption means that there are only 13 ambulances fit for purpose in Sofia and Metev captures the strain placed on this committed and comradely crew, as they respond over two years to emergencies and frivolous call-outs alike. For much of the film, the camera is fixed to the dashboard and focuses on tired faces, as the middle-aged trio banter, complain, smoke and joke about their lot and the limited service they are able to provide to the two million citizens in their charge.

Discreetly resisting the temptation to intrude upon the pain of the patients and, on occasions, the grief of their relatives, Metev contrasts Yordanov's sober bedside with the chirpy Mikhailova's more reassuring ministrations. But each is entirely professional and the frustration felt at not being able to provide the best care is palpable, as they curse the inefficient dispatching system and lament the paucity of the facilities in some of the city's biggest hospitals. Slavkov also kvetches about the condition of the roads, as the ambulance bounces along during high-speed responses. But much more is conveyed by exhausted and exasperated expressions than any heartfelt diatribe.

The London-trained Metev offers no sense of chronology. But the pressure steadily begins to tell on the put-upon threesome, with Mikhailova increasingly wondering whether there is more to life than tending people whose medical crises are often self-inflicted. However, it's clear that Bulgaria as a whole is under scrutiny here, as Metev strongly implies that her prospects for a happier life would be little better in a less stressful profession that doesn't require her to bid goodnight to her young daughter over the phone. Yordanov appears more altruistic, as he sighs that he is the city's last practiced resuscitator. But he is also a social counsellor, a problem-solver, a peace-maker and an authority figure (as well as a periodic fruit thief), and the anguish etched on his face after being berated by distraught onlookers in the wake of a rare failure is harrowing in the extreme.

There's a schizophrenic quality about Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky's Watermark, which can't quite decide if it's about the compilation of a book or the issues raised by a project that was several years in the making. As Baichwal demonstrated in Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Burtynsky is a remarkable photographer, whose giant images of humanity's impact on its fragile planet are both visually stunning and intellectually provocative. However, in examining our most precious resource and the environmental ramifications of its usage and wastage, the co-directors never quite reach the artistic heights of their previous collaboration and often struggle to link footage from some spectacular locations into a coherent thesis.

Shot in 5D, the action opens with a thrilling close-up of muddy water cascading from the Xiolangdi Dam silt release on the Yellow River in Henan Province. A dramatic cross-cut reveals the parched, cracked former bed of the Colorado River delta in Mexico and a helicopter shot captures a small boat in the middle of a vast expanse of arid wilderness. Another aerial shot shows some dried-up tributaries scarring the landscape like the fronds of a fossilised fern.

It's not stated whether Man or Nature is responsible for such desolation, but the viewer gains a pretty good idea from the nocturnal shots of the construction site of the Xiluodu Dam being built on the Jinsha River in Yongshang County, which will turn out to be six times the size of the Hoover Dam in the United States. A rather unnecessary interlude featuring Burtynsky and Marcus Schubert analysing photographs in the former's Toronto studio facilitates a match shot with a view of the Ogallala Aquifer, which lies beneath the Great Plains and covers 450,000 km2 across eight states. Burtynsky is shown photographing the enormous green circles visible from Bill Nance's aeroplane, but offers no insight into their geological origins or current use.

Instead, he and Baichwal cut away to the All American Canal, which runs for 130 km through California. However, they then jump back to Inocencia González Sainz in Mexico, as he laments that a once thriving fishing industry is gone forever, before moving on to the 11,608 km2 of fields in California's Imperial Valley, which is separated from dehydrated scrubland solely by a winding highway.

This regimented verdancy is replaced by the squalid sludge of the Hazaribagh tannery district in the Bangladeshi capital, Dakha. Rafikul Islam Sarkar boasts about the global demand for leather produced by factories on the banks of the Buriganga River. But few will share his enthusiasm, as they watch soda ash polluting bathing water and small boats traversing the waterway at dusk as though caught in a dystopic Canaletto vista.

