The recent tragic deaths of IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon and MotoGP ace Marco Simoncelli make the DVD release of Asif Kapadia's Senna all the more timely. It's 17 years since the three-time Formula One champion was killed at the age of 34 during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola. Yet the thrill of dicing with danger was as much a part of the sport as winning to Ayrton Senna, the iconic Brazilian racer who dominated F1 for a decade after becoming an instant sensation on steering his way through the pack to finish second in Monaco in 1984.

Born into a wealthy São Paolo family, Senna began racing go-karts as a youth and always maintained that this was the purest form of motor sport, as it pitted competitors against each other on a relatively equal footing without the incessant intrusion of owners, designers, sponsors and officials. However, he broke into Formula One at the earliest opportunity and stunned the experts when only a contentious manoeuvre by Alain Prost prevented him winning at Monte Carlo in his debut season from 13th position. Naturally, Prost became his deadliest rival, even when they both raced for the same McLaren team, although it took Senna's move to Williams Renault for the feud to ignite fully.

The Suzuka Circuit would become the scene of their most infamous clashes. During the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, Senna collided with Prost at the final chicane and returned to the pits to change his front wing before rejoining the fray and overhauling Alessandro Nannini. However, Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of the Fédération Internationale de Sport Automobile (FISA), ruled that Senna had made illegal use of the chicane's escape road and the verdict handed the world championship to his fellow Frenchman. The following year, however, Senna exacted his revenge as he rammed Prost at the first corner and put them both out of the race and guaranteed his second title.

However, rather than suggesting that such ruthlessness was out of character for a quietly spoken and deeply religious man who often alluded to his intimate relationship with God, Kapadia and screenwriter Manish Pandey suggest that Senna was a man who did what it took to succeed - with the exception of forgiving Balestre, as he had sufficiently made up with Prost for the Frenchman to be one of the pallbearers at his funeral.

Given the hair-raising nature of much of the cockpit footage - which still offers a visceral insight into a driver's perspective, despite the overuse of such imagery in modern TV coverage - it was perhaps hardly surprising that Senna would meet his end on the track. He remains the last F1 driver to perish during a race and one wonders what he might have achieved had his misgivings about the car been taken more seriously and had FISA not tinkered so frequently with the rules and regulations governing the vehicles and their equipment in the hope of making the action more spectacular and lucrative.

In concentrating on Senna's sporting prowess, Kapadia and Pandey largely overlook his private life and his views on anything other than the practice and politics of Formula One. While this prevents the viewer from getting to know the man behind the myth, it should be remembered that the film was made with the co-operation of his family and any untoward revelations would have been unwelcome. FISA would also have resisted anything that besmirched its own reputation and, with Kapadia so heavily reliant on official footage to compile his film, his reticence is entirely understandable.

Besides, this is a slice of sporting history not a celebrity profile and Kapadia, Pandey and editors Gregers Sall and Chris King deserve enormous credit for keeping the focus on the game while sifting through over 5000 hours of home movies, TV broadcasts, cockpit clips and exclusive FISA footage. Those unfamiliar with F1 may feel a bit lost, but petrol-heads will be enraptured by the behind-the-scenes wrangling, the often frank interviews that Senna gave to Brazilian journalists and the race action.

Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, Walter Salles and Antonio Banderas have all reportedly contemplated Senna biopics. But Hollywood track record with Grand Prix and NASCAR racing is less than inspiring and the exemplary nature of this slickly assembled and thoughtfully soundtracked documentary should dissuade anyone from attempting to top it.

The pace understandably slackens, but the quality remains equally high for visual artist Pierre Thoretton's Yves Saint Laurent: L'Amour Fou, another semi-offical biography that recalls the life of the doyen of Parisian couture through the eyes of his business and life partner Pierre Bergé. Similarly eschewing the rent-a-celeb approach, this is more a personal assessment of Saint Laurent's aesthetic achievement than a balanced account of his life or a neutral estimation of his impact on the world of fashion and beyond. Indeed, such is Bergé's refusal to discuss any of the maestro's flaws or peccadilloes that the profile often comes close to hagiography. However, in focusing on Bergé's decision to auction off the couple's art collection to raise money for AIDS research and their charitable foundation, Thoretton gains an unexpected insight into Saint Laurent through his taste in painting, décor and men.

