Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 25/12/2014)

January saw the release of Teenage, Matt Wolf's middling study of adolescence; The Armstrong Lie, Alex Gibney's scathing exposé on disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, and Kiss the Water, Eric Steel's charming memoir of Scottish fishing fly spinner, Megan Boyd. Following the February issue of As the Palaces Burn, Don Argott's profile of troubled rock band Lamb of God, the focus fell on political matters in March, with Errol Morris interviewing former US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known, Kirby Dick exposing sexism in the American military in The Invisible War and Mandy Jacobson and Carlos Aguilol revealing the role played by Jean-Yves Olliver in some of the worlds hottest trouble spots in Plot for Peace.

On a lighter note, Finn Petri Luukkainen put all of his belongings into storage and learned to live more simply in My Stuff and the upbeat tone continued into April with Mark Cousins's typically personal take on juveniles on screen in A Story of Children and Film. The same month also brought Visitors, Godfrey Reggio's experimental investigation into humanity's relationship with technology, and Luke Dodd and Michael Whyte's Looking for Light: Jane Bown, a portrait of the renowned Observer photography that became all the more poignant when its subject passed away in December.

Lina Plioplyte and Ari Seth Cohen showcased several more ladies ageing gracefully in Advanced Style, while Dylan Goch followed Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys as he followed in the footsteps of intrepid 18th-century Welshman John Evans in American Interior. Completing the May line-up, Ramona S Diaz revealed how Filipino vocalist Arnel Pineda found his niche with a fabled combo in Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey. But this unlikely odyssey was more than matched in June by Steve Barker's homage to an Aylesbury icon, Rock and Roll's Greatest Failure: Otway the Movie. This busy month also saw London band St Etienne team up with Paul Kelly for the montage snapshot of the capital, How We Used to Live, videographer Doug Block meet some of the couples whose nuptials he had recorded in 112 Weddings, and Talal Derki view the conflict in Syria through the eyes of activist Ossama al-Homsi and sloganeering goalkeeper Abdul Baset al-Sarout in Return to Homs.

Compelling profiles abounded in July, with John Maloof and Charlie Siskel's Finding Vivian Maier, Jeffrey Schwarz's I Am Divine and Mike Myers's Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon respectively centring on a nanny with a gift for photography, a cross-dressing countercultural icon and a fast-living talent manager with a philanthropical streak. The darker side of human nature came to the fore in The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine's riveting account of a doomed 1930s social experiment, and Deborah Perkin's Bastards, which delves into the problems faced by women within the Moroccan justice system. The law also proved to be something of an ass in the August trio of Todd Miller's Dinosaur 13, Brian Knappenberger's The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz and Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin's The Notorious Mr Bout. The first pair explore the concept of ownership where archaeology and the information superhighway are concerned, while the last traces the career of Viktor Bout, the charming Russian arms dealer, whose trade earned him the nickname, `The Merchant'.

September saw the prolific Alex Gibney misfire for once, as he examined the political content of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti's trademark Afrobeat style in Finding Fela, while Ben Rivers and Ben Russell had their hit-and-miss moments in the Nordic triptych, A Spell to Ward Off Darkness. George Hencken provided a more tuneful account of the rise and fall of Spandau Ballet in Soul Boys of the Western World, while the spotlight fell on Nick Cave in Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's self-consciously chic, but still enjoyable 20,000 Days on Earth. Gracie Otto adopted a similarly scattershot approach in celebrating the achievement of theatre producer Michael White in The Last Impresario, while Al Pacino stumbled and blustered his way through an introduction to the life and works of a flawed Irish genius in Wilde Salomé. Margy Kinmonth marked the 250th anniversary of a St Petersburg landmark with a fascinating, if occasionally twee guided tour in Hermitage Revisited, while Direct Cinema maestro Frederick Wiseman captured the daily routine at a leading American seat of learning in At Berkeley.

While Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky ended the month pondering the planet's scarcest natural resource in Watermark, the formidable sextet of Robert Redford, Wim Wenders, Karim Ainouz, Michael Madsen, Michael Glawogger and Margreth Olin launched October with Cathedrals of Culture, an anthology of architectural vignettes that wasn't quite the sum of its parts. The same is true of Skip Kite's fond tribute, Will and Testament - Tony Benn, which was much less clear-sighted than Owen Gower's analysis of the 1984-85 miners' strike, Still the Enemy Within. The work of puppeteer Gerry Anderson was recalled in Stephen La Rivière's admirably detailed Filmed in Supermarionation, while in Time Is Illmatic, One9 and Erik Parker reflected on the impact made by an epochal 1994 album by the American rapper, Nas. More fuss was made, however, of Laura Poitras's encounter with whistleblower Edward Snowden in CITIZENFOUR and Jesse Moss's visit with disgraced North Dakota pastor Jay Reinke in The Overnighters.

Moving into November, the two sides of revered film critic Roger Ebert were laid bare in Steve James's Life Itself, while Edward Lovelace and James Hall showed how musician Edwin Collins fought back from a debilitating brain haemorrhage in The Possibilities Are Endless. Elsewhere, Randall Wright returned to his favourite topic in Hockney, while born again hack Rich Peppiatt let his ego get the better of him in satirising the bad boys of British tabloid journalism in One Rogue Reporter (which he co-directed with Tom Jenkinson). More edifying were Concerning Violence, Göran Hugo Olsson's archival essay on Africa's colonial legacy, and Gianfranco Rosi's Sacro GRA, a lettera d'amore to the people living along a Roman ring road that made history by becoming the first documentary to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Closing the year, Kat Mansoor extolled the virtues of a Dutch master in Exhibition on Screen: Rembrandt, Tensin Tsetan Choklay followed the planning an execution of a unique art exhibit in Bringing Tibet Home, and Leila Sansour recalled her bid to bring the plight of Jesus Christ's birthplace in Open Bethlehem. But none of these admirable pictures made our end-of-year Top 10:-

10) 20 FEET FROM STARDOM (Morgan Neville).

Religion had a key role to play in the evolution of backing singing, as Morgan Neville reveals in the Oscar-winning documentary, Twenty Feet From Stardom. Many of the African-American women who helped change the way popular music sounded in the 1960s started out in gospel choirs (indeed, many had pastors for parents), where they not only learned about harmonies, but also the value of being part of a group. Some yearned to be in the spotlight and took their shot at the big time. But, as this considered account explains, the people who ran the music business had very definite ideas about who should be a star and so, unfortunately, did those often indiscriminating arbiters of taste: the record-buying public.

Bruce Springsteen avers that it is a long walk from the back of the stage to the front and, as Lou Reed's `Walk on the Wild Side' plays on the soundtrack, Janice Pendarvis says that this song might have aroused controversy with its use of the word `coloured', but it encapsulated the power that black back-up singers brought to R&B and rock music. Pendarvis is a longtime collaborator with Stevie Wonder, while Lynn Marby has been associated with Talking Heads for many years. As Neville shows a live performance of `Slippery People', Australian singer Jo Lawry (who works with Sting), Cindy Mizelle (an E Street Band regular), and ex-Harlette Charlotte Crossley opine that being part of a singing sisterhood is wonderful, as it enables artists to be chameleonic. But, as white male singer David Lasley states, backing vocalists are expected to be perfect first time and take no credit for their work.

Onetime Raelette Mable John is now a preacher and the founder of the Joy in Jesus ministries in Los Angeles. She says in a sermon that using a God-given gift is a duty and many of her fellow interviewees reveal how they were tutored in the call-and-response technique at their local church. Among them is Darlene Love, who recalls with Bette Midler that, until the mid-1950s, backing vocalists were usually white women who looked good alongside a white male crooner. They were known as `readers' by their black counterparts, as they simply followed the score and put little of themselves into their performance. But, as Stevie Wonder explains, this all changed in the 60s, when people wanted to hear some spirit in their music.

Darlene's sister, Edna Wright, revels in the rawness of the sound created by The Blossoms, a trio comprising Darlene, Fanita James and Jean King, who reunite for the first time in five decades to listen to their contribution to such hits as `The Monster Mash' by Bobby `Boris' Pickett and the Cryptkickers, `That's Life' by Frank Sinatra and `The Shoop Shoop Song' by Betty Everett. We see monochrome footage of them belting out `I Do the Shimmy Shimmy' on TV and they do an impromptu run through of `Da Doo Ron Ron', which sounds superb.

The Blossoms were in demand from the moment producers heard them. But, if they couldn't make a gig or recording session, they were quick to pass the work to a friend and Merry Clayton was one of the beneficiaries. Producer Bill Maxwell says Clayton stood out from the crowd and was always the leader of any group she sang with. Edna and Darlene knew her at school and, as we see her ripping through `Nobody's Fault But Mine', she explains how her big break came when keyboard player Billy Preston called her to audition for Ray Charles. She was desperate to become a Raelette and learned how to tone herself down and be an entertainer, as much as an artist. Over colour footage of `What I'd Say', academic Todd Boyd claims that Charles was like an old-fashioned preacher who sang about sex and his vocalists were his choir. But he was a tough taskmaster and Clayton remembers how she missed a note during a show in front of 5000 people and Charles stopped the song and hammered the note on the piano to teach her a lesson she never forgot.

Having started out as a session singer for Quincy Jones, Patti Austin went on to win a Grammy as a soloist. But not everybody wants to come up front and she lauds Lisa Fischer for playing the game by her own rules. She does a scat number, as she confides in voice-over that she is content to put herself at the service of a melody and make people happy. But trumpeter-composer Chris Botti declares that her voice demands attention and Austin proclaims her the empress of vocalists. Yet Fischer is abashed by such praise and doesn't understand why so many back-ups clamour to go centre stage, as singing is about sharing not competing.

