Outside Magazine's Best Documentary Film List

The September issue of Outside magazine was chock full of great content, and today I pass along to you an outstanding best-of movie list that was between the magazine’s covers.

Titled “The Outside Documentary Canon,” this piece is a list of the 25 best adventure, investigative and nature documentary movies ever. The list was compiled by the magazine’s editors and guest editor David Holbrooke, who is the director of the Mountainfilm festival in Telluride, Colo.

The list is divided into two parts with the first 15 documentaries being the “greatest adventure, investigative and nature documentaries of the 21st century,” while the other 10 are “20th century classics.”

Without further ado, here are the first 15 in no particular order:

1. Riding Giants (2004) surfing documentary.

2. Man on Wire (2008): About Philippe Peitit, who walked a highwire between New York’s Twin Towers in 1974.

3. Touching the Void (2003): Mountaineering film based on the book, “Touching the Void” by Joe Simpson.

4. Encounters at the End of the World (2008): About workers at McMurdo, the U.S. research station in Antarctica.

5. Stranded (2007): About the 1972 plane crash in the Andes that inspired the 1993 movie, “Alive.”

6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006): About Al Gore’s nationwide global warming campaign

7. Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006): About the demise of the General Motors EV-1 concept car.

8. Food, Inc. (2008): About corporate farming in the U.S.

9. Gasland (2008): About communities affected by natural gas drilling.

10. The Cove (2009): About the annual slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

11. Winged Migration (2001): About the migration of birds on every continent.

12. Grizzly Man (2005) About bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell.

13. Red Gold (2007): About Bristol Bay, Alaska, “the site of the world’s largest sockeye run and a proposed open-pit mine” that could wipe out the fish.

14. Earth (2007): About a wide variety of wild habitats and animals around the globe.

15. March of the Penguins (2005): About the annual journey of emperor penguins in Antarctica.

The following is the list of 10 best “old school” documentary films from the 20th century:

1. South: Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition (1919): About Shackleton’s 1914-16 Endurance voyage.

2. Olympia (1938): About the 1936 Summer Olympics.

3. Kon-Tiki (1950): About the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition from Peru to Polynesia.

4. The Conquest of Everest (1953): About the various expeditions to the top of Mount Everest.

5. The Silent World (1956): Groundbreaking underwater film.

6. Endless Summer (1966): About two surfers on a surf trip around the world.

7. Fitz Roy: Mountain of Storms (1968): About the summit of 11,073-foot Fitz Roy in Argentina.

8. Koyaanisqatsi (1982): Voice-less film that consists mostly of time-lapse and slow-motion footage of cities and natural landscapes.

9. Blizzard of Aahhh’s (1988): About extreme skiing in the late 1980s.

10. For All Mankind (1989): About the 12 men who walked on the moon during the 1969-1972 Apollo missions.

I’ve been tossing around the idea of trying to watch all of these movies, but a few of them are apparently hard to find, especially three of the older movies.

Those available through NetFlix include “Riding Giants,” “Man on Wire,” “Touching the Void,” “Encounters at the End of the World,” “Stranded,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” “Food, Inc.,” “Gasland,” “The Cove,” “Winged Migration,” “Grizzly Man,” “Earth,” “March of the Penguins,” “South,” “Olympia,” “Kon-Tiki,” “The Silent World,” “Endless Summer,” “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Blizzard of Aahhh’s” and “For All Mankind.”

Those that didn’t return results in a search of NetFlix included “Red Gold,”
“The Conquest of Everest” and “Fitz Roy: Mountain of Storms.”

In the end, how many of these movies have you had a chance to watch? What did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.

(I’ve summarized a good deal of the original Outside magazine article, so if you’d like to read the entire story online, visit http://outsideonline.com/adventure//201009/adventure/travel-ta-adventure-documentaries-sidwcmdev_151282.html.)