Clearly dismayed by the horror of such degradation, Burtynsky heads to northern British Columbia to photograph the purer waters of the Stikine River watershed, which occupies 52,000 km2 of sublime mountain scenery. Native Canadian Oscar Dennis explains the delicate eco-system operating within this expanse of rugged beauty and warns that it is being rapidly undermined by human folly. Images of swimming fish shift the scene to Luoyuan Bay in the East China Sea, where Lin Jianqing explains how floating abalone farms are tethered together to enable workers to live close to the source of their livelihood and remain safe in the face of typhoons.

Despite all their precautions, Lin concedes, over a majestic magic hour shot, that nothing lasts forever. But the scientists based at the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver would beg to differ, as they have samples in their -35° C storeroom that offer clues into the state of the planet millions of years ago. As we see footage of an expedition to Greenland's 1,710,000 km2 ice sheet, field manager Jørgen Peder Steffensen and glaciologist Dorthe Dahl-Jensen explain how the Earth passes through climatic cycles and how the conditions we are currently experiencing suggest that we are emerging from a temperate anomaly rather than leaving a period of typical stability.

In contrast to this pioneering work, which just might help us plan for a sustainable future, scuba-diving engineers maintain the fountains of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, which require 83,279,060 litres for the nightly son et lumière displays. Back at Xiluodu, Zhou Shaowu describes the cutting-edge technology involved in the operation of his dam and the swirling shot of the forbidding structure is rather coyly compared to close-ups of the dancing Vegas water jets.

Long before such electro-ingenuity was envisaged, stepwells were excavated in Rajasthan and Baichwal indulges Burtynsky by showing him setting up his camera equipment in order to take a shot of the intricate interior brick work. She then cuts to Polly Hankins walking towards a small brick structure at Lone Pine, California, which is just about all that remains of a community that perished when William Mulholland diverted its water to supply Los Angeles in 1913. Yet this engineering feat caused as many problems as it solved and the camera lingers on the sprinklers that damp down the Owens Lakebed, which is the largest source of dust pollution in the USA.

A slick edit takes us to the rice fields that have occupied the same spot in Yunnan Province since 300 CE. As the camera roves across the banked paddies, Zhengliang Luo reveals how water is divided between the farmers. However, Bai Yunfei is employed as a water guard to ensure that nobody steals the precious supply and he bemoans the fact that fewer people are willing to stay in the countryside and undertake such vital, but arduous work when they can make better money for less effort in the big cities. Yet, as this traditional way of life declines, the duodecennial Prayagraj pilgrimage to Allahabad continues and Sri Madhavacharyanji Maharaj explains how up to 30 million souls bathe together in the Ganges during the Maha Kumbh Mela in order to wash away their sins.

Somewhat crudely, Baichwal and Burtynsky transition between the faithful submerging themselves in sacred waters and girls in skimpy bathing suits performing cartwheels on Huntington Beach before the US Open of Surfing. There is no question that water has a leisure purpose, but the co-directors opt not to explore this aspect in any detail, as they end a montage of images chronicling humanity's relationship with rivers and their surrounding landscapes with an aerial view of the constructed waterfront at Discovery Bay in California.

Water also has a role to play in the printing of Burtynsky's latest photo-book at Gerhard Steidl's publishing house in the German town of Göttingen. As Dahl-Jensen describes how water came to Earth as a result of its collisions with passingn comets, we see the water levels rising as the Xiluodu Dam goes into commission. A close-up picks out a daddy longlegs on a patch of mud to stand as a metaphor for humankind's precarious position, which is reinforced by Steffensen's dire warning about the fate of life on Earth without water.

Closing on shots of the Blue Lagoon geothermal springs in Iceland and the Stikine River meandering its way through the mountains, this is a striking, thought-provoking and rather frustrating film. The sequences of Burtynsky at work are entirely extraneous and could easily be replaced with footage that better contextualises and links the different themes and locations. Considerably greater effort might also have been expended on a more convincing unifying thesis, as, while Burtynsky is wise to avoid preaching to a largely converted audience, some of the juxtapositions feel more than a little spurious.

