I eat documentaries for breakfast. Seriously, I can't see enough. Once I saw "
Hoop Dreams" in 1994, I was hooked, and I've spent the years since catching up on the greats – "
Hearts and Minds," "
Grey Gardens," "
Gates of Heaven," etc. – and seeing all the new ones. It's why I love my job at Rocky Mountain PBS and why I love coordinating our ITVS Community Cinema screenings. It is extra exciting to me, then, to see two local filmmakers enjoy serious success with their ambitious, thoughtful documentaries.
Documentarians Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher are having a good month. Last week, their latest documentary "
They Killed Sister Dorothy" won the jury award
and audience award for documentaries at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin. This week, their documentary "
Iron Ladies of Liberia" airs nationally on PBS (that's tonight at 9 on "Independent Lens") after a run of public screenings/discussions in 45 American cities, including Denver (see photos above).
"Iron Ladies of Liberia" captures a year in the life of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the freely elected president of Liberia. This level of access to a president anywhere is remarkable, and President Johnson Sirleaf puts on no airs for cameras. She is captured as is, speaking as directly to the filmmakers as she does to her cabinet and the people who elected her. My favorite scene features a conversation with her as she's having her makeup done. It's wonderfully intimate and conveys great trust between subject and filmmaker.
Daniel and Henry's brand-new film, "They Killed Sister Dorothy," is also astonishing in access alone. Under Daniel's direction, the crew traveled to Brazil to follow the murder investigation of Dorothy Mae Stang, a nun from Dayton, Ohio, who was gunned down on the road in the Amazon jungle. Sister Dorothy dedicated the last decades of her life to humanitarian and environmental work (in her eyes, the issues were one and the same) in the Amazon.
I was fortunate enough to attend the screening of "They Killed Sister Dorothy" in Austin last week, and to see the audience rise to their feet when Daniel and Henry took the stage after the closing credits. It was all the better, a day later, to hear that "They Killed Sister Dorothy" took both documentary awards at SXSW. (See Joanne Ostrow's feature on Daniel and Henry in the
Denver Post here.)
The thing that moves me so much about documentaries is that it sparks my desire to learn about things outside my normal realm of interest. Before, I didn't know much about African politics or deforestation in the Amazon, but now I care enough to check out some library books or do some research. I want to get involved. I want to tell people about it. I've had this same experience with so many other documentaries, such as "
A League of Ordinary Gentlemen," the highly entertaining doc about professional bowlers. Or "
Cruel and Unusual," a devastating account of the violence incurred by transgender women in prison. This documentary completely opened my mind to something I'd never thought of in my life. It's really no exaggeration to call these experiences life changing.
Long live documentary film and people like us who want to see them!
So, how about you, docu-fans? What are your favorite documentaries and why? I could talk about this all day, so don't be shy with the comments.
-Allison, Rocky Mountain PBS
photos by
Clinton T. Sander
