The History Channel Presents The Presidents

Posted on January 19, 2009 at 10:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some references
Violence/ Scariness:	References to war and assassination
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the series
Date Released to Theaters:	2005
Date Released to DVD:	2005
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0007VY3ZK

This week we observe one of the great strengths of the system created by the founding fathers, the orderly transition to a new administration. In honor of the outgoing and incoming Presidents of the United States, take a look at this eight-part series from the History Channel about the Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush, their careers and their lives, their triumphs and their disappointments.

Interview: Steve James of ‘At the Death House Door’

Posted on January 3, 2009 at 8:00 am

I last wrote about the superb documentary At the Death House Door when I interviewed its subject, Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as the death house chaplain to the infamous “Walls” prison unit in Huntsville. The film was the first-time direction collaboration between award-winning directors Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) and Peter Gilbert (“Vietnam: Long Time Coming”). James was nice enough to answer some of my questions about the film.

How did you first hear about Pastor Carroll Pickett?

Steve James: Gordon Quinn at our film company Kartemquin was approached by The Chicago Tribune because they thought we would be interested in doing a film focused entirely on the investigation of the Carlos De Luna case by Steve Mills and Maurice Possley. Gordon knew that Peter and I would be interested in the subject and set up a meeting with the reporters. In the course of telling us about De Luna, they also mentioned Pastor Carroll Pickett who had been haunted by the memory of De Luna, and recorded these feelings in an amazing audio tape about the execution right afterwards. When they revealed he’d recorded audio tapes about all 95 executions he’d
ministered to, we were hooked. We decided from the get-go, that we wanted Rev. Pickett’s journey to be our main story, and bring us to why De Luna was so important to him.

What was your original intention for the film and how did it evolve?

SJ: See answer above… As stated, the original intention of the Tribune was to have us do a film about Carlos De Luna, but its hard to do a film about a man who was not famous or led a well-documented life, and who was executed 17 years before. With the mention of Pickett, it was clear that we had a unique and potentially powerful story to tell about a man’s past and also who he is today. This is one time when the original conception of what the film could be was pretty much on target for what the film ultimately became.But that doesn’t mean that the filmmaking process did not evolve. We didn’t anticipate guard Fred Allen, nor Carlos’ sister Rose, nor Carroll’s family and the significance they would all play in the film. Nor did we anticipate just how closed and “well armored” Carroll was as a person and how this film would ultimately – in his words – prove to be “the therapy he never got.”

What films inspired you to create documentaries? What documentaries most influenced your approach?

SJ: I was initially influenced by fiction films – one director in particular whose work was always characterized by complex portrayals of his subjects. That director was the great Jean Renoir, director of such classics as The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion. But I was also affected by less celebrated films of his like “Toni” and “The Crime of Mister Lange.” Renoir was the ultimate humanist filmmaker, a great observer of the human condition. Documentary influences were the films of Barbara Kopple, particularly Harlan County, U.S.A., 35 Up by Michael Apted, and The Times of Harvey Milk by Rob Epstein.

Related Tags:

Documentary Interview Spiritual films

Interview: The Tustys of ‘The Singing Revolution’

Posted on January 2, 2009 at 8:00 am

Tea thrown overboard. Freeing the prisoners. Knocking over a statue. Every revolution has a moment when the people say that they will no longer tolerate tyranny. In the case of Estonia, the Baltic nation that suffered under two of history’s most brutal and oppressive regimes, the Nazis and the Soviets, it was a song.

Laulupidu, the Estonian song festival held every five years that features 30,000 singers on stage In November 2003, UNESCO declared Estonias’s Song and Dance Celebration tradition a masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In 1988, 300,000 Estonians in Tallinn sang national songs and hymns that were strictly forbidden during the years of the Soviet occupation, as Estonian rock musicians played. It signaled and hastened the end of Soviet domination.

I was delighted to see this film because my family has been to Estonia and we heard a little bit about the Singing Revolution when we were there. I began by asking Maureen and James Tusty how they came to make The Singing Revolution documentary.

MT: We never get tired of talking about it. We spent four years in production and the past year in distribution and promotion and we are still excited about it.

Jim’s father was born in Estonia, in Tallinn. We had a chance to teach in the first media program in the Baltics. We were teaching filmmaking and people started telling us stories. We asked ourselves, “How could we not have heard of this?” If we were ever going to take on a personal project this would be it. They came up with the name “the singing revolution.” It is central to the Estonian nature. It is such a small country and they are quite modest. People would talk about these events and we would say, “You did what?” “Oh, well, I told my mother and the babysitter to come,” they would say it so casually, and here was this event that was so transforming.

JT: The Estonians in particular dislike bragging and as a result they did not boast about what happened.

How did you shape the story as you filmed and edited?

JT: We shot about 40 days over about 3 months, February to July 2004. We pre-interviewed about 200 people, then interviewed about 40 on camera and of those maybe half of them ended up in the film. We wanted not only the leaders but also those who simply participated. One of the interesting things is that there was no one character to focus on, no central hero in the film. It is easier in one way because the entire nation is the hero. But it is a challenge in another way. How do you make that a personal story? The film gave the nation a personality.

The first singing protest was in 1988 after a rock concert. There was no one person saying, “Here’s what we do.” Everyone just came together. It was one of the pivotal events and the leaders emerge after the will of the people is evident.

How did the Estonians respond to the film?