Sheryl Crow describes the voice as the most heavenly instrument and Lasley recalls hearing Darlene Love doing `Hallelujah I Love Him So' on a Phil Spector TV special and knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Darlene goes back to the studio and producer Bob Santos plays her `Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)' from the fabled Spector festive album and she is evidently proud to have been part of the `Wall of Sound' experiment. But she resents the fact that the sessions were always about Spector and that he tricked her into doing ghost vocals for other acts. A case in point is `He's a Rebel', which was recorded while The Crystals were on tour and yet became one of their biggest hits. Similarly, she believed `He's the Boy I Love' would be her first solo single, but he gave that to The Crystals, too, and Susaye Greene (who was the last official member of The Supremes) opines that there is nothing more dispiriting than watching someone lip-synching to your voice.

Springsteen says he strove for years to capture the Spector sound, only to realise it was the sound of youth. But Warren Zanes (from The Del Fuegos) regrets that Spector kept Darlene in a box and deprived her of her chance of the fame she deserved. Tata Vega and Gloria Jones also feel she was badly treated, but insist that she was hardly alone. Vega recollects running after Stevie Wonder to try and impress him and he smiles at how she blew him away. We see her recording with The Waters Family and Springsteen remarks that R&B was essentially the secularisation of gospel.

Many singers came to Los Angeles in search of their break, among them Claudia Lennear, who made her mark as one of The Ikettes backing Ike and Tina Turner in the mid-1960s. We see a colourful clip of the band playing and she jokes that they were R&Bs first action figures. Mabry and Stevvi Alexander tut that some of the outfits worn by backing girls in this period were far too revealing and Lennear agrees before admitting to having posed for Playboy. She also worked with several British acts, including Joe Cocker, who allowed his backing singers the freedom to express themselves. Linnear was also the inspiration for The Rolling Stones track `Brown Sugar'.

But it was Merry Clayton who delivered the powerhouse line `Rape. Murder. It's just a shot away' on `Gimme Shelter' and Mick Jagger remembers not knowing a thing about this pregnant black woman in pyjamas with her hair in curlers when she was roused in the middle of the night to join a session. Clayton smiles as she recalls Jagger not being particularly impressed with the first take, so she decided to go an octave higher and blitz the lyric, which is played without the musical track and Jagger laughs at how key her performance became to the song. Linnear toured with the band for many years and Fischer has kept the gig since 1989 and Jagger is happy to punctuate a Stones show with a strong female voice.

Fischer also teams with Sting on `The Hounds of Winter' and he claims he enjoys nothing more than his backing singers and band going off on their own during concerts. He considers Fischer a star, even if she is reluctant to accept the epithet and Lawry says few people put more of themselves into a song. In her own mind, Fischer feels she is a feather floating down to the ground when she performs and she shows Neville around a flat cluttered with gold discs and mementoes (including the Grammy she won for `How Can I Ease the Pain' in 1991). She harks back to her early days with Luther Vandross and jokes that she almost lost the chance to sing with him as her dance moves left a little to be desired. But, as Lasley points out, Vandross started out in the shadows, too, and only came into his own when David Bowie insisted on showcasing his singers on `Young Americans' in 1975.

Maxwell says that a voice is the purest way of making music and that is why so many singers are sensitive about how it is used. Mabry and Mizelle agree and take pride in the fact that backing vocals helped change modern music, with Pendarvis stating that the public often remember their contributions to a song because they often handled the hook. They also became a bigger part of the show from the 1970s and Linnear reflects on being part of the Concert for Bangladesh with George Harrison. A clip of `Wah Wah' (with Ringo Starr on drums) follows, as Linnear recalls the fun she had with Jagger and Bowie (although Austin snipes that some singers were too quick to make their crude plays for the stars). She says she learned much about the world from being on the road and Clayton and Greene concur that being in the studio was like being confined in a bubble and they only found out how people were reacting to Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement by meeting people on buses and at gigs.

Clayton knew enough not to want to sing on Lynard Skynard's `Sweet Home Alabama'. But her husband, who was 19 years her senior, urged her to do the session and sing the hell out of the lyrics to subvert them. She is now proud of her contribution and Neville cunningly intercuts her performing `Southern Man', which was written by Neil Young, who was the target of Skynard's Confederate apologia. Boyd proclaims that black women were changing the art of singing and white folks either didn't realise it or couldn't do a damn thing about it. Clayton's claim to be an activist through her music feels a bit retrospective, but Neville rather ducks the issue of race in the American music industry, as he overlooks the techniques that these remarkable women employed to move backing singing on from `la las' and `doo wops'.

He also opts against identifying the different members of the Waters Family, who assemble in a room filled with iconic signed photographs to reminisce about their work on with Donna Summer, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, as well as their contributions to such movies as The Lion King (1994) and Avatar (2009), for which they did `The Circle of Life' and the dino-creature noises respectively. They do an a cappella version of `Up Where We Belong' and take quiet satisfaction in their achievement. But Jagger wonders whether anyone can be entirely happy in the background and, as Neville shows a 1971 clip of Tom Jones doing `River Deep, Mountain High' with The Blossoms, Darlene Love explains how she finally escaped from Phil Spector's clutches and signed with producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff to launch her solo career. However, without her knowledge, they sold her contract back to Spector and she decided to quit rather than remain indentured.

Springsteen and Wonder agree that Darlene should have been a star. Merry Clayton also harboured ambitions to take the lead and did three albums with producer Lou Adler that neither think could be improved in any way. But, as Gloria Jones suggests, the business felt she sounded too much like Aretha Franklin and refused to get behind her. However, the public didn't take to her, either, and Clayton fights back the tears as she confesses that she thought all she had to do to become a star was give her heart and soul to the music. But Wonder suggests having luck with material and producers plays an even bigger role in why some people make it and those with considerably more talent do not. Lennear had a similar experience, as her Warner Bros album didn't sell and she quit to get a steady job as she had a daughter to support. Vega had her wings clipped, too, when her bid to fame foundered and she was informed by executives that she was too fat to become a star. Forty years on, she is grateful that she retreated to the back of the stage, as she thinks the pressures of sustaining stardom would have pushed her towards drugs and she would not be here today.

Sting regrets that music isn't a level playing field and Linnear concurs that there are no guarantees. Judith Hill has tried to learn from what befell her predecessors, but her chance to perform with Michael Jackson on the `This Is It' tour was snatched away by his death. Her profile was raised, however, when she sang `We Are the World' at the funeral and she admits that she has since started turning down backing work to prevent it impeding her tilt for the top. Yet, she also has expenses to meet and donned a wig to back Kylie Minogue, only to be bombarded on social media sites for selling out.

Mabel John says that African-American women have settled for less for too long and she insists that they need to start demanding what they are worth. Darlene Love admits it took her a long time to realises this, as she was working as a cleaner when she heard `Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)' on the radio and she decided to move to New York and reinvent herself at the age of 40. She became an annual fixture performing this number on David Letterman's chat show and took bit parts in pictures like Lethal Weapon (1987) to keep herself out there and Gloria Jones agrees that it takes dedication and courage to keep bringing yourself to the attention of people that matter.

Fischer enjoyed the success of her first album, but has no hard feelings that the second was cancelled for taking too long to complete. She is similarly sanguine about not insufficiently good at self-promotion to stay in the front rank. Austin claims it takes ego and energy to make a go of going solo and Alexander says many backing vocalists simply weren't prepared to play by rules they could not respect. Sting puts it differently, by suggesting that some people need to feel the music taking them on a spiritual journey and he questions whether contestants on today's talent shows want to sing or simply be celebrities. Maxwell also condemns these wannabes and mocks the `tuning' software that can help good-looking kids who can't hold a tune to sound like angels.

Judith Hill is finding it hard to break through, but Wonder is convinced she has what it takes. She keeps taking live work to get by, but Rosie Stone (from Sly and the Family Stone) says the jobs are drying up, as so many people record in home studios and the record companies don't have the budget for long or well-populated sessions. Fischer remains in demand and has no regrets about missing out on motherhood to sing, as she considers music a higher calling. She is also relieved that she retained her integrity, as is Clayton, although she sometimes wondered if she was doing the right thing. However, God has yet to give her a sign that she has make a mistake.

By contrast, Linnear recognised when her moment had passed and she has spent the last 15 years teaching Spanish. She sings occasionally, but has reconciled herself to her choice. Wonder says the industry is less about music than it was before. But Vega is still in there pitching and tours with Elton John and keeps faith with the mantra that all she can do is sing her heart out and hope it's what people want to hear. Darlene Love subscribes to this viewpoint and is glad she decided to pick herself up and go again. She was inducted into the Rock`n'Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 and keeps making music at the age of 72, with the film closing with her being backed by Lawry, Fischer and Hill on a studio version of `Lean on Me' and duetting live with Springsteen on `A Fine Fine Boy'. But it seems clear that, while backing singers still have a role to play, the golden age is over and we are unlikely to see again talents of the calibre of those we have witnessed here.

Given the peculiar selection made by the Academy, this probably deserved to pip Zachary Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer, Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars, Jehane Noujaim's The Square and Joshua Oppenheimer's wildly overrated The Act of Killing. But Neville often seems content to let big names relate anecdotes or gush fulsome praise when he might have done more to put back-up singing into a wider musical and socio-political context. He says nothing about the prejudice these women would have encountered singing with white bands in the Deep South and skirts a discussion of how they were utilised in the studio or on stage. Next to nothing is mentioned about remuneration or how the singers juggled engagements and their home lives.

