DOCUMENTARIES

The evidence grows that many documentaries eminently deserve an outing in major cinemas because people will flock to see them there.

Even better, British documentary makers are proving better than anyone in the world at hitting the populist note.

Out on the big screen already and enjoying immense critical acclaim in the UK as everywhere else is "Helvetica" by Brit director Gary Hustwit.

"Helvetica"??? Whatever is that? Some little known Greece battle?

Not at all. And don't look so baffled, because surely you know full well what it is. Or you should. For Helvetica is a typeface (pictured, Danger Helvetica). Indeed, the most commonly used typeface in the world.

Still not convinced that is deserved the 35 mm treatment? Then you owe it yourself to see the series of interviews and notes that Hustwit has put together about Helvetica.

Perhaps it would help you to get in the mood by considering some of the bizarrre titles that Hustwit was previously involved in as producer: "Spend an Evening with Saddle Creek", "Drive Well, Sleep Carefully: On the Road with Death Cab for Cutie"; "Moog"; "Ted Leo & the Pharmacists: Dirty Old Town; "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. "

Did someone say there are some things that are just inherently dull. That, for instance, you could never make an exciting film about paint drying. Well, Hustwit just proved you can.

Moving on from the most ridiculous of cinematic subjects to the most sublime, we find another Brit director Brit David Sington tackling the moon. Or at least the moon landings.

Here is source material that almost anyone could turn into a good film. Fortunately, Cambridge grad Sington wanted more than a "good" film and, after making some 40 award winning films for the BBC and other leading outlets during the last 20 years, he was perfectly qualified to delivered the goods: "In The Shadow Of the Moon" (pictured, literally).

His films on climate change have won him a Gold Hugo award, 2 Wildscreen awards, 2007 Earthwatch film award, and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2007.

Now we have "Moon", an Edinburgh Festival winner, which brings together for the first, and possibly the last, time surviving crew members from every single Apollo mission that flew to the Moon along with visually stunning archival material re-mastered from the original NASA film footage.

The result is an intimate epic that vividly communicates the daring, the danger, the pride, and the promise of this extraordinary era in history when the whole world literally looked up at America. And it will be in cinemas soon.

Filed September 11, 2007