Economic stories that focus on numbers — employment rates, job creation rates, wages, and inflation — fail to show the real price, the human costs, of financial realities. Hard Earned, an upcoming documentary series from Kartemquin Films, tells stories about people working to make a living and working to make a life following the economic…
Category: Reviews
Engaging the Battle for ‘Hearts and Minds’
For the years during the war and for almost a decade after, Vietnam remained an almost untouched subject in the American popular media. Extensive television coverage of men fighting in the bush provided a collective experience accompanied by newscasters’ observations, but not until the late in the 1970s did memoirs, novels, and films begin to…
‘Grizzly Man’ and the Filmmaker-Subject Relationship
Grizzly Man (2005) is as much about the filmmaker-subject relationship as it is about the subject himself. The subject is Timothy Treadwell, a bear enthusiast who spent 13 summers living among them and recording more than 100 hours of video with them and himself. Treadwell and his then-girlfriend Amie Huguenard met their untimely deaths when…
Getting Down in the Trenches in ‘The War Room’
In 1960 presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon met on national television for the first in a series of debates. This meeting proved the latter’s downfall for while Kennedy, tanned and relaxed, impressed audiences with his confidence and poise, Nixon, pale and haggard, lost credibility because of his tired appearance. Unique at the…
An Invitation to Witness in ‘Cameraperson’
Cameraperson is an audiovisual memoir of documentary camera operator Kirsten Johnson’s 25-year career. It features a pastiche of images and occasional titles, but no voiceover or staged interviews. The film results in a deep meditation on creating documentary images and sound and their ethical implications. Cameraperson opens with a title that reads “For the past…
New Documentary Offers Advice for Thriving with Age
Popular media and culture celebrate youth. Soft news stories show us how to feel young and look young in 73 easy steps. Rates of cosmetic surgery increase each year. If 60 is the new 40 and 50 is the new 30, then 41 must be the new minimum drinking age. Time to get your new…
A Simple Question Belies Depths in ‘The Jinx’
Sometimes an interview question seems so simple that it belies the cultural depths that inform it. A question like this appears in Andrew Jarecki’s The Jinx: The Life and Murders of Robert Durst (2015). This six-episode HBO series retraces the unsolved murders linked to Durst through archival footage, reenactments, and interviews, including with Durst himself….
The Challenges of Getting and Staying ‘In the Game’
Sport documentaries are one of the oldest and most popular genres of the form. Some of the earliest films recorded boxing matches, as the sport’s confined area and bright lighting paired well with camera capabilities at the time. Later documentaries highlighted the spectacles of athletes and their abilities. Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) and Kon Ichikawa’s…
‘We the Economy’ Answers Complex Questions in Short Episodes
The economy this. The economy that. So much news coverage talks about the economy, but for those who avoided that class in college, what does “the economy” mean? We the Economy, a new online documentary series, offers some engaging explanations. We the Economy consists of 20 short videos organized around a series of questions that…
‘Little Dieter Needs to Fly’ Recounts Harrowing War Experiences
Little Dieter Needs to Fly offers a recounting of Dieter Dengler’s harrowing experiences as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. Dengler was a German citizen who moved to the United States in order to pursue his dream of learning to fly. His inspiration came from the planes that flew over his village during…