Documentary Arcades Project

fog of war outtakes.

posted by sethy @ 8:57 PM 1 comments

"hell house" director interview

I found an interview on line with the director, George Ratliff.
However, before you read it, decide how relevant it is. How would you think about the doc if you heard him say he was an evangelical? How would you think about the doc if you heard him say he thought they were nuts? Or if he said they were well intentioned, but horribly misguided? Or...what if his thoughts about them were more complex than any of that?

Once you read the Ratliff interview, you can't go back...in so far as this matters to you...

posted by Ralph @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

Thinking about Persuasion

As we think about docs, I think we need to be careful how we construct our thinking about the idea of bias. I have found in my experience that people use the term without really thinking through what they are saying.

I believe that most docs are persuasive in execution. I noted the fact of Ryan's indictment because of the irony. But I don't think the filmmakers have any obligation to some abstract notion of "fair and balanced" in the journalistic sense. Doc makers construct arguments. If you want to argue against it, it requires an argument, and not one based on assumptions about the responsibility one imposes on the filmmakers.

The makers of "Deadline" make a strong argument against the death penalty. I would argue that they did this in an open way (in disagreement with a previous post). They told the story of a particularly awful individual where guilt was never much in question.

So there are, I would argue, two lines of thought going in to this film; one about the frequency of executions of innocent individuals, and another about the basic moral stances around executions.

The warrant is that these topics are intertwined in the minds of the public, and rather poorly discussed as part of the political process.

posted by Ralph @ 9:52 AM 0 comments

Welcome to Documentary Arcades

I hope this blog finds you well.

Up for discussion here are any thoughts you might have about documentary visual media. There will be discussions of particular films or videos, notions of history, arguments about theory, and suggestions for further viewing and reading.

The root of this blog is the class "Documentary Film" being taught at the University of Oklahoma in the Fall of 2005. The syllabus for the course can be found as the second posting, for those who find such painful matters to be worth consideration.

Please feel free to comment on what you see.

Thanks;
Ralph Beliveau

posted by Ralph @ 11:21 AM 0 comments