Indie Film: Saving The World Two Hours At A TimeFeb 01, 2007

Jason The

Last week I made my 15th annual trek to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT.  This year, I came home with something new.

The festival is always a venue for promotion of documentary film making, but not until the success of films such as March of The Penguins, and An Inconvenient Truth has the documentary section of the festival really come into its own.  With increased screening opportunities reserved for documentary submissions, they are quickly becoming the most crowd pleasing (and quickly purchased) element of the festival.  

In past years of the festival, it was obvious the drive of most film, from World Cinema to Documentaries, has been mold-breaking, with most screen time being given to films that challenged the status quo in the most brazen fashion yet seen.  One would leave the festival with the sense of being caught amidst a brawl between visionary film-makers and the film industry that wouldn’t let them in.  This year, there seemed evident a social-political maturity to the films. It was as if the mold had finally been broken to the satisfaction of independent film, and now the message was being presented.

Still present are the challenges to traditional film making, of course, with ingenuous films built on nearly non-existent budgets, or amazing stories of adversity challenging the film-makers’ productions, but the shock-treatment seemed to be gone, replaced by documentaries that not only promoted truth where the film-maker felt it lacking, but also presented intelligent, reasoned arguments for change, and how it might be achieved.  In past years I remember leaving theaters enraged and frustrated by what I had seen, and desperate to learn what could be done.  This year, I left each film still enraged and frustrated, and knowing exactly where to turn for more information or to lend myself in even the slightest way to a cause.  After years of screaming "Pay Attention!," it seems independent documentary film has gotten it’s wish, and in recognizing they finally have a large audience, the film-makers have plenty to say.  

Below are a few of the films (not all documentaries, but all dealing with important topics) I felt readers here would find worth the effort to locate, once they (hopefully) see release:

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (Directed by Rory Kennedy)
Ezra (Directed by Newton I. Aduaka)
Everything’s Cool (Directed by Daniel Gould and Judith Helfand)
For The Bible Tells Me So (Directed by Daniel Karslake)
Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) (Directed by Jason Kohn)
Manufactured Landscapes (Directed by Jennifer Baichwal)
No End In Sight (Directed by Charles Ferguson)
War/Dance (Directed by Sean and Andrea Nix Fine)
Grace Is Gone (Directed by James C. Strouse)
Crossing The Line (Directed by Daniel Gordon)
Enemies of Happiness (Directed by Eva Mulvad, Anja Al Erhayem)
Hot House (Directed by Shimon Dotan)
Chicago 10 (Directed by Brett Morgan)
The Devil Came on Horseback (Directed by Annie Sundberg)
Save Me (Directed by Robert Cary)

This is not a complete list of all entries of the 2007 festival of course, just a few that presented topical subject matter appropriate for the regular readers.  There were also many humorous, visually stunning, or simply "fun to see" films.  But my experience was overwhelmed by the amazing sense of purpose and direction I felt after each of the documentaries I was lucky enough to be exposed to.  

I mean no disrespect to the history of documentary film making, as I can see each step was part of a process that led to today, but I am encouraged by my experiences with these films.  It seems another cog in the process that is growing each day through grassroots organizations and more individual attention to truth and fact and having a voice.  It is another sign that the individual is remembering his or her place again, not only in politics, but in the world at large.  Please keep an eye out for these films!