I applaud the way a handful of pioneering art galleries are introducing documentary film-makers into their white cubes but I’m not convinced the Serpentine made the right choice this time.

Luke Fowler is a highly regarded Glaswegian film-maker and musician, with his own record label. Last year he won the first Derek Jarman artist-film-maker award. There are a couple of beautifully-made films here. What You See Is Where You’re At (2001) is about the experimental community for disturbed young people that RD Laing ran at Kingsley Hall in the Sixties. Laing interpreted mental “breakdown” and madness as a healing process for conflicted individuals. Pilgrimage from Scattered Points (2006) is about the remarkable experimental English composer Cornelius Cardew and his Scratch Orchestra, active in the early Seventies. Their compositions involved both trained musicians and ordinary punters, composition and improvisation. There’s an eye-popping moment with a female musician who plays her sewing patterns.

But the problem with this show is given away in the opening room. Tenement Films (2009) is an installation of short film loops shot in a housing block. The camera pans over stacks of audio cassettes or swings pendulum-style across bookshelves. There are mixed shots with layers of cars driving at night, and those cool bits of flare you get at the end of a roll of exposed film.

It looks nice but what’s wrong with it? I’ll give you a clue. It’s 2009, well into the digital age, there are plenty of HD video cameras around, and Fowler’s exhibition is humming with the sound of 16mm film projectors. Yes, it’s all a bit retro.

The text on the gallery wall claims Fowler is “exploring the limits of documentary film-making” but these films are old-fashioned in their style and ­storylines. The Seventies and Eighties were full of films about Leftist musicians and experimental hippy communes.

There are other documentary-makers whose work is far more interesting, such as Liz Mermin (The Beauty Academy of Kabul), Eugene Jarecki (Why we Fight), Ben Hopkins (37 Uses for a Dead Sheep), Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) and Lech Kowalski (East of Paradise).

Curators of documentary film-makers should work with film festival programmers and BBC Storyville documentary commissioning editors to make sure they don’t get seduced by lingering shots, wobbly camera and over-earnest storylines.
Until 14 June. serpentinegallery.org.