Nevertheless, Burtynsky combines well with cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier (who just happens to be Baichwal's husband), while Roland Schlimme's editing is as accomplished as the music he composed with Martin Tielli. What makes his achievement all the more remarkable, however, is that he operated on a 180:1 footage ratio, which means that three hours of footage were rejected for every minute that made the final cut. Observational documentaries have always been a matter of watching and waiting. But this must set some kind of record.

Finally, few people did more to revolutionise children's television than Gerry Anderson. He was notoriously reluctant to share the credit and even tried to airbrush his former wife Sylvia out of the story of his success. But, as Stephen La Rivière reveals in Filmed in Supermarionation, AP Films was very much a collaborative enterprise and several old hands share their memories with Anderson's son Jamie in a documentary that will prove irresistible to anyone for whom the opening notes of a Barry Gray theme meant instant transportation from the mundanities of a 1960s childhood into an escapist neverland populated entirely by intrepid puppets.

La Rivière and Anderson fils are assisted in chronicling the story by Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward (Sylvia Anderson) and her Cockney butler-cum-chauffeur Aloysius Parker (David Graham), who is asked if he is having an existential crisis when his employer catches him reading La Rivière's book on Supermarionation. He reassures her that his faculties are all in perfect working order and explains how the adventure started when Gerry Anderson teamed with Arthur Provis, Reg Hill and John Read to form Pentagon Films in the mid-1950s to do animation work for commercials.

Among the first assignments was a 30-second slot for Ricicles starring Enid Byton's Noddy character, which suitably emboldened the Pentagon crew to produce their own puppet film, Here Comes Kandy (1956). Although it was barely seen, this short about a cuddly koala prompted author Roberta Leigh to ask Anderson if he could base a series on her books about a doll with the ability to extend his arms and legs. He was surprised when she presented him with scripts for 52 shows running 15 minutes each . But he was astounded when she insisted on using puppets and Provis remembers how Anderson was so ambitious that he accepted the commission even though he had none of the requisite skills. Nevertheless, the first episode of The Adventures of Twizzle was broadcast on 13 November 1957 and Leigh was sufficiently impressed to collaborate with Anderson on Torchy the Battery Boy, which ran for another 52 episodes over two years.

Anderson had no intention of becoming a puppet master. He simply wished to get his foot in the door at the new commercial station. But, when Provis left to work with Leigh on Space Patrol, Anderson and second wife Sylvia Thamm retained control of AP Films, which was now based at Islet Park, a stately home outside Maidenhead. James Anderson returns Berkshire with directors David Elliott and Desmond Saunders and puppeteers Mary Turner, Roger Woodburn and Judith Shutt, who recall how Anderson invented the Dexion Bridge to enable them to tower over the action taking place on the lovingly created sets. Such was the workload that many had their own rooms at the house. But the effort was well worthwhile, especially when inspiration combined with luck in one episode to produce the special effects to launch a rocket. Jill Freud also remembers Kenneth Connor slipping double entendres into the dialogue during dubbing, while Anderson himself created a Torchy character called Bossy Boots, who bore a striking resemblance to the dictatorial Roberta Leigh.

The pilot episode of the cowboy series Four Feather Falls was also made at Islet. But it soon became clear that purpose-built premises were needed in order to keep to the tight production schedule. Lady Penelope and Parker appear on a monochrome Western set and Nicholas Parsons and ex-wife Denise Bryer look back on voicing Tex Tucker and Ma Jones, while Connor contributed Rocky the horse and Dusty the dog. Crooner Michael Holliday was hired to record the theme tune and it became a chart hit. Woodburn reflects on the camaraderie among the crew and some charming colour footage shows everyone on the set with their puppets.

