Per tradition, the International Documentary Association has announced most of its winners for next Friday's gala awards ceremony (while saving the unveiling of the top prize for the big night). The headline is probably the fact that the Alan Ett Music Documentary prize will go to Stephen Walker's YOUNG@HEART, a film that is also in the running for the IDA's Best Documentary Feature award - where it may well pose a challenge to favorite MAN ON WIRE.
But if there's a subhead, it is this - TROUBLE THE WATER, already left out of the IDA's Best Documentary race, did not win the award in the one category where it was nominated - the ABCNews VideoSource Award. Instead, that honor - which salutes a film for best use of archival news footage - will go to C. Karim Chrobog's WAR CHILD. While the peculiar nature of the award (must we really retread old ground to explain why an award for archival news footage is anathema to folks round these parts?) hardly - in and of itself - portends ominous storm warnings for the acclaimed Katrina documentary, it does suggest that the film is not the shoo-in that has been suggested elsewhere. Also out in the category was ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED, which was surprisingly left off on the Academy's doc shortlist last week.
Other announced winners include BURNING THE FUTURE: COAL IN AMERICA by filmmaker David Novack, which will receive the Pare Lorentz Award. An honorable mention in that category will go to Oliver Hodge's GARBAGE WARRIOR. Nominees in the category had included the Oscar shortlist titles PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL and STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE.
For the second year in a row, the Showtime series THIS AMERICAN LIFE, the TV version of Ira Glass' beloved public radio show, will receive the Continuing Series Award, while SIN CITY LAW will take the prize in the Limited Series category.
While the award for Best Short Film will be reserved for next Friday, the IDA did announce the winner of the Student Filmmaker Award, which this year will be presented to American University student Laura Waters Hinson for her film AS WE FORGIVE.
For our initial post on this year's awards, including a list of honorary award recipients and a full list of this year's nominees, go here.
Awards will be handed out next Friday, December 5 in Los Angeles. Morgan Spurlock will host.
Despite Trouble the Water’s high ratings - and one of this year’s festival darlings - no one has read the film for what it is: the most contrived, over the top, get-behind-the-issue/cause docs of the century. It is the exemplar of the new mold of self-righteous docs. It’s a given that the directors completely fucked-up what could have been a truly troublesome, complicated metaphorical story about recovery and transformation - both of a city and a person (or couple, in this case). But it’s not a given that the directing duo (and their editor) imitate what’s been happening in U.S. docs since the birth of Roger and Me: the unnecessary intercuts of sloppy, heavy-handed and manufactured cheap shots ruminating throughout the film (e.g., Bush comments, "uppity-White people" in the French Quarter declaring a rise in tourist and a comeback for the city, and a propaganda laden, "lead-the-audience" storyline about its main characters while hiding their backstory).
The directors’ point of view is based in identity politics, where they, as "white people of privilege" (gag me!), feel a "duty" to represent "people of color" (read, “underprivileged”) in a "responsible" way (read, “condescending”), given the historical connotations and representations of people of color in the past and present. The directors' story amounts to nothing more than a hybrid of a gritty and slick slung together images that fondle self-identified progressives and liberals in all the right ways (in other words, the directors found the "L-Spot"). Rather than "doing the right thing," Trouble the Water "does the righteous thing." They go for the political gut of tapping into 8 years of disgust with the Bush administration and target “America” as the true victim (“It’s not about a storm. It’s about America”).
Throughout Trouble the Water, the directors deliberately leave out their leading and baited questions and, instead, leave in the responses they wanted to obtain from the characters. Their film is told completely from the point of view of the directors. Additionally, the characters respond with what they think the directors want to hear ("Bush is Bad" - everyone clap, “Let's rap” - everyone cheer; “Return to the Scene of the Crime” - everyone feel righteous anger and sadness by reliving the collective trauma of loss). It's the worst piece of recycled "noble heroin" story – a form of micro-righteousness that lacks the strength, depth, and honesty to explore deeper stories that will eventually tell themselves. Self-righteous films, instead, simply reconfirm what the directors (and programmers) already believe. They reinforce narrow mindedness while simultaneously reinscribe political docs as the standard by which to evaluate documentaries. They become the new norm.
Trouble the Water is the epitome of such a film as norm. It speaks to shared political ideologies which go on to win awards thus fueling the new era of righteous films in a post-fascist manner: The Garden, Fuel, Pray the Devil, Operation Homecoming, An Inconveinent Truth, etc. These issue based docs reconfirm political and lifestyle identities (or at least how the directors and programmers would like other people to see life in an Alfred Schutz sort of way). These self-righteous films are made for people who want to see their ideologies on the screen, to re-inscribe their beliefs, clap when they're recognize them, and then praise it after they leave because reinforces their world view. These films are recognized for what they do instead of how they do what they try to do. Most of all, they lack courage to truly explore.
Self-righteous docs do nothing to advance storytelling, nor do they truly challenge audiences. There is little room for storytelling - trumped by political docs that focus on "conscience raising,” "changing people's minds," and/or “activist films.” Where are the men and women docs that truly walk on a tightrope to the end of the world? Where are the daring and different films instead of safe and conservative ones that try to maximize the "audience award" syndrome? Today’s climate of documentaries is issue based that appeal to the masses in the worst possible way: through populism.
Man on Wire truly inspires a new form of creativity that transcends the actual documentary and the story. It is transcendental in old fashioned modernist ways. It's too bad almost all the “major” doc festivals have jumped in bed with politics and equated documentary with advancing political points of views. Why haven’t any right wing nonsense docs ever been nominated? Take Expelled, for instance. At least it doesn’t disguise their politics the way in which the liberal films do. Then again, what’s the difference between Expelled and Trouble the Water, Fuel, or the many other issue based docs?
“Enough!” as Zizek would say. Off with their heads! The revolution in documentary is now the dominant, suffocating ideology, and Full Frame, Silverdocs, IDFA, Hot-Docs, Tribeca, and to some degree, Sundance are all paving the road of homogeneity with political intentions. Politics trump story.
Posted by: Politics Trump Story | November 24, 2008 at 10:27 PM