Documentaries

[November]

Which documentaries had an impact on you and why?

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Blackfish. I always somewhat trusted documentaries to present facts, but the way they twisted and misrepresented the truth just to make Sea World look bad really tainted how I viewed documentaries following that.

Mind Over Murder. Demonstrated how far some people in law enforcement will go to stroke their own ego and how disreputable psychiatrists can ruin peoples' lives by planting ideas.

 

[famicommander]

Leaving Neverland was pretty haunting. I already knew Michael Jackson was a disgusting pedophile, having been pretty familiar with the Jordan Chandler, Jason Francia, and Gavin and Star Arvizo cases from the 90s and 2000s.

But to see the men in the documentary, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, recount his horrific crimes against them in graphic detail was almost too much.

But the worst part is that there are so many more kids who accused him, beyond the six I mentioned here.

 

[TriBel]

Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. Made in 1922, it's generally regarded as the first documentary and I watched it because I was researching John Grierson. Grierson's considered the "father of documentary". He coined the term and described it as 'the creative treatment of actuality'. Nanook is great viewing but the liberties Flaherty took with actuality in order to make a romantic portrayal of the indigenous people are astounding. Since then I've never been able to look at documentaries as anything other than a particular form of representation.