This was the first show to utilise Supermarionation and Parker summons Brains (Graham again) to explain how it works. He unravels the word into its constituent parts - super marionette animation - and describes the unique contribution made by glass fibre heads and electronic synchronisation devices that gave the impression a puppet's mouth was moving in time to the dialogue. Woodburn recalls the teething problems they had with vocal timbres affecting the pulse mechanism, but it worked well enough on all 39 episodes of Four Feather Falls.

However, the bosses at Granada called time on Tex and his pals in 1960 and Anderson confided in Frank Green that AP Films would go bust unless a new series was commissioned soon. The company was now based at a small factory on a trading estate on Ipswich Road in Slough and Jamie and the old gang pay a return visit and discuss how the extra space enabled them to work on bigger sets that allowed for reverse camera angles. It certainly came in useful during the production of Supercar, although the show was nearly cancelled before it began, as Lew Grade at ATV couldn't justify spending £3000 on each episode and Anderson had to cut the tea budget to conclude the deal (although he nearly blew his big break again when he asked for a letter of intent to help secure loans and Grade was furious that anyone would doubt his word).

Patented by Rudolph Popkiss and Horatio Beaker and piloted by Mike Mercury, Supercar was stationed in the Nevada Desert and was capable of flying through the air and submerging like a submarine. Co-creator Hugh Woodhouse reveals that the emphasis on action meant there was little dialogue in the early episodes and sidekicks Jimmy Gibson (who was voiced by Sylvia) and Mitch the monkey were added along with Dr Beaker and Masterspy to make the storylines more rounded. In order to make the aerial sequences look more authentic, cameraman John Read was sent up to 12,000 feet in a twin-engine plane to ofilm cloud and ground footage. However, he soon experienced difficulty breathing, as he only had one lung and only just survived the ordeal, as there was no oxygen aboard and the pilot couldn't make a rapid descent because the engineer had a cold and his eardrums would have burst.

Anderson was grateful that the bulk of the action took place in the eponymous vehicle, as it saved him the trouble of solving the problem of credible perambulation. A jokey montage shows puppets bouncing or shuffling across sets rather than walking and directors Saunders and Elliott concur that it was sometimes difficult to make the characters appear lifelike. Puppet maker John Blundall joins with Woodburn and fellow puppeteer Christine Glanville in lamenting how the figures often swayed on their six-foot strings and it was decided to shoot as many scenes as possible from the waist up. Sylvia's daughter Dee Anderson recalls spraying the strings to make them `invisible', while Saunders, designer Keith Wilson and lighting cameraman Julien Lugrin sigh over the hours spent preparing takes that lasted for a matter of seconds.

Saunders also cheekily reveals that he once got into trouble by ensuring that some of the male puppets were all man. But AP Films was a happy place to be in 1961 and a series of clips show the problems the team had making Supercar sink beneath the `waves' of its water tank and it is conceded that the odd jump cut was used to make its plunges more convincing. Yet, Gerry could make enemies and those who crossed him were soon dismissed. Editor-director David Lane says he was a very driven man and bore the scars of a tough upbringing and some traumatic experiences in the wartime RAF. By contrast, Sylvia was the company agony aunt, who also had a considerable say in the costuming of the puppets and their merchandising. Gerry might have been the ideas man, but Sylvia was crucial to his success and they were very much a team.

As Parker sings the Supercar theme, Lady Penelope urges him to get on with the story, which takes a new turn in 1962 when Lew Grade demanded a more ambitious show that would reflect the growing interest in the space race. Anderson had heard of rockets that could take off like aircraft and SFX director Brian Johnson remembers the endless meetings discussing how the ship belonging to World Space Patrol would blast off. Once again, Gray provided the theme for Fireball XL5, which turned around the 2062 exploits of Steve Zodiac and Venus and their back-up boffin, the garrulous Professor Matic, and his faithful robot, Robert. Blundall revelled in the freedom to create alien adversaries and shows off a fish creature and a plant man. This ingenuity caught the eye of NBC and this became the first Anderson show to screen in the United States.

