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Like many conservatives and critics, Peter Rollins, editor-in-chief of the journal Film & History, takes issue with Michael Moore's portrayal of the Bush administration in his controversial film “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Rollins calls Moore “wacky but thrilling” and says he has a “sophomoric, simplistic view.”
But unlike other Moore critics, Rollins has no doubts that “Fahrenheit” belongs in the category of documentary film. “They say it's not objective,” Rollins says, “but no documentary has ever tried to be objective. Moore's film is very much in the tradition of the persuasive film.”
If “Fahrenheit 9/11” has plenty of antecedents, from the late Leni Riefenstal's movies about Nazi Germany to the 1974 anti-Vietnam War documentary “Hearts and Minds,” Moore also has plenty of company these days. Every week seems to bring the release of yet another anti-Bush movie, such as “The Oil Factor Behind the War on Terror”; “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of the American Empire” and two recent films by Robert Greenwald that are achieving underground celebrity: “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” and “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.” Several, including “Bush's Brain,” illustrate and elaborate arguments that had already been put forward in books.
“To a certain extent, I believe liberals have found their message vehicle in popular documentaries, just as Republicans did in talk radio,” says Matthew Felling, media director at the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Liberals may not hold onto such a monopoly much longer. On Oct. 5, the day Moore's film was released on DVD, conservative groups released the DVD of “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House,” a documentary about Bush's Christian faith — which is being sent to thousands of churches as the conservative response to “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Then, conservative Sinclair Broadcasting announced it would broadcast a 90-minute anti-Kerry documentary on its 62 television stations. And two festivals devoted to conservative documentaries have recently been held in Dallas and Los Angeles. “There hasn't been an appetite for it, but I have a feeling that's about to change,” says Roger Aronoff, a conservative media critic who has just completed “Confronting Iraq,” a documentary about the war.
Liberals and conservatives — and non-political storytellers — are crafting documentaries in unprecedented number for two reasons: technology and money. Digital video cameras and editing have made the creation and manipulation of images neater and easier.
“It's so quick and inexpensive,” says William McDonald, head of the cinematography program at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. “In the past, people might have had an idea for a documentary but wouldn't have known how to pay for it, and production would have been cumbersome. Now you just pick up a camcorder and make a film.”
Homemade documentaries are sometimes passed around among partisans on DVD and videotape, similar to the way samizdat — underground literature — was circulated in the old Soviet Union. But other, more carefully crafted films are making serious money. Documentary filmmakers used to consider themselves lucky to get a one-time screening at a festival, but now they can set their sights on a long run at the multiplex.
“Supersize Me,” which documented the effects of eating a month's worth of meals at McDonald's, spent several weeks among the Top 10 box office leaders last spring. “The Fog of War,” an Oscar winner about the career of former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, grossed about $10 million. “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which made $120 million in theaters and will probably earn even more as a DVD, shattered Moore's previous record, for 2002's “Bowling for Columbine,” as the top-grossing non-Imax documentary of all time.
That kind of financial return will only encourage more people to invest in documentaries, says David Thomson, a film historian in San Francisco. Much of the audience, he suggests, is made up of adults who are tired of the preponderance of Hollywood films targeted at children and teenagers. “There are a lot of people — it's a minority, but still enough to make an audience — who are pretty well sick of the fiction films that are being made in America today,” Thomson says.
Rick McKay, director of the recent documentary “Broadway: The Golden Age,” agrees. “Feature films these days tend to be for the lowest common denominator, and people are demanding something that makes them think and inspires them,” he said in an online chat. “There is a huge void to be filled that documentary filmmakers are filling without the support of a studio. Documentaries are the last vestige of free speech and passion in the film industry that literally one person can make alone.”
Thomson says that the documentary tradition in this country, particularly on television, is not as rich as in his native England, but he's not surprised that the medium has become hot in a time of polarization. “Whenever people are politically aroused, and we definitely live in a time when the country is fiercely divided, I think people want to know more about what's going on,” he says.
But Thomson warns that, with documentaries, seeing is not necessarily believing. Images can be manipulated and moments captured on film can take on new meanings when put in a different context.
“Documentary is not naturally, inherently factual,” Thomson says. “It's very open to trickery of one kind or another.”
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