Category Archives: DEFINING DOCUMENTARY

In exploring documentaries, we find that films cannot fully match the definition: “a film or TV program presenting facts about a person or event.” We examine this group of movies attempting to understand the genre.

The Weather Underground: Define Documentary Film?

BUT the human mind is not a film which registers once and for all each impression that comes through its shutters and lenses. The human mind is endlessly and persistently creative. The pictures fade or combine, are sharpened here, condensed there, as we make them more completely our own. They do not lie inert upon the surface of the mind, but are reworked by the poetic faculty into a personal expression of ourselves. We distribute the emphasis and participate in the action.
Lippman, Public Opinion

The Worst of Times and the Weather Underground

Some may remember the times and maybe even some of the events recounted in the film, The Weather Underground. It was a time of terrible unrest, yet I venture to guess that most remember the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination more strongly than other events of the era. Continue reading The Weather Underground: Define Documentary Film?