Bergé and the 21 year-old YSL met at Christian Dior's funeral in 1957. They became an item soon afterwards and, when the House of Dior dismissed Saint Laurent, Bergé found the backers who enabled him to launch his own company in 1962. He even remained loyal when Saint Laurent discovered drink and drugs in the mid-1970s and when he struggled to retain his niche after the fashion business became more cutthroat in the 1990s. But, in addition to making commercial decisions together, they also shared several houses over the next five decades and spent a sizeable fortune on the treasures that Bergé offered to Christie's shortly after the designer's death in 2008.

Drawing on the six interviews that Bergé granted him in the four months leading up to the auction, Thoretton pieces together the extent to which Saint Laurent was dependent upon his lover for inspiration and support. He also canvasses the opinions of former model Betty Catroux, ex-Minister of Culture Jack Lang and fashionista Loulou De La Falaise to separate the myth from the reality.

But it's the director's selection from the archival footage and 100,000 still photos at his disposal that gives this portrait a touch of class. He also produces several telling images of his own, most notably in keeping Léo Hinstin's camera fixed upon the bare walls that had, for so long, provided a backdrop to valuable paintings, sculptures and objets d'art before the Christie's team had discreetly packed them all into crates to be taken away forever.

Those hoping for harder facts may well be disappointed. But this is an innovative approach to screen biography and Lucas Marcheggiano, Eduardo de la Serna and Adriana Nidia Yurcovich prove equally resourceful in chronicling the career of veteran Argentinian film-maker Daniel Burmeister in The Peddler. However, their ingenuity pales beside that of their subject, a sixtysomething amateur who travels between remote villages in a beaten up red Dodge to produce hoary melodramas and cornball comedies starring the very people who will watch them.

Opening with an awkward exchange between Burmeister and the mayor of Benjamin Gould, the action quickly settles into a relaxed snapshot of a hucksterish master at work. Coaxing the locals into attending auditions with the promise of becoming stars in their own streets, Burmeister shuffles through his collection of formulaic scenarios to produce Let's Kill Uncle, a macabre romp that will take his DIY filmography close to the 60-feature mark - and all he asks in return is board and lodging for the duration of the shoot and a cut of the profits from the screening and any souvenir DVD sales.

Overcoming their initial bashfulness, the cast slowly warms to its task. However, one possessive girlfriend is less than amused by the prospect of her man marrying another woman (even though she knows it's only make believe), while the leading man is called away to drive his ambulance, while another co-star has to leave the set because his taxi has been hired as a hearse. Yet Burmeister remains upbeat throughout, delighting in the fact that tracking shots have to be achieved by dragging him and his VHS camcorder along the floor on a tarpaulin and some of the watching kids wish he was filming Ice Age 3.

But you only have to watch the faces of the villagers as they gather for the world premiere to see the value of Burmeister's mission to take cinema back to the people. Everyone is excited to see their friends and neighbours on the sheet that serves as a screen and, though there is occasional unintentional laughter, there is genuine admiration for the amdram efforts and the chance to see their little pueblo immortalised forever. And it's clear that Burmeister also loves what he does, as it provides the validation that he never received from a father who always favoured his brothers. Moreover, he is fully aware that he is also documenting a disappearing world, as the backwoods are changing fast and his canon offers a unique glimpse into communities where everybody knows everyone else and escapes from the daily grind are few and far between.

Those hoping for harder facts may well be disappointed. But this is an innovative approach to screen biography and Lucas Marcheggiano, Eduardo de la Serna and Adriana Nidia Yurcovich prove equally resourceful in chronicling the career of veteran Argentinian film-maker Daniel Burmeister in The Peddler. However, their ingenuity pales beside that of their subject, a sixtysomething amateur who travels between remote villages in a beaten up red Dodge to produce hoary melodramas and cornball comedies starring the very people who will watch them.

