Because of this apparent shortcoming, other filmmakers of the time chose to deal with the war in a more sophisticated and nuanced way. As we shall see, these nuanced ways of looking at the war often had more to do with character than plot and perhaps more to do with confession than testimony. These films would allow the audience to get to know the people involved in the war and then leave space for them to draw their own conclusions. John Huston is perhaps the most notable example of this approach. He produced a similar set of documentaries during the war but often ran into trouble with the war department (perhaps, as we shall see, it was because he was ahead of his time). His first film after joining the service was called Report From The Aleutians, shot in 1943. In it, he chronicled a bombing mission by the Americans against the Japanese in a very straightforward manner; very similar to the way Capra utilized the expository style. He included the events of the mission and narrated the events himself, but also chose to focus on the men involved, the ex-farmers, ex-storekeepers and ordinary people that made up the American […]

This article from Vox is like the Platonic Form of my documentary. The reason for my journey, the message I have about neighborhoods, community and urban planning for Americans, the sense that friendship grows out of spontaneous repetitious, unplanned encounters, and the push towards solutions. It’s all here.  From the article:  “Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial ways by the physical spaces in which we live.” “… in America we have settled on patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built.” “… as the habits of family and work settle in, friendships become an effort, and as every tired working parent knows, optional effort tends to get triaged.” “For the vast majority of Homo sapiens’ history, we lived in small, nomadic bands. The tribe, not the nuclear family, was the primary unit. We lived among others of various ages, to which we were tied by generations of kinship and alliance, throughout our lives. Those are the circumstances in which our biological and neural equipment evolved. It’s only been comparatively recently (about 10,000 years ago) that we developed agriculture […]

Of the four narrative techniques described by Wesley Kort, the expository style of Capra seems to cater to plot and the appeal to truth is in the form of a testimony. Capra tended to present the march of Germany through Europe in Why We Fight, for example, as a succession of events. The closing moments of the film suggests that the story is not over and invites the audience (not unlike an alter call of sorts) to join the narrative, and change the outcome. The implication is that Nazism needs to be stopped, and the call to action is justified by the evils that the audience has just witnessed. Capra in this case wanted to paint in broad strokes, and offer a very clear moral or lesson in his films. However, by the mere fact that the films were intended as propaganda, there is a very real sense in which they gloss over the truth in many ways, painting history as completely one-sided and failing to deal with any of the nuances, moral dilemmas or doubts about war in general or human conflict. In some cases, Capra engaged in outright racism in what he thought was in service to the […]

“…a teenager heads off to college, and is surprised to find that everyone at his new home seems to know him, but they know him by another name. So who do they think he is?” One of the award winning Sundance documentaries I did NOT get a chance to see this year was “Three Identical Strangers.” Well it was bought by NEON and the trailer is out! Here’s the Indiewire write-up about it. http://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/three-identical-strangers-trailer-sundance-documentary-1201951528/

Transpositions is a great online magazine publication that comes out of St. Andrews University in Scotland. I have had the privilege of visiting there several times, to take part in conferences and as a guest student at The Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. This article looks at the difference between an aesthetic of sentimentality when dealing with suffering in the world, and genuine engagement with the inexplicable things that happen in our lives. From the article: “(Jeremy Begbie) links this sentimentalist eschatology to the type of Christian theodicy which Ivan Karamazov rejects in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan launches a notoriously compelling tirade against the belief that innocent suffering is justifiable as part of an overarching ‘harmony’, and Begbie believes that sentimental art can lure the Christian into precisely this kind of aesthetic theodicy, in which all is made right in a final ‘balancing act’. “There is however, a profound beauty (in The Brother’s Karamazov) which is sometimes glimpsed amidst this ‘sentimentality with boys’ which gives us cause to hesitate before joining Begbie in trying to disentangle God’s beauty from the sentimental. Alyosha is, at times, susceptible to naivety, yet he does – as Begbie notes – accept Ivan’s […]

Expository films rely on the narration to drive the story or carry the plot, and use images as supportive elements. Generally these films are written out in script form first, like one would do with a fiction film, and then the voice over is recorded, while accompanying images are sought to either illustrate or counterpoint the narrator. This is called evidentiary editing, the seeking imagery that reinforces the claims of the narrator. The expository film draws on the long history of rhetoric and the art of persuasion, allowing the narrator to make claims, and then presenting evidence to back up those claims, appealing to the common sense of the audience. The narration, delivered in a detached and above-the-fray kind of way, presupposes its own authority, and at the time, audiences had enough faith in the government and the establishment to believe it. – from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock

Capra ended up producing a seven part documentary series called Why We Fight, beginning with the Prelude to War, outlining the events that led up to the outbreak of World War II, and moving on to installments on the war in central Europe, Russia and China, The Battle For Britain and finally War Comes to America. The series involved historical archive footage of prominent world leaders such as Hitler, Neville Chamberlin and Mussolini, as well as actual war footage peppered with the occasional scene reenacted for the camera (like a family sitting around a radio listening to FDR’s speech). The narrative however is driven almost entirely by the ever-present voice of the authoritative narrator. The beginning of the series employs the narrator informing the viewer that what they are about to watch is the answer to the question, “why we fight.” The rest of the series is then presented like an essay arguing for a point, as the narrator explains the events leading up to the American involvement in the war. The point, of course being that it was inevitable that the American people should stand against the likes of Nazism and dictators like Hitler and Mussolini, and that they […]

Those of you who have been following me and my documentary projects know that I keep coming back to one central question: what constitutes a healthy and thriving community? The more research I do, and the more people I talk to, the more I start to think that human community happens naturally or organically when given the right conditions, not unlike the flowers that we would cultivate in a garden. Simple ingredients like close proximity of living and retail space, walkable streets, diversity of income, affordability for the voluntary pour and middle class, and safety for families lead to healthy growth. But so often these conditions are denied to so many of our communities for a host of reasons. This article from the Guardian does an excellent job of showing how city planners in mid-century America managed to deny so many ethnic middle class communities of these life-giving ingredients, from “red zones” to highway construction, to actual, physical walls segregating white and ethnic neighborhoods. From the article: “…infrastructure is not value-free – and the decisions made now will affect the future of inequality in our cities.” “The FHA promoted home ownership in new – and primarily suburban – neighbourhoods so […]

Capra felt a great need to make a series of films that would inspire the troops as well as the American people to fight. In watching Triumph of the Will, Capra left the screening utterly depressed. How, he thought, could the United States possibly compete with that? He recognized the skill of Riefenstahl and wanted to find an approach that would convince Americans of the errors of Nazi ideology. In the end, he decided that he would try to turn the propaganda on its head. He decided to simply show the American people the essence of fascism, by showing footage of Hitler, Mussolini, and other leaders, in order to highlight the tragic nature of their arrogance. If people saw what the Nazi’s wanted to do, they would understand the importance of fighting them. “If they weren’t so evil, it would have been a comedy,” he later pointed out in an interview.   – from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock