Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 15/12/2011)

This was the year of the 3-D doc, with the prime examples being Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Wim Wenders's Pina. Richard De Aragues's record of the Isle of Man's famous TT Races, TT3D: Closer to the Edge, and nature studies like David Lickley's Born to Be Wild, Mark Lewis's Cane Toads - The Conquest and Matthew Dyas's Flying Monsters 3D With David Attenborough also made evocative use of stereoscopy to explore their subject rather than provide gimmicky enhancement, as was more the case with such contrasting concert pictures as Kevin Tancharoen's Glee: The 3D Concert Movie and Michael Beyer and Tomas Erhart's Sir Simon Rattle & The Berlin Philharmonic - A Journey in 3D.

It remains to be seen how important three-dimensionality will become to documentary film-making. Clearly, son et lumière presentations at galleries, museums and other tourist attractions would benefit greatly from the added sense of depth and the possibility of immersing viewers entirely in historical or fantastical environments. Those sat in cinema seats or watching on a small screen at home, however, have probably been drawn to a film because of its subject matter and the intellectual content will nearly always matter more than the visual form. But with directors like Martin Scorsese threatening to work exclusively in 3-D from now on, it may yet even become the default mode for factual as well as fictional features.

The other notable factor in 2011 was the reduction in the number of documentaries securing a theatrical release. For much of the last decade, the actuality has been in vogue. But, with arthouses struggling to stay afloat during the recession, they have become increasingly reluctant to show foreign-language films that only appeal to a specialist audience, let alone doses of reality that frequently browbeat rather than entertain. Besides, so many of the documentaries that are vaunted at festivals show up within a matter of weeks in Channel Four's True Stories strand or under the BBC's Storyville or Imagine banners (often in truncated form) that cash-strapped patrons can be excused for not seeing movies on the big screen that hardly suffer from being shown in reduced domestic formats.

Many documentaries this year had their merits, including Steve James's The Interrupters, Janus Metz's Armadillo, Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye's Benda Bilili!, Alex Gibney's Client-9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Jerry Rothwell's Donor Unknown, Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez's Four Days Inside Guantánamo, Ian Palmer's Knuckle, Charles H. Ferguson's Inside Job, Andrew Rossi's Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times, Justin Mitchell's Rio Breaks, Asif Kapadia's Senna, Tim Plested's Way of the Morris, which centred on the Adderbury Village Morris Men.

But there were also disappointments, such as Errol Morris's Tabloid, Göran Hugo Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Yves Hinant's Referees and the cricketing duo of Stevan Riley's Fire in Babylon and James Erskine's From the Ashes. Moreover, there were also wildly over-praised efforts like Lucy Walker's Countdown to Zero, Kevin Macdonald and Natalia Andreadis's Life in a Day and Gillian Wearing's appallingly exploitative Self Made.

There was also one exceptional piece of innovative investigative film-making that would have been the runner-up in the Top 10 were it not for the fact that it is being released next week. So keep an eye out for the review of Dreams of a Life, Carol Morley's portrait of the vivacious, yet enigmatic Joyce Vincent, who was only discovered in her London flat three years after she died while wrapping Christmas presents in December 2003.

10) THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD The wit is incisive and gleefully contrived in Morgan Spurlock's The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, which amusingly seeks to expose the perniciousness and ubiquity of advertising and product placement by selling promotional spots within the film itself. Back on Super Size Me (2004) form after somewhat losing his way with Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (2008), Spurlock again proves a much more genial on-screen presence than Michael Moore, although he is still prone to the intellectual superficiality and grandstanding lapses that have made Moore such a decreasingly effective critic of the contemporary American scene.

Intrigued by the extent to which commercials and sponsorship have impinged upon most aspects of modern living, Spurlock decided to buy in rather than sell out and make a film about the process of funding the very picture he was shooting. Consequently, he hit the phones in a bid to attract potential investors and gets the action off to a rousing start with a montage of pitches and rejections that finally results in Ban deodorant agreeing to come on board for $50,000. Other companies eventually follow suit and Spurlock is seen meeting with founders and executives as he contracts to drink nothing but Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice on screen, as well as exclusively fly with Jet Blue airlines, drive Mini Cooper cars, stay in Hyatt hotels, eat Amy's Kitchen pizza and conduct as many interviews as possible in Sheetz gas stations and convenience restaurants.

He also consents to shoot an ad for Mane`n'Tail shampoo, as he is so taken with a product that can be used on both humans and horses. In so doing, Spurlock fulfils his promise of total transparency. Moreover, he also succeeds in discussing such issues as brand perception, marketing strategies and consumer suggestibility with a satirical insight that would be all the more trenchant if he could resist mugging to the camera whenever he hits a target. Yet Spurlock manages to finance his `docbuster' entirely with other people's money without relinquishing artistic control.

Indeed, he finds time for a couple of digressions, as he buys ad space on the perimeter fence of a cash-strapped school in Broward County, Florida and visits São Paulo to discover how mayor Gilberto Kassab and co-ordinator Regina Monteiro removed all outdoor advertising in a campaign to end visual pollution. Moreover, he also gets to learn some tricks of the trade from PR gurus like Tony Seiniger, Britt Jonson, David Whales, Richard Kirshenbaum, Martin Lindstrom and Peter Bemis, as well as debating the phenomenon of product placement in mainstream movies with directors JJ Abrams, Brett Ratner, Peter Berg and Quentin Tarantino and the ethics of advertising with such academics and activists as Noam Chomsky, Susan Linn, Robert Weissman and Ralph Nader. He even commissions an official film song from the rock combo OK Go.

