Capturing Reality is a 2008 documentary about… well, documentaries!
Directed by Pepita Ferrari, the movie does feature the occasional clip, but is mostly a “talking heads” style presentation, with such notables as Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens), Werner Herzog (Lessons of Darkness), Errol Morris (Gates of Heaven), Kim Longinotto (The Day I Will Never Forget), Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void), and Nick Broomfield (Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer) discussing what the documentary form means to them, and debating as to whether or not it’s possible for a film to be fully truthful.
Like many movie-centric documentaries, I came away from Capturing Reality with a list of titles I now want to check out, including Paul Cowan’s The Peacekeepers (about the U.N.’s negotiations to avoid war in the Congo) and Nettie Wild’s A Place Called Chiapas (centering on Mexico’s Zapatista National Liberation Army), and while I was ultimately a little disappointed that Ferrari and company didn’t delve into the history of the genre (a brief section on Robert Flaherty would have been nice), I found Capturing Reality - for what it was - to be both insightful and informative.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