Moreover, too little is said about any rivalries or jealousies or how those left behind felt about the taller poppies. Of course the music is fabulous and the personalities of Love, Clayton and Fischer come across in all their larger than lifeness. But this lacks the incisiveness and inquisitiveness of Greg 'Freddy' Camalier's Muscle Shoals (2013), which is strange, because Neville has such a fine track record in rockumentaries.

9) NEXT GOAL WINS (Mike Brett and Steve Jamison).

Football fans are forever wondering where the next win is going to come from. But they should spare a thought for the long-suffering followers of the American Samoa national team. The Us only had to wait eight games for their first victory of the new campaign. American Samoa hadn't won in 17 years and had shipped 229 in the process. However, as Steve Jamison and Mike Brett reveal in Next Goal Wins, everything was about to change.

The catalyst was Dutch-born coach Thomas Rongen, who had failed to make the grade as a player at Ajax and had kicked around the North American Soccer League before opting for the dugout. During the course of a chequered career, Rongen had managed to alienate players or administrators everywhere he went. But he had enjoyed a modicum of success with the US Under-20s team in the early 2000s, the very time that American Samoan football hit rock bottom.

During the qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup, the team had lost 13-0 to Fiji, 8-0 to Samoa and 5-0 to Tonga. But, on 11 April 2001, American Samoa had been thrashed 31-0 by Australia, with seven different players making the score sheet as Archie Thompson bagged 13 goals and David Zdrilic netted another eight. The unfortunate goalkeeper that night was Nicky Salapu, who managed to concede a whopping 91 times in his eight World Cup games. But, rather than quitting after he relocated to Seattle, Salapu decided that the 2011 campaign was going to prove his salvation and he was welcomed back by his team-mates with open arms.

Even though the five islands making up the country are only inhabited by 55,000 people, there were also some new faces in the squad, including the American-born pair of Rawlston Masaniai and Justin Manao who were eligible because of their family connections. However, the media attention fell primarily on Jaiyah Saelua, who, despite being born male, lives as a woman and identifies herself with Samoa's third gender, the Fa'afafine. Accepted unquestioningly and with laudable respect by captain Liatama Amisone, Jr. (who teaches maths at the local school) and like teammates serving US soldier Ramin `The Machine' Ott, Saelua quickly proved herself to be a tough-tackling defender whose indomitable spirit was exactly what Rongen was seeking to instil into his charges.

As much a drill sergeant as a coach, Rongen spends the majority of his training sessions bawling at players who are often exhausted from a full day's work and lack the basic skill to master what he asks of them. But the martinet also has a soft side, as wife Gail reveals that Rongen accepted this assignment from the US Soccer Federation to honour the memory of his 19 year-old step-daughter, Nicole Megaloudis, who had been killed in a car crash seven years earlier. But standing in the way of the elusive victory were Samoa, the Cook Islands and Tonga.

Renowned for their commercials for brands like Nike and Adidas, the debuting British duo of Jamison and Brett must have thought all their Christmases had come at once when this project fell into their laps. Everybody loves an underdog story. However, this one not only has some tragedy and discrimination to enhance the hard luck factor, but it also has several characters genuinely worth rooting for. And, the locations weren't too shabby, either.

Most people will already know the outcome of matches that took place three years ago. But, as with the `No Hiding Place' episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, in which Terry (James Bolam) and Bob (Rodney Bewes) try to avoid finding out the result of the England-Bulgaria game until the highlights are shown on television, the film works best if you don't know the scores in advance. Roger Goula's shamelessly sentimental score spoils things a little bit. But Jamison and Brett demonstrate a sure visual touch in operating their own digital cameras and they are ably helped to ramp up the suspense by editor Julian Quantrill.

8) THE PUNK SINGER (Sini Anderson).

Archive material proves crucial to The Punk Singer. But Sini Anderson makes much more dynamic use of the grainy images in this profile of riot grrrl icon Kathleen Hanna, whose blend of musical rebellion and feminist activism inspired a generation of young women, while also putting a shot across the bows of the misogynists in the mosh pits. However, in 2005, Hanna withdrew from the scene claiming she had nothing left to say. But Anderson reveals that she was actually struggling to come to terms with the ramifications of a debilitating illness that had been misdiagnosed for several years.

Although born on Portland, Oregon in 1968, Hanna endured a peripatetic childhood, as her father frequently changed careers. In later years, the press would hint at an abusive relationship and delight in discovering that Hanna not only had an abortion at 15, but also worked as a stripper to pay her way through Evergreen State College at Olympia, Washington. It was also here, however, that she began putting into practice the feminist principles that her mother had imbued in her when she opened the Reko Muse art gallery after the school had refused to show the pictures she had produced for an exhibition with photographer Aaron Baush-Greene.

Not content with creating a space for independent artists, Hanna also teamed with co-founders Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland to form a band called Amy Carter, which played before the art shows. She also experimented with spoken word pieces until radical novelist Kathy Acker told her to concentrate on music and Hanna embarked upon a nationwide tour with a combo known as Viva Knievel. Within two months, however, Hanna had quit to join drummer Tobi Vail, guitarist Billy Karren and bassist Kathi Wilcox in Bikini Kill, whose first major tour - in support of the album Revolution Girl Style Now! (1991) - was filmed by Lucy Thane for her documentary, It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill in the UK (1993).

On returning Stateside, Hanna began collaborating with iconic rocker Joan Jett and the albums Pussy Whipped (1993) and Reject All American (1996) played a major part in sustaining the riot grrrl phenomenon that had spread from music into DIY fanzines and artworks. However, Hanna proved a restless type and, having already spent part of 1991 with Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman and Jen Smith in Bratmobile, she had a brief spell with The Troublemakers and began working with zine editor Johanna Fateman on a live show for The Julie Ruin.

In 1998, Hana, Fateman and film-maker Sadie Benning united in Le Tigre and started producing danceable electronica with a decidedly political edge. In 2000, Benning was replaced by JD Samson on the follow-ups to the eponymous 1999 debut album, Feminist Sweepstakes (2001) and This Island (2004). But, just as it looked as though Hanna had found another niche, as well as happiness in her marriage to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, she suddenly disappeared. Even close friends had no idea what was going on, but Hanna was suffering from Lyme Disease and it took several years before the symptoms were identified and she was properly medicated. Rather than give up, therefore, Hanna has simply been recharging her batteries and Anderson euphorically reports that she has revived The Julie Ruin with Kenny Mellman and Kathi Wilcox and is actively campaigning to raise awareness of disability with the same commitment she showed on stage in her heyday.

Anderson is not the first to survey this explosion of feminist fury and creativity and she frequently covers material previously explored in Kerri Koch's Don't Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl (2005) and Abby Moser's Grrrl Love and Revolution: Riot Grrrl NYC (2011). Indeed, several talking heads resurface here, but the focus in this chronology falls largely on Hanna herself, who is backed up by former collaborators, as well as the likes of Kim Gordon, Lynn Breedlove, Carrie Brownstein and Jennifer Baumgardner, who provide musical and intellectual insight. Anderson and editors Jessica Hernández and Bo Mehrad are very much to be commended for giving the footage a zine feel, as montages fizz with the energy of live clips embracing 38 songs from Hanna's sonically diverse, but consistently lyrically pugnacious back catalogue.

But the pace slows during the final third, as Anderson (herself a Lyme sufferer) reveals the anguish and uncertainty that Hanna and Horovitz faced while doctors sent her for an endless series of inconclusive and misread tests. In many ways, the Hanna captured in this period between 2010-12 is more heroic than the twentysomething who imposed a press blackout when she felt the stories were becoming too intrusive; who dressed provocatively on stage and often daubed herself with inflammatory slogans; and who ordered women to the front at gigs and demanded that the males in attendance treated them with the respect they deserved. Hanna has always been intense, erudite and uncompromising. But in reclaiming her life and giving it new direction and meaning, she has realised her greatest achievement.

7) THE MISSING PICTURE (Rithy Panh).

Despite the comparisons with Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), Rithy Panh's The Missing Picture has more in common with Camp 14: Total Control Zone, Marc Wiese's harrowing account of the suffering that Shin Dong-Huyk witnessed over 23 years after being born in a North Korean labour camp in 1983. Although he has been acclaimed for such fictional works as Rice People (1994) and The Sea Wall (2008), Panh is best known for unflinching documentaries about the Cambodian genocide. But, while S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003) and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell (2011) made powerful use of personal testimony, this deeply personal adaptation of his own book, The Elimination, combines archive material with claymation to recreate lost scenes from Panh's past and reclaim his own history from the propagandist depictions fabricated by Pol Pot and his Khmer henchmen. Aesthetically, this is a bold approach that occasionally runs the risk of trivialising a age of atrocity. However, the blend of naiveté and nostalgia is entirely intentional, as Panh seeks both to expose the fallacies contained in footage designed to seduce the Kampuchean Revolution's Communist allies and to warn against the ease with which flawed humanity can succumb to its worst instincts.

Panh was 13 when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975. As he recalls in a commentary co-scripted by Christophe Bataille and read by Randal Douc, the regime quickly exploited the tensions between the bourgeoisie and the lower classes to impose a programme of re-education that saw thousands of city dwellers dispatched to agricultural labour camps, where stubborn resistance was systematically weakened and eradicated by increasingly pitiless corporal and capital punishment. The killing fields were secretive places, however, and no cameras were allowed to record the barbarism they witnessed. Consequently, Panh stages their crimes in a series of dioramas populated by clay figurines that restore the missing pictures and memorialise the family members, friends and strangers who perished at the hands of `brothers' and `sisters' who acted as much out of envy as fear before falling victim themselves to the suspicion and paranoia that became the norm under Brother No.1, as he sought to impose an ideology comprising concepts borrowed from Jean-Jacquess Rousseau and Mao Zedong.