The majority of these encounters are knowingly droll, with Spurlock never missing the opportunity to winkingly emphasise ironies and reassure the audience that they are not being as manipulated as ordinary punters in being sold the benefits of the tie-in products because they are in on the postmodernist joke. But he struggles to answer such questions as whether having his film sponsored will raise its profile before opening weekend or how much the average consumer is actually influenced by advertising in an era when TiVo and the internet allow them to eliminate sponsors messages at the press of a button.

One thing Spurlock triumphantly succeeds in promoting throughout the film is himself. But the suit he wears on the Jimmy Kimmel Live chat show represents a splendid lampoon of corporatism and logo fixation, which also demonstrates a laudable strain of self-deprecation that goes a long way to restoring Spurlock's credibility after the Osama fiasco.

9) BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD Liz Garbus's Bobby Fischer Against the World is a difficult watch, but one that compels as much as it repels and confounds.

When Bobby Fischer challenged Boris Spassky for the World Chess Championship in 1972, the contest took precedence over Vietnam and Watergate on American television newscasts. Henry Kissinger viewed the match as a chance to claw back some kudos in the Cold War, while chat show hosts like Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson fell over themselves to interview the new superstar. For a brief moment, the most cerebral of pastimes became the subject of mass hysteria. But, once the fuss had died down and Fischer no longer had expectation to sustain him, he was left with the desperate dilemma of having to deal with his own prejudice and paranoia for the next 36 deeply unfulfilling years.

Born in Chicago in March 1943, Fischer was raised in Brooklyn with his older sister Joan by his mother Regina, a Polish-Jewish, Communist-sympathising political activist who was divorced from German biophysicist Hans-Gerhardt Fischer and took maintenance payments from Hungarian-Jewish physicist Paul Nemenyi (whom some have since claimed as Fischer's actual father). He began playing chess at six and won the first of his eight US championships at 15. However, within a year, Regina had moved out to further her medical career and Joan was left to accompany her brother to tournaments and TV appearances.

Fischer's rise up the chess rankings was nowhere near as meteoric as Garbus would have the viewer believe. Indeed, there is no mention of his 1960 clash with Spassky, his defeat by Samuel Reshevsky or the semi-retirement that followed accusations of collusion after his failure at the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curaçao. However, she does mention his membership of the Worldwide Church of God, which he joined in the mid-1960s, along with fitness coach Harry Sneider, who played a key role in the strenuous physical regime that helped make Fischer the poster boy of American chess.

But, intriguing though the backstory is, the emphasis is firmly on the Reykjavik showdown and Fischer's eccentric behaviour beforehand, as he argued about the purse and playing conditions and seriously considered backing out altogether before receiving a stern phone call from Dr Kissinger. His arrival came as a great relief to tournament organiser Gudmundur Thorarinsson, although Fischer was unsportingly late for the first game, which he inexplicably lost after moving what became known as `the poison pawn'. He failed to show at all for the second game and chief arbiter Lothar Schmid still feels a pang at having been compelled to `destroy a genius'.

However, following complaints about the positioning of cameras and the need to play games in total isolation, Fischer began the fightback in Game Three by famously using the `Son of Sorrow' strategy. He surpassed this in Game Six, however, when his victory took on a `placid beauty'. But, even though the world was gripped by every move three decades ago, Garbus decides to condense the next 14 skirmishes into a breakneck montage (slickly assembled by Karen Schmeer and Michael Levine) and concludes the segment on Game Twenty-One, when Spassky resigned by telephone after an overnight adjournment.

Thrust into an even more glaring media spotlight, Fischer struggled to retain his equilibrium and his demands for future tournaments became increasingly outrageous. He also started studying contentious texts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The White Man's Bible and groups like the Illuminati, with the result that his pronouncements became disturbingly anti-Semitic and the enigmatic genius was soon being branded a detestable bigot. Garbus compares his plight to that of Paul Morphy, a 19th-century chess champion whose psychological collapse similarly testified to the thin line between mastery and mania. But, while `The Pride and Sorrow of Chess' slipped into anonymity in the 1860s, Fischer very publicly accepted Hungarian Zita Raycsanyi's suggestion of a Belgrade rematch with Spassky and fled to Tokyo after he was threatened with a 10-year prison sentence for defying a UN sanction against war-torn Yugoslavia.

However, Fischer hit a new low when he called Radio Bombo in Philippines on 9/11 to gloat about the United States receiving the punishment it had long been overdue and he was forced to seek asylum in Iceland after he was detained in Tokyo at Washington's request. Footage from Fridrik Gudmundsson's documentary Me & Bobby Fischer (2009), showing how former bodyguard Saemi Pálsson helped facilitate the move back to Reykjavik, enlivens this sorry episode. But Fischer quickly alienated would-be supporters like neurologist Dr Kari Stefansson with his hateful politics and he died in January 2008 after refusing the dialysis that might have saved him.

