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Belinda Smaill on passion and politics in documentary film.

Article Excerpt
For anyone who regularly attends the cinema it is difficult to ignore the sharp rise in the number of feature length documentaries making it to movie theatres. An overwhelming number of these documentaries have a social agenda and are concerned with critiquing the status quo, whether it is in relation to corporate power or the dominance of right-wing administrations and conservative ideals. Michael Moore is the most infamous proponent of this trend with Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. Yet, other notable examples include The Corporation, Super Size Me, McLibel, Outfoxed, Control Room, Darwin's Nightmare and, in Australia, Time to Go John and Letters to Ali. These films would not be appearing on screens in Australia and elsewhere if there were not a sizeable audience willing to pay the price of a ticket. Fahrenheit 9/11 represents the biggest box office success of any documentary in history. In seeking some way of accounting for the public's re-discovery of the documentary, much is owed to the way these filmmakers appreciate the intractable relationship between politics and the passion of emotions.

This preoccupation with social issues in documentary, particularly in relation to a class consciousness, can be traced to the beginnings of the form. Two Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s, Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisentstein, are the most influential forebears to have sought out the relationship between...

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