JT: The film premiered in Estonia on December 1, 2006. We were concerned that they would feel, “Who are you to tell our story?” but we got an unprecedented standing ovation. I think it was good to have someone who cared about Estonia but who also had an arm’s length view and some objectivity. What they did not even really have a name at the time but now everyone thinks of it as “the singing revolution.”

There had been other versions of the story focused on all three of the major events, but this is the first one to show how these three movements interwove with one another. It was released theatrically in Estonia and became the most successful documentary ever shown there. The history of the song festival is a possible project for us in the future. It always had a political aspect – it was founded with a view against tsarist Russia.

MT: Part of the challenge was the way we represented the leaders. Many are still involved in Estonia today. We spent quite a bit of time to make sure we had the balance and accuracy of the events. We finally had all three of these different factions agreeing, “Yes, this is how it happened.” Each knew only what they had been talking about.

JT: We did that independently so they could each make sure we had their part right. It would be like getting Al Gore and George Bush to agree on the Florida recount!

And what about in the US?

MT: It was released just a year ago in NY and LA. We wanted to go for a theatrical run, but the majority of distributors were discouraging. We just felt this story would so resonate with people that we decided to go for it. It was held over for five weeks in NY. We were able to play in over 140 cities across the US and Canada and it is still playing even though the DVD is out.

JT: Part of what makes our film unique is that we had a regular theatrical release; it was not just an event film. We got to experience the film in many different cities. It brought in several different kinds of audiences: Baltic-Americans, singers, people interested in non-violence, and people in the freedom movement. It began with those four constituency groups in particular, and we would narrowcast our marketing, but then word would get around town and by the third week the general community would find us.

MT: Estonian choral music is quite known in the community of people who sing in choruses, so they really supported this film.

JT: And they are already organized, so they would come in groups.

What else have you done to help people understand the extraordinary events of the singing revolution?

MT: We have developed a three-DVD educational set for high schools and colleges with teacher materials, maps, and PowerPoint, so that schools can use this story to teach students not just about Estonia and this particular struggle but about non-violence and freedom fighting. To accomplish what they did without violence is really remarkable, especially with what they had lived through, an amazing human story.

JT: Ironically, the Estonians are quite an independent people, as they said, “The miracle is not that we beat the soviets, it is that we got hundreds of thousands of Estonians to hold hands together.” We have done dozens of films, but this one is highly personal and unique. We feel there are millions to reach with this story because of the grace and elegance of the protest and how effective they were. We think we have it hard sometimes, but look at the Estonians and see how they prevailed.

Related Tags:

Documentary Interview

List: Election Documentaries

Posted on October 31, 2008 at 8:00 am

In honor of one of the most exciting elections in American history, here is a list of ten classic documentaries about elections and politics.

1. Primary This pioneering political documentary from Robert Drew, the first in a trilogy, shows candidate John F. Kennedy running against Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary in 1960. Elbert Ventura wrote in Slate:

Stacked up against today’s documentaries, which tend toward overweening subjectivity and strident polemics, Drew’s movies seem like relics. Here, it seems, was the first gaze–the audience granted an intimate glimpse of their leaders, the subjects not yet trained to play to the cameras. Ironically, Drew’s innovations would end up killing the very spontaneity he captured. The ubiquity of portable cameras, whose development Drew helped speed along, would eventually usher in the era of media-trained politicians.

2. The War Room “It’s the economy, stupid,” was the mantra of campaign specialists James Carville and George Stephanopoulos as they and their colleagues took a young Governor from Arkansas to the White House.

3. Our Brand Is Crisis Carville attempted to export his skill at marketing candidates to Bolivia and the result is a tale of American hubris — soon to be remade as a feature film starring George Clooney.

4. A Perfect Candidate Two very high profile Virginia candidates for the Senate, former Governor (and Lyndon Johnson son-in-law) Charles Robb and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North compete for votes in 1994 in one of the state’s most tumultuous elections.

5. Journeys With George The daughter of the first woman Speaker of the House made this up-close-and-very-personal documentary about the campaign of George W. Bush that is as much about the way media covers the candidate as about the candidate himself.

6. Anytown, USA Candidates for mayor of Bogota, New Jersey — two legally blind, one ill, in a race that proves that not only is all politics local politics but that local politics are just as brutal and unpredictable as national elections.

7. See How They Run Even by San Francisco standards, this race is a wild one. The ever-popular wheeler-dealer Willie Brown is challenged by a baker’s dozen of colorful characters.

8. The Delegate Most documentaries focus on the candidates, their top aides, or the press. This one looks at a 21-year-old delegate to the GOP convention.

9. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story The late former Chairman of the Republican National Committee who engineered Ronald Reagan’s election is profiled in this current theatrical release.

10. Unprecedented – The 2000 Presidential Election Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman takes the viewers on a journey through the turbulent 2000 election with stops at the Republican and Democratic conventions and conversations with activists from all sides.

Please Vote for Me

Posted on October 28, 2008 at 8:00 am

There is no better way to make elections real to kids than this award-winning documentary about the first-ever election in a third-grade classroom in China. In Please Vote for Me , the children are completely unfamiliar with even the concept of a genuine election and their parents and teachers don’t know much more. The office at stake is class monitor and the campaigns are as cutthroat, heart-felt, and heart-breaking as any election anywhere. Though its subtitles make it unsuitable for the youngest children, it is an outstanding introduction to the benefits and costs of democracy and a great way to start a conversation about what we look for in the people who deserve our votes.