In seeking to reconcile the sublime with the pernicious, Garbus draws on an impressive range of experts, including authors David Edmonds (Bobby Fisher Goes to War), David Shenk (The Immortal Game), Sam Sloan, (Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess), Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers), Clea Benson (Life Is Not a Board Game) and Nikolai Krogius (Spassky's `Second') and chess masters Garry Kasparov, Susan Polgar, Fernand Gobet, Fridrik Olafsson and Asa Hoffmann. However, the most useful insights come from those who knew Fischer well, most notably chess friend Anthony Saidy and Larry Evans, TV anchor Shelby Lyman, lawyer Paul Marshall, brother-in-law Russell Targ and Life photographer Harry Benson, who recalls Fischer's love of solitude and animals.

Yet nobody is fully able to explain the origins of Fischer's social gaucheness and vicious intolerance and the speculation of the early and latter stages of the film lacks the conviction of the Reykjavik chronicle. Garbus has unearthed some exceptional archive material and she tells her tale with admirable brio. But one suspects that any chance of getting to the bottom of the Fischer riddle passed with his sister Joan.

8) HELL AND BACK AGAIN Cannily cross-cutting between the tour of duty that led to Marine sergeant Nathan Harris being seriously wounded in the hip and his agonising rehabilitation, Hell and Back Again is a judicious insight into the sacrifices and suffering involved in ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban. Embedded photojournalist Danfung Dennis's combat footage is as remarkable as anything in the recently acclaimed Restrepo or Armadillo, with his focus on the fear of the locals caught up in the fighting being particularly sharp. His chillingly ironic juxtaposition of scenes of domesticity in Helmand and North Carolina is equally acute. But it's the struggle endured by Harris and wife Ashley to return to a semblance of normality that proves most revealing, as strangers and comrades alike commend the 25 year-old for his courage without fully appreciating the consequent physical and psychological traumas.

In 2009, Nathan Harris was serving with Echo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment in southern Afghanistan. Danfung Dennis was seconded to the unit and captured intimate images of troops conducting routine patrols, interacting with the locals and going into combat against a largely unseen enemy. But, while these sequences are notable in themselves, they become utterly compelling when contrasted to the suffering that Harris himself has to endure during his convalescence.

A trip to Wal-Mart becomes a major expedition, as Harris frets about his failure to find a parking space. But his grumbling abates when an old lady comes to welcome him home with a hug and a request to be photographed with him. However, the front line is never far from the thoughts of a die-hard patriot whose ambition had always been to kill people for his country and the terrifying comparison of Harris patrolling civilian streets and playing a violent video game is followed by scenes of him justifying the US presence in Afghanistan to his sister-in-law and showing Ashley how to load and aim a pistol as they sit on their marital bed.

Equally disconcerting is the linking of Nathan and Ashely's trip to view a potential new home with shots of a Marine patrol kicking in the doors of Afghan dwellings and conducting gunpoint searches without a shred of the respect and tolerance that Harris sets so much store by in his speeches to camera. But breakdowns in communication are commonplace in Helmand, with the elders explaining during a night recce why they refuse to co-operate with foreign forces because they are more afraid of Taliban reprisal than they are of American reprimands.

However, before the audience can begin empathising too much with the besieged villagers, Dennis shows Harris (who is at risk of becoming addicted to the painkillers that make daily life bearable) preparing to return to his base for a memorial service for 13 fallen comrades. The distress displayed by padre Terry Roberts as he valiantly attempts to deliver his sermon and the dignity of the survivors filing past the helmets and portraits of the lost is deeply moving and it's impossible to forget that while they may be infidel devils to many of those they are seeking to protect in the name of democracy, they are also sons, brothers, husbands and buddies to others.

At this point, Dennis shifts the focus on to Ashley to reveal how the relief of Nathan's safe deliverance is tempered by the frustration of having to cope with his mood swings and the realisation that her own life has been changed just as dramatically as his by the machine-gun bullet fired during a helicopter raid on a remote enemy stronghold in a country far, far away. Thus, she has to deal with his bitterness when he learns from the doctor that his recovery from the replacement of part of his lower leg with titanium will be slower than he expected and their argument in the car on the way home from the hospital is upsetting to witness. Even more disturbing is his cruel joke as they snuggle up in bed that she had perished in a game of Russian roulette he had been imagining in the front room. Yet she speaks of him with nothing but enormous pride on collecting his medication from the pharmacy and Dennis leaves viewers with the sobering conclusion that, even though Harris may well walk again, he has been permanently changed physically and psychologically by his experience and that the task of finding a new niche in society is going to be every bit as daunting as that of bringing peace and justice to Afghanistan.

7) THE FLAW The causes of the ongoing recession are explored with laudable clarity and control by David Sington in The Flaw. Opening with footage of Alan Greenspan - the chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987-2006 - admitting to the House Oversight Committee that there was a glitch in the efficient market hypotheses on which American capitalism had been based for several decades, this occasionally runs the risk of being wise after the event. However, with its judicious mix of talking heads and poignant case studies, this is a fascinating insight into why so few academics and financiers failed to notice the imminence of meltdown until it was too late.