Opening with an awkward exchange between Burmeister and the mayor of Benjamin Gould, the action quickly settles into a relaxed snapshot of a hucksterish master at work. Coaxing the locals into attending auditions with the promise of becoming stars in their own streets, Burmeister shuffles through his collection of formulaic scenarios to produce Let's Kill Uncle, a macabre romp that will take his DIY filmography close to the 60-feature mark - and all he asks in return is board and lodging for the duration of the shoot and a cut of the profits from the screening and any souvenir DVD sales.

Overcoming their initial bashfulness, the cast slowly warms to its task. However, one possessive girlfriend is less than amused by the prospect of her man marrying another woman (even though she knows it's only make believe), while the leading man is called away to drive his ambulance, while another co-star has to leave the set because his taxi has been hired as a hearse. Yet Burmeister remains upbeat throughout, delighting in the fact that tracking shots have to be achieved by dragging him and his VHS camcorder along the floor on a tarpaulin and some of the watching kids wish he was filming Ice Age 3.

But you only have to watch the faces of the villagers as they gather for the world premiere to see the value of Burmeister's mission to take cinema back to the people. Everyone is excited to see their friends and neighbours on the sheet that serves as a screen and, though there is occasional unintentional laughter, there is genuine admiration for the amdram efforts and the chance to see their little pueblo immortalised forever. And it's clear that Burmeister also loves what he does, as it provides the validation that he never received from a father who always favoured his brothers. Moreover, he is fully aware that he is also documenting a disappearing world, as the backwoods are changing fast and his canon offers a unique glimpse into communities where everybody knows everyone else and escapes from the daily grind are few and far between.

Surfing provides a similar outlet for the kids of Brazil's crime-riddled favelas, as Justin Mitchell reveals in Rio Breaks. A far cry from the iconic surfing documentaries of Bruce Brown, this is a poignant study of the youngsters who see riding waves off Arpoador Beach as the only way of avoiding a short life of servitude with a drug gang. Mitchell includes some striking aquatic action. But the focus is firmly on the narrowing options facing 13 year-old Fabio and his younger buddy Naamã, as they hone their skills with the Favela Surf Club in the hope of winning a competition and landing a lucrative sponsorship deal that will keep them out of the clutches of the notorious Commando Vermelho or Red Command, which competes ruthlessly with its Blue counterpart for control of the Pavao neighbourhood that has been nicknamed Vietnam because of the incessant gunfire.

Fabio and Naamã live to surf. They spend much of their time bickering and taunting each other, but they are inseparable and would never dream of hitting the beach near Ipanema alone. They idolise Favela Surf Club mentors like Rogerio, Jean and Thyola, who grew up alongside Simao Romao, who has not forgotten his roots since making it big as a professional surfer. The trio do their best to keep their eyes on kids like Maicon, Jaira, Pretao, Picachu and Nem and try to convince them that surfing is the great leveller in Brazilian society, as breakers dump rich and poor alike.

However, it's impossible to ignore the dire straits in which most of this eager band are raised. Naamã's family hails from the rural North-East and his parents strive to raise him and sisters Brisia and Canan according to traditional values after their oldest son was gunned down by a rival dealer. But, while they ensure that Naamã goes to school and encourage him to play football, as well as surf, Fabio is more often left to his own devices and, thus, seems more likely to stray. His father was murdered when he announced he was leaving his gang and his mother abandoned him and sister Patricia to be raised by their grandfather Gildo because she was so desperate to make a fresh start away from the slums.

An air of inevitability hangs over Fabio's progress, even though Jean takes him and Naamã to his local church in an effort to convince them there is a better way than crime. He vows to continue with his education after the club imposes a new rule barring those cutting classes from the beach. But while Rogerio's daughter Joyce begins dedicating herself to following the example of 20 year-old sensation Maya Gabeira, Fabio starts looking increasingly likely to emulate Biloa, who has to quit the water and find a job after getting his girlfriend pregnant, and Bochecha, a promising athlete who was tempted by the quick cash offered by the gang bosses and nearly lost a leg in a shooting.

