Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
This weekend, the documentary The Unforeseen will begin trickling into theaters. On the surface, it's about urban sprawl in Austin, Texas. It traces the history of the booming growth of that city, and the tensions that arose between developers and environmentalists trying to protect a natural spring-fed watering hole called Barton Springs. As a piece of strong social advocacy, I'd recommend it. But it's a whole lot more than that.
What really makes The Unforeseen stand out is that it breaks new ground in what could be dubbed the poetic documentary genre. First-time director Laura Dunn does more than chronicle a history, she imbues it with visual resonance, taking the time to shoot Texas fields of grass and gurgling brooks with the cinematic panache that recalls the gorgeous cinematography of fiction narrative director Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line). And for good reason: long-time Austinite Malick was the executive producer of The Unforeseen. His input, as well as that of director of photography, Lee Daniel (who has shot most of Richard Linklater's films, including Slacker and Dazed and Confused), is apparent throughout the documentary. Dunn and company may even go overboard in achieving beautiful imagery, such as when a wizened farmer clutches a sickle and stands in a field watching a construction crew ripping up the earth. But I'll forgive them that. The film feels like a feature-length version of that early 1970s "Keep America Beautiful" ad with the Native American (Chief Iron Eyes Cody) wandering through garbage heaps, and eventually shedding a tear (see the ad on YouTube) And that's something I've always wanted to see.
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I am excited to announce that after attending this impressive event since its inception, this Sunday POV will (finally) co-present not just one but two workshops at the Fifth Annual NYC Grassroots Media (NYCGM) Conference. This conference has been successfully connecting community and media organizations in NYC to explore the political dimensions of media and how it shapes our lives. The theme of this year's conference is Speaking Truth to Power: Media Justice In Our Communities.
In March, 
I think of my film The Tailenders as an essay film (with a strong observational bent). In fact, all of my films are in some way essayistic. The essay film is a sub-genre of documentary. It's a mode that allows the filmmaker to meditate on a theme or explore an idea, rather than being limited to representing real (visible) events. In 1940, Hans Richter wrote a manifesto entitled "The Film Essay: a New Form of Documentary Film," in which he imagined a new genre of film that would make "problems, thoughts, even ideas" perceptible and would "render visible what is not visible." In 1948, Alexandre Astruc coined the term "camera-stylo" to suggest a new means of writing through cinema, with the camera serving as a pen, creating arguments, meditations and inquiries with as much range of form as exists in the written word. 
The documentary winners of the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Sunday night.
I laughed out loud when I read Tom's February 15 Doc Soup column — a 
We've received notice that 
The concept behind FYI is beautifully clear and direct. They ask 14-24 year olds to "film their issue" because they want young people to contribute to the public discussion on pressing issues — and even influence policy. We are in fantastic company on this project — the United Nations, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NAACP, USA TODAY, Associated Press, MTV, the Humane Society of the United States, the NRDC, Starz, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Association of Student Councils, AFI Silverdocs and AFI Screen Nation, International Documentary Association, MySpace, the American Association of University Professors, the University Film and Video Association and the Association of American Colleges and Universities are some of the other sponsors. Plus, we are offering this year a summer internship at POV as one of the special prizes. For our prize, the 
And whether the timing was a deliberate act of commemoration or sheer coincidence, AJ Schnack's Kurt Cobain: About a Son (first released in October 2007) has just been released on DVD. It's getting all sorts of great press — the 
Oh, and the films! We saw a quirky Scandinavian movie called 
Who says Valentine's Day has to be all about flowers and candy? We can all name feature films about romance and passion, but real life is so much more nuanced. There are so many nonfiction films that show "real" love stories about people from all walks of life in real relationships that it can be hard to keep track, so in keeping with the spirit of Valentine's Day, here's a roundup of some POV staffers' favorite documentaries about love:
If you're in New York City, check out MoMA's annual showcase of international documentary films from February 13-March 3. This year's Documentary Fortnight features more than 30 films, with a special focus on docs about the environment, covering a whole range of topics from graffiti in New York to the problems of chemical sensitivities. Another film that looks especially interesting tracks the electoral campaign of Malalai Joya, a woman who successfully ran in the 2005 Afghanistan parliamentary elections. And to spice things up, there's a program dedicated to documentaries made using cell-phones — these videos range from one to fourteen minutes long.
Chevigny: Election Day follows eleven people participating in the electoral process over the course of the day on November 2, 2004. Through the eyes of poll workers, international observers, first time voters, former elected officials, campaigners, and voting rights activists, we tried to show what voting means to Americans. In our filming, we saw a lot of flaws in the system, but we also saw a lot of people trying to make it work.
With Critical Condition, Roger Weisberg takes an unflinching look at what it's like to be sick and uninsured in America. He took a few minutes to answer some questions about his film and why health care and universal health insurance should be a critical issue during this election year. Critical Condition will have its broadcast premiere on POV in 2008.