In 1963, Grade acquired AP Films, but wisely left Anderson in charge. He immediately relocated the company to new premises at Stirling Road that Lane confirms allowed for greater experimentation. The following year, having been impressed by the productions he had seen at the New York World's Fair, Anderson announced that Stingray would be filmed in colour. Camera operator Alan Petty remembers along with Shutt and Turner that Anderson spent months exploring which colours worked well, as the verdict of the NBC audiences would make or break the show, which was transmitted in monochrome in Britain from October 1964.

The plots usually centred on the efforts of the evil Triton to sabotage Marineville, which was defended by Commander Shore. In addition to control crew members Atlanta Shore (the boss's daughter) and John Horatio Fisher, the other key members of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol were submariners Troy Tempest and George Lee `Phones' Sheridan. But, perhaps the most intriguing character was a mute mermaid, who provided the inspiration for Gray's theme song, `Aqua Marina', which became a hit for Gary Miller. Saunders opines that Gray was a genius and he reveals that he got the ideas for his scores at the most unusual times. He was driving home when the Fireball XL5 tune (sung by Don Spencer) popped into his head while he was driving home one night, while the famous Thunderbirds march came to him as he was lying in bed before getting up.

Equally important to the success of the shows was the casting of the character voices. Sylvia often held sway here and David Graham, Shane Rimmer (Scott Tracy), Robert Easton (Phones) and Elizabeth Morgan (Destiny, Rhapsody and Harmony Angel) recall the relaxed recording sessions. They voiced wild knowing that the pulse system would synch the dialogue with the puppets and Sylvia encouraged them to give natural readings, as though they were playing human characters.

Once again, Anderson produced 39 episodes (running 25 minutes each) and Johnson explains how a giant fish tank and a high-speed camera was used to create the underwater effects that would be duplicated for Thunderbird 4. Johnson and cameraman Reg Hill also recall the tank shattering, while model maker Alan Shubrook looks back with pride on being part of such an accomplished ensemble. But Anderson was less convinced by the new series and it lasted only a single season, as he had seen newsreel footage of a mining disaster in West Germany and had been so struck by the sight of the large drilling machine that he invented a body that stored such equipment at a top secret facility so that it could respond immediately to any emergency anywhere in the world. He named the organisation International Rescue. But the programme was called Thunderbirds.

Lady Penelope is delighted to reach her part in the story and Parker reminds everyone that astronaut Jeff Tracy ran International Rescue with the help of his five sons, Scott, John, Virgil, Alan and Gordon, who operated machines devised by Brains. Periodically, the Tracys responded to crises caused by a villain called The Hood, while they also frequently had recourse to request assistance from British agents, Lady Penelope and Parker. But the majority of cases involved cutting-edge technology malfunctioning and imperilling innocent lives. Stories involving such danger and destruction were unusual in 1965 and juvenile audiences lapped it up.

A clip from the 1971 documentary, Something for the Children, shows Sylvia explaining why the principals spoke with American accents. But Gerry later gave a more prosaic answer: the US networks paid more and called such creative shots, although it would seem that the invasion of British pop bands around this time made it easier to slip in the odd character from Blighty. Rather fancifully, David Graham claims that Parker was born in a pub restaurant in Cookham and had worked as a wine waiter before serving in the royal household. In fact, although he was something of a snob, Parker was a crook nicknamed `Nosey', who dropped his aitches and relished the opportunity to open fire with the guns secreted in the six-wheeled pink Rolls-Royce (with its number plate, FAB 1).

By all accounts, Gerry had wanted Fenella Fielding to voice Lady Penelope, but Sylvia insisted on taking the role and the old lags joke with Jamie that her puppet came to bear a more striking resemblance to Sylvia as the series went on. Shutt compares her to Emma Peel from The Avengers, while Lane opines that she was the real stars of the show, as she epitomised Swinging London - and even gave a television interview to a real reporter about her fashion sense.