In the opening sequence, Panh shows a stack of film canisters and reveals that the monochrome imagery they preserve was faked to show the glorious triumph of the people over misrule. But, while he makes poignant use of this footage, he rather overdoes the metaphor of the crashing sea unleashing a tidal wave of memories that the Khmer Rouge were unable to hold back. Similarly, Marc Marder's score is frustratingly insistent in its eagerness to convey the simple decency of the models sculpted with laudable attention to detail by Sarith Mang and photographed with subtle sensitivity by Prum Mesa to enhance their personality as they immobily endure back-breaking labour, cramped living conditions, state-orchestrated malnutrition and brutal executions.

Brightly coloured and presented in tableau that manage simultaneously to suggest authenticity and artifice, the figures convey the terror and helplessness of the population, while also distancing the viewer from the full horror of the traumas that accounted for over two million souls in four years. Panh is too shrewd not to recognise that it might be a mercy that such barbarism was never filmed and he and editor Marie-Christine Rougerie frequently juxtapose intimations of happier times with evocations of cruelty to force the audience into realising the full hideousness of the new normality, in which dying of starvation (as Panh's father did) becomes an act of heroic resistance. But, while it contains many moments of excruciating poignancy and chilling depravity, it's the totality of the enterprise that is most significant, as it stands as a testament to Panh's own survival and his eloquent ability to commemorate and condemn long after his tormentors have been confounded.

6) JOURNAL DE FRANCE (Raymond Depardon).

In the late 1950s, Raymond Depardon found himself debating whether to become a film-maker or a photographer. Ultimately, he excelled at each métier and his dual career is assessed in Journal de France, a documentary collaboration with Claudine Nougaret, who has been his partner and sound engineer since they met three decades ago. In many ways, this is similar to McCullin, David and Jacqui Morris's profile of photojournalist Don McCullin, who similarly spent so many years covering conflict overseas that he came to feel like a stranger in his own land. But, while Nougaret contextualises the gems she unearths in Depardon's archive, he opts to focus on the transient present, as he potters around La Patrie in a little camper van snapping eclectic relics of both a disappearing landscape and the society that begat it.

Depardon is first seen composing a shot of a tobacconist's in Nevers. He likes the façade because it has a 1950s feel and he chunters to himself as various vehicles and pedestrians wander into his viewfinder. As he removes the plate from the back of the box camera perched on a high tripod, Nougaret explains that she has been making films with the 71 year-old Depardon for over a quarter of a century. He has asked her to sort through the materials he has stored in his basement and she jokes that her painstaking process soon prompted him to hit the road to reacquaint himself with a country he barely knows. As he drives along, Depardon confides that he has grown bored with listening to others and wants a little silence and has rather enjoyed his four years photographing whatever caught his eye, whether it was a quaint shop front, a roundabout, an industrial complex or the Garet farm near Villefranche-sur Saône, which he knew from his childhood.

As a young man, Depardon had experimented with still and moving picture cameras and a brief montage links footage taken at a wedding, a department store and a street near Notre Dame in Paris, where his handheld vérité style allows him to flit between the faces of the passers by and their environs. Within a year, however, he found himself filming civil unrest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. In 1964, he made the first of his many visits to Africa to record newly elected president Jean-Bedel Bokassa celebrating Independence Day in the Central African Republic he would come to tyrannise as a self-proclaimed emperor. Just as he had filmed milling shoppers while descending an escalator, so Depardon boldly meandered between the flag-carrying youths marching in the parade and this readiness to pitch himself into the maelstrom is very much at odds with the Direct Cinema detachment that would become his leitmotif.

Fetching up at the seaside, Depardon drops in for a haircut and chats with a barber whose shop is set to close after 50 years. He sympathises with his situation and is grateful that he is his own boss and still has much to achieve, as he is currently more familiar with Djibouti in the Horn of Africa than he is with the Meuse in the north-eastern region of France. Nougaret explains the reason for this over images captured on the West Bank in 1967, as Depardon had founded the Gamma Agency, whose guiding principle was that photographers could take whatever pictures they liked and retain an authorship over them.

Leading by example, Depardon imposed his own perspective on his coverage of Chilean revolutionaries, stand-offs along the Suez Canal and the Jordanian border and everyday life in the Yemeni cities of Aden and Saada and Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti. In 1968, he went to Biafra with Gilles Caron to profile the mercenaries who had been hired by Western oil companies to protect their investments during a civil war that precipitated a calamitous famine. The French soldiers joke on camera about their wage packets and the local ladies, as they eat their supper. But, for all the levity, as they sing and dance into the small hours, they find themselves in a hellish situation the following morning and the jolliest of the interviewees is killed and his comrades lament that his passport and money have been stolen from his jacket.

The following year, Depardon found himself in Prague, as protesters continued to defy the Soviet occupation by taking on the tanks stationed at landmarks across the city. His shockingly visceral monochrome footage shows people of all ages lining up against tear gas and water cannon to show their solidarity with immolation martyr Jan Palach and Depardon himself was arrested by the secret police and spent three days in prison before being deported. Nougaret proclaims that the peaceful protests of the Czechs eventually drove the Russians out, but this seems a rather sweeping statement, as the Kremlin decided when its troops came home and another two decades were to pass before the Velvet Revolution finally completed the job started during the Prague Spring.

Fittingly, a small-town war memorial forms part of the next montage assembled from Depardon's peregrinations. He takes particular delight in shooting shop fronts and eccentric pieces of street furniture and jokes that his van has become a capsule projecting him into orbit. However, he bemoans the fact that even an idyllic odyssey can have its drawbacks, as he dislikes photographing in flattering light, as he prefers his reality to be less picturesque.

An adroit cross-cut takes us to the Louvre, as Depardon covers the presidential campaign of Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing for the documentary, 1974, Une Partie de Campagne. Giscard had insisted on having final cut and his own soundtrack music. However, Depardon detested his choices as much as Giscard disliked sequences such as the one in which he informs his campaign team that he will continue to make brilliant speeches, but will say nothing controversial to ensure he does not alienate any potential voters. On coming to power, Giscard had the profile banned and it was only shown in France in 2002.

Embittered, Depardon went to Tibesti in northern Chad to highlight the failures of the administration's foreign policy by tracking down archaeologist Françoise Claustre, who had been abducted by the Tubu forces led by Hissène Habré. In all, Depardon would spend two years with the rebels and was torn between empathising with them as human beings and resenting the way in which they tormented a frightened woman after her one of her male companions escaped and the other was released on the payment of a ransom. Depardon was allowed to interview Claustre and her sense of betrayal at being abandoned is as pitifully evident as her anger and fear. On returning to France, Depardon succeeded in getting the meeting into news bulletins. But, in spite of alerting the nation to Claustre's plight, he was jailed for failing to aid a fellow citizen in distress and a further two years were to elapse before Claustre was released on the intercession of the Libyan leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi.

Nougaret can find no record of Depardon's TV broadcasts in the network archives, but she decides against delving any more deeply into this shameful episode. Nor does she mention the fact that Depardon made a fictional account of the Claustre kidnapping, La Captive du Désert (1990), with Sandrine Bonnaire. Instead, she takes us to Venice for a clip from the harrowing 1982 documentary, San Clemente, which was filmed in the eponymous island asylum that is now a luxury hotel. Depardon had been urged to film there by Franco Basaglia, the leader of the Democratic Psychiatry campaign, and the close-ups of residents left unattended to stare at the camera in desperation or grim resignation retain their awful power. Lenses were also to the fore in Reporters (1981), as Depardon filmed his Gamma colleagues and their rivals papping such public figures and celebrities as Maurice Papon, Jacques Chirac, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Rouch and Alain Delon.

Back on the open road, Depardon wonders whether it required him to spend decades chasing the news abroad to make him sufficiently dedicated to discover his homeland. He clearly has an eye for personality, as well as the photogenic, as he poses four old men on a bench and they quote the 1930s film star Raimu in discussing olive trees, blacksmith forges and the fact they will all still be here in 20 years time, just as they are now, two decades after Depardon first snapped them. This ability to make blend into the background and allow his subjects to express themselves freely is readily evident in the extract from Faits Divers (1983), in which the members of a police medical unit chat casually about a 35 year-old doctor who had hanged himself with a hi-fi wire as they speed along the Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris.

Ever restless, Depardon headed for Mogadishu to make Une Femme en Afrique (1985), in which the camera assumed the perspective of an unseen man falling in love with

Françoise Prenant during a trip to East Africa. There is a hint of jealousy in Nougaret's concession that sensuality informs every frame. But she was about to enter the story herself, as we see joyous Super-8 footage of the director and stars of Eric Rohmer's comedy, The Green Ray (1986), on which Nougaret made her debut as a sound recordist. She had already met Depardon, who had convinced her she would be perfect for a series of photographic tests, as a pretext for being with her.

Yet, no matter how smitten he might have been, work came first and Nougaret accompanied him to the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris to make Urgences (1988), which saw psychiatric patients like Marie-Thérèse entrust their stories and their fears about dying in the road like a dog after losing her parents and being abandoned by her siblings. The notion of coping with confinement recurred in Africa: How Are You With Pain (1996), as Nelson Mandela showed Depardon how he could keep silent for precisely 60 seconds because of a technique he has learned on Robben Island. By contrast, the small crowd he films in a township chant and sing with fervour, as they urge their leaders to seize the day after the collapse of apartheid.

