In my twenties, I spent two summers in Asia and Europe, documenting the work of Christian missionaries abroad. My idealism soon gave way to bone-crunching realism. Most of the missionaries I filmed expressed a carefulness to their approach, talking at length about their ministry being Read More …
If life is what happens while you are making other plans, great documentaries are often those that result from sudden and unexpected navigational shifts. Nowhere is that more evident than in the films of Barbara Kopple. A profile of the Dixie Chicks takes on new Read More …
In a year of excellent documentaries—Cameraperson, The Witness, O.J: Made in America—Tower is a film of immense emotional heft. The film serves as a formal exercise in collective memory, a memorial recording both the horrors of human depravity as well as the redemptive courage that can emerge out Read More …
A companion piece to Joshua Oppenheimer’s previous documentary about the bloody history of genocide in Indonesia The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence takes a more intimate and contemplative approach. Where the previous film featured bombastic murderers and gangsters giving elaborate reenactments of their brutal killings, this Read More …
At turns inspiring, challenging, sobering, and finally devastating, The Overnighters is an existentially probing documentary with more layers than a twisty Hollywood thriller. Partly this is due to the compelling subject matter: a Lutheran pastor in a booming North Dakota oil town committed to showing Read More …
Kirsten Johnson’s moving tribute to her dying father (Dick Johnson) and cinema itself is easily one of the best documentaries of the year. Kirsten admits she is making time capsules to remember her father, but the film also serves as a sharing of careers as she and Read More …
“There are moments when the social world seems more evident in an object or a gesture than in the whole concatenation of our beliefs and institutions.” In this quote, anthropologist David MacDougall encapsulates the ambition of observational cinema with perfect precision. “Through our senses we Read More …