From Sundance: Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight.
Culture » January 28, 2005
Docs Rock Sundance
“We’re 21, which is usually thought of as the age of consent,” Robert Redford said at the opening of the Sundance Film Festival. “But I like to think of us as a festival about dissent.” Dissent and diversity, two of the mantras of the Sundance Film Festival, were in full flush during the hectic first week of the 10-day festival.
The festival may have burgeoned into a megamarketing spectacle, with companies from Turning Leaf wines to Volkswagen figuring out how to maximize their presence. But it’s still a place where independence of thought, difference of opinion and innovation in getting these qualities before audiences are prized. This year was an excellent one for politically and socially critical documentaries. Not only did engrossing and challenging work get shown to sold-out theaters, dealmakers of all kinds were competing to purchase them for theatrical distribution.
Expect to see, for instance, Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room in theaters within a couple of months. Enron chronicles the implosion of the world’s largest energy company from corruption so large-scale that it was simply unimaginable to Wall Street insiders. Gibney (who earlier made The Trials of Henry Kissinger with Eugene Jarecki) follows the story from the inside, seizing upon the company’s slogan, “Ask Why.” The question he asks: How did ordinary people who thought of themselves as decent and responsible go along with ever-larger fraud?
“Enron is important because it’s not the exception to the rule,” said Gibney at Sundance. “It’s an exaggeration—and maybe not enough of one—of the way things too often work.”
You’re also probably going to get to see Why We Fight, by Jarecki, in theaters in the spring. Yes, that title is drawn from Frank Capra’s celebrated WWII propaganda series, and so are some clips in the film. But the heart of this aggressively argued essay is in the first sequence, when President Dwight Eisenhower warns, in his farewell address, of the military-industrial complex. Jarecki argues that corporate greed drives compliant legislators and a self-interested military to foment war. The Iraq war, he argues, is the tragic result.
He also asks: How do good people become part of the problem, and what wakes them up? A female lieutenant colonel, part of the military’s public relations machinery, finally balks at passing along required boilerplate on WMD that she knows is erroneous. A grieving father who asks for his son’s name to be written on a piece of ordnance does an about-face when he realizes he has been lied to by the president. On the other hand, two fighter pilots who were the first to bomb Baghdad with “precision” bombs that killed civilians remain proud of their role in launching the war.
“The question before us now,” said Jarecki over lunch at Sundance, “is: ‘Is this the way we want to live?’ And each of us has to ask that question, because it’s now up to us to provide direction to our leaders.”
Both Jarecki and Gibney hope that after they’re in theaters, their films will show on television, with luck on a broadcast channel, one with more viewers than the teeny-audience Sundance Channel, where The Trials of Henry Kissinger played. But they’re prepared for the possibility that politically sensitive arguments are a tough sell—especially for American public television, where the culture wars never end.
That’s why it’s heartening to see that The Education of Shelby Knox, another standout among social documentaries at Sundance, is already pledged to the public TV series P.O.V., and thus eventually will be available to 98 percent of the American public. It’s a story for everybody.
Shelby is a good student from an upstanding Republican family in Lubbock, Texas, who became locally notorious when she led a campaign to get sexual education into the high school curriculum. In Texas, the law bans all sexual education except that which deals with abstinence. (Lubbock, it should be noted, has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the country.) Veteran documentarians Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt track Shelby’s school-of-hard-knocks political education, without cheerleading or moralizing. It’s a fascinating journey into cultural conservatism, where cognitive dissonance and denial are close friends.
Another public-TV treasure at Sundance was Shakespeare Behind Bars, in which Jilann Spitzmiller and Hank Rogerson follow a yearlong process of shaping a performance of The Tempest in a Kentucky prison, where the warden says he “hates prisons” and believes that they mostly fail in their rehab mission. The prisoners seize upon the play’s theme of redemption, until you believe Shakespeare must have written the play for prison inmates.
Next year will also bring some excellent documentaries to cable subscribers. Marc Levin’s Protocols of Zion explores anti-Semitism in the wake of 9/11, and was backed by HBO/Cinemax. Jessica Sanders’ After Innocence, funded by cable channel Showtime and destined for it after theatrical release, features several men whose sentences were dropped—in one case after 23 years in solitary confinement—after DNA or other evidence proved them innocent.
Several of the exonerees attended the festival. “At the screening last night, a prosecutor stood up and apologized on behalf of prosecutors,” said soft-spoken Wilton Dedge, who spent 22 years in prison on false charges. “That meant so much to me. I wish that others had that courage.”
