DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
Vietnam
IN THEATERS
From The Unforeseen
Laura Dunn's The Unforeseen, executive produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, tells the story of massive real estate developments near Austin, Texas and their impact on the environment. The film, called "part straight-ahead land-war documentary and part elegiac contemplation of the earth and what humans do to it" by Salon, has received positive reviews from most critics (including our own Tom Roston). The Onion's A.V. Club says that "the movie wavers between Sundance-friendly issue film and spiritual reverie," while Entertainment Weekly gives the film a B in its short review.
The Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen chronicles the anti-war protests outside the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and the conspiracy trial of the demonstrators that followed a year later. Morgen, who also made The Kid Stays in the Picture, takes an audacious approach to The Chicago 10 by re-creating the trial through motion-capture animation, and using music by the likes of Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, and the Beastie Boys. In a rave review, The Washington Post says "Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America." The Chicago Tribune, however, says it's "inconsistent," praising the film for its use of news footage and resisting the urge to provide "outright commentary," while admonishing it for not taking its subject seriously enough. (See the trailer on YouTube.)
ON DVD
The documentary The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, showed at a number of documentary film festivals and was nominated for various awards. The film follows Mr. Vig, a never-married 82-year-old man living alone in a ramshackle castle in Denmark who wants to donate his home to the Russian Orthodox Church so that it can become a monastery. A young Russian nun arrives to supervise the extensive repairs on the castle, and their contest of wills take unexpected turns as Mr. Vig and the nun begin to find common ground. The Village Voice praises the film as a "fantastic little character portrait... [which pays] prudent attention ...to aesthetic nuances." TV Guide says that despite the strangeness of the subject, filmmaker Grønkjær has crafted "a fascinating picture" and calls The Monastery a "remarkable film."
March is National Women's History Month, so why not curl up with some films from the P.O.V. archives that celebrate amazing, courageous women from around the country?
The women showcased in these three P.O.V. films — an African-American Congresswoman running for president; a Christian teenager from Lubbock, Texas; and an Asian-American architect — are very different from each other in age, race, background, and almost everything else. But what they have in common is the determination to stand up for their vision, and to share that vision with all those around them.
CHISHOLM '72 — Unbought & Unbossed
In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became the first black woman to run for president. She championed the causes of the poor, the young, minorities, gays, women, and other marginalized Americans. Despite strong, and sometimes bigoted opposition, Shirley Chisholm struck a populist progressive chord with many Americans, and carried over 151 delegates to the 1972 Democratic Convention, where she spoke from the main podium.
Chisholm '72
In 2008, when either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton will make history as the first African American or first woman Democratic candidate for the President of the United States, let us remember Shirley Chisholm, who said, "I ran because somebody had to do it first. I ran because most people thought the country was not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate. Someday — it was time in 1972 to make that someday come."
Read more after the jump...
I was intrigued and troubled by David Poland's recent blog post about the Writers Guild of America (WGA) awards. In his critique of the awards, Poland says:
"Third, has anyone outside of the WGA seen the top doc vote-getter, The Camden 28? The film was release [sic] by First Look in July on 1 screen and earned under $10,000. How in God's name did this movie end up being the biggest vote getter at the Guild?"
He raises a number of issues that trouble me. First, in the spirit of full disclosure, The Camden 28 was included in P.O.V.'s 20th anniversary season with a broadcast premiere on 9/11/2007 — and I like the film! I don't need to spend too much space here defending the film despite Poland's snide dismissal. For that, check out the review in The New York Times which says: "The Camden 28 is a brilliant merger of political outrage and filmmaking chops, and the most suspenseful movie in theaters right now." A simple Google search comes up with dozens of other notices both praising and criticizing the film — including the Grand Jury Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The film has been featured in dozens of other festivals internationally and had a limited theatrical run through the first class distributor First Run Features.
What Poland's post raises, I believe, is the more problematic issue of equating box office success with the importance of a documentary — a crude measurement. Let's get real here, the vast majority of docs have a very limited box office appeal. I can't believe that other WGA nominees made millions at the box office — despite how much I might admire The Rape of Europa and the excellent No End In Sight. Most of them make little or no money. (As far as I'm aware, the WGA does not take box office in account in their awards, God bless them.)
Sure, there is a terrific festival circuit that has evolved so that filmmakers can reach hundreds, and occasionally thousands of people. Theatrically, a tiny percentage of docs will reach major audiences. At P.O.V., we wholeheartedly support filmmakers who want to pursue these options through festivals and theatrical releases. It's an important part of the whole life of a film. But that's not where the major audience is for most films. So, where is that big audience and where does that leave doc filmmakers? Well, it may sound old fashioned, but television is still where doc filmmakers are going to reach their biggest audience, and it means that doc filmmakers (as most do) need to seek out all their audiences — not just the hyper-engaged festival and theatrical audiences.
Case in point: The Camden 28. The film has had a long festival life, and a modest but acclaimed theatrical life. But the real audience was television — over 700,000 people watched its premiere on the P.O.V. broadcast on PBS. Thousands more have watched and will watch re-broadcasts of the film. So, it seems to me that The Camden 28 is, in fact, pretty successful.
The Starz Denver Film Festival is taking place this week and I just listened to a great podcast of a panel held yesterday about the role of documentary filmmakers in covering the war in Iraq. The festival is featuring several new non-fiction films about Iraq including Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan's Soldiers of Conscience, and Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker.
Former Rocky Mountain News film critic Robert Denerstein moderated a wide-ranging discussion about the war, the films being made about it, and whether doc filmmakers are filling a gap in news coverage about the war that Americans are seeing on TV. The panel included filmmakers Weimberg, Ryan, and Davenport, as well as Iraq War veteran Spc. Russell Peterson and Iraq native, retired pychatrist, and Middle East consultant Dr. David Kazzaz.
Listen to the podcast online or download it.
Freida Lee Mock's Academy Award® winning documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision premiered on P.O.V. in 1996. It was 25 years ago today that the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was dedicated in Washington D.C. On this anniversary date, we take a look back at the film, which follows a decade in the life of this visionary artist. Freida Lee Mock returns to P.O.V. on December 12th, 2007 with her new film about another extraordinary artist: Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
Visionary artist Maya Lin. By Adam Stoltman
On November 13, 1982, the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. It was one of the most bitterly disputed public monuments in American history. Only 21 when her design for the Washington, D.C. Vietnam Veterans Memorial was chosen in 1981, Maya Lin has never shied away from controversy.
Her starkly simple slash of polished black granite inscribed with the 57,661 names of those who died in Vietnam was viciously attacked as "dishonorable," "a scar," and "a black hole," but Lin remained committed to her vision, and the Memorial, a moving tribute to sacrifice and quiet heroism, was built as planned. Since then, Lin has completed a succession of eloquent, startlingly original monuments and sculptures that confront vital American social issues.
Read more and watch an interview with filmmaker Freida Lee Mock after the jump...
