What Makes a Good Documentary?

Documentaries have been around for a long time to record our "true" stories, whether they were newsreels of world events or scientific accounts of life. In schools they were often associated with boring accounts of animals mating or black and white, fuzzy filming. Those days are over! With state-of-the art editing and storytelling, documentaries can now be as suspenseful and riveting as many fiction films and because they are at least based on a true story, they can grab the viewer even more as they attempt to make sense of the veracity of these events.

As I review a range of documentaries, I will hold the lens of truth telling to these texts in an attempt to understand alternative perspectives and in order to discuss the ways editing and filming can alter our sense of reality. I will review both standard and cutting edge films and will examine how useable these films could be for secondary schools as well as other audiences.

Every week I will review a documentary and will rate it on it the following criteria:

1. Storytelling

2. Cinematography

3. Deeper Meaning

4. Targeted Audience

5. Connections to other works and/or ideas

6. Quality of Research

I invite you to participate in lively conversations about these films and to recommend a few of your own. I look forward to the adventure!