While I do admire Wikipedia’s bravado regarding this issue, other Internet players have taken a more subtle approach, encouraging action by putting up a splash screen (Mozilla) or changing their logo (Google) but not blacking out the entire site for a day. Why has Wikipedia blacked out the entire site for the SOPA and PIPA issue, but has not done so for other issues that may be even more important, like hunger, poverty, human rights, etc? It is an issue worth thinking about. Why do we take particular actions with particular issues, and what does that reveal about our deeply held values? Food for thought.

User engagement
For Patricia Aufderheide, Director, Center for Social Media, American University, and author of Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, the biggest macro trend is, “user engagement, which can be seen in Facebook creating ways to share info on what people are watching, in HTML5 options to provide many ways to engage with material, and with crowd-sourced stories such as Life in a Day.” On July 24, 2010 thousands of people from around the world uploaded videos of their day to YouTube in order to participate in this documentary about one day on earth. From over 80,000 YouTube submissions (about 4,500 hours of footage), director Kevin MacDonald, working with a team of researchers, crafted a 90-minute documentary film showing the cycle of life on earth played out in one twenty-four hour period. MacDonald said, “I learned to appreciate the beauty of some of this amateur footage. There’s a great and very specific beauty to material that’s shot on handicams or even on cells phones and the kinds of shots that they can get, the kinds of shots that an amateur can get that actually professionals couldn’t get,” see: Conversation: Kevin MacDonald, Director of ‘Life in a Day’ (ArtBeat, PBS NewsHour).

Competition from distraction
David Kung, a fellow MIT Media Lab graduate, tells me that competition from distraction is a major issue, he observes that “the Media Industrial complex has failed to capitalize/monetize Distraction (a.k.a. “Snack Culture”) the opportunity to provide ubiquitous (afforded by mobile technology) and elastic content (entertainment that lasts as long as you want it to,” He points to key examples, including: a short experience with Angry Birds; watching a “viral” video; ending/reading a Tweet, etc. Kung is concerned that, “because of intellectual property/copyright restrictions, the traditional players won’t ever be able to compete in these areas which has allowed for new players to emerge… Facebook, the App Store, etc.”

Social consumption is changing how viewers experience media
Ryan Evans, Director of Experience Design, Corey McPherson Nash, observes that “social consumption of media is going to change not only the way consumers learn about their options, but also how they experience video, music and art together.” This trend is enabled, “not only social networks but mobile devices, but geolocation and video streaming too.” Evans illustrates this with two examples of social networks built up around media consumption: Into_Now and GetGlue. Evan adds that Foursquare and Facebook are enabling social connections around events including movie screenings, concerts, festivals, for example, see: Foursquare Goes Beyond Place; Adds Movies, Music & Sports and Facebook Lets Users Check In to Events via the Touch Site, Soon the iPhone. Furthermore, Evans sees the integration of YouTube with Google+ Hangouts, “takes things further by making social connections in realtime with video conferencing,” as described in YouTube Gets Google+ Hangouts (PICTURES).

Fragmentation of the media experience
Writer and director Federico Muchnik expresses his concern over fragmentation of our media experience. It appears to him that long form narrative is in peril as it gives way to short bite sized “video-ettes,” a product of our decreased attention span fueled by a cornucopia of choices at our fingertips, something Cyber-Surrealist lou suSi has referred to as “Media Snacking.” Muchnik says that viewers today, rather than watch a single film, are often watching what he describes as, “…disparate narratives, music videos, ads, talking head shots, cute kittens, porn, news clips, random material, animation, experimental, and documentary clips we confabulate [into] our own customized two hour ‘virtual narrative’ whose beginning, middle, and end are of our own choosing, whose characters are legion, and whose conflict is unknown at the start of the experience.” Muchnik adds that this experience is “often interrupted by phone calls, emails, trips to the bathroom and the fridge,” This is the digitally enabled equivalent of multiplex hopping, taken to a new level of digital efficiency. We are now in a role where we can extract our own story. Muchnik reflects with a mournful tone, “god died when we acquired the ability to change the channel, once we used to trust the storytellers, now the storytellers are commodities.” That’s one prediction I don’t want to be true, but it rings true, and we know for whom the bell tolls: our old friend, the long form narrative. Long may it live.

Are hyper-linked, fragmented, media forms evolving?
Working in a form that may appear as a living nightmare to Muchnik, artist and provocateur Geo Geller highlights what he calls a “micro trend [...] a very small one indeed,” in what he calls Social Sculptures, “where the story is a non-story story a non-linear experience that like the mind our eyes and ears and senses are attuned to see/listen/smell/feel, especially heightened in times of danger.” His work suggests that we “think of a treasure hunt as the new trend” and that this process “happens in your mind but also in some instances it will be eavesdropping on conversations mixed with options of video/audio/still/text/smells etc” providing an experience allowing your to follow your curiosity and “jump all over the place.” Geller’s work provides a fragmented, hyper-linked, multi-layered, media experience outside the confines of traditional, linear, media forms. More of his work can be seen at silentmusicvideos.com and myownprivaterevolution.com. We’ve been able to create links and fragments ever since the web was created (and before that with Ted Nelson’s vision of the ultimate hypertext in Literary Machines), and yet much of the media we create is not deeply hyper-linked and easy to repurpose at a fine granular level as evidenced in Geller is working in an evolving form that may become more common in the future.

The boundaries between genres and styles are slipping away
Anne Marie Stein, Dean of Professional and Continuing Education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design thinks that “while production costs may be relatively more inexpensive, navigating distribution is a much more difficult proposition than ever,” viewers are inundated with more media options than ever. She asks, given our limited time, “what are you going to pick with the huge amount of stuff that’s out there?” Therefore, there is a need for new forms of curation to come into the mix. From a creative perspective, Stein observes that the “boundaries between genres and styles is pretty much gone, there are documentaries that are made like narrative films that use experimental film language, and narrative films that pretend they are documentaries,” which results in a lot of interesting and innovative work, however, she believes “for the viewer, it underscores just how important it is to be media literate.”

Apple has become a primary driver of media and entertainment trends
Brian Lucid, Professor of Design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design points out that when it comes to Macro Trends, Apple has become “one of the primary drivers of the trends influencing media and entertainment” with their “shift from a hardware company to a service design company” which has led to the development of “new ecosystems that include content, licensing, distribution and consumption.” Apple has changed the way we think about photography, music, movies, phones, “even operating systems and applications.”

