Documentaries - food for your brain

A friend of mine asked me what my favorite film genre was, and without missing a beat, I said 'documentaries'. She wasn't all that surprised, I think she was indulging me. I love that documentaries can take you on a journey to another country, culture, time period, or examine an event in depth. It would be even better if I could get college credit for watching them, but I don't think that will happen. The nominees for 2012's Best Documentary are all worth watching (well, I haven't been able to see The Gatekeepers yet, but let's go with 4 out of 5), and they are so disparate in their content and story-telling method. Not to be bossy, but you should see them.

Searching for Sugar Man, 3/17/13, Best Documentary Feature 2012

Searching for Sugar Man tells the story of Sixto Rodriguez’s incredible and unknown popularity in South Africa. Rodriguez is a musician who was mostly active during late 1960s and early 1970s. He essentially disappeared from the music scene but cultivated almost myth-like status in South Africa. The movie looks at this status and traces Rodriguez’s life in Detroit in the 1970s and into the early 21st century. There is very little direct commentary from Rodriguez, the history and background are filled in by his South African fans, people who knew him in Detroit and his daughters. There is plenty of Rodriguez’s music, which is great, because the songs are really incredible. If you like music or are interested in music’s role in society and culture, you should check it out. 


This is one of the few categories where I have seen most of the nominated films, and while I really liked Sugar Man, in my opinion, it was not the best feature.

My personal choice is The Invisible War which discusses the issue of sexual assault in the armed forces. The film feature interviews with several veterans, women and men, military investigators, JAG attorneys and others. I found this to be one of the most compelling documentaries I have watched. The women and men tell of their love for the military; for some of them they were 2nd or 3rd generation military and that their service was so important to them. Then it all changed after their first assault (in many instances, the assaults were repeated many times before a superior intervened or they were able to ‘escape’). Alongside the personal stories, attorneys and some investigators discuss the gauntlet that victims of sexual assault must walk to pursue any course of action and also the ‘process’ that the military and Department of Defense follow, essentially re-victimizing the victims over and over. The movie made me sad for the victims, and then incredibly angry. If there is anything good that came out of this film, it is that the discussion has been raised above a whisper in the Senate with hearings being held by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and maybe with more women in the Senate than ever before (and more enlightened men) there will be a change. Perhaps that is why I wanted this movie to win so badly, because it would have given the women and men in this film another platform for their message. Everyone should watch this movie.

5 Broken Cameras is a first-person documentary of the protests in Bil’in in the West Bank. Emad Burnat films the protest of his fellow villagers with five different cameras (most of them were given to him); the cameras are usually broken during encounters with Israeli soldiers. Burnat is not a professional videographer, and that’s not really essential here, he is capturing the events as they happen, many times through tear gas, bullets, and other explosive devices. Burnat shows us the protests and the violence, but he also shows how the villagers try to survive, harvesting the olives from their beloved olive groves. Burnat’s family features prominently in the narrative, particularly his youngest son. To be honest, I was not sure I wanted to watch this movie because I was afraid it would be anti-Semitic and I knew I would not react well to that at all. I didn’t find it to be anti-Semitic; I just saw people who were trying to keep their homes, their groves, and their dignity. The questions of Gaza and the West Bank are far too complicated for me to even try to cover here, so I won’t. I will say, I appreciated the honest efforts of the villagers to pursue a course of civil disobedience and when one of Burnat’s best friends, and a favorite among the kids, was shot and killed, I was just stunned. I think a documentary is successful when it makes you reframe your perspective. And this did that.

How to Survive a Plague traces the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the activist groups ACT UP and TAG, and the fight to get drugs tested and out to AIDS patients. It relies mostly on archival footage from news coverage and the groups themselves. Any kind of radical movements (or perceived as radical) tend to get bad raps and dismissed as the lunatic fringe. This movie shows there was a lot of thought into what the members of ACT UP did, their protests, sit-ins, marches, confronting representatives from drug companies and government agencies. Through their persistence, refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer, and an ability and desire to synthesize reams of information and data, ACT UP earned the respect (reluctantly, perhaps) of the scientific community. Don’t get me wrong, they made a lot of enemies along the way, people who wanted gays to go away and who didn’t like the brash and aggressive tactics they took. I would like to think I could do a tenth of what they did in terms of putting themselves on the line (keep in mind, many of these men had the HIV virus or full-blown AIDS and they were marching and protesting, sometimes getting arrested). It was interesting to watch the timeline unfold because I was in high school when this documentary starts its timeline and I remember many of the more national level events, and to see where were are today.
So, what’s a movie viewer to do? Watch them all (I wouldn’t do it all at once, but if you do, finish with Sugar Man) you will not be disappointed.