November 30, 2004 Gianfranco Rosi's 'Boatman' I remember feeling outraged when I first saw Boatman (1993), a film about life and death on the river Ganges in India. I saw the film at a time when Read more
October 31, 2004 Playback: Johan Grimonprez's 'dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y' People sometimes ask me what my all-time favorite documentary film is. Many documentaries have moved me, or seem important or have influenced my own Read more
August 31, 2004 Nicolas Philibert's 'To Be and To Have' " To Be and To Have isn't a documentary in the traditional sense, with a demonstrative and didactic approach," says its maker, Nicolas Philibert. "I Read more
July 30, 2004 Playback: David Sutherland's 'The Farmer's Wife' The Farmer's Wife , a documentary by David Sutherland, had a profound effect on me. It inspired me back into producing documentaries. After film Read more
June 30, 2004 Kevin Rafferty, Jane Loader and Pierce Rafferty's 'The Atomic Café' Back in 1983 I was living in San Francisco, and I read in the newspaper one day about a new documentary called The Atomic Café that had just opened. Read more
April 30, 2004 Playback: Pare Lorentz's 'The River' It was the mid- 1950s and my sociology professor announced to our class one day that he was about to show us a documentary film. Students began to Read more
March 31, 2004 Fatima Jebli Ouazzani's 'In My Father's House' In My Father's House is a fascinating film because filmmaker Fatima Jebli Ouazzani shows us all her confusions, dreams and regrets, while remaining Read more
January 31, 2004 Lawrence and Lorne Blair's 'Ring of Fire' My brother Roko and I grew up on late-night dinner conversations with interesting guests, and summer trips to Eastern Europe to see family. But it Read more
December 30, 2003 Playback: Frederick Wiseman's 'Titicut Follies' The summer of 1969. Clearly the world was about to change––or end––and at the age of 13, I was not going to miss it by going away to summer camp. So Read more
August 30, 2003 Ross McElwee's 'Sherman's March' For a reason that has since been lost to me, during my last year of college in 1990, I volunteered to write a thesis on something called "reader Read more