In order to put the downturn in context, Sington uses clips from the animated educational shorts Going Places (1948), What Makes Us Tick (1952) and It's Everybody's Business (1954), as well as the 1957 live-action infomercial Where the Heart Is, to explain the theories of supply and demand, how competition stimulates growth and why so much emphasis is placed on owning property. He then allows onetime traders George Cooper and Andrew Luan and economics professors Robert Shiller (Yale), Louis Hyman (Harvard), Robert Frank (Cornell), Robert Wade (LSE), Don Ariely (Duke) and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia) to discuss how Reaganomic deregulation, the collapse of Communism, the dot.com boom and the growth of the sub-prime mortgage market saw the US economy place its bets on increasingly risky ventures that ultimately created a bubble that simply had to burst.

Those enraged by how various bankers, stockbrokers and hedge fund traders could have brought the world to the brink of fiscal collapse will be particularly piqued by the analysis of how the postwar consumer boom became a scramble for property and how the sub-prime racket placed an untenable strain on the American economy. Even for a layman, it's difficult to see how nobody could have spotted the fact that something would have to give, with the top 1% of earners monopolising wealth and those on the lower rungs ratcheting up the national debt as unemployment rose and demand dropped.

However, the loans kept coming and hard-working people were lured into investing beyond their means, among them real estate speculator Steve Nahas, who bought big just as the market peaked and now faces ruin, and successful optician Antoinette Coffi-Ahibo, who risked foreclosure because the bank refused to renegotiate her mortgage agreement. The most salutary study, however, is provided by Ed Andrews, who became a delinquent borrower even though the was the Economics Correspondent of the New York Times.

Following Andrew Luan, as he leads a guided tour along Wall Street, Sington challenges the easy assumptions that the crisis was simply caused by greedy bankers and indolent watchdogs. His arguments are cogent and compelling, but it remains to be seen how many of his lessons about excessive income inequality leading to economic instability will be taken onboard.

6) PROJECT NIM An object lesson in how badly the best of intentions can go awry is dismayingly presented in Project Nim, James Marsh's long-awaited documentary follow-up to the acclaimed Man on a Wire (2008). Adapted from Elizabeth Hess's book, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, and supplementing archive footage and photographs with interviews and dramatic reconstructions, this unflinching exposé of the fallibility of scientific research is bound to provoke debate. But in chronicling the life of a chimpanzee who was consistently betrayed by those it trusted, Marsh is careful to avoid sensationalism or sentiment and, consequently, this succeeds where Nicolas Philibert's Nénette (2010) failed in creating a factual drama with the emotional intensity of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933).

Nim was born at the Institute of Primate Studies in Oklahoma in November 1973 and within days he had been separated from his mother Carolyn in order to test Columbia University behavioural professor Herbert Terrace's theory that a chimp could be taught to communicate through sign language. Nim was entrusted to Terrace's former lover Stephanie LaFarge, who had recently married poet Wer LaFarge to whom the baby ape took an instant dislike. As Stephanie and daughter Jenny Lee recall, life in the large Manhattan brownstone was initially blissful, as Nim was dressed in human clothing and allowed to play while he learned. However, lacking a basic knowledge of animal psychology and increasingly struggling to cope with Nim's increased size, strength and independent streak, the LaFarges were forced to accept the assistance of undergraduate Laura Ann Petitto, who became Nim's primary carer when the project relocated to the 28-acre Delafield Estate in 1975.

Revelling in the freedom of his new surroundings, Nim became sufficiently boisterous and canny to require the attention of additional staff. But, while he was mostly affectionate towards Joyce Butler, Bill Tynan and Renee Falitz, he occasionally became aggressive and once bit Falitz so badly on the face that she required extensive treatment and had to be removed from the compound. Throughout this period, Terrace kept collecting data about Nim's ability to express himself through signing and continued to hope that he would eventually be able to form simple sentences. But Nim was smarter than he suspected and began developing skills to manipulate his carers and keep the work sessions short in order to maximise play and feeding time.

Eventually, Terrace pulled the plug on his nurture versus nature study and arranged for Nim to return to Dr William Lemmon's IPS facility, where he became the charge of Bob Ingersoll and Alyce Moore. A keen fan of The Grateful Dead, the former bonded instantly with the beast and even shared the occasional joint with him. However, a shortage of funding led to Lemmon selling his apes to the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates at New York University and it was only through a rights case brought by Ingersoll and lawyer Henry Hermann that Dr James Mahoney was able to spare the grim fate of his LEMSIP neighbours and eventually transfer him to the Black Beauty Ranch for retired animals run by Cleveland Amory and his assistant Marion Probst, where he died of a heart attack in March 2000.

This sorry tale makes for sobering viewing, especially as the designated villain of the piece refuses to exhibit the same remorse as his former employees. Clearly, there was academic merit in Herbert Terrace's experiment to disprove linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky's contention that humans alone were capable of understanding and using the grammatical principles key to sophisticated communication. But the decision to remove an infant ape from its mother, billet it with a foster mother and then treat it as a specimen rather than a creature capable of forming emotional attachments soon proved catastrophically misguided and Terrace's apparent indifference to both Nim's psychological well-being and his fate once the study was completed is one of the many contradictions that Marsh highlights with growing incredulity.

