Left-Leaning Films Get Box-Office Vote
In terms of its success, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is in uncharted territory. By next week it will probably surpass $100 million in domestic box-office revenues, nearly five times as much as the next-highest-grossing documentary feature -- Moore's own "Bowling for Columbine."
In terms of its politics, though, "Fahrenheit" is strictly par for the course. At a time when the right-leaning Fox News Channel leads all cable news channels, when radio airwaves resound with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, when bookstores are piled high with the pronouncements of Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg, one form of nonfiction narrative remains determinedly liberal: the documentary film.
Since the political upheaval of the late 1960s, the liberal point of view has predominated among documentaries -- at least those that get a showing in theaters. From films about opposition to the Vietnam War (1974's "Hearts and Minds," 1979's "The War at Home") to slain black leftist or gay leaders (1971's "The Murder of Fred Hampton," 1984's "The Times of Harvey Milk"); from films about the menace of Republican administrations (1992's "Panama Deception," 2002's "The Trials of Henry Kissinger") to the struggles of coal-mining and meatpacking union workers (1976's "Harlan County U.S.A." and 1991's "American Dream"), most documentaries that approach political issues do so from the left.
"I think it's pretty meaningless for a documentary filmmaker to put six years of his life into a film that reinforces the dominant paradigm," explained Mark Achbar, co-director of "The Corporation," a treatise on the evolution of corporate power that opened last week in Washington. "By default, documentary filmmakers are put in a dissident position because we are being critical of what's happening in the world."
"The people who make documentaries very often come from the left," agreed LA Weekly critic Ella Taylor, "mostly because conservatives are not particularly socially conscious people looking to change the world."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4005-2004Jul21.html