But the U.S. documentaries this year are another story. As usual, many look at the world from a point of view well left of center. But an unusual number of this year's entries reflect their directors' concerns with justice, peace, religion, and ethics. Judy Valente reports.
JUDY VALENTE: The Sundance Film Festival: the Holy Grail for independent filmmakers. For documentary filmmakers, Sundance is especially important. Documentaries screened here often attract worldwide media attention.PATRICIA FINNERAN (American Film Institute): Filmmakers seek to understand the world that we live in.
VALENTE: For the first time in the festival's history, 8 of the 16 films competing in the documentary category center on either ethical or religious themes.
Ms. FINNERAN: I think the idea of looking at religion and its influence on our choices is definitely growing. So I think the question one could ask is: Is this the year of the ethical, religious documentary?
VALENTE: The people who make documentaries are often on the left of the political spectrum -- sometimes even the far left.
Ms. FINNERAN: Artists ask themselves questions about what matters in the world and make films out of that impulse.
VALENTE: More times than not, their films challenge the status quo.
EUGENE JARECKI (WHY WE FIGHT): Documentary makers don't work for large corporations. They don't work for anybody who's going to pressure them.Ms. FINNERAN: Documentary is uniquely suited to address religious and ethical concerns, because it -- a filmmaker has the opportunity to explore an issue in depth. Audiences want to get beyond the kind of partisan politics and punditry and really understand and really learn something.
VALENTE: This year's crop of films delve into such topics as sex education in schools, the consequences of false imprisonment, the exploitation of global workers, the causes of war, and corporate scandal.
In THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX, young Shelby Knox challenges the school board in Lubbock, Texas to include information on contraception and AIDS prevention in sex education classes -- and not just abstinence only -- after several teens in the town get pregnant or contract sexually transmitted diseases.
ROSE ROSENBLATT (THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX): I grew up you know, in a religious home. My own life mirrors a lot of her development. She's a religious, devout Christian. She pledges to be a virgin until she's married.MARION LIPSHUTZ (THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX): Shelby's about to get a chastity ring from her parents.
SHELBY KNOX (THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX): I commit to not have sexual relations with anyone until I am married, and that is my personal commitment to God.
Ms. ROSENBLATT: Lubbock has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs in the state of Texas and nationwide.
She sees kids all around her. She knows these statistics. She sees there's some warp there, you know, some disconnect. She discovers that this isn't working, herself, and she tries to make a change.
Ms. LIPSHUTZ: I would welcome any kind of conflict around it because I feel so comfortable about the choices that we made and how we represented that elusive truth.
MARC SIMON (AFTER INNOCENCE): That's Herman Atkins, and that's his father, who is a California highway patrolman. And Herman was in large part the inspiration for this film.VALENTE: Thirty-one-year-old Marc Simon is a first-time filmmaker, and an attorney. His documentary, AFTER INNOCENCE, grew out of his work as a law student helping ex-prisoners, exonerated through DNA testing.
Mr. SIMON: Herman couldn't even walk down the street in public by himself, because that's how his nightmare started. He was walking down the street and a police officer picked him up.
DAVID REDMON (MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA): I'm seeing globalization as lived by people who make the majority of our consumer goods in the United States on a daily basis. What do they dream about, you know? What do they like to do?
ALEX GIBNEY (ENRON: SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM): To me, Enron was kind of a moral report card for the nation.
Mr. GIBNEY: Here you have California traders for Enron who were calling power plants, telling them to shut down in the middle of an energy shortage in order to drive prices higher.
Ms. FINNERAN: To the extent that religious and ethical issues are core to human beings' understanding of their role in the world, I think filmmakers will continue to, and maybe increasingly, address those issues.