For the majority of boys tuning in, however, Thunderbirds was all about tense moments like Virgil trying to land Fireflash on mobile platforms. Brains explains how Derek Meddings invented a rolling sky device that made it look as though the various aircraft were zooming along, while Johnson reveals how a rolling road machine was run at a different speed to exploit the illusion created by forced perspective. Sylvia proclaims Meddings a genius, while Lane describes him as a problem solver who brought big-screen techniques to a kids' YV show. However, Saunders and Elliott fondly remember him as a chap who liked an explosion and a thrilling montage bears out their contention.

Over black-and-white footage of the model shop in full flow, effects director Shaun Whittacker-Cook states that the attention to detail was remarkable, with designers working in conjunction with storyboard artists like Mike Trim to ensure that the miniatures looked right in long shots and close-ups, right down to their insignia and patches of grime. Wilson jokes about the ingenuity of the crew, who turned beach balls, plastic packaging and other household items into gadgets or set furniture. However, they didn't always get it right and Trim admits that he is still haunted by the lemon squeezer appended to the wall in Thunderbird 1's launch bay. According to Brains, fire and water effects are tricky to film and he explains how high-speed photography gives models a sense of gravitas and intensity by slowing them down. In order to demonstrate, Johnson rigs up an oil refinery set and it is astonishing to see how a couple of small pops and a bit of smoke in real time resemble a devastating explosion and a conflagration in super-slow-mo.

Lew Grade was delighted with the series and told Anderson to double the running time to 50 minutes. He was aware that this meant increasing the budget and the size of the crew, but Thunderbirds was selling worldwide and Ken Turner describes how exciting it was joining such a revered project. Saunders says it became essential viewing and claims the Tracys were akin to puppet versions of The Beatles. Fans certainly hung around the factory hoping to catch a glimpse of a set or find souvenirs in the rubbish bins. Even scientists at the National Physics Laboratory took it sufficiently seriously to write and complain that a craft of Thunderbird 2's proportions could never fly. Yet, while Dee recalls being amazed that her parents were behind this phenomenon, the faithful few admit to Jamie that they never felt they were making entertainment history.

In 1966, AP Films changed its name to Century 21 Cinema Productions to reflect its space-age image. Shortly afterwards, work began on the feature, Thunderbirds Are GO, which was filmed in Technicolor and Techniscope. However, while this meant additional prestige, it also meant extra pressure, as the level of detail quadrupled in a bid to achieve `no strings attached' perfection. Cliff Richard and The Shadows made cameo appearance in puppet form and Lady Penelope recollects that the picture was a huge success. But Parker remembers things a little differently, as the reviews were poor and audiences stayed away in the belief that they had already seen the storyline for free in the comfort of their own living rooms. A second feature, Thunderbird 6, was released in 1968. But Lane concedes that the leap to the cinema screen was bigger than anyone had anticipated and Matt Zimmermann (who voiced Alan Tracy) recalls the despondent mood being exacerbated by the fact that Gerry and Sylvia were on the verge of splitting up.

But Grade was waiting in the wings with more bad news. Although Thunderbirds was still popular in Britain, the American viewing figures were declining. Consequently, he ordered Anderson to abandon Tracy Island and come up with a new programme. This became Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967), which charted the struggle for control of Earth in 2068 between Spectrum and Martian invaders who enlist the dead to their sinister cause. Opposing them were Colonel White and his network of agents and fighter pilots, although the principal tussle was between Captain Scarlett, who had become indestructible after surviving an encounter with the Mysterons, and Captain Black, who had gone over to the dark side.

As Parker opines, the emphasis on death and destruction meant the show felt a bit daunting for the nippers. Moreover, while the puppets were much less human caricatures (as smaller lip synching pulse mechanisms meant that the bodies could be better proportioned), director Leo Eaton confesses that they were much less loved by the puppeteers, who felt that they seemed so realistic that they looked ridiculous when they did something non-human. Woodburn blames Anderson for this, as he was always rather ashamed of working with puppets (he called them `little bastards') and was desperately disappointed that he was unable to follow up his live-action directing career after Crossroads to Crime, a B thriller produced by Anglo-Amalgamated in 1960. Yet, the irony is, if he hadn't detested the puppets so much, he wouldn't have put so much work into the details that set his shows apart.

