In the coming weeks, the editorial staff of Documentary magazine and www.documentary.org will build on what we started with the Fall 2008 issue and cover the intersection of documentary film and the current election by bringing news, opinion, video and more to our Doc the Vote section. Check back for continual updates.

November 5, 2008

Uh, in case you missed it (and how could you, with record voting turnout and TV tune-in numbers), this guy won:

Think change isn't upon us? Check out how CNN went all Star Trek with their fancy hologram technology.Will.i.am even got into the future:

November 4, 2008

Well, my friends, it's history-making day--time to look back on an astonishing year, as The Huffington Post has compiled its list of the Top 60 Memorable Campaign Ads.

Coming in at the number 2 slot was The Obama Infomercial, the 30-minute ad that ran on most networks last week. The spot was directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), following in the footsteps of his father, Charles Guggenheim, who created TV ads for Robert F. Kennedy's Presidential campaign, then, as a memoriam for the slain candidate, directed the Academy Award-winning short RFK Remembered for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

And if you want to see how the voting process is going today, you might want to check out Video the Vote, where you can upload your mini-docs about what's happening in your district and view what's going on around the country. Here's a dispatch from the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York, where machines apparently aren't working and the names of longtime voters have mysteriously disappeared from the books.

October 31, 2008

Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, whose film Why We Fight takes President Eisenhower's warning against the encroaching "military-industrial complex" as the premise for examining how closely aligned the military industry is with the political infrastructure, found himself in hot water with the McCain camp when the film was about to be released in January 2006. Here's Jarecki's story in The Huffington Post, of his encounter with the Straight Talk Express.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Pallast have devoted much of their professional lives, in their respective roles as attorney and journalist, to voting rights and making sure that American citizens know the laws with respect to voting and elections. But, as we've seen in the last two Presidential elections, and as has been presented in a number of documentaries, not everything is above board. Here is Kennedy and Pallast's article about election fraud from Rolling Stone. And here's a preview of Kennedy and Pallast's film, entitled Steal Back the Vote, which can be downloading from http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/:

October 29, 2008

Errol Morris weighs in on political advertising with his history of real-people ads in "People in the Middle", found in the Opinion section of The New York Times. In the piece, he offers commentary on select spots from The Living Room Candidate, the collection of political campaign commercials curated by David Schwartz of The Museum of the Moving Image.

Morris has done his own set of "real people" spots for this election which can be found at People In the Middle for Obama. The ads focus on people who are making the switch from voting Republican to voting Democratic this election. In the article, Morris says that the people are self-selected. An interesting comment on the site speaks to an age-old issue in documentary filmmaking: even in a verite doc, by simply deciding when to turn the camera on and off, the documentarian presents his or her subjective version of reality as opposed to a hard and fast "truth."

While the ad does show ‘real people’ opposed to actors pretending to be real people, and while we do hear them speak their own words, they have thought about what it is that they are going to say and that has been prepared. While you say, as a caveat, in your piece that these are people who came to you, then this is another selection process, another putting words into the mouth of others, so to speak. While they may be self-selected, did you chose to film and show all the people who wrote to you?

Here's one of Morris' spots:

October 28, 2008

Forty-four years ago, another Arizona-based politician ran for President: Barry Goldwater. His granddaughter, CC Goldwater, produced a documentary for HBO entitled Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater. She writes in the Huffington Post about why she's not voting for Arizona Senator John McCain.

Here's a trailer from Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater:

The Influence of W.

OK, it's not really a "documentary," but what influence is W. having on the upcoming real-world election? Oliver Stone and Josh Brolin fielded those questions over at Filmazing.

Filmazing: Do you think the film will influence some voters?

Oliver Stone: I only think the movie can give you a fuller perspective of George Bush. A lot of people don't know the story of George Bush, it has been hidden. There is a veil around it. It helps you to understand who he is, how he got there, and frankly what we are doing and where we are going. There is nothing we have added, it's all statements they have made and policies they have adopted.

Filmazing: Do you think the film will influence the way the election comes out?

Josh Brolin: Absolutely-No, I have no idea. I don't know! I did the movie for the movie and how I felt. When I read it, I really wanted to be involved in it. I do hope it empowers people to go and vote. And, those who are registered who do not vote, I hope it makes them or gives them the feeling that they need to be heard, which I think is the whole point of doing a movie like this.

For the rest of the interview, click here.

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