ARTICLE (w/clips): A Brief History of Documentaries That Changed the World

[Ryan Goble]

Nice slideshow of interesting docs - hardly a comprehensive list but interesting nevertheless...

A Brief History of Documentaries That Changed the World
3:00 pm Tuesday Feb 15, 2011 by Jason Bailey

A couple of weeks ago, an interesting comment popped up in one of our posts. On Tuesday, January 25^th,we wrote (as countless other blogs did) about that morning’s Oscar nominations — the snubs, the surprises, etc. The next day, this comment from “ANGA” appeared: “Claims in the film Gasland have been widely documented to be untrue. See the investigative documents for yourself here,” followed by the URL for a “truth about Gasland” page. Here’s what’s interesting about that comment: all we did in the post wasmention Gasland — we listed it, among the Best Documentary nominees, without comment.

At risk of getting ourselves mixed up in this controversy over the accuracy of Gasland, we will merely note that we’ve seen the film and it seemed awfully convincing to us; that Fox has responded to each of the claims being lobbed against him; and that ANGA is a high-profile natural gas company which certainly benefits from Fox’s reportage coming into question. The fact that they have the resources to troll the Internet and comment on blogs that so much as mention the film gives you some idea of what a documentary filmmaker is going up against when taking on big targets like this.

See the full slideshow HERE.