Of the 11 political documentaries being screened by the UCLA
Film and Television Archive in the two-week series “This is
Not Your TV,” one clear highlight is acclaimed filmmaker
Errol Morris’ new work “Fog of War: Eleven Lessons of
Robert S. McNamara.” One of the most celebrated documentary
makers in recent history, Morris will be present to speak about his
film after it screens at the Harmony Gold Theater on Nov. 20.
Yet big names aren’t the only things that the archive has
to offer. Kicking off tonight at the James Bridges Theatre, the
series will start with the premier of “A Different World
is Possible,” a film collectively directed by 33 people
documenting the G-8 protests in the streets of Genoa in July 2001.
This Sunday, the theater will screen “My Terrorist,” a
very personal work by Yulie Cohen Gerstel, who is otherwise not a
professional filmmaker.
The diversity of films reflects the “embarrassment of
riches” that Cheng-Sim Lim, co-head of programming at the
Film and Television Archive, confronted as she put the series
together.
“We’ve wanted to do a political documentary series
for a while,” Lim said. “And in the last year at least,
we noticed that there were so many fantastic documentaries being
made around the world, and they weren’t getting shown very
much in the U.S., on TV or theatrically. Also, we felt that there
was a need to show something other than what passes for political
discourse in our mass media.”
Part of the sudden boom in documentary filmmaking can be
attributed to the runaway success of Michael Moore’s
“Bowling for Columbine.” But many films to be featured
by the archive are decidedly unconventional compared to
Moore’s critically and commercially successful film. “A
Different World is Possible” eschews traditional narration in
favor of a more lyrical meditation on mass protest. Travis
Wilkerson’s “An Injury to One,” which started as
a student project at the California Institute of the Arts, is
characterized by its “bold, Bauhaus-inspired design.”
Lim, however, thinks that there’s one singular characteristic
that viewers will find in all the featured films.
“In the same vein of the American indie movement in the
’90s, documentary filmmakers are feeling a need that
Hollywood hasn’t been paying attention to ““ people are
hungry for the well-told stories. So, like the indie narrative
features, … it’s the documentaries that can provide
them.”
Both accessible and forward-thinking, the documentaries may
provide the archive with a chance to dispel certain myths about the
medium that keep it from garnering a larger audience and serious
attention from Hollywood.
“I think people who are not familiar with documentaries
may have a perception that they are full of preachy
speeches,” Lim said. “One of the points that we wanted
to make with this particular series was … that there are many
ways to tell a story. Of the narrative techniques used, some take a
more personal approach, some allude to different forms of drama,
some are lyrical. They all have different effects, but
they’re all very effective.”
For a full list of documentaries being screened as a part of
the “This is Not Your TV” series, visit
www.cinema.ucla.edu.