As he lines up a shot of a diner sign featuring a giant knife and fork, Depardon admits that he finds dusk a sad time, as it makes him wonder what life is all about. He claims to prefer darkness and a cut takes us to the bowels of the Palais de Justice in Paris, as a man named Valet is interviewed by a prosecuting attorney and a young defence lawyer in Caught in the Act (1994). Neither seem very interested in his crime or his admission, as he resigns himself to prison, that he can be a bit of a rogue. Speech was just one of the sounds that Nougaret sought to meld into an ambient symphony in Paris (1998), an experimental documentary that saw Depardon hire casting director

Sylvie Peyre to find him a cross-section of women who would be willing to answer a series of probing questions. In the sequence filmed at the Café le Gymnase, for example, a young woman tells her male companion how liberated she has felt since her mother died in a car crash in Le Touquet

A need to understand his changing nation prompted Depardon to make two documentaries on farming: Profils Paysans: L'Approche (2001) and Profils Paysans: Le Quotidien (2005). In between times, he returned to Chad to record stunning monochrome images of nomads on camels in the Djourab desert before making his third visit to the Palais de Justice (following Muriel Leferle, 1999) for The 10th Judicial Court: Moments of Trial (2004). The scene in which a female judge tries to convince a young man of North African descent that it is not okay to run a traffic light in order to make a drug delivery, especially when one doesn't have a driving licence. Yet, while they converse in French, it is clear they are not speaking the same language, in this typically humanist insight into the way in which the law works against ordinary people.

Over a lovely shot of a snow-covered farm in the village of Le Villaret (to which he returned for La Vie Moderne in 2008), Nougaret declares that Depardon keeps working because he has an insatiable curiosity. A flurry of images taken in America, Russia, China and an unnamed rainforest connect him to the streets of Paris, where he continues to draw inspiration as strangers go about their business without seeming to notice he is watching them.

There is something Godfrey Reggio about this flashy sequence, which sits a touch uncomfortably alongside the bulk of Depardon's oeuvre. He has always had an eye for the mesmerising image, but his speciality is the candid coverage of the commonplace, as is made plain by the photos taken en route, which ended up in a 2010

Bibliothèque Nationale exhibition entitled `La France'. It is apt, therefore, that this blend of self-portrait and affectionate homage should end with him photographing unassuming shops in another nameless French town before he rolls up to a beach and the scene fades to white. This seeming to vanish into the landscape epitomises Depardon's approach to filming and it is hardly surprising that he proves to be such an elusive presence in his own profile.

Yet, while this playfully soundtracked actuality should be a treat for Depardon's admirers, it is a somewhat frustrating picture. Obviously, this is a highly personal and, therefore, an inevitably selective alternative history. But, while the footage gleaned using the tried-and-trusted `listening and looking' method cogently examines the consequences of French colonialism and the workings of domestic institutions and their effect upon the populace, there is too little sense here of an evolving society. Indeed, the very detachment that makes Depardon's documentaries so compassionate and compelling counts against him here, as a sense of the man is vital to understanding his attitude to reportage and its presentation on screen.

5) MANAKAMANA (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez).

The technical challenges that Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez set themselves mean that there is little opportunity for fabrication in Manakamana, an observational documentary that is made up of 11 vignettes, each of which lasts approximately 11 minutes, which is the time it takes for a 400ft magazine of 16mm film to pass through a fixed camera and for the cable car from the base station at Cheres in Nepal to reach the temple to the Hindu goddess Bhagwati, which sits atop a mountain, some 3425 feet above. Produced by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel for Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Laboratory, this is as much a work of avant-garde formalism as it is an anthropological or sociological study. Indeed, like Castaing-Taylor and Paravel's Leviathan, the content is largely left to chance. But, given the rigidity of both the structure and the methodology, it seems rather surprising that this supposedly unmediated record of reality is the product of an 18-month post-production process. Can fades to black at the end of each run really be that complicated to achieve?

As there are no captions or voiceovers, the viewer is left to glean snippets of information from the conversations that take place during the shuttles. In all, six upward trips and five down are presented in full. The service was launched in 1998 and it is possible to see through the windows the path up the hillside that pilgrims had used since the 17th century. Each car is capable of carrying six people and affords breathtaking views of the Trisuli and Marsyangdi valleys and the Annapurna and Manaslu-Himachali mountain ranges. But Spray and Velez deny the audience the chance to see the temple or the devotions that take place there. However, judging by the fate of a rooster and four goats (albeit presumed in the latter case), it is safe to say that sacrifices of some sort are not unusual.

The first pair to ride the car are Chabbi Lal and Anish Gandharba, an old man in a dhaki topi hat and a small boy sporting a peaked cap, who sit politely and look nervously around them as they go. They are followed by Bindu Gayek, a middle-aged woman carrying a basket of flowers that are clearly intended as an offering to the goddess. She is succeeded by Narayan and Gopika Gayek, a couple of around the same age who are carrying the aforementioned rooster. Next to make the ascent are Khim Kumari Gayek, Chet Kumari Gayek and Hom Kumari Gayek, a trio of elderly women in traditional Nepalese dress who seem to share the same husband. But the most animated trip sees three heavy metal musicians Simen Pariyar, Anil Paija and Saroj Gandharba being joined a tabby kitten, which one of the youths jokes might be for the chop when they reach journey's end. Sadly, this almost certainly seems to be the fate awaiting the five goats that follow them in a pen gondola.

Making the first descent is a single middle-aged woman known only as Bakhraharu. After her come two younger women, Mithu Gayek and Isan Brant, who chatter away in American accents. But the possible mother-daughter pairing of Mily Lila Gayek and Bishnu Maya Gayek provide the most amusement, as they try to eat rapidly melting ice creams without getting sticky fingers. They are followed by traditional musicians `Kaale' Dharma Raj Gayek and `Kaale' Ram Bahadur Gayek, who use the ride to tune their stringed instruments and play the odd snatch of melody before the film ends with Narayan and Gopika Gayek returning to the village, with their foreheads anointed and a very dead bird that seems destined to make the journey from altar to dinner table.

It has to be said that some 11 minutes seem to last a lot longer than others, even though the sight of pods passing in the opposite direction to the ascending one look amusingly like something from a science-fiction film. As Velez and Spray are credited as camera operator and sound recordist respectively, it has to be presumed that they were present at all times and one is left to wonder how differently some of the passengers might have behaved if they had operated their equipment from a distance. The persons riding alone are unsurprisingly the most reticent and the viewer is left to speculate about the thoughts going through their heads as the sometimes creaky cable cars go back and forth. While the metalheads lark about, take selfies on their phones and complain about the lack of air-conditioning, the sarangi players provide a potted history of the mechanical marvel they are riding. Elsewhere, Narayan and Gopika discuss their ears popping and the fact that more local roofs are using tiles instead of thatch, while Khim, Chet and Hom natter about their obviously delicate domestic arrangements and their trust in the goddess to protect them as they pass over the hills, fields and houses below. But it says much that the highlights are provided by a couple of melting ice-cream cones.

The inclusion of the cornets feels suspiciously like a Flaherty-like suggestion by the film-makers rather than a fortuitous happenstance. Indeed, this is most likely the case, given that Velez and Spray (an ethnographer who has lived in Nepal since the 1990s) spent a lengthy period getting to know the locals and cast those they felt would be least intimidated by the presence of the crew. However, setting such quibbles aside, this is a fascinatingly immersive voyeuristic experiment that comments obliquely on such issues as tradition and progress, the spiritual and the secular, observation and communication, and the individual and the landscape. One fears an enterprising producer somewhere selling Channel 4 a lookalike reality series filmed at such locations as the London Eye, Ben Nevis, Blackpool Tower and Big Pit. But would anyone want to watch an airborne variation on Gogglebox?

4) SCHOOL OF BABEL (Julie Bertucelli).

Julie Bertuccelli has served as an assistant to some impressive mentors. What she picked up from the likes of Otar Iosseliani, Krystof Kieslowski, Bertrand Tavernier and Rithy Panh (as well as her famous father, Jean-Louis) was readily evident in her first fictional features, Since Otar Left (2003) and The Tree (2010). But she began her solo career with the actualities La Fabrique des juges ou les règles du jeu (1997) and Un Monde en fusion (2001) and she returns to the realms of documentary with School of Babel, a charming, but always acute study of everyday life in a reception class for migrant teenagers in Paris's highly cosmopolitan 10th arrondissement. Comparisons will inevitably be made with Nicolas Philibert's Être et Avoir (2002), Laurent Cantet's The Class (2008) and Pascal Plisson's On the Way to School (2013). But this has most in common with Daniele Gaglianone's My Class (2013), which combined fact and fiction by having Valerio Mastandrea play a teacher running an Italian language class for `real' immigrants.

Brigitte Cervoni conducts her classes at La Grange aux Belles with a blend of fairness and firmness that ensures each student is given an equal opportunity to express themselves, regardless of their mastery of French. Clearly aware of each pupil's backstory (they range in age from 11-15), she encourages them with sympathetic warmth and admonishes them with clipped gravity when they fail to live up to her expectations. But Cervoni strives hardest to give the kids the impression that they will be rewarded in their new country if they work hard and obey the rules and, given the likelihood that they will have experienced some sort of racist taunting, they respond with trusting affection to this welcoming reassurance.

