The Realness Documentary Podcast

12 O'Clock Boys  is one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries of the year so far, but we're not quite sure it's that great. Luckily our friend Kristy Puchko, of Cinema Blend and PopCrush, is a bit of an expert on the film. She joined us to talk about whether director Lotfy Nathan is perhaps too disinterested in the real world situation of his characters and their city. There's a lot of compelling footage of these star dirt bikers of Baltimore but does the film offer much depth beyond that, specifically in its treatment of 12-year-old Pug and his family? We discuss the narrow scope of 12 O'Clock Boys and what many critics are now looking for in a documentary. Is there a middle ground between the maligned "issue film" and a movie that doesn't actually tell you anything about anything? 12 O'Clock Boys is nothing if not great fodder for conversation.

The Sundance Film Festival finished up last weekend, but it's only the beginning for many of the films that premiered there. We wanted to talk about as many of the documentaries as we could and we asked Jason Gorber, featured critic at Twitchfilm, to help us out. We addressed the big jury prize winners, Rich Hill and Return to Homs, as well as audience award winners Alive Inside and The Green Prince. Other favorites include The Overnighters, Life Itself, The Notorious Mr. Bout, Whitey and Sepideh. We also talk about how documentaries get coverd out of Park City, and whether we think they get quite enough attention.

This week we review The Crash Reel, Lucy Walker's new film about snowboarder Kevin Pearce. The film has a number of passionate fans, and we try to pin down exactly what it is that people are responding to. Is it the film's structure, an arc of injury, hubris and redemption? Or is it the way that the film manipulates our emotions, a trend that Chris sees in Walker's other work as well? We also discuss The Crash Reel's soundtrack and whether it counts as an "issue film," particularly within the context of the recent success of Blackfish. Finally, we look back on what may have been a light year for sports documentaries and make some recommendations, including Steve James's Head Games.

Special Oscar edition! This week we tackle the 15 films on the Best Documentary Feature shortlist. Which films were left off the list, and why? After Tiller and Call Me Kuchu come up, along with Let the Fire Burn, Our Nixon and At Berkeley. We talk about the big showing for HBO, with a total of five films on the list, and wonder whether this year there could be a majority of non-issue documentaries in the final five. Finally, we make our predictions and talk for a bit about the critical consensus around films like The Act of Killing.

Thanks to listener suggestions, this week we tackle Style Wars, Tony Silver's classic 1983 documentary about graffiti and hip hop culture in New York City. The film stars many of the city's talented young graffiti artists, most of them teenagers, opposite frustrated city officials and then-mayor Ed Koch. There's a lot of entertaining, interesting and historically important footage here, but we have a bit of a disagreement over whether Silver crafts it into a particularly great film. How does it compare to similar movies, like Paris Is Burning, and does it build its characters effectively enough? In this respect, Chris sees it as more valuable as a document than a documentary. Finally, in light of both Banksy's recent visit and the larger change in how New York presents public spaces since the 1980s, we discuss how Style Wars is still relevant in 21st century Gotham. Also included: Dan gives a brief preview of DOC NYC, which kicks off this weekend. Chris tells us a bit about his own graffiti documentary, which if we cross our fingers we might get to see some day.

It's election week! In this episode we start with a modern classic of American nonfiction cinema, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus's The War Room. We talk about the extraordinary access that the filmmakers had to the inner workings of the Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign, and whether such a thing would even be possible today. James Carville and George Stephanopoulos became some of the most memorable nonfiction characters of the 1990s with this film, and we discuss why that might be. The War Room also inevitably leads to conversation about other political documentaries, like Street Fight and Primary. Then we turn to a new release, A.J. Schnack's Caucus. Character continues to be the focus, though the slate of Republican candidates in the 2012 Iowa Caucuses is a bit wilder than the cast of characters in The War Room. We talk about some of the film's best moments, and how well it balances the many, many candidates of last year's Republican primary process. It is in many ways a film about awkwardness, focusing on politicians who have trouble relating to real people, and the rise of one candidate who seems more human than the rest. Finally, we touch on Schnack's arguably apolitical style, and Dan wonders whether there might be an "American roots" style of documentary filmmaking.