Who’s going to pay? Content remains “King”
Brian Henderson, a Boston-based Cinematographer, believes the key question regarding the future of media and entertainment is “how do we pay for it?” He predicts that the current format of television as an “half hour by half hour schedule in the long run will evaporate,” and we’ll move to a format in which “people can chose to watch their shows whenever they want, on whatever device they want (TV, computer, phone, cerebral implant…).” Henderson sees that “advertiser’s money is being spread very thin” and that “there is a limited amount to spread around,” which in turn leads to “a problem for advertisers (the people who fund our work) [...] appointment TV is dead.” Right now advertisers have to reassess the entire business model. Henderson point out the simple economic reality that, “as advertising dollars get stretched across more platforms, budgets will drop, and shows may get shorter.” Perhaps one way to make up for lost ad revenue will be “more product placement in shows and movies.” What may be an opportunity for innovative producers and advertisers is that “smaller productions will become more accessible, independent films and programs made privately or for small markets will be viewable by people everywhere [...] on the web, they may even compete with the the established [...] networks because as we say, ‘Content is King’.” Henderson adds that “if the story is good enough, people may chose to watch some thing made by high school students in Wala Wala Washington rather than by NBC Universal.”

Embedded in our media technology are hidden consequences
Audrey Kali, a professor who teaches rhetoric and communication at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, brings to light some of the political and environmental consequences hidden inside the information technology devices that connect us. For example, their manufacture drives demand for coltan (Columbite-tantalite), which is used in the manufacturing of capacitors used in smart phones, tablets, computers, and the like. This concerns Kali, as “media and entertainment become increasingly more digital and accessible to more consumers, it drives increasing demand for rare materials like coltan that are causing political and environmental havoc, desire for this mineral is connected to violence,” for example, “Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi smuggle coltan from Congo, using the revenues for a violent war.” Kali observes that “It’s so absurd, when I think about it, I’m writing about the horrors of a mineral that is causing so much human pain and environmental destruction with the technology that actually supports those horrors.” While it’s possible to avoid “conflict diamonds” it’s more difficulty to avoid “conflict coltan,” adding a new twist to Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, “the medium is the message.”

Crowd-funding provides new ways to fund projects and connect with your audience
Many of my respondents concurred that crowd sourced funding is a key macro trend. The two leading examples of services enabling this are Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. These services differ in siginifiant ways in terms of how they operate. Kickstarter is a community limited to fundraising projects that meet their curatorial goals, and projects don’t receive any money unless the fundraising goal is reached. This is good in terms of providing funders confidence their money will go to a project that will be completed. On the other hand, IndieGoGo is an open community allowing anyone raise money for their creative project. If you don’t make your goal, you can still keep the money you raised to put towards your project. It’s clear that we’re in the middle of a rapid rise in the number of creative professionals leveraging crowd funding to support their work. One of the most impressive examples to date is Jennifer Fox’s Kickstater campaign for My Reincarnation in which she raised over $150,000 in order to get her film into distribution.

Digital production tools expand opportunities for expression
For Caroline Blair, a Cinema Instructor at City College of San Francisco, the most significant trend she’s observed is the effect of digital filmmaking (cameras and editing) on her program. As a “community school trying to meet the needs of the population it serves” the school in the past “experienced difficulty serving lower income groups” before digital technology became widely available. She illustrates this with an example, prior to the use of digital video, City Shorts [their annual film festival] was struggling with “very few submissions.” Today City Shorts is a “well attended film festival” with a good selection of quality work shot on digital video, much of which is also shown in other Bay Area venues.

Democratization of taste-making
Cinematographer and director Charles Papert, who has experience in both high-end and indie productions, tells me the big trend is “the democratization of the taste-making process in entertainment.” Papert reflects that “whereas in the past a talent or project would be discovered, packaged and groomed” in what he calls an “insider process” that would move through “a corporate machine to determine their worthiness to be presented to the masses,” we now have the ability for unknown talent to “become popular with the masses” through a process of “viral exposure” and after that “traditional media takes it from there.” He explaining this is a “reversal of the process,” and illustrates this with the observation, “in the heyday of radio, an influential DJ could break an artist, as radio became more corporate with mandated playlists, artists were manufactured.” But new options now exist, “now an unsigned and unknown artist can build their brand via iTunes and social media and gain wide exposure.” Papert has been working with Garfunkel and Oates, a musical comedy group, who’s been able to quickly built a following via “low-tech ‘couch videos’ of them simply singing to camera and are currently on the comedy circuit, selling out 500-600 seat venues.” Papert adds they now have an HBO development deal, providing a crisp example of the big trend. He’s pleased that “the possibility of creative freedom” provided by this new environment is “encouraging.”

Non-traditional distribution channels are gaining traction
Philip Hodgetts, Technologist, Author and President of Intelligent Assistance observes that “non-traditional distribution channels – iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix as well as AOL – are getting traction from brands now, such that it’s beginning to be possible to create and distribute without the traditional network gatekeepers.” Yet Hodgetts points out that, “of course brands end up still controlling the media,” but in parallel to this, “the rise of crowd funding is making producers less dependent on having advertising support at the distribution end.” You can see a list of the most funded Kickstarter projects on their site. Hodgetts points out Habib Kairouz’s article, Buckle up: Traditional TV is in for a heck of a ride, in which Kairouz points out that in order to find out how television is going to change “we’ll all be tuning in (on multiple devices) to find out.” One example of this is AOL spending on original series.

Circumvention of traditional media outlets
Julie Mallozzi, a documentary filmmaker and teacher observes we now have a “global communications infrastructure that “enables everyone to both create and consume media anywhere, anytime – and share it with the entire world within seconds.” Mallozzi sees the “circumvention of traditional media outlets” by Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, etc.to get their message straight out to people as a significant trend. These groups have “all kinds of people out shooting video – on cameras, phones, whatever – editing it right on the spot using laptops or ipods, and uploading it for the world to follow their actions via Twitter, Facebook, etc.” She adds, “they are inspired by the Arab Spring – who of course used these methods, too.” This makes our connection with current events more intimate and meaningful. We now have the ability to learn what’s happening from a variety of perspectives beyond the television news establishment for which ratings, not newsworthiness, is the prime directive. In addition, social media has made it easier to organize, participate, and get people involved in these events both directly and indirectly. For example, when Mayor Bloomberg announced that he was going to clear the park on the morning of Friday, October 14th, MoveOn.org immediately launched a petition drive to let the Mayor know how citizens in New York and beyond felt about his intended actions. The mayor was given a clear read of public reaction to the clean sweep, it was telephone calls from elected officials to the owners of the park that stalled the clean-up, but you can bet they were responding to the groundswell of support that was expressed. Social media is enabling citizens to make their voice heard and connect with current events in a manner that is way more intimate and meaningful than possible back in the day when broadcast media was the only conduit for live, breaking news.

Citizen journalism is influencing how mainstream media handles news
Artist Perry Bard observes how citizen journalism is influencing, “how mainstream media handles news,” pointing to the example of Police beat and pepper spray protesters on 10.05.11, a YouTube video in which a police officer discusses how he hopes to be able to beat protesters with his nightstick later in the evening. This is not something mailstream media may not have covered in the past. See also: MSNBC/Lawrence O’Connell on NYPD Police Brutality during Occupy Wall Street (not the same event). Now that amost everyone has cameras, more points of view come into play. During the launch of Iraq war Bard followed Riverbend’s blog, Baghdad Burning which, according to Bard, “gave daily accounts about electricity outages, food availability, i.e. effects of war on daily life.” The blog was later published. Bard points out the “difference between then and now is dramatic, more people with more devices and the ability and organization to upload instantly,” is making a significant difference in how news is being covered.

