Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno celebrate their 40 years at Downtown Community Television by announcing a plan to build a theatre for documentaries. A great, timely idea.
CNN starts a Documentary Unit
Documentaries, like anything on television, have to be programmed regularly and have to be of consistent quality. POV and FRONTLINE on Mondays, HBO on Tuesdays — there’s room for more; but CNN’s proposed documentary premiere every three months must be combined with documentary acquisitions for a weekly series if CNN is to gain traction.
No doubt that independent documentaries serve democracy’s need to come to grips with the stories and issues of our time since most of television have abandoned long form non-fiction storytelling.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s new film is DETROPIA — but (gasp) I haven’t seen it yet. (They are quoted in today’s NY Times story on the Academy Awards for documentaries. —see link below.) Documentaries are finally too popular for anyone to have seen all that are produced in a year. But if a wide number of Oscar nominators chose, lets say, the top 25, and then at least three documentary members viewed a selection of five to seven and voted to advance them to a final selection of 15, that list could be narrowed by all voting members or by a select jury. To be more concerned whether a film is in theatres or on television, when most makers want both audiences, ought to be beside the point in this modern era.
Some documentary directors are wondering if a new set of rules to select an Oscar shortlist, meant to be more inclusive, is as flawed as the one it replaced.
Chris Matthews followed at 10 p.m. with an MSNBC documentary essay Barack Obama – Making History. Taking an historic view of the election of the nation’s first black President, Matthews reminded us of Obama’s international appeal by noting that he visited 20 or more countries, more than any other president in his first term. Matthews made explicit the character and meaning of this Presidency for our nation. Where CNN’s program was too tight, MSNBC’s was too loose in construction. Its commercial blocks were shorter, but notably one ad from Chevron defended fracking. The viewer was reminded where real power resides. To combine the strengths of both programs would result in a real documentary that if presented without commercials would contribute to voters understanding and education. Oh, that’s FRONTLINE’S “THE CHOICE” on PBS. Or at least it has been, in past election years, the best documentary consideration of the presidential candidates before the electorate.
Obama documentaries
James Carville, invited to opine last night on CNN after it showed Obama Revealed: The Man, The President, began by saying, “the piece, ‘documentary’, I guess you’d call it.” Anderson Cooper had to reassure him it was a documentary, but I kept thinking if CNN believed more strongly in long form reporting Cooper would have introduced it and introduced the cable network’s reporter, chief White House Correspondent Jessica Yellin. She did a credible job of interviewing, especially when she spoke with the President, but not once did I see or hear her name during 90 minutes of the “documentary” in which commercials seemed more dominant than reporting.
CNN seemed tone deaf in that the first commercial was for “Clean Coal” – but there were eight commercials, usually, in four-minute blocks for about every six minutes of program material. Then, each program segment began by repeating something we had just heard and seen. Ultimately we did “learn something”, as Carville said, about the president’s accomplishments, but at a breathtaking speed because of how the ‘documentary’ was packaged.
After it was “over”, segments were repeated and “analyzed” by Cooper, Candy Crowley, Wolf Blitzer, Gloria Borger, Alex Castellanos, Carville – and Yellin, the only one I hadn’t seen before. Admittedly, I haven’t watched CNN for long time, not since Time Warner moved it higher up on its list of channels. I found it in HD on Channel 778. What a shame to see such good work, more an extended news analysis than a documentary, interrupted and so poorly presented.
What wonderful news to hear that Ricki Stern, Dartmouth ‘87, will be delivering this Fall’s convocation address at Dartmouth. It’s especially heartening to see a documentary filmmaker — and one with such a diverse portfolio of remarkable films made with her documentary partner Annie Sundberg, Dartmouth ‘90 — receive this recognition. 
FREEDOM & DOCUMENTARY
Freedom is the theme of many excellent documentaries – freedom that expresses concern for others, freedom that entails compassion, respect and justice.
LOVE FREE OR DIE
LOVE FREE OR DIE is the title of Macky Alston’s new documentary on Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church. Nowhere, in the film, do you see the ever-present state slogan “Live Free or Die” but having lived through many New Hampshire presidential primaries we are expected to appreciate the play on words.