The most critically acclaimed documentary opening this weekend is These Birds Walk, a film from Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq about the Edhi Foundation of Pakistan. Or, rather, it's a portrait of a runaway boy and ambulance driver employed by that foundation. Dan is a fan, Chris not so much. We discuss the role of humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi in the film itself, and how These Birds Walk compares to two Oscilloscope Laboratories releases of 2012, Only the Young and Tchoupitoulas. It obscures some of its context in the interest of storytelling and foregrounds the presence of the camera, both choices that complicate the viewing experience. In this way it evokes both classic fiction films like The 400 Blows and the recent work of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab. These Birds Walk is, to say the least hard to categorize.

First up this week is Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, a new film made from within the Egyptian Revolution. We discuss its production, which included a trip back to Cairo just this summer to capture more footage, months after a “World Premiere” at Sundance 2013. Despite the magnitude of the events it covers, the film is actually quite personal and even novelistic in the way it follows the lives of individual activists in and around Tahrir Square. We discuss how this narrative style functions, and compare it to previous revolutionary works like The Battle of Algiers and The Battle of Chile. Then we turn to another documentary that recorded history as it was happening. Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, Robert Drew’s direct cinema film about the showdown over the desegregation of the University of Alabama, celebrated its 50th anniversary on Monday. We talk about the way Drew and his collaborators collected this extraordinary footage of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and George Wallace, and how they crafted it into such a landmark work of journalism. Finally, Chris tells us a bit about another new political documentary which opens in Iowa this week, A.J. Schrank’s Caucus. 

This week we look back at some of our favorite films from the New York Film Festival. Their documentary slate this year was a diverse bunch, formally and otherwise. Highlights include The Square, Particle Fever, and Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley. Then we turn to this week’s big new release, Sundance Audience and Jury Prize winner Blood Brother. Is it a heartwarming story of love without borders, or a naïve and misleading adventure? It’s a little bit of both. We discuss director Steve Hoover’s very personal storytelling style, and whether it keeps necessary context out of the film.

This week we discuss Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing, now in theaters. It follows a group of gangsters in Indonesia, who were responsible for many of the killings in the anti-Communist purge of 1965-1966. Oppenheimer has given them the opportunity to make a film re-enacting the violence, a device which Daniel finds more effective than Chris. We'll address its implications, and whether The Act of Killing really has anything new to offer. Then we address the charges that Oppenheimer did not include enough historical context, as well as Errol Morris's contention that documentaries should not simply be filmed versions of books.

2013 is halfway gone and we've already seen plenty of list-worthy documentaries. This week we each count down our top five docs of the year so far, from the highlights of the Docurama Festival to some exciting work that came out of the Toronto International Film Festival last year. On the way we discuss the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, films we might respect rather than love, and which doc is the best "issue film" of 2013.

We're back! 20 Feet from Stardom is so good that it jolted us out of our hiatus. We review the film, Morgan Neville's documentary about backup singers. Is it better than Searching for Sugar Man? Yes. We talk about why that is, and what makes for a good music doc. Finally, we turn to some burning questions: Can movies be fun? And, should someone make a doc entirely about saxophones in pop music?

This week we dive into the work of the late Les Blank, one of the great documentarians of American culture. We’re joined by Charlotte Cook, Director of Programming for HotDocs, for a discussion of Blank’s unique style and why her festival is honoring him with their Outstanding Achievement Award. After a brief word about what else HotDocs has to offer, we turn to a discussion of our favorite Blank films. Finally, we recommend a few more contemporary documentaries that fit into the upbeat, musical spirit of his work.

This week we review Shola Lynch's new film, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, and its "historical vérité" approach to biographical documentary. Then, inspired by Lynch's own thoughts about making  the story of Angela Davis into a biopic, we discuss fiction adaptations of documentaries. Do they help documentaries find an audience, or are they too often simply blander, inaccurate versions of the original? Finally, we take a moment to remember Roger Ebert's championing of documentary film over the years, and recommend some of his favorites and ours.

In this inaugural podcast, Daniel and Christopher discuss "Room 237." Room 237 is a subjective documentary that explores the numerous theories about the hidden meanings within Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining (1980). The film may be over 30 years old but it continues to inspire debate, speculation, and mystery. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments. Together they’ll draw the audience into a new maze, one with endless detours and dead ends, many ways in, but no way out.