Here, dear readers, is some great coverage of documentaries coming to you soon:
NY Times Science writer Dennis Overbye reviews the Danish film Into Eternity about Finland's efforts to bury it's nuclear waste in a facility that will then be locked up for 100,000 years:
It might seem crazy, if not criminal, to obligate 3,000 future generations of humans to take care of our poisonous waste just so that we can continue running our electric toothbrushes. But it’s already too late to wave off the nuclear age, and Mr. Madsen’s film comes at a perfect time to join a worldwide conversation about what to do with its ashes. On June 3, administrative law judges from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will begin hearing arguments about whether the Department of Energy can proceed with shutting down development of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, where the United States had been planning since 1987 to store its own nuclear waste.
David Denby writes of Laura Poitras's award contender The Oath at the New Yorker:
For the past decade or so, we have suffered from an inability to comprehend, or even to imagine, the inner lives of the young men who wage jihad as members of Al Qaeda. Who are these men, so eager for asceticism, violence, and martyrdom? At first, we think that’s what we’ll learn from “The Oath,” a fascinating documentary directed, produced, and shot by Laura Poitras. We don’t really, but what we do find out is of equal interest, and oddly reassuring.
DocumentaryTech has a great overview and analysis of the latest fallout of Michael Moore-mania: directors' leeriness of appearing too goofy on-camera. They use Alex Gibney's Casino Jack, a takedown of DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff, as a recent example of a filmmaker trying to walk the line of adding some yuks to an otherwise dry subject matter while maintaining their integrity.
Some have emulated and succeeded (Morgan Spurlock) and legions have tried and failed, often polluting their own subject with their determined intrusiveness. The trend of actors suddenly becoming documentarians seems rooted in the notion that documentary is just one more way of getting your face in front of a camera. And even highly regarded films such as “The Cove” have been testament to the Moore Effect – In the Academy Award-winning “Cove,” Louie Psihoyos positions himself quite well and quite prominently as crusading swashbuckler, with no apparent compunction. It seems more odd these days when you don’t see the documentarian on camera – such as in Gibney’s films.
Renzo Martens' visceral takedown of the West's fetishization of African poverty, Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty is screening at the Tate Modern in London. Back when the film screened at the New Zealand Film Festival Caleb Starrenburg described it as:
A sort of mad homage to Joseph Conrad’s novella "Heart of Darkness", Enjoy Poverty is the result of Dutch artist Renzo Martens’s three years traveling the Congo, documenting the country’s ongoing plunder by foreign interests and our complicity in the ‘poverty industry’. With a purposefully offensive and pyrrhic logic, Martens suggests that poverty should be considered an important natural resource. Foreign aid is, after all, among the Congo’s largest sources of income.
Dave Kehr summarizes some new films about artists now out on dvd, including Gerald Peary's For the Love of Movies, Meredith Monk: Inner Voice and Word is Out.
And the inimitable AJ Schnack's Convention is New York magazine's critic's pick this week as it opens at the IFC Center.
This wonderfully counterintuitive doc about the 2008 Democratic National Convention focuses not on the political movers and shakers but on the everyday civil servants, bureaucrats, and average folks who hover around the event. Offers a generous portrait of the true face of modern democracy—if Robert Altman made documentaries, this is what they might look like.
indieWIRE also has a great piece on Convention's unique ensemble approach to shooting.
Thanks for the great list of summer documentaries!
Posted by: Cathy | June 03, 2010 at 02:11 PM