A couple of years ago when watching TV, zapping through the channels, I watched one overly fresh, actionpacked, mindless program after another. How Julie was thinking her new dress would look nice for her birthday, that Jack should probably save up for a new car, horrible crime shows letting you know who the killer was within the first five minuets. It left me hollow watching it every time I switched on the TV. I wanted to watch and find gold and was only getting lead. Boredom easily sipped in each time, and I found myself shutting it off faster and faster. Over time the television set was barely switched on anymore, and ultimately thereafter it met its fate at the local dump.
I talked with friends and family of having become the executioner of my TV, of how I had tossed it out in the dumpster and a future; free of all mindless TV junk. – Some of them proclaimed they had thrown their television out as well.
I began reading more books than before – consuming them in an endless hunger for knowledge of wisdom, politics, of great wars, alternative ways of life, philosophy, humanity, you name it… But still, I missed the occasional good documentary from BBC, National Geographic, History Channel…
It was a rainy day and I needed some rest from reading, so I sat down and surfed the net. By chance hit a documentary about “Real Life Dolls” and the people that bought and lived with them. I was immediately sucked in. I watched it once, twice, three times in a row, amazed why these people had chosen and was drawn to this particular lifestyle. I simply didn’t understand the notion of having a Real Life Doll as a companion/lover/friend/spouse. It gave me a brief glimpse into a vast and secret world. It was so different being visually thrown into other fellow beings’ thoughts and emotions. The trip was vastly intriguing and curiously interactive.
I searched for and found more documentaries, the good ones significant in being free from the usual crap of most broadcasting Channels. It spiraled onwards from there. I came across loads of documentaries, and soon I found myself writing down title after title of good docus to start a collection.
Very soon hereafter, I came across the first documentary site.
I enjoyed it in the beginning, but it was soon evident that it was a half-arsed job. I found other documentary sites shortly hereafter, and it was the same story. I really don’t see the point of going through the trouble of making a website only to do it 50%. The documentaries were not sorted right, they were cut up in bits rather than filed under one post, they were not updated, the snippet of text about the documentaries had spelling errors in them – or they were just poorly written. Especially the documentary sites with pop-up commercials, all of them wanting you to pay or donate – just plain out greed. All in all, it was quite bad. But who was I to complain? They were there for a reason, to give people a choice, a seed of knowledge. To do whatever they wanted with it.
I was a regular visitor to one documentary site, but couldn’t take it anymore after seeing the moderators interest falter over time for something so interesting. It pained me to see a library so extensive being covered in dust.
So I took matters into my own hands, and asked a good friend of mine to join in on the project. We made a brainstorming list for 10 minutes to choose a name for our site. We wrote down 100 names while keeping the words “documentary”, “documentaries” or “doc” in the name. We sat together and took 50 names out the first time, bad names as Lord of the Docs, TheDifusedDocumentary, PoliticsandDocs. We continued taking away names until we were left with three. As I recall, they were DocumentaryWall, DocumentaryStorm and WorldDocumentaries. I think we chose DocumentaryStorm in the end, because we could infuse a chaos element through the Storm bit, and do what whatever we wanted under this excuse.
We tore down the veil and planted the flag. After finding more video hosts on the internet, we began finding lots of documentaries. We hammered the codes for the website into existence, and delivered documentary upon documentary. The amazing thing is the fact that there still seem to be an almost endless amount of documentaries out there, put on the internet by catalysts, so you and I will gain insight.
We are left with interest and curiosity, we learn and might even begin to understand? We hope the documentaries hosted on this website will spur a thought in your mind, that this human visual library will give you something you did not have when you entered. The main objective to spread knowledge, easier access to educational videos and all around freedom to investigate human ingenuity.