However, like Werner Herzog in Grizzly Man (2005), Marsh is also fascinated by the delusional anthropomorphising to which so many of the humans that came into contact with Nim succumbed. But he clearly finds it hard to follow Nim in forgiving those who abused him and this remarkable and impeccably constructed film stands as a damning indictment of scientific arrogance and folly. But don't be fooled into thinking this is just a treatise on the ethics of animal experimentation. This is also a shrewd dissection of the social and sexual attitudes that existed in the early 1970s and a castigation of the predatory chauvinism that enabled so many powerful men entice trusting female underlings into their beds.

5) BLOOD IN THE MOBILE Over the past 15 years, youths in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been more likely to perish than be imprisoned, as civil war has claimed over five million lives, while an estimated 300,000 women have been raped. Among the chief means of funding the struggle have been the cassiterite and bauxite ores that are used by multinational companies in the production of electronic gadgets and Danish documentarist Frank Piasecki Poulsen sets out to discover whether his phone contains conflict minerals in Blood in the Mobile.

Every third mobile phone is a Nokia and having failed to persuade the Finnish giants to reveal the source of the minerals used in its merchandise, Poulsen decides to travel to Africa and investigate. He clearly revels in playing a kind of Michael Moore-cum-Morgan Spurlock variation on Marlow heading into Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but there's no doubting either his courage or his tenacity as he seeks to force mobile phone users into recognising the part that they play in perpetuating one of recent history's bloodiest wars each time they make a call.

On arriving in DR Congo, Poulsen meets with Mr Kampekampe, who not only holds a key post in the Ministry of Mines, but also operates his own company, which just happens to deal in minerals. He suggests Poulsen pays a visit to Walikale, a settlement in Goma in the region of North Kivu, where he can be escorted by members of the United Nations peacekeeping force. However, while he provides the Dane with a lecture on cassiterite and bauxite, Major Rahman is reluctant to discuss their uses or the role of warlords in their extraction and exploitation. The employees he meets from the Mining Processing Company prove equally reticent and advise him to steer clear of the notoriously dangerous terrain around the Bisie mine, as they are contested by both the FRDC unit of the Congolese army and the FDLR, the remnant of a Rwandan Hutu Power rebel group based on the eastern border.

But such warnings merely convince Poulsen that he is on the right track, as do the refusal of press officer Silvy to give him permission to accompany a UN patrol after a massacre in Bisie and the harrowing testimony of Bernard, a press attaché who speaks off the record about the pitiless rape of a woman named Massika on the dismembered body of her murdered husband. Even the preening FRDC commander who proudly shows Poulsen his collection of dress uniforms is wary about allowing him into the interior, as so many comrades are making their fortune from trading minerals But he finds a seat on a Russian cargo plane and befriends Chance, a 16 year-old survivor of the Bisie outrage, who has spent three years working in the mine and now agrees to act as Poulsen's guide on two-day foot trek through forbidding jungle.

The mine is now under the control of the rogue 85th unit of the FRDC and Poulsen has to go through a security check before he is allowed into the shanty settlements where 15-25,000 people live and work. After another series of protracted negotiations, he is taken down a mine shaft that is 100m deep and many complain loudly about his intrusion and demand to be paid for appearing on film. The dark, dingy and dangerous tunnels are difficult to light and the footage Poulsen snatches before leaving is jerkily handheld and indistinct. But it chillingly conveys the appalling conditions in which men and boys risk their lives and the suggestion that this is a glimpse of Hell doesn't feel too wide of the mark.

Poulsen equates the situation with the system of slavery that had enabled King Leopold II of Belgium to establish his African empire and he notes that Nokia started off as a paper and rubber company that had once had dealings with imperialist agencies. Now, having determined that $70m of minerals comes from Bisie each year, Poulsen sets out to test Nokia's insistence that it operates an entirely ethical sourcing policy.

Initially, the Finns seeks to stall Poulsen at the reception desk of their Helsinki headquarters, but he finally makes contact with press officer Saara Tahvanainen, who introduces him to an unnamed man who explains that coltan is a mineral that is converted into tantalum for use in phones. But he swears that it is impossible to follow a source trail and no absolute guarantee can be given that Nokia supplies haven't been tainted. However, Dr Frank Melcher at the Federal Institute of Natural Resources and Geological Sciences in Germany begs to differ in stating that the origin of minerals can be traced before they are smelted in Malaysia.

Armed with this information, Poulsen calls on Annie Dunnebacke at Global Witness, a London-based organisation that is campaigning for businesses to publish their supply chains, before returning to Finland, where Saara sets up an interview with product marketing manager Abby Guha, who tries to be accommodating, but evades the issue by claiming that competition sensitivity precludes full disclosure and becomes a little flustered when Poulsen suggests that the company considers profit protection more important than the lives of the Congolese who mine their minerals.

Dissatisfied with the answers he receives from Nokia, Poulsen flies to Washington, where he learns about the Raise Hope for Congo group striving to persuade Congress into outlawing blood minerals. But their collaborative approach cuts no ice with either former Clinton adviser John Prendergas, who says consumers need to take control by refusing to buy anything but conflict-free products, or Democratic Representative Jim McDermott, who states boldly that people should not reap the benefits of civilisation if they are rooted in exploitation, cruelty and violence.

