The New 'Fake' Wave (a pun on French Wave)

So yes, there is a new wave of documentary cinema being submitted for distribution, and Oscar consideration, as observed first hand by this writer. These 'genre' documentaries (terrible that they are even labeled as a genre) all clearly adopt a very fake,contrived and formulaic body structure that is disgusting to me. They are like moving picture 'selfies.' After watching  documentary cinema become a Hollywood hustling whore after the financial success of Michael Moore's 'blockbuster' cineplex favorite, 'Bowling For Columbine' , who knew that a tidal wave of 'shlock doc' was coming down the drain to drown us next. After Moore's mean-spirited and filmed home attack on the elderly and demented actor Charlton Heston, documentary cinema never fully recovered. The documentary, as a means for exploitation, was placed into high gears. Michael Moore gave documentary movies a license to kill or be killed- a license to exploit by any means necessary. 

Then, 'The Blair Witch Project' hit our local shopping mall theaters, and Hollywood raced out of breath to capitalize on that, as well!  Alas, a cheap & cost effective/high revenue 'fake documentary' genre was quickly discovered! Ching-ching $$$. Then we saw things like -'Open Water', 'Paranormal Activity,' 'The Conjuring,' and on and on and on. 

So, do the math now-  1) Documentary film becomes commercial by turning 'true stories' into 'funny movies' with the inclusion of a ring-leading clown as a protagonist agitator (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, etc) in order to make a lot of money. 2) Hollywood popcorn movies start dressing up as 'true stories' and quasi-documentaries in order to make a lot of money. 

This year's Oscar nominations, for best documentary (short and feature length) are self-exploitive. That's correct! I saw them and immediately understood that documentary cinema has now officially entered into a new and self-serving 'selfie' generation money making genre. Filmmakers creating documentaries are not exploiting 'others' as subject matter, they are actually now exploiting 'themselves' in self-objectified and polished ways. Cinema as psychopathology - Pretty and deliberate image compositions with people either dying or experiencing real-life threatening crisis right before their own personal iPhone camera's eyes. Swelling music, usually pop or dark droning, for glamourous opening and closing movie credits, or for that dying family member's last recorded 'bye bye.'

In summary, all of this sucks, but ironically it is essential in order for documentary cinema to truly grow. It takes this kind of an extreme betrayal of principles to motivate the mojo of an upset collective of purists (like myself) to push harder than ever and make things evolve into something as big a Jurassic Park dinosaur, and as legitimate as a Titicut Folly.  bye.

                         - critic Jane Publique