Reply #47: What is a documentary film maker to you? [View All]

[kristopher]

First, let me say that your manner of criticism takes so much from the Republican propaganda machine that it isn't a surprise you were labeled. Here is an arbitrary example:
A man steals an apple, he is a thief.
A man loots the treasury of a prosperous country causing hundreds of millions to live for decades in poverty, he is a thief.

In spite of the fact they are both thieves, to consider these two people the same is a false equivalency.

Unlike you, I consider the practice of documentary film-making to be varied enough to allow poetic license when dealing with complex social issues. If I'm a chemist documenting an experimental protocol, that would be taboo; but if I'm trying to portray the effect of religious opposition to needle exchange programs and thee consequent higher incidence HIV; then I might not portray each individual instance in the film within it's exact context. And just because I knew before I started filming that such religious opposition existed and that it resulted in higher rates of disease transmission certainly doesn't mean I'm "biased" like Rush Limpballs. It means I have an important social fact that people need to be made aware of and film is a better medium than a research paper.

You might want to reconsider the role of such film-making and what how it must be different from academic research.