dépaysementees: Not all documentaries are boring!

I've been watching a lot of films lately (I've been focusing on some rare, bizarre, avant-garde films though...) and I ran to two amazing documentary films I'd love to share with you guys.
I'm not the biggest fan of this genre actually, but I can't deny how interesting these two films are and how much they fascinated me.

The first one is "Marina Abramovic: The artist is present" (2012; directed by Matthew Akers and Jeff Dupre).

I discovered Marina's work through Tumblr and I've got to say, I admire her A LOT. For those who don't know her, she's a performance artist who began her career in the early 70's and she's recently started to call her self "the grandmother of performance art", she explores the relationship between the performer and the audience, the limits of the body and the possibilities of the mind. She's truly a genious and incredibly bold. I've read about her performances and watched a few of them on Youtube and I was speechless...It's something undescribable and clearly, not for everyone's taste, since she always takes it to the limit.

This documentary isn't about her whole career as an artist, but about a performance she did at the MOMA (Museum of modern art) in NYC, where she sat for 8 hours a day, six days of the week for three months on a chair and invited to the audience to sit in front of her and stare at her for the amount of time they wished and share an intimate moment, as other different artist re-performed her most famous pieces in other parts of the museum. As I watched the movie, I was in awe, I even started crying!!! I can't even imagine how powerful that moment must be...She's just too amazing!

I highly recommend this film, not only for those who are interested in art, but for everyone...She's an amazing human being and this movie is totally worth it! I do recommend though to do some research on her before watching the film, that way you can enjoy and understand the documentary better...Most of her performances are online, so it's not hard to find them!

Here's the trailer

The other documentary I wanted to talk about is a very rare one, called "Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the sun".

I discovered this one through a music video of a witch house band called "SALEM", they have this MV called "King night" that's an edit with a lot of short clips from different rare, bizarre and awesome movies that aren't really mainstream, and this film was featured there. I started watching the other films first though, because I wasn't that interested in this one at first...But then, I was reading some comments on Youtube about it and people kept saying how interesting this was so I decided to do some research, and I ended up learning a lot of cool stuff!!!

This documentary film is about an african ethnic group called the Wodabee (means: people of the taboo in Fula) and they are known for their beauty and elaborate attire and ritual ceremonies. This film takes us into the lives of this tribe and focusing mainly on the "Gerewol", a festival that resembles a beauty peagent but for men, where they dress up, do their "make up" and present themselves, showing off their charms to be judged by the females who will choose one of them as their mate.

Before watching the film, I read a bit about the Wodaabe on Wikipedia and other sites and I got inmediatly interested in this when I discovered they consider themselves "the most beautiful people on this earth"...I mean, how cool is that?? The fun part is that if you look at pictures of them on Google, you'll find that most of them are actually quite beautiful!!!! Not only men but also women! This is a great film about courtship and beauty...And it's really awesome for discovering other cultures of the world, who live by other rules and morals in a very natural way.

Highly reccomendable, specially because it's not even that long! Only 50 min and it's available on Youtube!

(Obviously, I also recommend to do a bit of research and read about them before watching the film)

Here's a short clip of the movie