Just a couple of weeks after writing a post about Participant Productions and their success with socially-active filmmaking, I thought it was interesting to see how many politically- and socially-driven films were at the Toronto Film Festival this year.
Here's a sampling of what's been screened:
- Death of a President, a British fictional documentary about an obviously fictional assassination of President Bush
- Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, a documentary about the fallout surrounding the band's public criticism of President Bush
- When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Spike Lee's HBO documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
- "...So Goes the Nation," a documentary examining the U.S. electoral process
- Sicko, clips from Michael Moore's new film about the U.S. health care system
I haven't done any real research on this, but it seems to me that the film industry is much more political than the music industry these days, which wasn't the case 35 years ago. When a political message is woven into lyrics, it's generally more subtle (and tends to last only a few minutes). Films--especially documentaries--are anything but subtle. It's also a time commitment to go to the theater or rent the DVD and watch a film. (Of course, it's a different story if the film is aired on HBO or, say, ABC.) But assuming it's a film you have to go rent or buy a ticket for, are these sorts of films just "preaching to the choir," or do they actually motivate change?
(For more on what's happening with political films in Toronto, check out this indieWire article.)
Advocacy documentaries have become huge in the last few years. It is no surprise that they began emerging since the initial phases of the Bush administration. It is clear that these filmmakers are angry and their documentaries reflect that rage.
Posted by Dodd on September 28, 2006 12:54 PMWhether these films actually motivate change depends on how the filmmaker chooses to craft their message. Films with a strong political agenda tend to alienate viewers (with the exception of Fahrenheit 9/11). However, films that raise relevant issues regarding everyone, right or left, will probably motivate more change. An Inconvenient Truth is a shining example. It manages to suppress its rage into a positive message to the audience that they can do something to save the world. More preachy documentaries, on the other hand, are sometimes very well-made, but are clearly made for a specific audience already in agreement with the subject matter. Whether these motivate change in the general moviegoing public is questionable.