Smaller and larger screens
Videographer Chuck Green observes that, “millions consume video, music, photos, and more (plus compose and read their correspondence) on micro devices, iPod nanos, mobile phones” while at the same time we’re seeing the rising popularity of large screens, “IMAX and IMAX3D is growing, as are home television/media center screens,” Green suggests this might be “weird for producers” and represents the challenge of “divergence,” which is developing media for both small and large screens simultaneously. Other trends he sees include “collaboration on editing, mashups and such,” and these he finds scary and exciting at the same time. For Green it’s ultimately about embracing the expanding palette and opportunity with both smaller and larger screens.

Greater flexibility in communication and collaboration
Kathryn Dietz, Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative, observes that “there are far more outlets for our creativity.” She explains, “If I have an idea, I can conceive of it as not just a movie … which costs a lot and takes a lot of time.” Instead her idea can, “take the shape of a game or short video clip shared on YouTube or maybe be a blog post or a comment on someone else’s media.’ This now all comes to us at “lower cost and far greater flexibility and opportunity for collaboration.” One implication of this is that media makers don’t just one thing anymore. Kathryn ran a production company for 23 years, always producing feature length documentaries. Now, she has three jobs (executive director of a non-profit, a producer, and as a writer). Kathryn is currently writing a feature length documentary being made in collaborative manner and she’s producing a series of web shorts for the new England Journal of Medicine in collaboration with another filmmaker. Much of this is possible because today it is “easier to manage” multiple projects because of the “ease of access and communication.” She pointed out to me that she and I were able to have a conversation over email while I was in Rio de Janeiro at the film festival and she was on a “lovely long kayak trip,” providing a sharp illustration of her point.

Beyond product placement: brand as character
Artist and filmmaker Jon Goldman sees a trend towards the convergence of storytelling and brand messages being “integrated into story-driven, serialized content positioned in web-based space straddling commercial spots with episodic enticement.” This work is a response to viewers becoming increasingly allergic to ads. As we move beyond traditional media forms, there’s a demand from advertisers to find new ways to create engagement. Jon has been working with StoryPoint, an organization responding to this challenge by creating compelling stories embedded with a brand. The brand message becomes an integral part of the story and character mix. Why should ads interupt our stories when the story can be the ad?

Our tools let us convey emotion to anyone, anywhere, at anytime
Artist and educator Philippe Lejeune says that “to create a tool so well designed that anyone can use intuitively to project to someone else our emotion through a complete set of communicative applicaitons is remarkable … tools are becoming transparent enough to let our emotion be carried to anyone anywhere at anytime,” this represents, “progress that is revolutionizes our desire for better communication and individual expression between each other.” Lejeune asks, “this media is ours … who needs anymore his/her 15 min. of Fame?” observing that he is part of the 99% of the once anonymous who “today have a voice and a name,” to illustrate this, Lejeune remixed Apple’s 1984 commercial giving it “a new meaning with today’s concerns (Occupy Boston),” reflecting that citizens now have, “the tools to prevail.”

Be the one you’re looking for
Kevin Brooks, UX Product Manager, Motorola Mobility, believes that “non-profressional producers creating the media they want to watch,” is the most significant trend. With the “increasing quality of production equipment we carry in our pockets and purses, the general population is more ready to capture what they see and express what they experience.” However, Brooks points out that what’s still missing is “deeper creative empowerment.” At this point in time we “have the tools in our pocket to create high quality crap.” Brooks thinks that “Once we start seeing compelling videos about producing compelling videos, or films about making films that aren’t about how zany, wacky, crazy, sex crazed or financially foolhardy it is to make films, then more people will make films.” He adds “as Brother Blue said and as I think Steve Jobs implied, ‘Be the one you’re looking for’.” Brooks sees a lot of “brave filmmakers who distribute on their own, they want their story out there and believe in it, so they skip over many of those concentric circles to go directly to the public.” He says that “Sita Sings the Blues is just one example, though a favorite of mine.” Brooks is encouraged that people “have found and will continue to find more creative ways to build theater – more creative ways to bring eyes and ears to their art,” but along the way, “many traditional business models and mechanisms will have to change the way they do things or disappear.”

Rise in multi-screen viewing
Lee Morgenroth, Founder and CEO of leemail.me, sees “an increasing number of new ventures looking at multi-screen viewing, or the idea that while people are watching television, or other video content, they are also on their laptops, tablets, or phones.” He believes that parallel viewing, “may lead to a more interesting ‘interactive’ experience than trying to force all of the experience through one screen/medium.” On the negative side, Morgenroth is concerned that, “legacy licensing and copyright issues still bind so much content, both new and archive.” Therefore, without a updated approach to licensing materials, we’re going to restrict the evolution of a “global audience of viewers and makers that are defined more by social graphs than by geographies and territories,” and without that, “we won’t see the full potential of innovation in media & entertainment.”

Perpetual escalation and insinuation of shock and awe
Nathan Felde, Chair of Design, The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, believes that the most significant trend influencing Media & Entertainment today is violence. He asserts, “now that attention is the new and only valid currency in the global economy, perpetual escalation and insinuation of shock and awe into media are needed to continually renew and raise interest rates while double digit hyperinflation of significance and attention deficit take their toll and tax our minds.” Related to this, by making it possible for humans across the earth to be linked in a digital world, technology has opened a Pandora’s box of possibilities, as Felde writes in From wilderness to bewilderment: Which frontier does your type face? Of visual frontiers, pattern recognition, mass media, and the survival of the human species. (DMI Review, 14:4, Fall 2003). Felde also shared this photo of 6,000 students at a school for animation, video games and comics, in Changchun, China.

The process of DIWO: Do-It-With-Others
Slava Rubin, founder and CEO of IndieGoGo observes that we’re, “moving from a world of transactions to a world of relationship.” He thinks that instead of a DIY ethos, things are moving to what he describes as, “DIWO (do-it-with-others),” this is, “the new breed, instead of millions, it is now the power of a dollar.” Since production and distribution have become ubiquitous, Rubin says, “it becomes a challenge of attention.” He suggest that “Youtube turned everyone in a TV channel,” and as a result, “crowdfunding will empower everyone to become a banking channel.” This will lead to storytelling evolving, “across mediums based on the customer touchpoint.” He paints this picture, “kind of like how banks now know how to best optimize their customer channels – physical location, ATM, website, mobile, etc.” His company, IndieGoGo, is currently providing the integrated social media tools that help creative people run their crowd-funding campaigns including community building and outreach, empowering creative people to fund, make, and distribute their work through the process of DIWO (do-it-with-others).

Media and entertainment becomes a catalyst for a wider dialogue
For Sean Flynn, an indepedent filmmaker and Producer of the Points North Documentary Forum, the most exciting possibility right now is, “location-based participatory storytelling,” pointing out that software like Ushahidi can, “extend the web to anyone in the developing world with a cell phone.” He’s been observing the proliferation of mobile apps that, “happened much more quickly than anything dependent on broadband.” Flynn looks at this and is rethinking what he does, saying, “as a filmmaker thinking about interactive, participatory models of storytelling, these technologies force me to reconsider the concepts of authorship and ownership,” changing the role of the filmmaker. Flnn reflects, “the content I produce isn’t necessarily the end result of my work, but can be a catalyst for a wider dialogue.” Flynn concludes that, “media and entertainment are no longer just about delivering a message or story through content, it’s about facilitating social interactions, dialogue, and community.” Perhaps it’s always been that way but to Flynn, the web is “opening up more feedback channels.” In addition to Ushahidi,Flynn as also been looking at Zeega and VoIP Drupal as possible tools of production for his next documentary project in India. He points to Mapping Main Street (by the co-founders of Zeega) as a good example of participatory documentary.

Big media talent listening and talking with their audience
For Steve Garfield, a video blogger and author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets, the most significant trend in media and entertainment today is, “talent, from big media, listening and talking to their audience, social media is driving this change.” Garfield has observed that, “many old-timers are figuring this out, sometimes too late. He tells me about several stories in which, “news anchors, posting on a Facebook page, get fired from their jobs, only to hear form hundreds if not thousands of people that say they are going to miss the anchor on TV.” Garfield points out the cultural divide, “it comes as a surprise to these news people that they can interact with the audience.” But this is changing, now there is a growing number of TV journalists you can subscribe to right now in response to this trend of connecting with the audience. Garfield explains that several years ago, “I became friends with Jimmy Fallon because of his video blog, he reads, comments and responds,” (related video). Garfield adds, “I regularly chat with the FOX 25 news anchor, Maria Stephanos, on twitter, where she shared her cookie recipe with me.” (related blog post).

High speed internet connections/instant gratification
Jeremy Osborn, an Adobe products training specialist, believes that “high speed broadband connections are more important than ever since they facilitate instant access to media.” Osborn observes that his 10 year old son’s relationship with online media, “reminds me of myself as a kid but with books in the library” but in his son’s case, the relationship is with movies. Kids are growing up with a lot more motion media consumption and are accustomed to getting it on demand vs. appointment, compared to the previous generation, and this will drive huge changes as these kinds become adults. Osborn is, “ambivalent about this ‘instant gratification’ tendency,” and, “think it opens up a lot of troubling issues, but without a doubt it is a macro trend.” On a lighter note, Osborn points me to Adrian Curry’s posts offering critique on movie posters.

Hollywood is driving the divide between major and indie films farther apart
Zak Ray, a recent film school graduate currently working as a freelance cinematographer and editor, thinks one of the most interesting trends, “has not been a shift in the content itself, but rather the way it’s consumed, indeed, when content has shifted in recent years, the cause can often be traced to modes of consumption.” He suggests one example of this is, “the proliferation of transmedia,” and continues, “whether you like it or not, this is a format created entirely as a response to those consuming media on a variety of platforms, and as web series have shown us, such content need not exist only in support of a broadcast television show or feature film, and some content may actually be better suited to the web.” Ray points out that the economics of this trend can’t be ignored, “the ability to distribute one’s film on web and mobile channels is both a blessing and a curse, the blessing is that it’s free; combined with the democratization of every aspect of the filmmaking process. As a representative of the generation of filmmakers Ray does not have to raise a $1,000,000 budget, nor even $10,000, to make his next film. The flip side, Ray continues, is that, “monetizing such distribution has not yet been solved in any meaningful way, the notion of the internet being free is a hard one to break, and even with much web content moving from free to fee (read: paywalls), consumers seem unwilling to shell out for digital goods, with exception to subscription services like Netflix.” Ray laments, “that’s assuming the customer decides to pay at all, piracy plays no small role in this.” As far as the major industry players are concerned, Ray observes, “Hollywood seems to be driving the divide between major films and indies further apart, the result being the consolidation of all their eggs into summer tentpole baskets, and the relegation of smaller filmmakers to the web and other platforms.” Ray expresses concerned that there is, “very little in between, not necessarily a bad thing, but something filmmakers will have to learn to fit their films into.”

Photo credits:
1. People-Watching by Stuart Richards (CC BY-ND)
2. Tools are Transparent by Philippe Lejeune (CC BY-NC-SA)
3. 6,000 Students by Nathan Felde (Copyright 2011 by Nathan Felde)

Minor revisions were made to this document on October 17, 2011 to correct missing links and fix some typos..

The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era

Mitchell suggests that after believing for over a hundred years in the notion of objective truth in photography (read film), its hegemony as a reliable witness has come to an end with digital imaging (read digital video). Since the ontology of documentary film (shot on film) is closely tied to that of photography, the effect of digital video on documentary is very similar to that of digital imaging on photography, except that maybe the house of cards has fallen in a different manner, since cinema is “truth at 24 frames per second” as Jean-Luc Godard once said, compared to a picture being worth a thousand words.

True to Marshall McLuhan’s maxim, the content of every new medium is the previous medium. Digital video, when compared to motion picture film, is no different. To suggest that digital imaging contains film is not to suggest that there aren’t several significant philosophical differences in their respective underpinnings. Cinematography is based on photography and digital cinema imaging is based on digital imaging. As Mitchell writes,

…digital imaging technology represents a new “configuration of intention [and] focuses a powerful (though frequently ambivalent and resisted) desire to dismantle the rigidities of photographic seeing and to extend visual discourse beyond the depictive conventions and presumed certitudes of the photographic record. (p. 59)

Without the reliable “indexical” reference of photography, it becomes difficult to claim “I was there” or “this really happened” or “this is evidence of an event,” and documentary, which was already on shaky ground in terms of truth claims, is now thrown into a full fledge ontological crisis. A large number of journalists, scientists, and documentary filmmakers find the malleability of the photographic image disturbing.

We are still in the process of developing a comprehensive theoretical framework to deal with the malleability of images. Mitchell ends Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era with,

…the emergence of digital imaging has irrevocably subverted [...] certainties [of recorded facts], forcing us to adopt a far more wary and more vigilant interpretive stance [...] and confronted us with the inherent instabilities and indeterminacies of [...] meaning. (p. 225)

and continues,

…as we enter the post-photographic era, we must face once again the ineradicable fragility of our ontological distinctions between the imaginary and the real, and the tragic elusiveness of the Cartesian dream. (p. 225)

and thus the possibility of documentary truth comes to an end. Or does it? Truth, whatever we make of it in documentary, is a notion that has never relied exclusively on the photographic image. Rumors of the death of the possibility of truth claims in documentary have been greatly exaggerated. How “truth” is constructed is a complex process that has always involved more than just a dependency on the photographic image, which was never such a reliable witness in the first place.

