CRAFTY DOCUMENTARIES

Well so long as I'm doing recommendations, I thought I'd share some 
docos. I'm always watching my way through some obscure doco 
collection or other that's found its way to YouTube or the Internet 
Archive, or sometimes on one of the old VHS tapes that I'm always 
picking up.

Some of my favourites, especially among the comparatively rare 
Australian ones, are from the "Artisans of Australia" series 
produced by Film Australia (RIP). They are absolutely nothing to do 
with computers, or modern technology, or anything that frankly most 
Gopher readers are likely to care less about, but they do have a 
wonderfully calm and genuine way of presenting various traditional 
crafts. They were filmed in the mid 80s and are distinct in that 
the entire narration is by the craftsman/woman who features in that 
episode, speaking in their own words. If you watch enough old 
Australian documentary films as I do then this is recognisable as 
something of a reaction that appears to have begun in the 70s 
against the highly formal style of documentary making that 
persisted in Australia from the 40s into the 60s. I find it quite 
captivating, though it's something that you're probably either into 
or you're not.

They are very nicely filmed as well, miles better than your average 
modern YouTube video, and aren't at all afraid to include the sorts 
of intricate details that modern "inside the x factory" type TV 
shows always leave out (often to the point that I get fed up with 
them entirely).

The National Film and Sound Archive has been intermittently 
uploading them over a very long time, so whether there are more to 
come or not isn't at all clear, but six are available in this 
playlist. They cover Timbercraft, Stonecraft, Glasscraft, Iron 
Craft, Solid Plastering, and Decorative Paint Work:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE25345CC43816E9E

The reason I mention them now is that a little while ago, via the 
HackADay Retrotechtacular column, I discovered the Irish series 
Hands, produced between 1978 and 1989 to document traditional 
crafts in Irelend. So far I've only watched the "Clay Pipe Works" 
episode that HackADay featured, as well as "A Dublin Bookbinder", 
and "Powers of the Metal". Particularly notable in that last one, 
documenting the operation of a small foundry (something that 
Artisans of Australia also features in "Iron Craft"), is how in the 
late 80s their scrap iron was still being delivered by two men on a 
horse and cart!

It has a more conventional, but still highly detailed, narration. 
So far I've also found the Hands series to be extremely 
interesting. It's also on YouTube (though the quality isn't so 
great), and all the episodes are indexed on its Wikipedia page:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZBo82eXTfUJ2hvLcmlG0oRxGYKKq5qNE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_(TV_series)

Beyond traditional crafts fading, or perhaps now faded, into 
history, I thought it might be worth including a video about a 
modern craft which is nevertheless just as mysterious in its 
details. The 'craft' of manufacturing Integrated Circuits may seem 
completely separate, but it is probably surrounded by a level of 
secrecy and awe not dissimilar to that maintained by the most 
respected producers of traditional crafts in the pre-industrial 
era. ICs and the computer designs that they've enabled are praised 
as the building blocks of modern civilisation, akin to how stone 
and iron were once admired in a similar light. But the actual 
techniques of the craft that turns them from raw elements into 
miracle components of the modern age are largely hidden from the 
outside world.

It's some way out of date, but this talk from 2012, titled 
"Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer 
Chips", lifts the veil on some aspects of this modern-day craft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

 - The Free Thinker