Historical Documentaries!

The ones that immerse you, like Tower (about the 1966 shooting at the University of Texas), Freedom Riders, Freedom Summer, and Last Days in Vietnam. The people who actually lived it (and lived through it) tell the stories better than anyone else could.

WW II: "The World At War" has yet to be equaled: The World at War (TV Mini-Series 1973–1974) - IMDb

Rock N Roll: The ten part PBS Series "Rock N Roll" is easily the best documentary on the subject matter but was never officially released to the masses on VHS or DVD. A limited amount of copies were made available to educators and libraries..I was lucky enough to come across copies of it at a library book sale.

Attempts to revive the series to be shown again on PBS have failed. That being said, you CAN find some if not ALL of the episodes on YouTube: Rock and Roll - WGBH Openvault

More on what is officially available: http://current.org/2013/02/interviews-from-wbgh-and-bbc-doc-series-rock-roll-available-in-streaming-form/

Music Festival: "Message To Love: The Isle of Wight Festival 1970" is the best rock festival documentary not named Woodstock.  Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival (1997) - IMDb

ROME: my favorite documentary about Rome was hosted by Peter Coyote, is six hours long and can be bought for less than $10 from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Rome-Power-Glory-Peter-Coyote/dp/B002YOJEGG

I agree, The World At War, which I think was a BBC production, is my favorite. It takes a very long time to watch. In fact, I have not finished watching it yet. I also liked that one about the propaganda film made by Germans in the Warsaw ghetto, entitled A Film Unfinished, made by Yael Hersonski. (And in the "we-hope-it-is-not-a-documentary" category, there's The Man in the High Castle, of course. I am totally addicted to this one.)

This is another Ken Burns work, but I am a huge fan of Baseball. This is a remarkable series, presenting some rarely seen photographs and footage of the game that used to be America's Pastime (and still is in my book). Since I didn't come into existence until 1975, this series allows me to see and hear about the greats of the past that I never got a chance to see play, and hear some of their personal stories. As a baseball nut, this work is at the top of my list.

For me it's all about World War II. "The True Glory: The Story of Your Victory By the Guys Who Won It" (1945) was a British-American collaboration from the Ministry of Information and Office of War Information, respectively. It won Best Documentary at the 1946 Academy Awards. While that tops my list, there are many more to cite including those by American Experience.

World at War (1973) is tied for second for the reasons listed by Larry, above.

Now - if you wanna talk about propaganda cartoons....

More Info on the upcoming Ken Burns creation:

Vietnam Redux, Again: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s Epic PBS Series - Under the Radar 

"For Vietnam, they have come up with a whopper that was 10 years in the making. Beginning in September, PBS will roll out a 10-part, 18-hour documentary The Vietnam War that the blurbs say will be a “gripping cinematic journey that promises to be a major cultural event.”"

Ken Burns's "The Civil War" both intrigues me as a pedagogical piece and irks me because it uses inaccurate information at times for dramatic effect.  Much of it also advances (through Shelby Foote and the veterans reunion sections specifically) a pretty retrograde sense of the war's causes and consequences.  In its defense, the documentary was made in the 1980s and does prominently feature slavery as a cause of the war along with an in-depth discussion of the institution and the implications of emancipation, so those are its saving graces.  Part III "Forever Free" in particular is fantastic.

Errol Morris's "The Fog of War" is an excellent interview piece, using former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to examine the role of the United States in the world in the 20th century, with World War II and Vietnam spotlighted in particular.  Their back and forth on the carpet bombing of Japan is fascinating.

Ezra Edelman's Oscar-winning "OJ: Made in America" was also a fantastic watch, even if both it and Burns's Civil War are about eight hours in length.  I found https://www.wired.com/2017/01/oj-made-in-america-oral-histo to be a fascinating read on what went into making that.

Re: Ken Burns' docus:

One poster here commented on some inaccuracies in Burns' "Civil War" docu.  I have noticed this many times in many docs by Burns over the years, hence I look at his stuff with a squinty eye now.  A proper, balance, truth-telling airing-out of the Vietnam war is way overdue and so I hope to Geebus Ken sticks to the historian's basic rules.  First, tell no lies.  Next, don't color the truth please.  We can decide on our own how properly told history is digested, eh?

I saw this article yesterday and thought it might be of interest:

See film scenes side by side with the videos or photos they're recreating (VIDEO).

From the article: "In "Recreating History," Vugar Efendi solves that problem by presenting films scenes side by side with the videos or photos they're recreating. Here you can fully appreciate how similar the clothing, the setting, the actors' movements, and the shots really are."

Looks like Ken is doing one on ALI as well:

Muhammad Ali to be subject of new Ken Burns documentary - LA Times