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Comment by atombender | Hacker News Reader

The Death of Yugoslavia (1996) [1] [2]. Won the BAFTA and Peabody awards that year.

It's a BBC documentary in six episodes about the conflict that caused the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Balkans.

It stands out among many documentaries for being a truly dispassionate moment-to-moment record of events. No sensationalism, no grand-standing, just the facts.

If you're tired of the Netflix style of documentary — lots of talking heads quickly edited together for sound bites, dramatic music, re-enactments — then this is for you. Sadly, too few documentaries are produced in this style anymore.

Edit: Looks like the episodes are on YouTube [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Yugoslavia

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gfbpy

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj9Zw5fN3rE&list=PLdw7wnKe0w...

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I really can't stand the new Netflix style documentaries as you call them. Like, there's no coherent sentence or point being made by the speaker when it's literally not even full sentences just parts of sentences being strung together. It's really disorienting and obviously any nuance that the original interviewee was trying to get across is completely lost when every word they say is taken out of context into whatever the point is that the editors wanted to make. How are people enjoying this?

I suppose it's all because of the topic or the content itself. They try to use any technique to keep the view and to make it longer. They sometimes build miniseries from something that could be an hour max.

Is there a good example of this style?

The Netflix documentary "13th" comes to mind. At about the 19 minute mark:

Speaker 1: The election of ronald reagan was in many ways transformative in a negative sense

Speaker 2: President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term "a war on drugs" but president ronald reagan turned that rhetorical war into a literal war

Reagan: It's back to school time for america's children, and while drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, it's especially damaging to our young people on whom our future depends

Speaker 2: The modern war on drugs was declared by ronald reagan in 1982

Reagan: As we mobilize for this national crusade, I'm mindful that drugs are a constant temptation for millions:

Speaker 3: Popular opinion polls of the day show that it wasn't an issue for most people in the United States. But reagan was determined to put this onto the agenda to define it as a problem

Reagan: A war against drugs is a war of individual battles

Speaker 3: Reagan used his wife for example in this "just say no" campaign

Reagan: She has helped so many of our young people to say no to drugs. Nancy, much credit belongs to you

Clip of 80s anti drug commercial: This is your brain. This is drugs (cracks egg into pan). This is your brain on drugs.

Speaker 4: I joined it. And some people said...

I think that's a pretty decent example

There is this satire of Netflix documentaries that sums the style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BUrNe3Vhtk

Sort of loosely related.

when I first streamed netflix years ago - my queue was full of 5-star movies and shows to watch.

As I worked my way through my queue I developed a pattern. Everything I hadn't watched became 5-star documentaries.

I would develop "documentary fatigue" where there were so many well-documented, well produced and important issues to learn about, that I would quickly saturate and at that point I wouldn't watch documentaries anymore.

I would literally put 2-star scifi movies with unbelievable monsters or cataclysms before all the 5-star documentaries.

What do you mean by 5-star? 5 on netflix? imdb?

I just came here to suggest the same, since I just watched it recently again. Coming from a Bosnia and born just before the war, it was really chilling watching it. I think it portrays the conflict in Balkans in some neutral and fair way.

Interesting story: during the high school, in 2006-2008, we weren't allowed to have lectures about the war. That didn't stop our history class teacher to play us this documentary. We would watch it during the class and it would take us couple of classes to finish, since it's pretty long.

Also, the full documentary is here [1] and not segmented like OP's link.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVUg-VoPAeA&ab_channel=Triac...

I just watched this while traveling in Croatia and Bosnia, and I thought it was an incredible documentary! It's also very interesting that it was made only 6 month after the Dayton Accords ended the war. It gives you a very in-the-moment view of events. Definitely worth checking out!

+1 An amazing documentary. It presents the war from unbiased perspective. Something that I wasn't able to get (been living there, including during the war). Learnt so much from it.

None of the documentaries related to this war paint an objective picture of what happened, everyone has a dog in the fight.

Didn't a guy putting a bottle in his ass start the demise of Yugoslavia? Do they mention him at all?

To save everyone one Google search: [1]. It is/was apparently not clear if the guy was masturbating or being assaulted - that's the point of the story.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90or%C4%91e_Martinovi%C4%8...

Unfortunately that style of documentaries far predates Netflix.

Fortunately, there are also more good documentaries being produced than ever!

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