In his article “From Real to Reel: Entangled in Non-Fiction Film” in Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Noël Carroll argues that,

In any given field of research or argument, there are patterns of reasoning, routines for assessing evidence, means of weighing the comparative significance of different types of evidence, and standards for observations, experimentation and for the use of primary and secondary sources that are shared by practitioners in that field. Abiding by these established practices is, at any given time, is believed to be the best method for getting at the truth.

Thus, since photographic evidence is only part of the system of evidence that filmmakers can provide in their documentary, order can be preserved and the ontological crisis is averted, at least for now.

Any given documentary should be analyzed in terms of standards essentially determined by non-photographic evidence, and that “film truth” based on a photographic record never had much substance or validity to start with. Even before digital trickery, documentary filmmakers have used clever editing or inappropriate B-Roll to lie with their images, Michael Moore’s Roger and Me providing a canonical example. It’s always been the rhetorical skill of the filmmaker that most effectively determines veracity of documentary in contrast to fiction. I think many (but certainly not all) documentary filmmakers would agree with Werner Herzog that it is the “ecstasy of truth” we’re after, not some Platonic truth, as if there were such a thing in the first place.

Bill Mitchell died this summer. He was a brilliant scholar and teacher. I never had a chance to take a class from him while I was at MIT, but I did have the pleasure one day of walking with him through the Stata Center as he spoke about the architectural program of the building. It was one of the most informative and delightful tours I’ve ever experienced. Wit, wisdom, and a love of architecture brought the ideas that drove the design of the building alive in my mind.

Perhaps now, with the ability of everyone to “broadcast themselves” we might see some of the future that Younglood envisioned forty years ago. A media form in which the demands of commerce and narrative give way to personal experience, personal perceptions taking precedence over the demands of traditional narratives. As Youngblood challenges his readers then and now, we need to create new narratives that are authentic, based on our personal experience, and thus truly unique. We have the means of making, collaborating, and distribution in today’s internet-based mediascape to bring Youngblood’s vision of synaesthetic cinema alive.

The personal computer allows us to merge the traditions of photography, typography, graphic design, audio and moving image production, interactivity, interaction through sensors, and more, into an expanded palette of infinite possibilities that Lev Manovich refers to as “hybrid, intricate, complex and rich visual language” in The Language of New Media (Leonardo Books, MIT Press, 2006, p. 11), which I like to call computational media. It encompasses every conceivable media form in a computational environment, which essentially makes it a hyper-medium.

I prefer terms like computational media and hypermedia over multi-media or digital media. The important transformation in photography and cinematography has not been digitization, but the embodiment of the medium in a computational environment. Computation is what is truly new in new media. Now, forty years later, we are living in an environment that makes expanded cinema not only possible, but necessary. Youngblood suggests that artists are ecologist crafting the environment and that expanded cinema will bring art and life closer together. We have a ways to go before we achieve that vision. As the internet becomes a new space for commercial conquest and net neutrality is threatened, we must fight to preserve this brave new medium so we may see the vision of Expanded Cinema come alive in our lifetimes.

Anyone who makes or consumes media should read this book. It’s an essential component of our intellectual diet for a sane planet.

1. culture of oral communication,

2. manuscript culture,

3. the Gutenberg galaxy, and

4. the electronic age.

The start of each phase is marked by the emergence of a new medium. Writing enabled manuscript culture, printing enabled what McLuhan called the Gutenberg galaxy, electronic media enabled the electronic age of broadcast communication. What has electronic media brought forth?

We have now entered the fifth era of history: the era of communication, simulation, and the end of reality. In previous ages we communicated in order to preserve and pass on memories. We lived in a world in which we believed there was a reality we wanted to share, so we communicated. But the signs we use are tricky and layered, they are deceptive, and the more we used signs the more we became removed from day-to-day, one-on-one interaction, we lost sight of the real.

The principle of reality ended in 1983 with the publication of Simulations, Baudrillard’s most influential work. At first only a small number of cultural and media critics were aware of the end, as the world continued to function under the illusion of reality. Sixteen years later the concept went mainstream with the release of the film The Matrix (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999). This blockbuster turned Baudrillard’s esoteric notion into a meme of apocalyptic proportions. Baudrillard wrote,

“Simulation is no longer that of a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory” (Baudrillard, 1983).

If the Matrix didn’t exist, Baudrillard would have invented it.

Simulations became a prescient handbook for the end of Renaissance ideals, fast-forwarding us through modernism, and throwing us straight into the eternal simulated present of post-modernism, post-capitalism, post-history, post-reality, post-memory, post-insert-your-favorite-concept-here. We no longer need to remember, we no longer can remember, for there is no reality, only information at out fingertips. And what we do remember is not even real in the sense of reality before 1983. Perhaps it never was. We are wired into the Matrix. Connected. In a wired eternal present without history, there can be no memory. Only desire fulfilled through consumption.

How did we get here? We learned how to write. Socrates tried to warn us of the dangers:

“If men learn [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom” (Plato, quoted in Kabitoglou (1990)).

Like Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, we chose to write, we chose to read, we chose “external marks,” and thus we chose to put our reality outside of ourselves, and thus, we created the Matrix, and with the Matrix, the principle of reality came to its untimely end. As Neo says in The Matrix, “All these memories I have, these places I went…. None of it ever happened. What does that mean?” Welcome to the simulacrum. We are happy to serve you.

References

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations, Trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Phillip Beitchman, Foreign Agents Series, Semiotext(e), 1983.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, 1962.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, The MIT Press, 1994 (originally published in 1964).

Kabitoglou, E. Douka. Plato and the English Romantics, Routledge, 1990.

Image Credits

1. Marshall McLuhan, © Canadian Postal Service

2. The Matrix, promotional materials, © Warner Bros.

3. “Jean Baudrillard (Simulated),” © Bifurcaciones

Note: This essay was originally written February 16, 2009 as part of an assignment for Design Seminar II
 at MassArt. Some minor editorial changes were made for the blog version.

1. Lumière Brothers’ First Films (Auguste and Louis Lumière, 1895-1897). A collection “actualities” made by the Lumière brothers between 1895 and 1897. While some historians trace the origins of documentary to Edvard Muybridge, others suggest these short films like “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory” (French title: La Sortie des Ouviers de L’Usine Lumiere a Lyon) and “The Arrival of a Train at the Station” (French title: L’ Arrivée d’un train à la Ciotat) demonstrate the beginnings of documentary cinema. The films consist of scenes from everyday life, providing an early example of documentary filmmaking and the aesthetics of photographic realism that would pervade the form to this day. For the Lumière brothers the new technology of motion pictures afforded them and their colleagues the opportunity to go out into the world and record everyday life. Audiences marveled at the beauty of simple things like seeing leaves moving in the wind. Imagine after a lifetime of seeing the stillness of photographs, paintings, and sculptures to walk into a darkened room and see on the screen images that looked like photographs, but they moved.

2. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922). Considered by many the first ethnographic film, “Nanook of the North” raises all the issues of representation we still deal with today. Through the character of Nanook (his real name was actually Allakariallak), Flaherty documented the “everyday life” of the Inuit Eskimos. We observe Nanook catching a seal and building an igloo, activities that the Inuit had abandoned by the time Flaherty was filming, but performed at Flaherty’s request. Flaherty did not allow Nanook to use any steel instruments or weapons in the film. Nanook’s re-enactments fit Flaherty’s Rousseau-inspired romantic vision of a culture that was rapidly fading. “Nanook of the North” has become a classic documentary, however, upon close analysis it has more of the characteristics of a fiction film, formed by western imagination. The debate over representational issues in documentary film started with Nanook and continues to this day.

3. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, Russian title: Chelovek s kino-apparatom). Among the best examples of poetic documentary to this day, a camera person travels through post-revolution Russia capturing images of everyday life. The protagonist of this film is the collective Russian people themselves. The film is loosely organized around the cycle of a day with music and editing moving the story along. The film makes explicit the many kinds of cinematic manipulation and serves as an encyclopedia of all of the techniques Vertov and his collaborators had access to including time-lapse, superimposition, cross-fade, etc. The filmmakers make themselves very evident in this film, a self-described experiment in cinematic communication. Vertov’s writings are also quite interesting, see “Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov,” edited and with an introduction by Annette Michelson.

4. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935). A documentary record of the Nazi Party Convention in Nuremberg, Germany. The film stands as one of the most disturbing, yet poetic, propaganda films every made.

5. The City (Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke, 1939). Contrasts industrialized city life with pastoral small-town America. The film was adapted by Lewis Mumford from the story by Pare Lorentz and includes music by Aaron Copland.

6. The Memphis Belle (William Wyler, 1944). The story of the final mission of the “Memphis Belle,” a B-17 Flying Fortress that became the first U.S. heavy bomber during World War II to complete twenty-five missions over Europe and return to the United States in one piece. The film was made by the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit to boost morale by showing the courage of “the boys who flew those planes.” Despite the hazards of combat, Wyler and his collaborators filmed multiple bomber missions (not all of them aboard the “Memphis Belle”) using 16mm cameras placed in the nose, tail, and other positions around the bomber. The original crew (which was back in the States for a war bond drive) was brought into a Hollywood recording studio to record their own dialog while watching the film, providing a sense of authenticity. In 2001 the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry. The “Memphis Belle” bomber is now at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio. In 1990 a narrative feature with the same name was produced directed by Michael Caton-Jones, providing an interesting compare and contrast opportunity.

7. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955). Resnais revisits the Nazi concentration camps ten years after the end of World War II. The film is made up of Resnais’ own shooting on location with Nazi footage of the camps, newsreels, and variety of other sources including Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. The film sparked controversy upon release. West German officials applied pressure on French officials to censor the film and it was removed from the Cannes festival line-up, yet eventually was screened out of competition. The film met with favorable reception by most critics and it eventually screened at numerous festivals. The film has sparked a number of debates, especially in terms of Resnais’ failing to disclose that a majority of the victims of the death camps were Jewish.

8. Primary (Robert Drew, 1960). Among the first American direct cinema masterpieces and the first intimate behind-the-scenes view of a political campaign. Robert Drew and his colleagues had film crews with both the Kennedy and Humphrey campaigns during the one of the state primaries.

9. Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (Robert Drew, 1963). Multiple camera teams around a crisis makes this one-of-a kind documentary come alive. This was among the early documentaries along with “Primary,” et al.. to make use of new lightweight cameras and sync sound. The film came about about when President Kennedy screened “Primary” and asked Drew what he wanted to do next, to which Drew replied, “to make a film about a President in crisis.” Three years later in the June of 1963, President John Kennedy and his brother Robert were in the midsts of a landmark racial confrontation with Alabama Governor George Wallace over opening the all-white University of Alabama to enrollment by two black students. With never-again-permitted access inside the oval office, we see the President and Attorney General making crucial, time-sensitive, historic decisions.

10. 7-Up Series (Michael Apted, 1964, 1971, 1978, 1985, 1992, 1999, 2007). The 7-Up Series started in 1964 when Granada television interviewed fourteen 7-year-old British children from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. The film was among the first attempts on television to record real people living real lives. Every seven years since, Michael Apted has returned to interview the now-adults about their lives and how they have changed. Titles in the series are: 7-Up, 7 Plus Seven, 21-Up, 28-Up, 35-Up, 42-Up, and 49-Up.

11. Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa, 1965). A montage of the 1964 Olympics. A large number of camerapeople captured the event which through editing become cinematic poetry.

12. Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967). Follows Bob Dylan on his 1965 tour in England. An excellent example of American Direct Cinema offering a glimpse into the private life of Dylan at a time when he is gaining popularity and transforming his style.

13. Monterey Pop (D.A. Pennebaker, 1968). Pure concert film, and the first one of it’s kind, the film that launched the concert film genre and still among the best examples of the genre. The movie is on the DVD The Complete Monterey Pop Festival: Disc 1: Monterey Pop.

14. Salesman (Albert and David Maysles, 1968). This seminal documentary follows four bible salesmen as they travel far from their families across the country selling expensive bibles to housewives who really can’t afford them. One of the finest examples of American cinéma vérité.

15. The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophüls, 1969), French title: Le Chagrin et la pitié. Ophüls explores the multi-faceted response of the French to occupation during World War II.

16. Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1971). Who else but Herzog could make a film about people who are deaf and blind through which he explores philosophical issues of communication and knowledge that have engaged philosophers for centuries?

17. Hearts and Minds(Peter Davis, 1974). A documentary about the Vietnam War that premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, however, distribution in the United States was delayed by legal maneuvering, due to the controversial nature of the film. The title is from a phrase spoken by Lyndon B. Johnson, “the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there.”

18. Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976). Excellent documentary of the 1973 coal miners’ strike against the Eastover Mining Company in Kentucky as the workers try to join the United Mine Workers Association.

19. Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1980). A documentary about the pet cemetery business told through interviews that launched Morris’ career. Among the cast of characters is Floyd “Mac” McClure whose pet cemetery fails and he must dug up and transport hundreds of animals to another pet cemetery. A documentary classic dealing with mortality for which Werner Herzog ate his shoe.

20. The Atomic Cafe (Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, & Pierce Rafferty, 88 min., 1982). Documents a defining period in history and presents a chilling and humorous look at cold-war era paranoia in the United States through newsreel footage, government archives, military training films, etc.

21. Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982). One of the best making-of/behind-the-scenes documentaries ever made. Essential viewing.

22. Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982). With stunning photography and a score by Phillip Glass, the film presents a prophetic indictment of western culture. The title is taken from the Hopi language,meaning “life out of balance,” Reggio, a filmmaker deeply involved in progressive political causes, states in Essence of Life, a documentary film available on the DVD edition of Koyaanisqatsi, “It’s not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, so we are no longer conscious of its presence. So what I decided to do in making these films is to rip out all the foreground of a traditional film—the foreground being the actors, the characterization, the plot, the story—I tried to take the background, all of that that’s just supported like wallpaper, move that up into the foreground, make that the subject, ennoble it with the virtues of portraiture, and make that the presence.”