As Poulsen's odyssey draws to close, he is summoned back to Nokia to meet with Director of Social Regulation Pekka Isosomppi, who admits that sourcing minerals is a complex process and that improvements in verifying origins need to be made. He shirks the charge that this is hardly a reassuring statement bearing in mind that Nokia had known about this problem for over a decade and when Poulsen tries to goad Saara into giving her frank opinion she declines saying she is unwilling to provide him with something juicily quotable for his movie.

Ultimately, like so many docu-provocateurs before him, Poulsen fails to elicit the answers he wants. But his exertions are incalculably worthwhile, as this exposé of the trade in conflict minerals and the moral abnegation of those refusing to take corporate responsibility for their products is timely, necessary and accomplished.

4) A SMALL ACT Jennifer Arnold's A Small Act proves that documentaries don't always have to be innovative to make an impact. This account of the consequences of a Holocaust refugee's humble act of generosity couldn't be more conventional. But, as it shows how Hilde Back's contribution to a Kenyan educational charity enabled Chris Mburu to become a human rights lawyer and sponsor his own scholarship initiative, this well-intentioned film becomes increasingly uplifting.

Back in the 1930s, German Jew Hilde Back was transported to Sweden and given a chance of life that was denied the rest of her family. She never married and lived in the same apartment for 35 years, as she taught generations of Swedish children and contributed $15 a month to a charity helping to educated underprivileged children in Kenya. Among the students to benefit from her small, but sincere act of generosity was Chris Mburu, who was plucked from a mud hut in the remote village of Mitahato and did so well in primary and secondary school that he gained entrance to the University of Nairobi and from thence graduated as a Fulbright scholar from the Harvard Law School, en route to becoming a United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.

Mburu was so grateful for his opportunity that he founded a scholarship in the name of his benefactor and Arnold shows how Patrick Kimani Nyambura, Caroline Gaceri Muraga and Ruth Wairimu Wambui knuckle down to their studies to benefit from the Hilde Back Foundation. Moreover, she also shows how Mburu and cousin Jane Wanjiru Muigai returned to Kenya following the disputed 2007 election to emphasise how ignorance poses as big a threat to the unity of the nation as the tribal rivalries between the Kikuyu and the Luo.

The 85 year-old Back plays little part in the film until Mburu asks to meet her for the first time and she travels to Africa to be serenaded by a local choir, feasted and presented with ceremonial robes. But, while this encounter is genuinely poignant, Arnold strives a touch too hard to generate some dramatic tension by depicting the hopeful trio awaiting the crucial test results that could possibly deliver their families from poverty.

Arnold tells her tale simply and effectively. The message is indisputable, while Patricia Lee's photography, Carl Pfirman and Tyler Hubby's editing and Joel Goodman's score reinforce the feel-good mood. But, despite its cinematic modesty, this is a picture that could easily help change lives, if only enough people are prepared to follow Hilde Back's example and if the global film industry recognised that it has a duty to do more where education, donation and inspiration are concerned.

3) SWEETGRASS Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor head back to the wilderness for Sweetgrass, which marks the passing of a tradition that started in the mid-19th century as it follows the last ever flock of sheep over 150 miles through the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in the summer of 2003. In fact, the footage was recorded over three years and has been edited together to suggest a single drive. Castaing-Taylor insists that the resulting documentary has not been `directed', as he maintained a strictly observational brief. But this still feels akin to a Flahertyesque bid to produce an American variation on Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's celebrated silent account of the Bakhtiari trek across what was then Persia in Grass (1925).

The opening scenes at Lawrence and Elaine Allestad's ranch in Big Timber, Montana suggest this is going to follow the elegiacally tough approach that French documentarist Raymond Depardon adopted for his Profils Paysans trilogy. But the charming close-up of a chewing sheep staring placidly into the lens and the droll long shot of a bleating flock jostling to squeeze into a pen are quickly replaced by images of the uncompromising daily business of sheep rearing, as beasts are sheared with muscular efficiency in claustrophobic sheds and ewes are duped into adopting abandoned lambs by dressing them in the fleeces of stillborns.

But the hardest work of all involves the annual three-month expedition into the Beartooth Mountains to allow the 3000-strong flock to take advantage of public grazing land. The entire Allestad family participates in the first stages of the journey, as the sheep bustle down a classic Wild West main street and into the wilds, with dogs scurrying hither and thither to prevent the wilful creatures from straying. Indeed, there's something of a jamboree atmosphere as teepees are pitched and ancient stoves assembled for a night under the stars. But the real task begins when veteran John Ahern and the inexperienced Pat Connolly are left to cope with the flock alone under vast skies on terrain that's as forbidding as it's beautiful.

In addition to the physical toll that it takes on man, horse and dog alike, the sojourn also involves long hours of boredom that is only relieved by tersely genial repartee and cell calls home that become increasingly emotional as missed sleep and weight loss are compounded by knee injuries and the very real threat posed by the bears who prowl the camp at night in the hope of feeding their cubs. Gun shots usually send the predators lumbering into the woods, but the odd sheep is lost and the dogs are allowed to feast off the discarded carcasses.