Bertuccelli makes herself scarce in the classroom, but her self-operated camera captures scenes from multiple angles and editor Josiane Zardoya deserves great credit for capturing the energy of the lessons, as well as the speed with which situations can escalate. An early sequence affords the students the opportunity to write the word `bonjour' in his or her native language. But a dispute arises when Egyptian-Libyan Maryam Aboagila takes exception to Mauritanian Ramatoulaye Ly averring that the phrase `Salam Aleykum' is used as a general greeting in Wolof, when she insists that it would not be used by non-Muslims. Cervoni referees the squabble with admirable calm, but it is noticeable that Rama is just as sorry to see Maryam leave halfway through the year as anyone else in the class.

The girls of African extraction are much more voluble than their peers and are quite prepared to defend their corner. But when Cervoni meets their parents or guardians to discuss their progress, Rama (who was mistreated by her father's kinfolk), Naminata Kaba Diakite from the Ivory Coast and Djenabou Conde from Guinea all have to be reminded that, unless they behave, they could easily be sent home to face the genital mutilation and enforced marriages they have been spared by seeking asylum. The exception is Kessa Keita, who has been raised in Britain and has the intelligence to realise how lucky she has been compared to classmates whose bolshiness invariably reflects their eagerness to test the boundaries of their new-found freedoms.

By contrast, Xin Li hardly says a word and has to be coaxed into making a contribution. Her mother (with whom she has only recently been reunited after a decade with her grandparents) explains that Chinese women are expected to be demure and that she works so many hours at her restaurant that Xin rarely has anyone to talk to. Her confidence is hardly helped by Chilean Felipe Arellano Santibanez claiming to have seen a television programme that exposed the fact that the Chinese are shape-shifting aliens. But, such is Cervoni's gentle nurturing that Xin eventually comes out of herself and starts to join in.

Venezuelan cellist Miguel Angel Cegarra Monsalve also takes a little time to settle, while Mihajlo Sustran spends so many hours translating official documents for his Serbian Jewish parents that he is too tired to study. Luca Da Silva from Northern Ireland also has problems in class and it is only when his mother comes to see Cervoni that it is revealed that he suffers from a mild form of autism and is finding it tough to acclimatise to Paris with his older brothers, who often have to care for him while she is working. Her pride in his achievements, however, is matched by Romanian Andromeda Havrincea's father, who is confident that she can achieve great things. But Cervoni urges every student to play to their strengths, whether she is prompting Ukrainian Oksana Denys into showing off her powerful singing voice or praising the quieter members of the class for the cherished items they have brought from home.

Occupying the remaining desks are Daniel Alin Szasz (Romania), Alassane Couattara (Mali), Andréa Drazic (Croatia), Youssef Ezzangaoui (Morocco), Abir Gares (Tunisia), Marko Jovanovic (Serbia), Daniil Kliashkou (Belarus), Eduardo Ribeiro Lobato (Brazil), Nethmal and Thathsarani Mampitiya Arachchige (Sri Lanka), Yong Xia (China), and Agnieszka Zych (Poland). But, while Bertuccelli may not dwell on these children individually, she consistently picks them out during lessons to show how they integrate within the group. She also subtly records the passage of time through a series of fixed-camera top shots of the playground. Yet it still comes as something of a surprise when exam time comes around and the doors of the hall are closed to ensure everyone concentrates.

Some do better than others Rama is among those to be held back for another year, as her grasp of French will restrict her progress in other subjects. Angry tears trickle down her nose as she tries to hide her face. But she knows Cervoni has her best interests at heart and there is every chance that her distress has been partially inspired by the fact that her beloved teacher is leaving at the end of term to become an inspector. The last day sequence, in which Cervoni is presented with flowers and other tokens of esteem, is deeply touching and it says much for the excellence of her teaching that the kids bid each other farewell for the summer with a genuine sense of attachment that was earlier evident during the shooting of a short that is entered in the Ciné-Clap Festival in Chartres, where it wins a prize.

Bertuccelli could be accused of ducking the issue of race relations, as no mention is made about how the children are fitting in outside the classroom. But this is a minor quibble, especially as it is made abundantly clear how readily these disparate souls bond through their shared status as outsiders. It would be fascinating to see what happens in the future, but one suspects this is a one-off rather than the first in a series like Michael Apted's landmark `Up' octology.

3) THE SQUARE (Jehane Noujaim).

Few events in recent times have spawned as many films as the Arab Spring. The majority sought to capture a moment in time and were rush released to cash in on the popular fascination with the uprisings and present aspects that failed to make the news bulletins. However, in seeking immediacy, such pictures inevitably sacrificed perspective and Jehane Noujaim is at pains to point out that The Square is a work in progress because the Egyptian Revolution is very much ongoing. Indeed, having already premiered the documentary, she had to add a coda to include the removal of President Mohamed Morsi by the military in the summer of 2013. Things have, of course, moved on again since. But this remains an invaluable insider insight into the momentous happenings on Cairo's Tahrir Square from January 2011.

As the protests intensify against longtime president Hosni Mubarak, Noujaim's focus falls on a group of friends who congregate at the apartment of Pierre Haberer, which looks out on to downtown Cairo. The most familiar face belongs to Khalid Abdalla, an actor with a refined English accent who has taken key roles in such films as Marc Forster's The Kite Runner (2007) and Paul Greengrass's United 93 (2006) and Green Zone (2010). His father Hossam was jailed for opposing the government in the 1970s and he remains in exile to warn his son against trusting the army and being fooled by quick gains. Khalid helps set up the Popular Media network that receives camera phone footage to share online and prove to Egyptians and the wider world that their protests are being met with tear gas, violence and live ammunition.

If Khalid was happy to exploit his fame to further the cause, musician Ramy Essam found himself in the spotlight by accident after he became the Revolution's unofficial troubadour. Film-maker Aida El Kashef also achieved a sort of celebrity, as she set up the first tent on Tahrir and helped Khalid with his citizen journalism project. Human rights activist Ragia Omran also hit the headlines when she challenged the Military Council over the murder of protesters outside a television station.

But Noujaim seems most interested in Ahmed Hassan and Magdy Ashour. The former hails from the working-class Shobra district and revels in preaching revolution and making converts to the cause. Always arguing, but with a baby-faced geniality and enthusiasm that makes his zealotry so disarming, Ahmed played a key role in the 18-day stand-off and formed an unlikely friendship with Magdy, a father of five and committed member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Having been imprisoned for his allegiance to an outlawed organisation, Magdy is unswervingly loyal to leaders he trusts implicitly. However, he is persuaded by Ahmed's impassioned rhetoric and comes to recognise that ending Mubarak's 30-year tyranny is vital for all Egyptians and not just those longing for the unrest to have an Islamist outcome.

After what seemed an interminable delay, Mubarak finally resigned from office on 11 February. But, as fireworks light up the night sky, Hossem warns Khalid during a Channel Four News link-up not to trust the generals and Aida soon comes to worry that power will fall into the wrong hands. The misgivings proved well founded, as, by the spring, the country was still under Emergency Law and Mubarak was still in office. Army spokesman General Hamdy Bekheit is filmed making a phone call, during which he swears that the people will always be able to trust the armed forces. However, his driver, Major Haytham, is less well disposed towards the public and sneers that Tahrir is being occupied by glory-seekers rather than those intent on improving the nation and such sentiments cause Khalid to despair that those in uniform who benefited from Mubarak's patronage will bolster his regime to retain their own privileges.

The group are furious when Tahrir is evacuated by force and Ramy does a video to show off the bruises he received after being arrested and detained at the Egyptian Museum. Bekheit counters such claims by saying that the army has a duty to uphold law and order and that David Cameron would use strong-arm tactics if Downing Street was under siege However, the arrest and torture of thousands of opponents, many of whom were put on military trial, brought the revolutionaries back on to the streets in the summer to demand civilian rule. Khalid is pleased by the enduring solidarity of the people, but he is also concerned by the increased presence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had taken little or no part in the initial protests. Noujaim's cameras capture mass prayer sessions and hint at a change in the treatment of female protesters and even Magdy becomes concerned that the attempt to divide and rule the cities and provinces will reflect badly on the Brotherhood and Islam.

Newspaper editor Mona Anis compares the strategies of the Military Council with those used to police Nortthern Ireland in the 1970s and she accuses of Khalid of being naive when he avers that it is too early to have an election, as there is no constitution and no semblance of party democracy. Ahmed shares his concerns and decides that all politicians are useless, as the situation deteriorate into the autumn. The media has turned on the activists and, when lives are lost during a Christian protest at the headquarters of the Maspero network, Khalid posts footage of armoured vehicles ramming defenceless people and hails Mina Daniel a martyr of the revolution. Ahmed comes to pay his respects to his family, while Ragia tries to ensure that proper autopsies are carried out to confirm the role of the authorities in the murders.

Yet, while she shows Ahmed and Khalid arguing with die-hard army supporters, Noujaim plays down the tensions within the Tahrirists, as well as the enmity between the Brotherhood and the Coptic Christians. She also shies away from depicting the shifting attitudes to women on the square. But she conveys the mood of grim determination as Ahmed heads back to Tahrir to denounce the generals for their duplicity and timidity and comes away despairing that war is rapidly replacing revolution and, as the stones and Molotov cocktails fly against hails of bullets, Khalid concludes that the top brass has cut a deal with the Brotherhood that will rob them of their achievement.

