John Golden's Page

Lindsay:
It's so funny, but when I was researching for Reel World in 04-05 (I call it "research" for tax purposes and for getting out of doing the dishes, but it really just meant watching a whole bunch of films) I jokingly started a chapter titled, "Why conservatives don't make documentaries." I was trying so hard to be sure that the book had political and ideological balance that I spent a lot of time trying to find films with a conservative viewpoint, and it was HARD! At first, I thought the films weren't out there b/c of a lack of distribution, bias of film buyers at festivals, crazy left-wing PBS and HBO..., but in 04-05, I think that people on the right just weren't making many documentaries for reasons that never quite added up to a full chapter (or so that crazy left-wing NCTE thought!!).
ANYWAY, I did find a few and even some that kind of get at the Iraq War by attacking Michael Moore and praising George Bush: Celsius 41.11(streams on googlevideo at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5613757524554114657#), Fahrenhype 911 (streams at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9087291936502859172#).
And in addition to limiting the discussion only to pro/con about the war, I have done another activity with my students about multiple perspectives on the war, including those of Iraqi filmmakers. The focus of my lesson is on how editing choices in documentary film affect audience reaction to the subject. The lesson is too long to post here, but I'll put it somewhere else and link to it.

Let me know what you end up doing with your unit. It sounds fascinating.

John