But it's the unruly behaviour of the sheep themselves that causes Ahern and Connolly the most trouble. For the most part, they content themselves with coaxing calls to steer their charges down inclines, through valleys and on to pastures. But one particularly frustrating ovine revolt prompts a torrent of agricultural language that contrasts hilariously with the softly spoken encouragement the shepherds give their horses and dogs.

Eventually, the ordeal ends and the sheepherders allow themselves the odd snatch of song as they negotiate the last miles. But, as Ahern drives back to the ranch in his boss's truck, he is suddenly faced with the daunting prospect of how to earn a living now that vocation to which he has devoted his life is about to be consigned to history.

Despite the latter attempt to deconstruct the cowboy myth forged in Hollywood Westerns, the film-makers spend as much time here bestialising the humans as they do anthropomorphising the animals. Consequently, with more baaing and kumbadaying being heard in Ernst Carel's sound mix than comprehensible conversation, we learn little about Ahern and Connolly as people. But we do come to appreciate that they belong to a brotherhood that was key to the making of America and it's impossible not to feel a profound sadness at the knowledge that their expertise and commitment is being employed for the final time.

Yet this is anything but a sentimental snapshot. Enduring his own hardships in tracking the drive while wearing a shoulder camera harness, Castaing-Taylor not only captures the majesty of the scenery in his often painterly compositions, but also the frustrations, deprivations, intangibles and dangers of living under canvas for weeks on end at the mercy of the elements and the potentially ferocious wildlife. Moreover, he also succeeds in revealing a country at a crossroads, with no obvious notion of where best to head next.

2) SOUND IT OUT So few documentaries manage to capture life as it's lived, but Jeanie Finlay bucks the trend splendidly with Sound It Out. Anyone who spent their teenage years hanging round an independent vinyl shop will undoubtedly be moved by this doting profile of Tom Butchart and his eponymous emporium in the recession decimated North East town of Stockton-on-Tees. Funded by arts grants and 257 local donations, this is a moving snapshot of a once-thriving port and railway hub, whose descent into tough times is reflected in the hard-luck stories and down-but-not-out demeanour of the store's predominantly male clientele.

Offering unassuming expertise and a human touch that's missing from internet transactions, Butchart and sibling assistants David and Holly Laybourne do much more than sell discs to ardent collectors and passers-by with a tune in the heads. They help keep the community together and it's noticeable that the regulars who wander in to while away the odd hour amidst the records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, posters and memorabilia also attend the live gigs showcasing such neighbourhood talents as singer-guitarist Butterfield, the markedly more manic Cramps-influenced Russell and the Wolves and returning prodigal, Becky Jones, who now performs under the moniker Saint Saviour.

Despite asking the odd off-camera question, Finlay largely keeps a low profile as she skulks behind the chancer trying to sell stolen goods and the freeloader looking for giveaways to decorate his bedsit walls But her main focus falls on the genial Butchart, the Laybournes and the select few who have become friends as well as customers over the past 20 years.

Bullied as a kid and sent to a special school because he suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, Shane Healey found his niche on the shelf-stacking night shift at B&Q. However, he lives for Status Quo and follows them around the country when not listening to his prized collection of albums and singles. Indeed, so key is his vinyl to his personality that he has looked into having it melted down to make his coffin.

Metal is equally central to Gareth Williams's existence. Indeed, as he sits in a bedroom with best mate Sam Howard, he confides that his periodic suicide bids might have been more awfully successful without bands like Pisschrist persuading him that life may be worthwhile after all. Making rather than listening to music sustains DJ Aaron Frankey McGlade and his emcee buddy John-Boy Taylor and siblings Big Dave `DJ Weedy D' and Richard `DJ Dick' Weedall, whose garden shed broadcasts on NYZ Radio have made their mam proud (and slightly relieved they're not up to mischief elsewhere).

The camaraderie between the brothers is nice to see, as is the banter between a middle-aged bearded man and his Meatloaf-loving partner Janet. Although not identified on screen (he could well, however, be Malcolm Bowen), he pops in frequently after hearing songs on the jukebox in the nearby Garrick pub and flirts amiably with Finlay at every opportunity. His gregariousness contrasts sharply with the reticence of insurance auditor Chris Smith, who always has £100 credit behind the counter in case something irresistible comes into stock (unlike the 17 who have `save it for me' carrier bags on a shelf in the back room). He shows Finlay his meticulously filed collection with a quiet satisfaction that intensifies when he shows how he can find any mid-period Bowie LP in a trice.

Such obsession is a very male trait and Finlay may have delved more into the sociology of her subject and why so few females follow suit. But, while this is more an observational than an analytical exercise, it still fascinates as a day in the life of a passing parade and evokes nostalgic pangs that will prompt many to dust off a deliciously crackly platter and stick it on the turntable.

1) GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD One always suspects that no film-maker cares more than Martin Scorsese. This is particularly true of his documentaries, with an evident passion coursing through A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) and My Voyage to Italy (1999) and an awed admiration informing No Direction Home (2005) and A Letter to Elia (2010), his paeans to iconic singer Bob Dylan and disgraced director Elia Kazan. With Living in the Material World, however, Scorsese has allowed a genuine affection bordering on fandom to colour a profile of George Harrison that is not only intimate and informative, but it will also delight anyone with fond memories of the Fab Four and Henley's most famous resident.

