We’ve talked about a lot of documentaries lately on FilmCouch, our weekly podcast. Last week Paul and I compared Nick Broomfield’s 1998 investigative blunder Kurt & Courtney to AJ Shnaack’s artfully sparse Kurt Cobain About A Son, while Karina weighed in on the misguided Katrina doc, The Axe in the Attic. We’ve also recently looked at The Price of Sugar, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, No End in Sight, Sicko, and The 11th Hour. It’s not a coincidence that docs keep coming up in our discussions. Without being overly dramatic here, I think documentary filmmaking is facing an identity crisis.

A few weeks ago, in FilmCouch 39, Paul and I were very moved by Bill Haney’s new documentary about the plight of Haitian sugar plantation workers, The Price of Sugar. While the film is sobering, a conversation we had with Haney after the premiere of his film at SXSW was downright inspiring. He said, “The fact that [listeners] like yours may see this film and pressure their congressman is quite concerning to the folks that operate these plantations.” I felt empowered. Naturally, my ears perked up when I heard Haney’s familiar voice on NPR’s All Things Considered just a few days after we finished the episode. As it turns out, the drama continued after filming wrapped. The film’s protagonist, charismatic Spanish priest Christopher Hartley, has since been removed from his parish by church leadership. The Vicini family, who own the plantations in question, are portrayed in the film as cold, calculating billionaires, willingly negligent of the suffering of their workers. The NPR piece features an interview with the family’s lawyer, who cites “53 specific errors in the film.” Needles to say, the usual legal and rhetorical battle is just warming up.

Maybe it shouldn’t have, but all this came as a surprise to me, Bill Haney and his subject Father Hartley seemed so pure, so unbiased. While watching documentaries lately, we here at SpoutBlog have felt it more and more difficult to sympathize with certain documentary filmmakers (although I still think Haney’s efforts are heroic, if flawed). Too often, documentarians set themselves up to be viewed as surrogate figures through which we’re supposed experience the situations of the film, emotionally and otherwise. When it started this wasn’t a bad technique. Michael Moore’s first film, Roger & Me, plays as a classic underdog story. A scrappy every-man with a camera digs for the truth, all in defense of his beloved hometown. How things have changed. Moore is now the go-to punching bag for angry conservatives, and even sympathetic liberals know that his films need to be viewed with at least a grain of salt, if not much more overt criticism.

After the jump: A list of three things every documentary filmmaker should know.

So all this begs the question: Can documentaries be a reliable source of information, in a journalistic sense? I think they can, but only as much as journalism is reliable, which is to say, not completely. In FilmCouch 33, Paul and I struggled with the devastating Iraq documentary No End In Sight. While not entirely perfect, the film does show how an investigative documentary should be done. A few lessons:

1. Interview the right people. Director/Producer Charles Ferguson scored in-depth interviews with the people who were there.

2. Be specific. While this frustrated some anti-war viewers, Ferguson never discusses whether the invasion was justified, or whether a prolonged occupation is right or wrong. He only investigates what went wrong with how the occupation was handled. Moore’s recent films, on the other hand, are so full of stunts and inflammatory blanket statements that the audience is clearly divided by the end of the first reel.

3. Be ready to have your mind changed. While this isn’t as overt as the other two, Ferguson seems to be prepared to receive whatever answers he receives, whether or not they fit his personal biases (admittedly, this is debatable). Documentaries like this should be approached like a scientific experiment. It’s ok to have a hypothesis, but one needs to be prepared to have their preconceptions challenged, and even changed, by what they find.

Reading over this little list I just created, it’s dawning on me that these points, while probably effective in producing a truthful document, don’t guarantee a successful film. Film is always a mix of art and entertainment, after all. I find Moore’s film’s incredibly entertaining. And one could argue that all film (and all art?) is at least to some degree a form of deception.

But is there a way to make a film that truthfully exposes a subject while avoiding being a clinical, hands-off study? Again, I see promising films on the horizon. A few weeks ago Karina was excited about a new Iraq documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Rather than taking the traditional political expose approach, the film follows the trails of Iraq’s only heavy metal band. At once humorous and heart-breaking, the film shows the conflict from the ground level in a way that’s exceedingly rare, despite the glut of documentaries on the subject. Also, as we mentioned in last week’s FilmCouch, AJ Shnack’s new film Kurt Cobain About a Son is striking new approach to the tired rock-doc formula. Consisting of only audio of Cobain speaking layered with ambient shots of the cities in which he lived, the film made me feel like I knew the guy, and caused me to re-mourn his untimely death.

Stay tuned to FilmCouch and SpoutBlog, and we’ll be sure to cover more promising new documentaries as they appear.