So any pretense to “objectivity” for a message movie “documentary” like this is thrown out the window. But if you believe there is a “both sides” to marriage equality you are likely not going to watch this documentary about the law suit to overturn California’s infamous Proposition 8, nor will you accept this film, which …
Tag: Human Rights
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (2009, Anders Ostergaard)
Burma VJ is one of those journalism-as-documentary films that is out of date pretty quickly after it is made – the military regime that is depicted in this film has fallen and a new, less repressive and supposedly democratic regime has taken its place. But just because things have happened since this film was made, …
Chasing Asylum (2016, Eva Orner)
When I lived in Australia well over a decade ago, the Australian government would take the “boat people” – refugees coming illegally by boat to Northern Australia, Western Australian Queensland and some Australian islands – who made it ashore and throw them in jails in the middle of nowhere in the Outback. The boat people …
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984 Rob Epstein)
So unfortunately the filmmakers made a strange – but perhaps understandable – decision when telling Milk’s story: they assumed they were speaking to a very particular audience. This assumption led to another: that therefore everybody knows everything they need to know about the backstory already.