Dying his hair blonde to look cooler, Fabio is suspended from school and acquires a reputation for bullying. He even tests Naamã's friendship on several occasions and boasts that he is better on a board than Rogerio. But, more worryingly, with the club struggling for funding, he finds his surfing options narrowing and, while Picachu and Joyce make sacrifices to train with big-wave rider Carlos Burle and enter prestigious competitions, Fabio blows his chances by arriving late and missing his call.

Naamã decides to concentrate on body-boarding after a disappointing result in his first surfing contest. But he is anything but disheartened and even seems resigned to the fact that Fabio is no longer his buddy - because that is the harsh reality of favela life and he would rather play alone than in bad company.

The stakes for which these kids are playing can be summed up by the shot of the rubbish tip that has become known as `the pit' because of the number of gangland victims that have been dumped in it. Yet so many are willing to take the risk that they will be the lucky one to prosper and avoid the bullet of a policeman, an enemy or a disaffected comrade. Mitchell makes this point by showing the pocked walls as the excited youths take the steepling steps from their eyrie hovels. But, while Fabio may be lost by its end, this is not a film without hope and certainly not one without heart.

Although it's become something of a middle-class preserve, Morris dancing was once the favourite pastime of agricultural workers in this country. Yet, as Tim Plester and Rob Curry reveal in the compelling documentary Way of the Morris, the recent revival of this ancient tradition has restored its place in the routine of communities once in danger of losing touch with their roots.

Despite being raised as the son and nephew of Morris men, actor-writer Tim Plester never felt the urge to don ribbons and bells or prance around the green wielding a long stick and waving a white handkerchief. Yet, while being painfully conscious that this quintessentially English pastime was almost universally mocked by his fellow countrymen, he felt drawn to exploring the history of Morris dancing and assessing its current status in a society that has almost completely forgotten its folkloric significance, let alone the supposed origin of this `moorish dance' as a bequeast from some North African Berbers, a relict from the Crusades or a late 15th-century import from Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain after the expulsion of the Moors.

Whatever the disputed dating of its first mention in Anglo records, there is no doubting that the Industrial Revolution and the Great War did much to change the national perception of Morris. In the case of the latter, thousands of young men accustomed to country ritual lost their lives in the trenches and their surviving comrades simply didn't have the heart to rebuild local sides. All but one of Adderbury's dancers, for example, perished in the fields of Northern France.

But, as Plester and Curry discover, the way of the Morris continues across Britain and around the world. It also numbers among its adherents such celebrities as Billy Bragg and Chris Leslie, who ensured Morris became a key component of the Fairport Convention legacy. Indeed, the Adderbury Village Morris Men guested on the album Son of Morris On, which was released the year after Bryan Sheppard and Tim Radford reformed the team in 1975 and danced outside the house of the sole survivor of its predecessor, Charlie Coleman.

Unfortunately, this sense of unity didn't last long and, while Sheppard was left in charge of the `natives only' Adderbury Village Morris Men, Radford quit to form the Adderbury Morris Men, who were not only open to those born outside the village and its immediate environs, but also favoured the songs and dances collected by Cecil Sharp rather than Le Hall Place-based folklorist Janet Heatley Blunt. More might have been said about this schism, but Plester and Curry prefer to canvas the opinions of local kids on the Day of Dance to gauge Morris's immediate future before accompanying Sheppard and his cohorts on a solidarity pilgrimage to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.

The sequence in which their scions pay tribute to George Robins (21), Lawrence `Harry' Wallin (21), Ronald Pargeter (19) and his younger brother Percy (20) is deeply moving and it clearly had a profound effect upon Plester, who decides to consult with father Bill and uncle Jim prior to taking the plunge and strapping on the baldrics and popping on the top hat for his long overdue debut.

The opening animation claiming that Morris started with a gambolling fox at the dawn of time sets the tone for this engaging and enjoyable study. But the highlights are the Super-8 images filmed by Plester's grandfather Harold and the moving rendition of `The Happy Man' at the Thiepval Memorial. A marked improvement on Lucy Akhurst's amiable, but lightweight comedy Morris: A Life With Bells On (2009), this may not prompt you to sign up for your local team. But it will certainly increase your understanding of an ever-evolving custom. So hats off to Bryan Sheppard, Jim Plester, Chris Garrett, Edd Frost, Dave Davies, Malcolm Wood, John Eckers, Nick Duxbury, Dave Trivett, Paul Brierley, Mark French, Donald McCombie, Chris and Pete Holmes, Robin Wilkinson, Tom Leary, `Dorset' David Reed, Ian Baum, Damian Piessel and Peter Jordan - and long may their shin-bells tinkle!

The death of Sir Jimmy Saville ties into our last offering this week, as he presented the first edition of Top of the Tops from the converted church in Dickinson Road in the Manchester district of Rusholme that had once housed the Mancunian film studios that produced the low-budget comedies celebrated in Funny Up North. Although George Formby and Arthur Askey are still reasonably well known, few will remember Frank Randle, Norman Evans, Robb Wilton and Dougie Wakefield, who could pack out theatres in the north of England without raising so much as a titter down south. This affectionate memoir could, however, win them a few new fans.

Professor Chris Lee is our guide through the careers of comics whose antics were often surprisingly saucy and subversive. The lyrics of the cheeky ditties George Formby sang as he strummed his ukulele were stuffed with double entendres, while Frank Randle's habit of slipping material into his act that had not been cleared with the Lord Chamberlain's office led to him frequently appearing before unamused magistrates. But it was John E. Blakeley who ensured the pair reached their biggest audiences in the pictures he produced for Mancunian.

As there were no facilities in the North West, Blakeley was forced to hire soundstages in London for the Formby vehicles Boots! Boots! (1934) and Off the Dole (1935), which were successful enough to earn the Wigan wag a lucrative contract with Basil Dean's Associated Talking Pictures. As Lee recalls, Formby was famously under the thumb of his wife, Beryl, and Betty Driver (who also passed away recently) recalls how she was vetoed from a supporting role in Boots! Boots! because Beryl (who took the part herself) didn't want her Frank flirting on screen with another woman. Arthur Askey also remembers Beryl as a formidable woman, although Lee suggests Formby exploited her reputatation for his own ends.

Frank Randle also had a devoted wife. But Queenie kept very much in the background as Randle rose from touring with an acrobatic troupe to becoming the King of Blackpool in risqué summer shows that earned him £1000 per week and Gracie Fields's verdict that he was the greatest character comic of his generation. His films were cheap and cheerful romps in which he cocked a snook at authority, most notably in the wartime service farces Somewhere in England, Somewhere in Camp and Somewhere on Leave (1942).

Having had his teeth removed so he could gurn more effectively, Randle always looked older than his years. But his knockabout byplay with bluff Harry Korris and `dude comic' Dan Young made him something of an eternally naughty boy - a role later taken on by Jimmy Clitheroe, who stooged for him in School for Randle (1949), which, along with Holidays With Pay (1948) and It's a Grand Life (1953) turned a tidy profit and allowed Blakeley to open the Rusholme studio and star Sandy Powell and Betty Jumel and a young Pat Phoenix in Cup-Tie Honeymoon (1948), the emerging double act of Jimmy Jewell and Ben Warriss in What a Carry On! (1949) and Let's Have a Murder (1950), Norman Evans in Over the Garden Wall (1950) and Jimmy James in Those People Next Door (1952).

However, with more people owning television sets, they became increasingly reluctant to buy cinema tickets to see stars they could watch in their own living rooms for free. Consequently, Blakeley decided to sell the Mancunian studio to the BBC in 1953, although he continued to make occasional pictures like the Lance Comfort trio of Tomorrow at Ten (1962), with John Gregson and Robert Shaw, Blind Corner (1963) and Devils of Darkness (1964).

With Professor Lee proving a genial raconteur - particularly when discussing Randle's brushes with the law and his drinking bouts with buddy and occasional co-star Josef Locke - and choice extracts from the Dougie Wakefield starrer The Penny Pool, as well as Formby's Spare a Copper (1940) and Turned Out Nice Again (1941) and Askey's The Love Match (1954), this may not be the most sophisticated or analytical survey of what made northerners laugh either side of the Second World War. But as a wallow in gentle nostalgia, it does the job champion.