For this week’s batch of Weekend Streaming Recommendations, I’ve chosen to pick a quartet of excellent documentaries, but with an added bonus: To enhance your viewing pleasure, I’ve included interviews I conducted with the films’ directors and subjects! It’s like special features for streaming movies!…well, kinda. There have been a truckload of great, great documentaries coming out over the past year or so, and these four are some of my favorites.

The Square

Recently nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, Jehane Noujaim’s The Square is about the Egyptian mass protests staged in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that have rattled the country over the past few years, and it’s also one of the most thrilling, culturally significant, awe-inspiring films in recent memory. Streaming exclusively on Netflix, the film follows a handful of revolutionaries, all from different walks of life, as they devote their lives to wresting the power away from oppressive dictators Hosni Mubarak and his over-powered successor, Mohammad Morsi. You couldn’t ask for a more inspirational, captivating on-screen personality than the film’s primary subject, a young, brash, loudmouth revolutionary by the name of Ahmed Hassan who you’ll never forget. – Watch the trailer

Interview with director Jehane Noujaim and producer Karim Amer

Tall as the Baobab Tree

One of the best documentaries I saw at last year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, Tall as the Baobab Tree follows a family in a small Senegalese village that struggles to transition into a new age of modernity that threatens to disrupt their established, traditional roots. When a freak accident puts a young girl named Coumba’s family in a desperate financial situation, her father chooses to sell her younger sister Debo into an arranged marriage. With Coumba being the first in the family to attend school, she’s able to dream of a bigger, better future for herself, and she wants to rescue her sister from the forced fate imposed upon her by their father. Though the script is fictional, the story speaks to the real-life status of a part of the world teetering on the precipice of modernity. It’s a beautiful, important film, and a story more people should be familiar with. It isn’t streaming for free at the moment, but it’s a special film that’s worth shelling out a few bucks. – Watch the trailer

Interview with director Jeremy Teicher

Blackfish

I’m never, ever going to Sea World again, thanks to Blackfish, a bracing, revealing documentary by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film examines the fatal consequences of marine parks keeping animals like killer whales in captivity through the story of one whale in particular, named Tilikum, who’s taken the lives of three trainers since his capture. Cowperthwaite interviews current and previous employees of these parks, and their accounts of the tragedies surrounding Tilikum and whales like him are shocking. With so many people having misconceptions about how these sea parks operate (me included), Blackfish is a must watch, and will hopefully help to bring about change in the way we treat animals in captivity. – Watch the trailer

Interview with director Gabriela Cowperthwaite

A Band Called Death

“Before there was punk, there was a band called Death”, reads the poster for the rock-doc A Band Called Death, directed by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett. The tagline speaks the truth: Before the Ramones or The Clash rose to prominence, three brothers from Detroit started a band in their parents’ house and eventually recorded the world’s first pure punk record. The band was forgotten and never received credit for pioneering a genre of music, but in 2008, their music resurfaced and word about the lost “forefathers of punk” began to spread like wildfire. Dannis and Bobby Hackney, two thirds of the band, recount the troubled history of their musical journey, including the demise of their self-destructive, spiritually inspired late brother, David. – Watch the trailer

Interview with subjects Dannis and Bobby Hackney

Now that you have gotten a chance to read Way Too Indie’s Best Films of 2013, a cumulative list from our staff, check out the individual Top 10 Lists from the eight staff members that created the list. The differences between the cumulative site list and these individual ones are actually quite different. First of all, even though mathematically Gravity was our overall #1 film for 2013, it only appears in the #1 spot in one of the eight lists below. Also, because a film had to get at least two mentions to quality for our cumulative list, you’ll find quite a few different titles down below: Leviathan, Paradise: Love, Blackfish, A Hijacking, The Past, and many more.

Staff Top 10 Lists For 2013

Dustin’s Top 10

Jansen’s Top 10

Ananda’s Top 10

Bernard’s Top 10

Amy’s Top 10

Pavi’s Top 10

Blake’s Top 10

CJ’s Top 10

In 2010, an animal trainer at Sea World named Dawn Brancheau was killed by a 12,000 pound killer whale named Tilikum. Blackfish, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, follows the story of Tilikum and explores what compelled a killer whale–a typically peaceful creature–to attack a human being it supposedly had a deep connection with. Cowperhwaite interviews both former and current Sea World employees to get to the truth about incidents like Brancheau’s, of which there have been many. It’s a thrilling, pulse-pounding look into the secret dangers of killer whale captiity.

Cowperthwaite spoke with us about Brancheau’s death, the challenges of focusing her story solely on Tilikum, her interview with a fisherman still haunted by his memories of capturing killer whale calfs, and more.

Blackfish airs tonight at 9pm ET on CNN. For more information, visit blackfishmovie.com

If my research serves me, the film turned out much differently than you thought it would when you started the project.
Yeah. I had no idea I would be making this movie. I’m a documentarian by trade, but I’m also a mother who took her children to Sea World. In my mind, I was doing a documentary about human beings and our relationships with our animal counterparts, kind of like a larger philosophical piece. I became interested in that topic when I found out about the death of Dawn Brancheau. I really knew nothing about the whales. I didn’t imagine there was this thing beneath the surface until I started peeling back the onion and learning what I did. I was shocked. The information came in shock waves over the next few years.

You cover a lot of frightening incidents involving the killer whales in the film, but you begin by showing the trainers talking about the beauty of their bond with the animals.
I wanted to start off the film by filming the Sea World trainers like storytellers. They have a tremendous amount of credibility, having worked there. But, I also wanted to start off with their experience and the idea that trainers started working at Sea World because it was a dream come true. It squares a lot with how the general public views Sea World. It’s an exciting place. You see magnificent animals. You want to watch people swim with dolphins and whales. I wanted to start off in that place because I think it’s really accessible to all of us. Then, we slowly watch [the trainers’] disillusionment from that point. You experience it through their eyes. I wanted to start at a high point, basically.

