Documentaries (was Re: Jazz)

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Thu Jan 18 20:45:56 PST 2001


You need to get with Titticut Follies and Welfare, among others. I'm blanking on the director, but these were pretty innovative and political in their time.

mbs


>The only truly popular documentary film-maker who is both
>stylistically innovative & politically on the Left may be Michael
>Moore. I sometimes show to my students the aforementioned works by
>Julien, Riggs, & Hammer; James Klein, Miles Mogulescu, & Julia
>Reichert, _Union Maids_ (1976); Barbara Kopple, _Harlan County,
>U.S.A._ (1976); Lorraine W. Gray, _With Babies and Banners: Story of
>the Women's Emergency Brigade_ (1978); Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty,
>& Pierce Rafferty, _The Atomic Cafe_ (1982); Errol Morris, _The Thin
>Blue Line_ (1988); Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky, _Paradise Lost:
>The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills_ (1996); etc., but I've never
>met any student who had seen any of these works before taking my
>class. Not even _The Thin Blue Line_, which has been relatively
>popular & readily available in most video stores (I think). I have,
>however, had a good number of students who had seen _Roger & Me_.
>
>Arthur Dong's _Coming Out Under Fire_ (1994) can't be called
>stylistically ground-breaking, but it is a compelling documentary, in
>that Dong chose his interviewees (who are ordinary Americans, not
>expert talking heads) very well.
>
>Yoshie

Check out Chuck Workman's docu on the Beats, "The Source" (1999). Good stuff. "Paradise Lost" and its sequel should provoke the anger of any decent person who watches them. Those boys were framed.

DP



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