Thom Powers Issues Call for Improved Nonfiction Film Criticism

My friend and colleague Thom Powers has just posted a lengthy essay on his Stranger Than Fiction blog calling for (a) film critic(s) who will specialize in nonfiction film.  It's an excellent piece with several interesting examples of the dearth of serious nonfiction film criticism.  Two excerpts:

Auteurism had Andrew Sarris. Abstract expressionism had Clement Greenberg. Punk rock had Lester Bangs. Where is the equivalent voice for today’s documentary scene? In the past, nonfiction film has drawn the attention of a few notable critics. Starting in the 1920’s, John Grierson actively championed the form. His generation gave way to the breakthroughs in direct cinema, covered by Jonas Mekas for the Village Voice and the “Living Room War” of Vietnam, analyzed by Michael Arlen for The New Yorker. Back then, documentary filmmakers were still dreaming of a future when equipment would be cheaper and distribution more accessible. Now, thanks to digital technology, that future has arrived. But America’s critical arbiters have lagged behind. Newspapers and magazines still follow the customs of an old era, squeezing in the occasional documentary review between saturation coverage of Hollywood dramas and comedies...

If you want to measure the gap between how the Times treats nonfiction books versus films, count the words. In the pages of the Times Book Review, nonfiction books are assessed each week in pieces running 1500 words or longer. A recent book review on the oral history of George Plimpton topped 3600 words. In the film section, documentary reviews rarely exceed 900 words, even when it comes to a title previously lauded at festivals such as MAN ON WIRE or PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL. Under such space constraints, what’s lost is the chance to place the film into the context of similar works or the director’s past career. In the case of PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL, readers might benefit to know how it compares to other docs such as LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR or IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA, all set in the same country. In the case of MAN ON WIRE, it would be illuminating to learn more about the past work of its director James Marsh. But in reviews of both these works, the Times and most every other publication left out any such consideration. Scott’s review of MAN ON WIRE spares one sentence to acknowledge the director’s long career.

Comments

[Mark Bell]

Thom doesn't read Film Threat, does he? We cover docs pretty hard (and not just the ones that wind up getting the mainstream press). Or maybe we don't count in the world of criticism, being neither a magazine (anymore) nor a newspaper. Oh well...

[Pamela]

Right, seemingly bloggers still don't count for much--well, most of us anyway.

[Matthew Lucas]

Part of the problem is the overall lack of accessibility to documentaries. I write for a paper that serves a relatively small town for which a drive to an art house theater could take over an hour. And even then the presence of documentaries are few and far between. I would LOVE to review more documentaries in the paper, but and forced to relegate that to my blog because my editor understandably doesn't want reviews of films that aren't playing nearby, despite my desire to introduce a rural area to things they might not otherwise would have tried or even heard of.

I don't have a solution, but I don't think the blame necessarily lies with the critics.

[Thom Powers]

Mark & Pamela, I didn’t mean to slight the efforts of Film Threat or bloggers. In the case of Film Threat, I’ve followed its growth ever since the 1980s when it started as a Xeroxed fanzine near my home in suburban Detroit. I applaud its effort to review lower profile docs such as Hi My Name is Ryan, Frontrunners, and Heavy Metal in Baghdad. And I applaud blogs like Pamela Cohn’s Still In Motion that fill a void (as I stated in my piece). I can’t tell if you only reacted to AJ’s quotation or read my whole posting (if the latter, why not comment directly on STFdocs?). Maybe you didn’t reach the part where I herald the new forums of the Internet. Despite the admirable efforts being made in these venues, they tend toward different activities than what I would call “in-depth criticism” - the kind of long, reflective essays like the example I used of Jonathan Rosenbaum. I’d be very pleased to see Film Threat or bloggers push deeper in that direction.