Magdy feels increasingly conflicted, as the Brotherhood are steering clear of the square and he proclaims that he is a revolutionary before anything. Ahmed continues to go to Tahrir and is appalled by the opportunism of the Brotherhood and the treachery of the military. His dismay is compounded when he is wounded during a baton charge and Aida films the tear gassing of patients at the hospital. He goes home to see his mother and, for once, seems at a loss as to what to do next. Khalid rails against the elections in interviews for foreign news programmes and he is distraught that the Muslim Brotherhood plans to follow up its victory at the parliamentary elections in the winter of 2012 by backing Mohamed Morsi for the presidency and bribing the poor with oil and sugar to secure their votes.

As they eat at a communal street buffet, Magdy and Ahmed also feel that the revolution has been stolen and Haytham jokes on camera that it only got as far as it did because it suited the army's purpose. When a woman protests to Bekheit that troops are using live rounds on the people, he dismisses her with an arrogant shrug. However, Khalid refuses to allow his efforts to count for nothing and launches Cinema Tahrir by projecting footage of atrocities on a screen in the square and keeps broadcasting to the wider world via his website. He curses that the ballot boxes are for the traitor and the killer and mocks the legitimacy of a race between Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, who was Mubarak's last prime minister. When Morsi wins on May 2012, Magdy urges his friends to give the Brotherhood 100 days to see if it intends honouring it pledges, but Ramy declares the result a calamity and Ahmed vows that the people will seize back power if they are cheated.

As Noujaim records yet another mural being painted (a device she uses to preface the film's seasonal chapters), it has already become clear within 150 days that Morsi is more corrupt and dictatorial than Mubarak. Once again, Tahrir becomes the focus of the discontent, with Ramy singing about Morsi being a monster with ambitions to become the new pharaoh. Magdy is reluctant to accept this version of events, as he knows the Brotherhood are aware of his movements and that he depends on them to support his family. Ahmed frets that Egypt could go the way of Iran, while Khalid interprets Morsi's speech about maintaining order as being a signal for the Brotherhood to attack the Tahrirists. He is shocked when Magdy's son, Assem, admits to throwing stones at the protesters and Magdy chides him for not having the gumption to think for himself. But, even though he is saddened to see the Brotherhood using guns, he refuses to accept that Morsi is a religious fascist.

Noujaim visits Magdy's home as the unrest worsens during the summer of 2013. His wife is tired of the protests and an unidentified young woman taunts him for choosing the wrong side. His tweenage daughter cries at the thought that he might get into trouble and he hugs her. Yet, when the Brotherhood order him to patrol the streets during the nationwide strike on 30 June, he has no option. Morsi denounces the industrial resistance as the work of thugs during a televised speech. But Ahmed says he has misjudged the people, as they are now used to a culture of revolution and will rise up again if he continues to oppress and defraud them because they are now the owners of their freedom. He is proved right, as millions take to the streets and even children sing the slogans he has helped coin. His pride is tempered by the knowledge that the army will have to step in again, but he considers this a small price for the ousting of the Brotherhood.

As Morsi speaks about shedding his blood, Magdy hopes to avoid confrontation as he laments being at loggerheads with his new friends. On 3 July, however, General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi announces Morsi's departure and Ahmed insists he will be back on the barricades if this twist takes an unsatisfactory turn. But he admits he is exhausted and phones Magdy to plead with him to abandon the Brotherhood, as the common cause for which they stood shoulder to shoulder has triumphed. Noujaim films Magdy driving through Cairo in a car and he wishes things could be otherwise, but remains true to his faith. He opines that he would rather die than go back to prison and a closing caption reveals that he was among those violently removed from a pro-Morsi sit-in. But, while hundreds have perished, he remains safe and Ahmed concludes that what Egypt needs is a conscience rather than another leader.

Making more sense of an intractable situation than its competition, this is fortunate in its choice of characters, as Khalid, Ahmed and Magdy are all as charismatic as they are committed. However, Noujaim tends to marginalise the others, just as she overlooks the Coptic question and the treatment of women by men on all sides of the conflict. The most fascinating footage pitches the principals into the middle of the mayhem and has an immediacy that is sometimes missing from the more studied direct-to-camera pieces, particularly by Khalid and Ahmed, who are much more savvy than Magdy, who avoids polished sound bites or edgy slogans to speak from the heart in the midst of his confusion over whether his nation, his religion or his new comrades have the certainties he is searching for.

Dynamically and courageously photographed at the height of often dangerous chaos, the images are potently edited to convey the highs and lows of a campaign that has veered even further away from the aims of the Tahrirists since the revised edition was completed. Noujaim is less willing to question that naiveté of the public than the Machiavellian machinations of Moubarak, Moursi, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Army. But it is so sobering to witness the speed with which the optimism of January 2011 dissipated, with the touching trustfulness of Magdy Ashour serving as a symbol for an entire nation's misplaced faith.

2) THE GREAT MUSEUM (Johannes Holzhausen).

This has been the year of the museum movie. In addition to guided tours of the Hermitage, the Vatican Museums and the National Gallery, there have also been further entries in Phil Grabsky's excellent Exhibition on Screen series. But the best has been saved until last. Having already taken a key supporting role in Jem Cohen's delightful drama, Museum Hours (2013), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is the focus of Johannes Holzhausen's The Great Museum, which offers a witty insider's insight into the running of a noble institution during the redecoration of the famous Kunstkammer cabinet of curiosities. Housing over 2000 items collected by a variety of emperors and archdukes, these 20 rooms form a small part of a vast complex that was opened in 1891 to display the taste of the Hapsburg dynasty. But, while Holzhausen worked as an art historian before becoming a film-maker, this is anything but a dry infomercial. Indeed, this look behind the scenes is full of droll observations and sly deflations that give this impeccable exercise in direct cinema a knowing personal touch.

An opening crane shot reveals the full extent of the beautiful white stone edifice before Holzhausen takes us inside its meticulously maintained galleries, as the morning clean gets underway. However, as the inner thigh of Antonio Canova's `Theseus' is flicked discreetly with a duster, a builder takes a pickaxe to the parquet floor in one of the Kunstkammer chambers and it becomes immediately clear that this is going to be a respectful, if occasionally wry account of the daily workings of a treasure house that is not only a symbol of former national glory and a renowned centre of artistic scholarship, but also a tourist attraction that has to pay its own way in an age of recession and reduced subsidies.

Central to the redevelopment are Sabine Haag, the new General Director (who had previously been Head of the Kunstkammer, and of the Secular and Sacred Treasury) and Chief Financial Officer, Paul Frey. Yet, while acknowledging their importance, Holzhausen is not above debunking them as they go about their duties. Thus, Haag is first seen in a flurry of self-importance as she explains the proposed changes during a walk-and-talk through the Kunstkammer building site with British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, while Frey is shown belittling a female colleague in a distastefully passive-aggressive manner during a meeting about budgets and the font to be used on the new day pass offer poster.

However, unlike such masters of the so-called `fly on the wall' technique as Frederick Wiseman and Nicolas Philibert, Holzhausen never lingers for long and shots follow of a polar bear rug being cleaned, the Imperial Crown being examined, a numismatist gliding through a maze of subterranean corridors on a push scooter to pick up a photocopy and an array of paintings being respectively stored and restored by various gumbies and experts. Paulus Reiner, the Director of the Kunstkammer, inspects a pair of duelling toads, while arms specialist Christian Beaufort-Spontin leaves cheese and nuts on his window ledge to feed the birds. Elsewhere, Helene Hanzer carefully removes the head from a colourful statue and places it on a pillow (where its previously surprised expression appears to be replaced by one of contentment), while a couple bicker about the reconfiguration of a priceless Benvenuto Cellini salt cellar.

Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner is more gracious, as she accepts Count Czernin's bequest of his father's Imperial Chamberlain uniform. However, Holzhausen amusingly cross-cuts between a shot of it being packed away in tissue paper with a close-up of the polar bear rug, as it descends in a lift on a large wheeled table to the cavernous storage area beneath the museum. As if to reinforce the fact that more items are hidden away than displayed, a sequence follows a female curator, as she empties some carefully wrapped artefacts from a large cardboard box and places them inside a mobile shelving unit.

As work continues stripping wallpaper in the Kunstkammer, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Elisabeth Wolfik start contemplating the new layout and consult old almanacs before resorting to a computer programme that allows them to move paintings around in cyber space. Meanwhile, Haag and Frey attend a meeting to discuss the fact that the museum has to compete for funding with supposedly more tourist-friendly attractions. Yet, down in the restoration area, we witness work it is hard to put a price on, as Ina Slama and Gerlinde Grube show Professor Arnout Balis x-ray evidence of images below the surface of a modello sketch by Peter Paul Rubens.

The sense of camaraderie between equals is noticeably absent as Ferino-Pagden and Wolfik brusquely order the gallery technicians around, as they try to decide upon the new layout by viewing the paintings in situ. Furthermore, invigilator Tatjana Hatzl complains in a meeting with Frey about improving the visitor service term that she has been at the Kunsthistorisches for 11 years and has never been introduced to anyone above her station, even at the staff Christmas party. This gentle dig at the pomposity of the hierarchy is pointedly juxtaposed with a search for moths in the carriage store and the examination under a microscope of an insect that has been found beneath a canvas undergoing a thorough cleaning.

Another judicious edit makes it seem as though these activities are being watched by the Empress Maria Theresa from a portrait in which she is surrounded by her four sons. This painting has been entrusted to the museum for restoration by the office of the federal president and a telling exchange follows between Wolfgang Prohaska, Andreas Zimmermann and Eva Götz about the Hapsburg legacy and whether they are serving the dynasty, the state, the public or the artists whose works they have the privilege of handling. The fact that President Heinz Fischer then sweeps past an honour guard to view the work in progress in the Kunstkammer with Karl von Hapsburg is all the more mischievously felicitous. As flash bulbs pop around them, Haag shows them the state crown and the cover of the Coronation Gospels. But the ever-alert Holzhausen picks up the fact that the Hapsburg is still addressed as `Your Majesty' and that he can't resist pointing to an old map and remarking how much bigger the country was when the imperial family ruled over it.

