Movies: Raging against the Republican machine

The Painful Lessons of Abu Ghraib

by Anthony Kaufman

Raging against the Republican machine

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0419/kaufman.php

Richard Clark, Jon Stewart, and Air America are about to
get some company in the media assault on George W. Bush.
>From Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, an incendiary
attack on U.S. foreign policy and the Bush-bin Laden
connection (premiering in Cannes this week and, as of
press time, blocked for release by Disney), to the
moveon.org-co-produced Uncovered: The Whole Truth About
the Iraq War (opening during the Republican National
Convention), politically charged documentaries are
showing up in theaters and on television over the next
several months. Along with anti-corporate works such as
The Corporation, Super Size Me, The Yes Men, and Go
Further, an unprecedented surge of activist
documentaries is poised to join the election-year
debate.

"There seems to be a groundswell of activists who are
willing to challenge the information we’ve been force-
fed," says Eamonn Bowles, a New York-based distributor
(Magnolia Films) who launches the documentary invasion
next week with Jehane Noujaim’s Control Room, an inquiry
into the media coverage of the current Iraq war as
related by Al Jazeera journalists. "Not too long ago, it
seemed obvious to me that Bush would get re-elected
easily," continues Bowles, "but there really has been
this incredible mobilization of the dissatisfied
exercising their voice."

"This presidency has galvanized many who are lethargic
on the left, and I include myself," echoes Lawrence
Konner, a Hollywood screenwriter (Mona Lisa Smile) who
founded an organization called the Documentary Campaign
in late 2002. Aimed at producing nonfiction work that
advocates social and economic justice, the company’s
first feature, Persons of Interest, co-directed by
Alison Maclean (Jesus’ Son) and Tobias Perse, looks into
the Justice Department’s post-9-11 detentions. "I feel
like more of an activist on this issue than a
filmmaker," says Perse. "You have an administration that
has this idea of unilateral force, both in the world and
domestically. And this film helps to question that
policy."

Acquired by First Run/Icarus (sister company First Run
Features will distribute the left-wing portrait Howard
Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train this
summer), Persons of Interest will also be broadcast on
the Sundance Channel. "We’re trying to figure out how
the film can be used on a grassroots political level,"
says Maclean. Adds Perse, "This film is designed to open
up a conversation that was short-circuited within a
month of 9-11."

The film medium, say documentarians, can be very useful
as a political weapon, tapping into the emotions of
voters that stories in print can’t deliver. Konner cites
Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine as "a great model.
Moore makes movies that are politically progressive,
cinematically exciting, and get people emotionally
involved as much as they are intellectually involved,"
he says. "People hear the information all the time, but
it doesn’t always get through."

The record-setting $21.5 million box-office gross of
Columbine also supplied a financial precedent for
distributors that once winced at the thought of
releasing documentaries on a wide scale. "[Columbine]
broke down a lot of barriers for docs," says Eamonn
Bowles. "But it also identified a strong presence of the
’skeptic’ audience, the folks who don’t buy the party
line."

Still, Moore’s success hasn’t shielded him from alleged
attempts at corporate and government sabotage. Disney is
trying to block its subsidiary Miramax from distributing
Fahrenheit 911, because the movie is "against the
interests" of the conglomerate’s tax status and family-
friendly image, according to statements reported in The
New York Times last week. "This struggle has been a
lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to
create a piece of art that might upset those in charge,"
Michael Moore countered on his website the day after the
story broke.

Morgan Spurlock’s Michael Moore-esque Super Size Me,
which follows the deleterious effects of the filmmaker’s
30-day McDonald’s binge, is proving how effective
Moore’s populist style can be. Long before opening in
theaters last weekend (with box grosses of over
$500,000), the documentary made headlines when
McDonald’s declared it was eliminating the Super Size
option (while denying that Spurlock’s film had anything
to do with the decision). "The movie is definitely
shaking the trees," says Spurlock. "There need to be
movies that are not beholden to anyone, whether it’s a
media corporation or a government agency . . . to get
ideas out that are getting buried in today’s society."

Robert Greenwald, who made the Abbie Hoffman drama Steal
This Movie!, felt an urgency to finish Uncovered: The
Whole Truth About the Iraq War while the Bush
administration’s push to war was left unquestioned by
the mainstream media. (Completed in November 2003, the
movie has sold nearly 100,000 copies online; an expanded
90-minute version will be released in theaters this
August.) "Part of the power of the movie and the hunger
for the film is that we were in the middle of
something," he says. "And here was a tool that was more
user-friendly than a book, and it had this extraordinary
relevance, because the story, up until recently, hadn’t
been available."

Indeed, these documentaries of dissent indict the
media’s passivity as much as the right wing. "The press
offers this monolithic point of view," complains Control
Room’s Noujaim. "The situation that we’re living in is
really complex and volatile, so it’s difficult to get a
’truth’ out of one channel or one station or one voice.
It’s important that U.S. citizens have a better
understanding of why things are happening and who are
the people behind it, rather than just what’s on the
news."

Henry Thomason and Nickolas Perry’s The Hunting of the
President, an adaptation of the bestseller by Joe
Conason and Gene Lyons, suggests that an extreme "right-
wing cabal" conspired with decidedly un-independent
counsel Kenneth Starr to unseat President Clinton. But
the film’s other main target is, says Thomason, "the
good old liberal press," which published stories based
on unreliable sources or no sources at all, and jumped
on Monica-gate for the salacious headlines. With the
documentary circulating in theaters this June, Thomason
hopes the film "can sway a reporter or two to be really
fair and balanced," he says, "and not be bullied by the
extreme right and their network of AM radio and e-mail."

Other filmmakers have a more pointed goal. Michael
Shoob, co-director with Joseph Mealey of Bush’s Brain,
an investigation into the "dirty tricks" of Republican
puppet-master and alleged "co-president" Karl Rove,
says, "Obviously, we wanted to push this information in
an election year."

But can docs really rock the vote? "Sometimes films
influence events beyond their origin. Sometimes they
don’t," says nonfiction veteran George Butler (Pumping
Iron), who is currently rushing to complete Tour of
Duty, a biographical portrait of his longtime friend
John Kerry. "Sometimes you make a film like The China
Syndrome, which causes all kinds of changes in the
nuclear industry, or a film like Pumping Iron, which
causes 100,000 gyms to open up in America and eventually
makes Arnold [Schwarzenegger] the governor of
California."

"If I didn’t think documentaries had an impact, I don’t
think we would make them," says Mark Achbar, co-director
of the Noam Chomsky cult film Manufacturing Consent and
of this year’s festival hit The Corporation, an
investigation into globalization and corporate power
that has won audience awards at film festivals around
the world and opens at Film Forum this June. "The people
are speaking," says Achbar. "Membership in activist
groups is shooting up because people come out of [The
Corporation] informed, engaged, enraged, and ready to
put thought into action. There’s no question that it has
an impact. It’s absolutely record-setting in Canada. We
even knocked Lord of the Rings off a couple screens."