You focus your narrative on Tilikum, the killer whale, but I’m sure you’ve heard dozens of other shocking stories. Did you have to restrain yourself and leave a lot of those other stories out to concentrate on Tilikum’s story?
Oh yeah. I knew I didn’t want the film to do a hatchet job on people. This film could only work if it was a story and if I focus on Tilikum’s life, from the moment of his capture to the tragic day when he killed Dawn Brancheau. I didn’t want to shoehorn in information to make you feel angry or sad about whales. To be perfectly honest, I think audiences are smarter than that. They can sense when they’re being told too much or being manipulated. I wanted them to simply watch a fact-driven narrative and focus on one story. By itself, it was a powerful enough story where they could get so much information if I exercised self-discipline. I didn’t want the film to feel like medicine. I wanted to tell a story.

Do you have enough extra material to make a television series?
That’s interesting. I’m sure I do. There’s still information coming out on a daily basis. There are current employees at Sea World right now who contact me and tell me, not only are the facts in Blackfish true, but you’ve barely scratched the surface. I think there’s a whole world of information there, waiting to be discovered. Sea World’s been around 40 years, you know? I’m sure there’s a lot of disturbing information yet to be unearthed.

The interviews you conduct are just riveting. The one that stuck with me the most was with the fisherman who recounts his experience capturing calfs in the wild.
I had heard that there was someone who had captured whales in the early ’70s. People said that he was really sick and might not be with us anymore. I took my chances and called every John Crowe in Western Canada, I called every John Crowe in Washington state, and I finally found him with good ol’ cold-calling in Oregon. He answered the phone, and I asked if this was John Crowe. He said, “What’s left of him!” I thought, I’ve got my guy. I know it’s him! He’s an example of someone who thought he was going to take on a fun summer job and realized what he was doing while he was doing it. He realized he was taking a calf from its family, and he would hear vocalizations from the family trying to communicate with the calf and the calf trying to communicate back. You can only imagine what that conversation was. For him, he truly realized what he was doing at that very moment. To this day, he doesn’t really forgive himself for that. That comes through in the interview.

Did approaching the story as a mother inform the process.
That’s interesting. I always had Dawn in the back of my mind and the idea of what it would be like to lose a child or lose someone who was so dedicated to their job. Killer whales are matriarchal societies and are said to live peaceable existences in the wild. There’s no documentation of a killer whale killing a human in the wild, and there’s also no documentation of a killer whale killing a killer whale in the wild. Both of these things have happened in captivity. In terms of the storytelling, I didn’t want to leave us at an emotional place for too long; I wanted the story to be driving, I wanted the story to be heart-beating, and I wanted it to move so that I could ensure that people would stay on the edge of their seats. The subject matter resonates with me a lot as a mother, in terms of the calf separation, but in terms of the storytelling, I definitely wore a different hat, you know? We move through those emotional things pretty fast.

Somewhat similar to the documentary The Cove, Blackfish makes persuasive arguments against catching and holding animals in captivity, though this documentary is focused on the directing blame solely on one company, SeaWorld. Blackfish catches SeaWorld in several lies through court documents and eye-witnesses to prove that the SeaWorld PR department rank up there amongst the best public deceivers in the business.

The majority of the documentary is told from the testimonies of former SeaWorld trainers—each who recall the magical feeling of being hired and being able to work with the orca whales on a daily basis. Many of them have personal videos of them eager as can be on their first day at work. But Blackfish does a great job at playing with the emotions of its audience. After a brief stint of highlighting how exciting and rewarding it is to work with these animals (especially at first), the story that unfolds is one that is much more dark and depressing.

While there have been no human deaths on record from killer whale attacks in the wild, in captivity there are several instances of deaths that SeaWorld does not want you to know about. Blackfish centers around one whale in particular, Tilikum, who is the largest orca whale in captivity. But Tilikum has another interesting fact about him and that is that he has a history of killing people.

Blackfish brings attention to several alarming facts about how SeaWorld treats their whales; such as how tiny their sleeping quarters are and how they separate infant whales from their mothers. These cruel environments are the reasons why the death rate for orcas is 2.5 times higher in captivity than it is in the wild. It is also very likely the reason why the whales act out with violent behavior.

But the second part to the documentary is set on exposing how SeaWorld covers up these stories and puts the blame on the victims instead of the animals. The reason for doing so is pretty simple; Tilikum is a male orca who is worth millions for of his reproducing purposes alone. Then add on the fact if SeaWorld accepted full blame for the deaths that they would likely be sued for millions. Suddenly it becomes evident why the company wants to sweep everything under the rug from the public.

One thing that is particularly interesting is that the former trainers believe Tilikum is not exactly insane but rather just acting out of aggression likely caused by psychological effects of being in captivity. However, a graphic is shown that indicates that the majority of the whales SeaWorld have bred used Tilikum’s sperm. This suggests the potential danger of his offspring which nearly challenges statements made about how Tilikum is not an inherit threat to people (other than his surroundings). This could spark a whole other debate on how much genetics comes into play on how you were raised. Bottom line though, the documentary points out that Tilikum has a history of killing people and history tends to repeat itself.

There will not likely be another documentary this year that is more impactful or emotionally stirring than Blackfish. Though the documentary is pretty much a one-sided argument, it is of no fault of their own as SeaWorld repeatedly declined interviews. Interestingly enough, SeaWorld did issue a response to the film since its theatrical release, which can be found on their official site along with the film’s comments to those responses. This is a very moving documentary that is spectacularly told and edited, making an Oscar nomination very likely and a future trip to SeaWorld unimaginable.