And who said that social docs can’t be about sex and violence? Inside Deep Throat, an HBO-funded project by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, recalls the astonishing history of the most popular pornographic film of all time. Whether or not you believe their argument that the 1972 film changed history, you have got to love the story of how the film was launched and received. Distributed entirely outside above-board businesses by the Mob, the film was hand-carried to theaters, with gunsels counting heads and taking cash back at the end of the day. Some of the interviewees in the film still tremble at the thought of retribution for even talking about it. Somehow $600 million went sloshing around the economy without ever being accounted for.
With companies like Docurama and Netflix picking up the pace on distributing and renting out docs on DVD, it seems to be getting easier to see controversial material, if you’re home and have equipment. Robert Greenwald also noted in a Sundance panel that with his “Un” series (Unprecedented, Uncovered, Unconstitutional) and Outfoxed, Internet-based “viral marketing” sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his films directly to viewers, many of whom expected to watch them with friends and family.
Broadcast and cablecast television continue, however, to be both influential and a bottleneck. The one unequivocal masterpiece at Sundance, Three Rooms of Melancholia—a profound meditation on the cost of war by Finnish artist Pirjo Honkasalo—faces an uphill battle to be seen at all, whether on broadcast or in theaters.
Still, filmmakers remained optimistic. At a reception for doc filmmakers, Redford—obviously gloomy about the inaugural events going on simultaneously—paid homage to the role of documentary films today. “You are the guardians of truth-telling,” he said. “And we need your stories more than ever.”
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Patricia Aufderheide, a professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, was culture editor of In These Times from 1978 to 1986. Now a senior editor of the magazine, her most recent book is Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, co-authored with Peter Jaszi.
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Reader Comments
Any comments on a film entitled “Today” featuring Douglas Balch of Buffalo ?
Posted by Bev on Jan 28, 2005 at 4:42 PM
We really need to know more about moderate Arab views. Bush has not helped us at all in the Arab world, and yes it matters a whole hell of alot what they think. Our news media and governemts treats them as less that human, or as very stupid people.
That is not true. Does anyone remember what we thought of the Russian people, after years of cold war brainwashing, by our government and, to maybe a lesser extent, by the media? Hell the Russian were always coming when I was young; actually to the point where I once blurted out at the dinner table, “Well, I wish to hell they would get it over with. Come on if your coming, get it the hell over with. I am tired of hearing about it.”
Leaving Mother’s and Dad’s mouths flopped open, I marched away from the table and out the back door. I laid in the grass (one of my favorite things to do even untill this very day) and stared up into the night sky at the stars and planets and asteroids, etc, etc, and in my fury I realized that I was a part of all of that, made of the same atoms and particles, the very same material. As my heart began to slow, I began to cry at the glory of it all. Who cared what the Russians did, they could never take this moment from me. Neither could the fear-mongers in the government. A monent of experiencing Oneness with the All that there is, the One, God Almighty, Allah, Jehovah; and the Oneness with everything and everyone was so impressive that I was forever changed by that moment.
I was no longer who I had been. Born again? Well, that phrase has certainly left us all with a bitter taste in our mouths, eh? But, yes, that is about the only way to explain it. I would never see the world again in the same way. I would always love my fellow man, yes, even those I am told are my enemies. In the twinkling of an eye, it seemed, I was changed. Actually what I experienced, seemingly out of the blue, that Christmas Eve, was more a culmination of many dark nights of the ego, and it was the beginning of a journey through a dark night of the soul, which many years later, I am wrestling with.
Christ said, “you shall know them by their fruits,” when asked how people would know, if someone was doing the work of Christ or was, in fact, a charlatan, a pretender and a liar.
We have been taken over by a Cult of accomplished liars; deceivers of the first degree! You shall know them by their fruit! That is what Christ said. Do we really crave the blood of innocents, vengeance and torture of other human beings, all made possible by intentional deception of the American people. Do those friuts seem worthy of the Vine keeper? I don’t think so. I would be more drawn to kindness, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, giving my last dollar to someone who needs it more than me. The Great Compassion and Love of God flowing through my heart and informing my mind.
We need to hear more from ordinary Arabs, because my strong hunch is they are really not that different from us.
Just like the Russians.
Posted by Dot Dedman on Jan 28, 2005 at 6:06 PM
These mid-western born again types would never think to take that quote by Christ into account. They don’t make it their business so much to know the teachings of Christ as to dance around with their hands stretched upward and make Christianity an exclusive club. The idae of being ‘born again’ is that by accepting Christ they’re ‘saved’. So basically no matter what they do, they’re not worried about hell. Very comforting I guess, but doesn’t take into account personal responsibility. Who could be all that worried about other people with a sense of smug satisfaction like that? The movie ‘saved’ was a pretty good example. I know some of these types, and it was a pretty good portrayal.