The past meets the present again, as the metal the cover of the Coronation Gospels is scanned with a 3-D imager prior to the launch of a limited edition of 333 facsimiles (at almost €30,000 a pop). A curator explains how it is possible to detect which part of the animal was used to make the velum pages of the original and this attention to detail recurs as Nils Unger swears in frustration as he tries to repair the clockwork mechanism inside a magnificent sailing ship automaton made by Hans Schlottheim in 1585 and a silent colleague uses a toothbrush to clean the private parts of a cherub clutching a bunch of grapes. Indeed, the passion shown by the curators and conservators is echoed by Ferino-Pagden when she tuts dismissively at Frey when he has to admit that she will have to wait for the opening of a new gallery because the budget has been transferred to another project.

Further evidence of the strain being placed on the museum purse strings is presented when Kurzel-Runtscheiner attends an auction of court livery and is given such strict bidding limits that she comes home empty handed. Yet the powers that be clearly recognise the commercial need to stress the link to the monarchy and several old lags roll their eyes as Creative Director Stefan Zeisler explains why the word `imperial' has been added to the official title of the Treasury. Holzhausen impishly catches him repeating the mantra `stylish and timeless', as he submits the logo artwork for staff approval and it is somewhat sad to note that this occasion is better attended than Beaufort-Spontin's leaving do, at which Haag makes a fuss of a letter from an absent government minister and offers an awkward embrace to a poor fellow who is too overcome with the emotion of leaving his life's work behind to respond.

As his ID badge is cut in half and placed in a file that is buried in another warren of shelves, Franz Kirchweger agonises over the placement of items in a three-tiered display case and Ruth Strondl outlines the roles everyone is to play during the grand re-opening of the Kunstkammer. Naturally, Haag finds herself front and centre as the distinguished guests arrive. But Hatzl also draws attention to herself by accidentally setting off an alarm by touching one of the exhibits. A towering top shot looks down on the tables arranged around an elegant staircase landing. But Holzhausen slips away from these proceedings to track a camera along a row of stored items that have survived in various states of repair from classical antiquity. These heads are contrasted with the thousand miniatures of Renaissance worthies that were collected by Archduke Ferdinand II. But the closing shot takes the viewer into the heart of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's `The Tower of Babel' (1563) before it's removed from the wall by two members of the anonymous installation staff.

Mistakenly dismissed in some quarters as an elaborate corporate video, this is a thoughtful and often irreverent glimpse at how an august institution seeks to keep itself relevant within the increasingly competitive leisure industry, while also striving to maintain its academic credentials. It may strike some as being less incident-packed than Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (which goes on general release next week), but Holzhausen has managed to convey the opulence of the setting and the import of the exhibits while also capturing something of the little human dramas that also occur in less rarefied workplaces. The scene of Beaufort-Spontin packing away his books is deeply moving, but there is something disapprovingly acerbic about the coverage of his curt farewell.

Indeed, Haag and Frey come in for a good deal of quiet reproach, as they survey their domain with a resistibly pseudo-regal haughtiness. But Holzhausen is also aware of the fine job they are doing in negotiating fraught circumstances and recognises that feting the great and the good is as vital to the Kunsthistorisches's survival as maintaining intellectual standards and finding new ways to popularise the galleries and make visitors spend in the gift shop. This is very much a singular vision, but Holzhausen is superbly served by camera operators Jörg Burger and Attila Boa; sound technicians Andreas Pils and Andreas Hamza, and editor Dieter Pichler, whose deft sense of the museum's majesty and absurdity help make this one of the best documentaries of the year.

1) NIGHT WILL FALL (André Singer).

George Leonard was a Lance Bombardier with the Oxfordshire Yeomanry when he entered the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. As he reveals to André Singer in the harrowing documentary, Night Will Fall, his unit was prompted to investigate after a foul odour reached the picturesque nearby town, which appeared to have been untouched by the conflict. What Leonard witnessed remains vivid in his memory and he has to pause while giving his testimony to camera in order to compose himself and wipe away a tear. Seven decades have passed since he saw hundreds of naked, emaciated corpses piled high or tossed carelessly into trenches. But, while shocking images of the camps have become familiar, it has taken this long for the systematic record of Nazi atrocities commissioned by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to see the light of day.

As David Dimbleby recalls, his reporter father Richard was present when the horrors of Bergen-Belsen were exposed and his graphic report for the BBC was initially withheld until its content could be verified. But, as Royal Artillery major Leonard Berney remembers, Army cameramen Mike Lewis and William Lawrie wasted no time in capturing the hideous scene before them. Their footage reached SHAEF and Sidney Bernstein, the chief of the Psychological Warfare Film Section, was ordered to compile a systematic record of a genocide that immediately appeared unprecedented in recent human history.

Having supervised production for the Ministry of Information, Bernstein quickly assembled an editorial team that included Steward McAllister, Peter Tanner and John Krish and set assistant Richard Crossman the task of scripting a commentary with the aid of Australian journalist Colin Willis. It soon transpired that US Army cameramen like Arthur Mainzer were shooting equally disturbing footage, as were such Red Army operatives as Aleksander Vorontzov. Realising that he needed someone with the cinematic sophistication to co-ordinate the project, Bernstein contacted Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had collaborated on the French-language MOI shorts, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (both 1944).

Although the pair were partners in the newly formed Transatlantic Pictures company, Hitchcock was unable to make the dangerous crossing to Britain, as he was deeply involved in his latest feature, Notorious (1946). However, he was well aware that fellow film-makers like Paul Rotha had criticised him for remaining in Hollywood for the duration of the war and he clearly felt that Bernstein's invitation was a chance to silence his critics, while also salving his own conscience. While still in the States, Hitch seems to have instructed the army camera crews to avoid potential accusations of fakery by employing long takes that placed victims and perpetrators in the same frame or sequence. He also suggested that dignitaries and ordinary residents from the communities closest to the concentration and extermination camps were coerced to witness the deeds sanctioned by their leaders, as German audiences would be more persuaded to accept the truth of the situation if they could see compatriots witnessing it at first hand.

Tanner and Krish recall the influence that Hitchcock's ideas had on the project. But much of the Crossman script had been completed by the time he arrived in London in late June. Moreover, three of the proposed six reels had already been approved. Nevertheless, Hitchcock forced himself to spend hours each day viewing rushes from the camps in a small Soho screening room and helping select the most impactful imagery. Yet SHAEF was growing impatient with Bernstein, who has struggling to persuade the Red Army to share footage with its allies. As a consequence, the Austrian-born Hollywood director Billy Wilder was asked to produce a 20-minute short entitled Death Mills, which took scenes from the Bernstein archive and arranged them in trenchant segments that were accompanied by a pugnacious commentary that left the audience in little doubt who was to blame for this crime against humanity.

Yet, as Hitchcock returned to California and Bernstein continued to await Soviet co-operation, political strategists were becoming concerned that a film that presented the Final Solution in such uncompromising detail might be bad for German morale, just as the West would require the soon-to-be divided state to act as a bulwark against the advancing Communists. Thus, five days before SHAEF was dissolved on 14 July, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was cancelled and the materials were filed away after a single screening of the unfinished picture on 1 September.

Labelled F3080, this trove of damning evidence remained in the Imperial War Museum vaults between 1952 and 1984, when PBS broadcast the five reels of edited footage under the title Memory of the Camps. Hitchcock was credited as `treatment adviser', while Trevor Howard read the commentary, which concluded with the lines: `Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But, by God's grace, we who live will learn.'

Despite Bernstein's determination that his film would prevent the repeat of such barbarism, recent events around the world suggest that few lessons have been learned from the Holocaust. But no one viewing this powerful document can be left unmoved by the incontrovertible evidence and by the courage of such survivors as Mania Salinger, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Eva Mozes Kor, Tomy Shacham, Vera Kriegel, Menachem Rosensaft (who was born in the displaced persons camp at Belsen) and Branko Lustig, who lived through Auschwitz to produce Steven Spielberg's lauded adaptation of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List (1993).

Among the other speakers are Toby Haggith and Kay Gladstone of the Imperial War Museum, Raye Farr of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, medal-bedecked Soviet soldier Matvey Gershman and Benjamin Ferencz, who liberated camps as part of General Patton's Third Army before prosecuting war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. His recollection of peering into Hell at Dachau leaves a deep impression and it is to be hoped this fine film and the finally completed German Concentration Camps Factual Survey will be widely seen after the latter premieres at the London Film Festival.

Much has been made of Hitchcock's part in the proceedings. But the driving force was clearly Bernstein, the future founder of Granada Television who gives his side of the story in an archived interview. Given the distinctive treatment that Singer approved as executive producer of The Act of Killing (2012), Joshua Oppenheimer's unsettling record of slaughter in 1960s Indonesia, it comes as something of a relief that he has adopted a more conventional approach in this challenging inquisition into documentary objectivity, the responsibilities of actuality film-makers and the extent to which moving images can and cannot alter history. Helena Bonham Carter provides the sober narration, while Jasper Britton reads the extracts drawn from primary sources. But, perhaps most significantly, editors Arik Leibovitch and Stephen Miller cut judiciously between Richard Blanshard's talking head contributions and the restored monochrome imagery, which has lost none of its shaming potency over time.