Johnson jokes that there was always a rivalry between the effects crew and the puppeteers, as the latter always complained when a stunt damaged one of their dolls. But Shubrook says they were all committed to making each episode as good as it could be and all were sufficiently on the same wavelength to know that nothing would ever top Thunderbirds. Grade was certainly unimpressed with Captain Scarlett, who was stood down after 32 episodes. But Anderson already had the next concept ready to go. The introduction of reusable magnetic film gave him the idea for a hero whose brain could be repeatedly reprogrammed and he came to life in the form of a nine year-old boy, whose father (Professor McClaine) had patented a super-computer that could give him the expertise needed to handle any situation. There was a hint of Bond-like espionage about Joe 90 (1968) and some of the old hands feel a bit uneasy about a programme in which a boy was sent to kill terrorists.

In the end, it only ran for 30 episodes. Yet Anderson used it to improve manipulation techniques by installing electronic video assist monitors that enabled the puppeteers to see the action as it unfolded on the miniature sets. He also introduced video recording for instant playback, which meant that any required retakes could be shot straightaway without having to wait for the rushes. But Anderson was growing restless and the chance to return to live-action cinema with Doppelgänger (1969) prompted him to attempt a meld of human and puppet action in The Secret Service (1969), a spy scenario that starred Stanley Unwin as a the vicar of a country village who was really working undercover for British Intelligence Service Headquarters, Operation Priest.

Anderson was a huge fan of Unwin and his gobbledegook language known as `Unwinese' and was amused that he could use this and his miniaturisation device to get out of scrapes. But Grade was horrified by the whimsy of priest in the employ of BISHOP and felt that American audiences would be baffled by him and his sidekicks, Mrs Appleby the housekeeper and Matthew the gardener. He was even less convinced by the use of Unwin and other human actors in long shots and cancelled the series after a test screening of the pilot episode. Anderson convinced Grade to let him finish the 13 episodes already under way, but his disappointment was probably tinged with a degree of relief, as he was finally granted his wish to embark upon the live-action series, UFO.

Lane suggests that the writing had been on the wall for some time and Sylvia wonders whether the divorce impacted upon the staff as well as the Anderson family. Gerry had moved to offices in Pinewood and left the crew to complete The Secret Service in Slough. But there was no room for sentiment and Anderson closed down Stirling Road without a second thought. Shulbrook remembers the sets being sledgehammered and dumped into skips, while Turner recalls that he and a few others tried to keep the animation side going. But Lane says they all knew that standards had slipped and that they had done well to keep things going for 12 years.

Over a shot of Brains, Lieutenant Green and Mike Mercury on one of the few remaining sets, Saunders reflects that the shows have stood the test of time. Graham thanks Parker for being such a good friend before Lady Penelope gives him a final `well done' before ordering him to drive her home. This farewell and a final montage of classic clips would have been the perfect way to end the film. But La Rivière gets a bit carried away after the new owners of Stirling Road refuse to allow Jamie Anderson and the APF veterans inside and they agree to blow it up - using a wonderfully cheesy explosion that leaves part of the building ablaze.

This homemade effect rather sums up the entire enterprise, as La Rivière clearly didn't have much of a budget at his disposal. But he makes fine use of archive material and show highlights and is fortunate in having so many personable old-stagers on hand to share their recollections. Despite the presence of Jamie and Sylvia, this is anything but a sanitised history. But it might have been fun to have included contributions from some celebrity fans or those die-hards who keep the Supermarionation myth alive at conventions. Mention might also have been made of the fact that Graham will reprise the role of Parker (opposite Rosamund Pike's Lady Penelope) in Thunderbirds Are Go!, which has been commissioned by CITV and will set CGI characters against authentic backdrops in its 26 half-hour episodes. However, anyone with fond memories of Gerry Anderson's pioneering programmes will forgive the odd moment of self-indulgence and naff humour, as this picture is pretty much critic-proof.