23. The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984). Not only a compelling story, but an example of excellent structuring and documentary editing. Recently made into a feature film, offering another interesting opportunity for comparing and contrasting the narrative and documentary versions of this story.

24. This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984). A classic, among the best examples of the mocumentary genre.

25. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985). Survivors, witnesses, and former Nazis talk about the events of the Holocaust. Lanzmann does not use reenactments nor historical footage, instead, uses only interviews and visits to the various places his interviewees discuss. Not only is this compelling storytelling, but demonstrates the awesome power of good interviews (along with The Last Days).

26. Seventeen (Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines, 1985). A fine example of American direct cinema, and while not as well known as the classics (e.g. Salesmen), it deserves a place among them. The project was originally designed to be part of a series (conceived by Peter Davis) as one of six television documentaries under the collective title of ‘”Middletown.” Five of the films were broadcast by PBS in 1982, but Seventeen was excluded, probably due to its raw, honest, observational approach looking at teenage life in America including strong language, drinking, drugs, a romance between a seventeen year old white girl and a young black man, and no artificial plot or crisis structure. And yet these qualities—which led PBS to not show the film—are exactly what makes Seventeen a unique and honest portrayal.

27. Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986). McElwee originally received funding to document General William Sherman’s effect on the South. But before he start the project, his girlfriend leaves him, and his journey through the South becomes personal as he meets several women in his travels and examines his own life rather than that of General Sherman’s, fueled the the personal documentary movement

28. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988). Morris has a unique style all his own. When most people do re-creations it’s pretty much the documentary equivalent of Velveeta cheese, however, when Morris does re-creations, it’s in the category of cinematic art, pushing the boundaries of what we consider is, and is not, a documentary film and providing the genre with some of the best examples of John Grierson’s quixotic definition of documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality.”

29. For All Mankind (Al Reinert, 1989). Reinert documents the Apollo space program with a focus on the human aspects of the missions. Rather than use voice-over narration, the film presents us with the voices of the astronauts and mission control personnel. A score by Brian Eno sets the emotional tone.

30. Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989). Poetically celebrates the difficult life of gay black men who must deal with double discrimination in terms of race and homophobia. The film is available on the POV 20th anniversary collection DVD along with other documentary classics like Silverlake Life: The View from Here, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, Regret to Inform, and many others.

31. Notebook on Cities and Clothes (Wim Wenders), 1989. A cinematic essay on film vs. video by way of fashion design. Wenders was invited by the Georges Pompidou Centre to make a film in the context of fashion and the result is this unusual documentary made from a mix of 16mm and video materials exploring the work of Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. Wenders follows the designer from Tokyo to Paris as the designer prepares for Yamamoto’s latest showing. Through dialog with the designer and his own musings, Wenders offers a mélange of reflections on the ephemeral nature of fashion and the essential differences between shooting on film vs. video.

32. Roger & Me (Michael Moore, 1989). I have serious issues with Moore’s documentary ethics. Moore pioneers a new form of rhetorical documentary that places the demands of entertainment and the director’s thesis over discourse and facts, and while I would not argue that it’s not a documentary, it’s not in he same league of documentary as Barbara Kopple’s American Dream.

33. American Dream (Barbara Kopple, 1990). A good example of a respectful filmmaker-subject relationship, the antithesis of Moore’s style as exemplified in Roger & Me.

34. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, and Eleanor Coppola, 1991). A film about the making of Apocalypse Now and among the best “making of” documentaries.

35. Madonna: Truth or Dare (Alek Keshishian and Mark Aldo Miceli, 1991). An entertaining documentary about Madonna’s persona behind the scenes shot during her “Blond Ambition” tour. A great deal of 16mm black and white film flowed as Madonna performed for the camera, including a famous scene with a coke bottle.

36. In the Shadow of the Stars (Allie Light and Irving Saraf, 1991). An affectionate look at the path to stardom inside the world of opera. In a refreshing twist, the filmmakers focus on the singers who stand “in the shadows” behind the divas and sheds light on the lure of celebrity and offers a privileged look into the world of opera. The opening sequence is beautiful.

37. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, 1992). The film presents Noam Chomsky’s ideas through interviews, stock footage and illustrations in a manner suitable to a new generation that does not read and prefers to watch.

38. Man Bites Dog (Remy Belvaux & Benoit Poelvoorde, 1992, French title: C’est arrivé près de chez vous). A mockumentary that takes a satirical look at how media promotes violence as a documentary crew follows a serial killer on his murderous activities.

39. Visions of Light (Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, and Stuart Samuels, 1992). Interviews with cinematographers are inter-cut with beautiful clips from their films as they discuss the art and craft of cinematography. The interviews were shot in High Definition video in an attempt to demonstrate that high definition video was ready to be taken seriously as a tool for cinematography. It would take another ten years before that became true.

40. Silverlake Life: The View from Here (Tom Joslin & Peter Friedman, 1993). A personal diary that addresses the issue of living with AIDS and the acceptance of gay couples by their family, among the new crop of films shot on Hi8 (at the time) that helped open up distribution to documentaries shot on prosumer video formats.

41. The War Room (Chris Hegedus & D.A. Pennebaker, 1993). An behind-the-scenes look at Clinton campaign headquarters where George Stephanopoulous and James Carville perfected the art making the news cycle work for them.

42. Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994). This well crafted film shot over several years follows two boys from inner-city Chicago with dreams of becoming basketball stars. We follow them through high school and some of their college years as they win scholarships and face obstacles along the way. Among the first wave of documentaries shot on miniDV that achieved theatrical release, once and for all removing the stigma of shooting on video rather than film.

43. Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994). A wonderfully done and intimate portrait of Robert Crumb, the comic book artist known for his biting social criticism through comics like “Mr. Natural” and “Fritz the Cat.” Over a six year period, Crumb allowed Zwigoff access to his family, friends, ex-wife, and former lovers.

44. Fear of a Black Hat (Rusty Cundieff, 1994). A mockumentary on the evolution and state of American hip hop music in the spirit of This is Spinal Tap. Rusty Cundieff, the director and writer also was the lead actor (Ice Cold).

45. Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (Freida Lee Mock, 1995). About the life of American artist Maya Lin, whose best-known work is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

46. When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996). A documentary about the “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held in what was then called Zaire in 1974, capturing the run-up to the fight, the controversy surrounding the event. A wonderfully crafted film.

47. Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog, 1997). This film tells the story of Dieter Dengler, Vietnam veteran who grew up in a Germany. Dengler recalls an early memory of American fighter-bombers destroying his village in which he saw one of the pilots and from that day forward he had to be a pilot. He eventually became a U.S. Navy pilot and while flying in Vietnam he was forced to make a crash landing in Laos. He was captured and became a prisoner of war. Eventually Dengler escaped. For the film Dengler returns to Laos and Thailand with Herzog in order to recreate his experiences. A character based documentary done in a manner only Herzog could make. But wait, there’s more. Herzog also made a fiction film based on the story titled Rescue Dawn, providing an opportunity to reflect on the differences between documentary and narrative filmmaking (especially since Herzog often makes documentaries with narrative elements as well as narratives with documentary elements).

48. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (Errol Morris, 1997). Presents the profiles of four men with intense passion for their chosen careers: a robotics scientist, a mole-rat expert, a lion tamer, and a topiary artist. As he did in “First Person” and “The Fog of War,” Morris used the “interrortron” to film the interviews in the film.

49. Four Little Girls (Spike Lee, 1997). On September 15, 1963, a bomb destroyed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls. The crime became a defining moment in the American civil-rights movement. This film tells the story of the bombing through testimonials from members of the victims’ families along with interviews with others, including George Wallace, the former Alabama Governor.

50. The Last Days (James Moll, 1998). There have been many documentaries made about the Holocaust, however, The Last Days is among the best (along with Shoah). Rather than telling the story with archival images and narration (which provides viewers a safe intellectual distance), this film presents personal stories that puts in sharp relief the evil of the Holocaust. From a documentary maker’s perspective, an example of the power of well crafted interviews is evident.

51. Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders, 1999). A poetic documentary wherein guitarist Ry Cooder gathers together twelve legendary musicians and resurrects the music of pre-revolutionary Cuba for a series of recording sessions and performances. A variety of performances and observational footage are inter-cut with interviews of the musicians reminiscing in a backdrop of a decaying but colorful Havana. The lush and colorful images were captured using a mix of miniDV and Digital Betacam in the PAL format, helping to de-stigmatize the use of video for films destined for theatrical release.

52. American Movie (Chris Smith, 1999). Smith documents a filmmaker’s attempt to make an independently produced horror film, capturing wonderfully the painful truth about independent filmmaking.

53. This Is What Democracy Looks Like (Jill Friedberg & Rick Rowley, 2000). Edited from footage shot by over a hundred media activists, this film presents a political and emotional account the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. An important example of the power of collaborative filmmaking. Presents a unique point of view made possible by weaving together footage from a hundred cameras. A glimpse of the future of documentary film made possible by collaboration on a grand scale.

54. In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Martina Kudlácek, 2002). A beautifully crafted portrait that weaves together fascinating interviews with Deren’s poetic images. Maya Deren, along with Stan Brakhage, is among the most important filmmakers of the American avant-garde. Kudlácek demonstrates Deren’s contributions to cinematography, editing, and how filmmakers discuss their work.

55. Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002). This film, like “Roger & Me,” raises questions about documentary ethics. The film is full of deceptive editing that twists and stretches the truth, yet through his storytelling skills, Moore, like a good magician, hides the mechanisms behind the tricks, resulting in a compelling argument that appeals to the emotions, but falls apart during the fact checking process. Moore unwittingly offers right-wing fanatics fodder for discrediting leftist arguments.

56. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003). In the words of Roger Ebert, “an instructive lesson about the elusiveness of facts.”

57. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (Judy Irving, 2003). Delightful story of a modern-day St Francis and his relationship with a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco. Beautifully shot on 16mm film, it’s not only a great story, but a feast for the eyes, the soft image with rich colors does justice to the story.

58. My Architect: A Son’s Journey (Nathaniel Kahn, 2003). Nathaniel Kahn examines in a cool, understated, and respectful manner the life and work of his father, architect Louis Kahn, whose work included innovative buildings including the Yale University Art Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, and the Parliament and Capitol Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Ironically, the senior Kahn left the world broke and mostly in obscurity despite being among the most innovative architects of his time weaving a distinctive personal vision and the international style.

59. Earthlings (Shaun Monson, 2003). A provocative examination of our dependence on and relationship to animals. The film examines how the food, medical, and entertainment industries use animals and how they are linked to the global economy. The film challenges our overall lack of respect for animals with searing facts and harrowing images. Joaquin Phoenix narrates.

60. Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004). An excellent example of a personal documentary in which Spurlock documents thirty days during which he eats only fast food from McDonald’s. This diet has a drastic effect on his health. The film offers an entertaining and cleverly constructed reflection on the fast food industry and bad nutrition. Spurlock gained 24 pounds during the thirty days which in turn took fourteen months for him to lose. A model of activist and personal filmmaking coming together.

61. Born into Brothels (Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, 2004). A portrait of children of prostitutes living in Calcutta’s red-light district, a slickly produced documentary with beautiful images.

62. Control Room (Jehane Noujaim, 2004) A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the media’s vital role in manufacturing history. In the early days of the war in Iraq, Americans could see on their televisions twenty-four hours coverage of the war and observe a “U.S. victory.” At the same time, a different story was being played out on television sets throughout the Arab world as Al-Jazeera broadcast images of Iraqi civilian casualties and American POWs (both taboo on American media, so much for the so-called liberal media).

63. Grizzly Man (Wener Herzog, 2005). Herzog explores what he calls “the ecstasy of truth” in this documentary that reflects on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, a serious bear enthusiast. Combines interviews with people who knew Treadwell and Treadwell’s own footage of his interactions with grizzly bears before he and his girlfriend were killed (and partially eaten) by a bear in 2003.

64. Who Killed the Electric Car? (Christopher Paine, 2006). A well structured, informative, and entertaining documentary in the form of a whodunnit. Recounts the story of the EV-1, an electric car that General Motors introduced in California and then suddenly pulled off the road, crushing most of them, much to the dismay of drivers who loved the car. The California Air Resources Board passed the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate in 1990, providing an incentive for GM to introduce the EV-1 into the California automobile market. The mandate was eventually reversed after suits were bought by automobile manufacturers and the oil industry who feared losing out on profit from the oil-fueled transportation monopoly. The film also presents a critical look at hydrogen vehicles and a positive discussion of plug-in hybrids.

65. Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (Jennifer Fox, 2006). An amazing six-hour, six-part, documentary of epic proportions in which we follow the filmmaker as she travels around the world asking her women friends how they construct and imagine their lives as she struggles to figure out her own. In her attempt to capture how women talk, Fox filmed her conversations with friends using a technique she calls “passing the camera.” Read my post on the film, “Flying takes documentary form to new heights.”

66. Operation Filmmaker (Nina Davenport, 2007). An insightful look at the filmmaker-subject relationship. Read my review of the film, “Operation Filmmaker offers crisp angle on subject-filmmaker relationship.”

67. Intimidad (David Redmon & Ashley Sabin, 2008). A beautiful film that weaves together a mix of home movie, cinéma vérité, and informal interview footage to present a gently observed portrait of Cecy and Camilo Ramirez and their daughter Loida, a hard-working young family living in Reynosa, Mexico. Read my interview with the filmmakers for more about the film and how it was made.

That’s it for now. There are many important classics missing from this list, but in many cases (e.g. “Chronicle of a Summer” and “Eyes on the Prize” to name just two) films missing from this list are not available through Netflix. I’ll be expanding this list over time and will eventually post a revised list of one hundred excellent documentaries available either through Netflix or online. Your comments are most welcome.

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