Gift Guide: The Gift of Documentaries

December 19, 2007 1:50 PM, by Ruiyan Xu

Looking for a gift for your history-obsessed uncle? Your environmentally-conscious friend? Your urban sophisticate of a brother-in-law? Documentary DVDs could be the way to their heart this holiday season. When it comes to ordering documentaries, the glut of online stores selling DVDs make purchasing and shipping a breeze, but buyers and gifters beware: despite what you might think, one size doesn't necessarily fit all.


The Populist
Amazon.com's Documentary Best Sellers list is an excellent place to visit if you're not sure where to get start. The list is updated hourly with what everyone else is buying (namely, docs about the planet and wars, with some musical docs thrown in — at least this week). Here, you can pick up a 5-disc set of The Blue Planet — Seas of Life for your teenage cousin who's taken a sudden interest in marine biology, or a copy of Ken Burns' The War for that history-obsessed uncle.


The Cinephile
To the cinephile, the Criterion Collection's stamp of approval carries far greater weight than an Academy Award. The collection is a series of important classic and contemporary films on DVD. Each film chosen for inclusion is remastered and lovingly packaged with special extra features into a beautiful collector's item. Criterion's list of documentary DVDs includes canonical films from Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North to the Maysles' Grey Gardens. But it also offers up unexpected gems, like the quirky and fascinating docu-series Fishing With John, written, directed and hosted by musician John Lurie and featuring everyone from Dennis Hopper to Tom Waits.

Read more after the jump...

The History Buff
Two of the best places to visit for historical documentary DVDs are ShopPBS and the History Channel Shop. Each of these sites allow visitors to browse by topic, so whether you're looking for docs about the Korean War, the Civil Rights Movement or your favorite president, you'll find the DVDs in just a couple of clicks.




The Political Progressive
The films offered through Ironweed, which calls itself a monthly progressive film festival on DVD, will surely appeal to the person in your life who is concerned with global warming and social justice. You can order a gift subscription to Ironweed for $14.95 a month, and each month, they'll receive a new documentary about progressive issues. Ironweed films have included Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated Street Fight (P.O.V. 2005), about the 2002 mayoral elections in Newark, New Jersey, Sir! No Sir!, David Zeiger's tale of antiwar soldiers during the Vietnam War, and Mark and Nick Francis' Black Gold, documenting a coffee grower's quest for fair trade.

Tags: DVD, Documentary Roundup, PBS, war