documentaries

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  4/4/2022
  

  Ken Burns on the Revolutionary Ben Franklin

  "If you find out that, very early on, there’s somebody advocating emancipation, it just makes the narrative a little bit messier."

• 
• SOURCE: Fast Company
  2/12/2022
  

  Docuseries "Everything's Gonna Be All White" Challenges Recurrent Historical Denial

  The CRT moral panic is just the latest instance of white America preferring to forget about the significance of race in history. Historian Nell Irvin Painter joins a new series where Americans of color critique the idea of whiteness. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/10/2021
  

  The Beatles Ignited a Culture War and Changed the World

  by Randall J. Stephens

  While Peter Jackson's "Get Back" documentary focuses on the last phases of the band's work together, it's important to think about how the group's emergence changed American culture, especially around sex and gender. 

• 
• SOURCE: USC School of Cinematic Arts
  11/11/2021
  

  View the Pioneering 1971 TV Series "Chicano" Through the USC Moving Image Archive

  The Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts has made available recently preserved video of the 1971 television program "Chicano," a pioneering examination of the political, social and cultural concerns of Mexican Americans in California and the U.S. Southwest. 

• 
• SOURCE: Deadline
  10/26/2021
  

  Detroit Bankruptcy Documentary Wins Library of Congress Prize

  Ken Burns, who collaborated with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on the selection, called "Gradually, Then Suddenly" a "complex, nuanced, layered" examination of the city's financial crisis and the political divide between Detroit and the state of Michigan. 

• 
• 10/17/2021
  

  Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"

  by Thomas Doherty

  Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can. 

• 
• SOURCE: Out In Jersey
  10/10/2021
  

  LGBTQ Documentary “Cured” Debuts on PBS’ Independent Lens

  A new documentary revisits the period before the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, and psychiatry endorsed extreme measures to "cure" same-sex attraction. 

• 
• SOURCE: AV Club
  9/13/2021
  

  Ken Burns's "Muhammad Ali" Well-Crafted, But Not Groundbreaking

  Ken Burns has an irresistable subject for his latest project. The problem isn't the quality of his film, but that so many others have gotten there first. 

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  8/24/2021
  

  Spike Lee’s New Documentary Platforms a 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist [UPDATE: LEE TO EDIT DOC]

  "There’s still time, though, before Episode 4 airs, for Lee to do the right thing by excising the 30-minute section from the film, which is totally unnecessary to the true and important story he tells in the rest of the episode."

• 
• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  8/17/2021
  

  New Documentary Asks Why Obsession with Hitler Endures

  "Why take 90 minutes to warn everyone yet again about Hitler, they wonder, when every mention of him only seems to do more harm than good?"

• 
• SOURCE: KPBS
  6/28/2021
  

  Independent Lens Presents: The People Vs. Agent Orange

  Two women activists demand accountability from the chemical industry for the toll of illness and death caused by Agent Orange. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/25/2021
  

  Women Dominate One Academy Award Category. Here’s Why

  by David Resha

  Women have dominated the Documentary Feature category at the Academy Awards, and have indeed shaped the genre from the beginning. But this reflects the fact that the film industry has been more willing to entrust leadership to women in the low-cost, low-stakes environment of documentaries than in feature film. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/21/2021
  

  The Fruit of Power

  Raoul Peck's documentary "Exterminate All The Brutes" considers not just the history of settler colonialism, but the epistemology of history in contexts where the powerful seek to shape knowledge. 

• 
• SOURCE: WGBH
  3/29/2021
  

  ‘Atomic Cover-Up’ Reveals A Previously Unseen Story Of Human Devastation

  The new documentary "Atomic Cover-Up"  reminds that "people of goodwill can differ over whether we did the right thing in order to bring a terrible war to its conclusion or if, instead, we committed unforgivable crimes against humanity. What none of us can do is look away."

• 
• SOURCE: Greg Mitchell
  3/22/2021
  

  “Atomic Cover-Up” Premieres

  by Greg Mitchell

  Documentarian Greg Mitchell's new movie about the two film crews – one Japanese, one American – who recorded the human toll of the Hiroshima bombing and had their footage suppressed has premiered. Find out how to view it. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/12/2021
  

  Ken Burns Still Has Faith in a Shared American Story

  "The most important thing about me talking about race now is to say that I am in a position where I have to be quiet. You have to be quiet. There are other voices that need to speak. The dismantling of white supremacy is not just white people continually talking about the dismantling of white supremacy. You have to shut up and listen."

• 
• SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman
  3/2/2021
  

  It's not Tex-Mex: New Documentary Digs Deep into Texas Mexican Food, History

  Adán Medrano's new streaming documentary focuses on the influence of indigenous culture and the labor of women and immigrants in the food culture of Texas. 

• 
• SOURCE: Civil War Memory
  3/8/2021
  

  The Problem With CNN’s Lincoln Documentary

  by Kevin M. Levin

  In a brief review, history educator and civil war scholar Kevin M. Levin says CNN's latest Lincoln documentary doesn't use the knowledge of a great roster of historians to full advantage. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  2/11/2021
  

  New Documentary: Tuskegee Airmen: Legacy of Courage

  TV journalist Robin Roberts produces a documentary on the famed Tuskegee Airmen – including her father – whose service in World War II supported the long movement for civil rights. 

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  1/15/2021
  

  A New Film Details the FBI’s Relentless Pursuit of Martin Luther King Jr.

  The new film "MLK/FBI" addresses Americans' failure to remember that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was unpopular, labeled as divisive and subversive, and subject to harassment by federal law enforcement agencies during his life.