George was always known as the Quiet One. However, he speaks with eloquence and conviction in this epic tribute, which achieves the remarkable feat of finding new angles on one of the most oft-told tales in modern showbiz, while also delving into the personality and philosophy of the Beatle who grew most as a man through his experiences in the best band popular music will ever know.

Despite having access to George's brothers Harry and Peter and his fellow Liverpool Institute alumnus Paul McCartney, Scorsese rather skates over the formative years and the influence of Harold and Louise Harrison's strict Catholic regime in such lower-middle-class addresses as 12 Arnold Grove, Wavertree and 25 Upton Green, Speke. No mention is made, either, of The Rebels, the skiffle group with whom George was playing when McCartney persuaded him to play the tricky and much-covered instrumental `Raunchy' on the top deck of a bus for a suitably impressed John Lennon. However, once George was accepted into the ranks of The Quarrymen, he became as key as Lennon and McCartney to sound that would be tempered during hundreds of badly paid gigs across Merseyside and the German port of Hamburg.

The section on the Reeperbahn phase of The Beatles's odyssey is among the most revealing of the entire film, as musician-cum-artist Klaus Voormann and photographer Astrid Kerchherr reflect on the endless live sets that so tightened the band's technique and the impact that the sudden death of bassist Stuart Sutcliffe had on the friendship between Lennon, McCartney and the 17 year-old Harrison (who was ended up being deported for performing underage). The moment when Kirchherr snapped John and George in the room where her lost lover used to paint is truly poignant and suggests the first stirrings of the spirituality that were to become so crucial to Harrison's music and existence.

Once Pete Best was jettisoned in favour of Ringo Starr in the autumn of 1962, The Beatles took off under the eager, but often naive management of Brian Epstein and the astute musical stewardship of Parlophone producer George Martin. Indeed, it was Harrison's remark about not liking Martin's tie that sealed the deal that led to the recording of `Love Me Do' and the start of Beatlemania. Yet, as Paul and Ringo recollect, while it was exciting being a Mop Top, it was rarely fun and the Fabs only really began to mature as musicians once they ceased touring in 1966 and the media furore died down. However, the camaraderie of the road had essentially been holding the combo together and the pressures of producing consistently innovative music began to take their toll, especially once Harrison had established his own artistic identity and no longer found being the creative balance between Lennon and McCartney rewarding.

Accounts of the break-up of The Beatles always make for dismaying viewing, as, for all the feuding in the studio, the foursome remained closer than siblings. Indeed, Eric Clapton notes that the disgruntlement he witnessed during the recording of `While My Guitar Gently Weeps' owed more to artistic frustration than any deeper antipathy. Yet Scorsese tactfully avoids prying too deeply into the ménage that led Harrison to divorce Pattie Boyd, who had inspired his and Clapton's respective classics `Something' and `Layla'. But the split was part of an overall re-directioning of Harrison's life that had started when he began studying the sitar with Indian maestro Ravi Shankhar and transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Scorsese discusses Harrison's religious beliefs with touching sincerity, although he does draw on an anecdote by Joan Taylor (the wife of the band's publicist Derek Taylor) to make an amusing contrast between his search for God and the temporary enlightenment he got from LSD in the mid-60s. However, Scorsese elects not to mention Harrison's arrest for the possession of cannabis in March 1969 or his subsequent drug use and only alludes in passing to his tendency to infidelity after he married Mexican-born Olivia Trinidad Arias in 1978. This revelation is both frank and courageous and speaks volumes for her love for her husband and their son, Dhani, who became something of a musical collaborator in George's later years.

The limited coverage of Harrison's solo career is perhaps the film's sole flaw. Much is made of the backlog of songs that George had amassed during the three years between Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road and the since-jailed Phil Spector's memories of the All Things Must Pass sessions are generous and valuable. Scorsese also pays due heed to the significance of the Concert for Bangladesh (which initiated the all-star charity benefit), the critical failure of the 1974 American tour and the glorious success of The Traveling Wilburys, with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne. But he ignores the albums produced between Living in the Material World (1973) and Cloud 9 (1987), as well as the posthumously released Brainwashed (2002). He even scarcely mentions the reunion with Paul and Ringo to record `Free As a Bird' and `Real Love' using John's old demo tapes.

Instead, Scorsese concentrates on the formation of HandMade Films that enabled him to save Monty Python's Life of Brian, the fixations with motor-racing, the ukulele and gardening at his Gothic retreat of Friar Park that gave him endless pleasure and the survival of both a cancer scare and a knife attack that brought him back into the headlines before he finally left his body (after many years of preparation) in Los Angeles on 29 November 2001. Consequently, Scorsese manages to establish that while Harrison relished his independence after 1970, he always enjoyed collaboration more than solo responsibility and celebrity. Moreover, he succeeds in finding the man behind the songs and, thus, this thoughtful, honest and fond appreciation is a fitting tribute to a decent if sometimes conflicted Liverpudlian who always suspected that, for all his earthly achievements, the best was yet to come.