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 29, 2005 at 1:44 PM
As bad as the Russians were, they were white. It’s so much easier to dehumanize brown folks. ugh
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 29, 2005 at 1:46 PM
Ryan, I grew up with them, and they kept me from a relationship with the Divine for many, many years, because if the Divine was anything like these hell-fire-breathing, yelling, stomping, judgemental, condescending hypocrits, I wanted no part of it. I knew that much at age 5.
I wish I had the talent to do a Documentary on the real fundamentalism, especially some of the Evangelical, fundys; talk about abuse of children; phsycical, psychological, and sometimes, probably far more than we know, sexual.
These endtimeer types are some of the most dangerous people in the world, because they reassly believe, literally, word, for word, what the Bisble says, especially endtine prophesies. They are not at all averse to helping it along, either; that’s call doing the will of God. Anyone who desires peace in the middle east, between Israel and the Palestinians, a two state solution, and everyone lived happily ever after scenario, the they find themselves at cross purposes with the end-timers, the last thing they want is peace while that Huge Mosque sits where Herrod’s Temple(and that of Solomon before it) sat, before the Romans finally destroyed it in 70 BCE.
Jpeaking of what Jesus Christ said, actually one of the few thinbgs he is said to have said that most moddern day scholars belkieve that he probably really said, is this: It is impossible to serve God and mamon, for you will ether hate the one and love the other, or hete the other and love the one. That was certainly a counsel against idol worship. Yet, it was more. Among all that it is, it is wise counsel to one who wishes to defeat the Republicans, for the sake of our nation and the rest of the world.
The Republicans are personified by two main groups, and they have all the power in the Rethug Party at the monent: 1st and foremost, the corporate pigs at the trough ( picture for a moment, the wild drinking and eating origies (and other tyes of origies that were not allowed on the screen of the old films about anything Roman, then think of what-his-name, from worldcom, I think it was, who had the $25,000 shower curtains and threw a wild toga party, a video of which was recently available for public viewing, in every news channel in America.) Think about every freakin’ greedy, gluttonous, sociopathic corporate officer you have ever seen in a perp walk in the last couple of years and quite a few others you haven’t and should. This is who Bush thold that they were his base. These people have so much money that if they never earned another dime, they would not be able to spend their fortunes 30 lifetimes.
Associated with this crowd is the want-to-be-pigs-art-the-trough club, equally greedy and generally unattractive people when you know much about them at all.
Then there are the True Believers, the Evangelical, fundamentalist, litreralist religio-fascist, who can be counted on to get out the vote, by threatening everyone in the church with total damnation if one fails to get out and vote for Bush. Preachers do not have to actually say this fronm the pulpit, you understand, for their followers to know exactly what they are to do, and rarely ever question it in the least. “Why, if it came from Brother, Deacon Lone Dendrite, then it was absolute truth,” no matter what kind of mind-bending gobbeldy-gook it was this time.
There is nothing this crowd likes better than the idea of persecution. They especially enjoy being victims of persecution, of course they have never really suffered persecution in their lives, but they like being a victim, gives tem s sense of “them vs the rest of us (read Satan’s progeny.” Of course, we all know victims are not nice people, they are not expected to be.
Many of them enjoy real persecution for anyone who disagrees with them, they believe that the very word, tolerance, is of the Devil. They have no intention of tolorating anyone or anything any longer than they have to. Many have openly said that they support torture of Muslims as a tool for gaining intelligence. That can in no way, be reconciled with the teachings of the Christ. As a matter of fact, much they say and do is antithical to Christ’s teachings; One would not be incorrect to refer to them as anti-Christ.
I hope that some really good investigative Documentarian works on this, and outs them all for the hypocrits and pretenders and deceivers, who they really are.
I know what you mean, Ryan, their idea of being saved is once one confesses Jesus as their personal savior, is baptised and whatever other ritualistic calp-trap goes with it, one does not have to worry anymore. A few I have known sport bumper stickers, “not perfect, just forgiven.”
I have known more jackasses who were washed in the blood, as they like to say, and I have known athiest who are more Christ-like than the many of them with their spiritual puffed-upness, and only a daily basis, I have known Reform Jews who are the models of Christ among us, right now, today. These people need to be outed, badly. Jesus Christ aslo said, ” There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.”
Posted by Dot Dedman on Jan 29, 2005 at 4:23 PM
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