I saw a documentary on Autism and Idiot Savants (now a discredited term) which featured Dr. Temple Grandin see ( THINKING IN PICTURES: Autism and Visual Thought ) who is a “high function person with autism” who designs slaughter houses. (The link is not one to the documentary, but to a paper by her)
She is VERY good at it.
Watching her, my initial reaction was mixed… a huge “ewww” factor as she was such an unusual person, but also a real interest in meeting her, as the way she spoke and presented her ideas was just spooky… She was seeing the universe in a way that we don’t/ can not, and her “postcards from the edge” were fascinating.
One of my favorite documentaries is Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr..
It’s a bizarre story about a guy who makes a name for himself designing more efficient execution devices, and who then lends his scientific credibility to those seeking to prove that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Possible interesting sidenote, but I know “Unk” fairly well, or at least I used to. He’s from Indy, but ran around with the GG Alin crowd in NYC when that doc was made.
Most anything by Werner Herzog or Errol Morris (two of my favorite filmmakers) would fit the bill; some have already been mentioned here.
I’d also submit a weird little movie called Put the Camera on Me by Darren Stein, the guy who wrote and directed Jawbreaker. The movie is composed mostly of video he shot of himself and his friends in the early to mid-80s, when they were 10-15; it presents their social circle as a weird little microcosm of, uh, something or other.
But what’s really interesting about it is the portrait Stein unwittingly paints of himself; the entire film is full of shallow, vain, petty, cruel little monsters, and he (as the editor/director) clearly has no conception of the superficiality of the children he’s memorializing. The movie worships the mean little bastards.
Those who have seen Jawbreaker probably won’t find this surprising, but I came away from the movie with a profound dislike for Darren Stein, and a determination never to see another of his movies.