The London United Film Festival at the Prince Charles showcases documentaries that are unashamed crowd-pleasers. Tom Huddleston offers a sneak preview

Canada’s hardest-working thrash-metal combo. Redneck DIY horror movies. Even ‘Donkey Kong’. In the past decade, the subjects of popular films like ‘Anvil!’ and ‘American Movie’ have turned documentaries into a multiplex staple, as committed but hard-up filmmakers have raided every corner of the pop-culture basement.

Four prime examples of the pop-doc wave will be playing at the Prince Charles Cinema this weekend as part of the London United Film Festival. Conceived five years ago by Oklahoma documentarian Jason Connell, the United brand has expanded from a local shorts showcase into a globe-spanning enterprise, bringing Connell’s personal selection of audience favourites to LA, Chicago, New York and now London. ‘Documentaries are becoming a lot more entertaining,’ Connell reckons. ‘If I can get into the characters, that’s enough for me. The characters, their stories, their sadness, their secrets: that’s the formula for the documentaries that I like.’

This ethos is reflected in Connell’s own ‘Strictly Background’, in which a group of charming, bizarre, devoted movie extras describe their struggle to survive on the mean streets of Hollywood. ‘This was pre-Ricky Gervais’s “Extras”,’ Connell is keen to point out. ‘When I moved to LA, I worked as an extra. I started meeting older guys who’d made a career out of it, and I thought: How come I didn’t know about this subculture?’

The festival’s centrepiece is ‘The Shark is Still Working’, subtitled ‘The Impact and Legacy of “Jaws”’, a witty study of how Spielberg’s classic (playing on Friday night) has altered pop culture in the three decades since its release. ‘“Jaws” lovers will get everything they ever wanted out of this movie,’ Connell enthuses.

But if movie geeks are stunned into silence by ‘The Shark…’, Connell is expecting a more vocal crowd for ‘Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong’. Exploring this up-and-coming frathouse ‘sport’ in all its boozing, puking, complete-absence-of-glory, the film may alienate British audiences as it unashamedly reveals the shocking depths to which young, white, male America can sink. But Connell still expects to draw a crowd: ‘There are beer pong leagues in London. There’s a lot of humour in the movie.’

Honouring Connell’s commitment to include a selection of homegrown fare in every United programme, the festival offers ‘Beyond the Pole’, a mockumentary pastiche of earnest eco-docs in which TV funnyman Stephen Mangan embarks on an awareness-raising mission to the North Pole. It’s not as funny as it should be, but its snippy sideswipes at misguided eco-warrior idealism are pertinent and welcome. But the festival’s most intriguing film is also its most modest. A tale of strange obsession, squandered wealth, uncertain love and animatronic, guitar-playing bears, ‘The Rock-afire Explosion’ is something of a minor miracle, packed with heart-on-sleeve pathos and moments of unexpected, heartwrenching beauty.

For now, United is dedicated to the task of pleasing broad audiences, but Connell hopes that as the festival grows it will become more daring. ‘I’d like to programme more serious movies, but we don’t have that kind of following. But as we grow, we can take more chances. Right now we play to expectations.’

The London United Film Festival is at the Prince Charles Cinema from Fri Dec 4 - Sun Dec 6.