On the face of things, Robert Greene‘s Bisbee ’17 and Lee Ann Schmitt‘s Purge This Land don’t look a lot alike. They’re both documentaries, and they both screened at the recently-concluded San Francisco International Film Fest, but in subject and approach, they seem worlds apart.
Watching She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, director Mary Dore’s perfectly agreeable and accomplished 2014 documentary about the birth of the modern women’s movement in the U.S., it’s hard not to feel there’s something staid about the proceedings.
This is less the fault of the film itself than a reflection of how exciting the landscape of documentary film has become in recent years.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series. The introduction and full list can be found here.
What is a documentary? What are its aims, ambitions, and responsibilities – to its subjects, to its audience?