Jeremy Seifert’s GMO OMG (2013) begins with his son’s interest in seeds and seed collecting. Taking his family on a journey of discovery, Seifert explores the issues surrounding GMO (genetically modified organisms) production, studies, labeling, and regulation. In part he wants to know why some Haitian farmers call GMO seeds “seeds of death,” while people…
Month: July 2014
‘Housing Problems’ a Landmark in Documentary Sound
Housing Problems (Arthur Elton and E.H. Anstey, 1935) is one of those classic documentaries that is important to the development of the documentary form but is more interesting to read about than it is to see. Housing Problems is one of the first documentaries to use synchronized sound of people speaking on camera. We hear…
‘The Raw and the Cooked’ Needs More Prep Time
The Raw and the Cooked: A Culinary Journey through Taiwan (2012) makes a poor guide on this tour that feels more like an aimless wander than a directed trip. This documentary had so much potential with its subject, but it falls short due to lack of contextualization and focus. Numerous shots of food in restaurants,…
Documentary Warns Us to ‘Beware of Mr. Baker’
Beware of Mr. Baker (2012) opens with iconic drummer Ginger Baker whacking filmmaker Jay Bulger across the face with a cane for wanting to include interviews with other people in the film. This scene sets up their somewhat contentious relationship and Baker’s difficult personality. Bulger’s documentary is a biopic of Baker and his uneven career…
‘Gideon’s Army’ Battles an Unjust Justice System
Dawn Porter’s Gideon’s Army (2013) is the best example I have seen of documentary story-telling so far with its dramatic tension that keeps you riveted until the jury’s verdict is read. Gideon’s Army follows three public defenders in the Deep South as they work against enormous odds — professional, financial, and personal — to represent…
Performance, Music Come First in ‘Stop Making Sense’
Concert films are a well-established sub-genre of documentary. Think Woodstock, Monterey Pop, The Last Waltz. Their conventions, by now, are well known: interviews with the stars and the fans, shots of performances, and hopefully some deep dish about the band not available elsewhere. While often dismissed by critics as publicity vehicles, concert films still provide…
Beauty and Death in ‘Library of Dust’
Library of Dust is an ethereal yet very real documentary short about the cremated remains of deceased patients in an Oregon mental hospital. Inspired in part by the David Maisel’s book of the same name, Library of Dust explores the ethereal through the photography of the copper canisters themselves. Over the decades, the copper turned…
‘The Crash Reel’ Finds Hope after Injury
Lucy Walker’s The Crash Reel (2013) begins with high energy in its subject snowboarder Kevin Pearce. He and his friends throw their energy into practicing their tricks, first in Aspen and then in Park City, in preparation for a possible Olympic competition. Fast music accompanies them. Then, on the pipe a move goes wrong, the…
‘Nostalgia for the Light’ Stuns with the Beauty and the Awful
Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light (2010) opens not with people, but with artistic cinematography and contrapuntal sound of heavy equipment shifting, turning, rotating. There is no narration, no scored music — just the rhythms of the telescope moving. Only as the shots shift to objects within a house does Guzmán’s voiceover begin. Nostalgia for…
Physics is Catching in ‘Particle Fever’
Early in Particle Fever a group of excited scientists and press gather at CERN in Switzerland to witness the first test of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A man counts down to one. Nothing happens. He counts down again, and this time a screen blips. Everyone in the room cheers and applauds. They understand what…