The Most Interesting Documentaries of the Year
From school teachers' plight to exotic pets to 
black power, these are films you don't want to miss.
Mother Jones
December 23, 2011 
http://motherjones.com/media/2011/12/best-documentary-films-of-year

Gerrymandering

Though gerrymandering is nearly as old as the Republic-
its namesake was early 19th century Massachusetts
governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced "Gary," if you
please)-it's never really been a hot-button issue for
voters. Gerrymandering seeks to change that with an
entertaining yet outraged look at the odd practice of
letting politicians pick their voters. Just consider the
case of Barack Obama, who got a major career boost when
he helped redraw the boundaries of his mostly black
Illinois state Senate district so it represented white
liberals.

A bipartisan cast of talking heads, including California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Howard Dean, make the
case for reform. But Gerrymandering walks the boundary
between documentary and political ad: Just as I received
a review DVD at work, I also received a copy at home-
mailed to me and other Golden State voters by the
backers of a redistricting reform proposition. -Dave
Gilson The Stinking Ship

One night in August 2006, a tanker chartered by
Trafigura, a British oil trader, anchored off the Ivory
Coast and illegally unloaded 500 tons of toxic waste
into Abidjan's landfills. The pungent, blistering sludge
killed 16 and hospitalized more than 100,000. Director
Bagassi Koura's short documentary skillfully chronicles
how Trafigura dodged environmental regulations to save a
mere $300,000, only to spend millions trying to cover up
its responsibility.

What makes The Stinking Ship so heartbreaking are the
stories of the people still living with the effects of
the "Ivorian Chernobyl," which has yet to be fully
cleaned up. A community leader laments, "When it rains
or it's windy, frankly we can't live in the village. The
stench reaches far beyond it. We are walking dead." 
- Titania Kumeh

POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Morgan Spurlock downed a month of McDonald's for our
fast-food sins in his notorious 2004 film Super Size Me.
Now he's aiming to show us how ad-soaked our lives have
become by financing an entire doc about the ubiquity of
product placement using-what else?-product placement.
The title is no joke; Spurlock pitches POM the naming
rights on camera. From then on, he is shown imbibing
only the pomegranate beverage, while other drink brands
are visibly blurred out. He flies exclusively on
JetBlue, wears Merrell shoes (giving a pair to Ralph
Nader), and drives Mini Coopers. His contracts obligate
him to interview anti-commercialization advocate Susan
Linn at a Sheetz gas station, and to stay at a Hyatt
when he travels to Sao Paolo to cover the city's outdoor
ad ban.

While amusing as a meta-commercial packaged as an
inquiry into artistic integrity, the film inevitably
feels like a stunt. The slyest touch may be that amid
the hawking and well-worn revelations about advertising,
the biggest sell is for the amiable Spurlock as the
genre's reigning goofball tour guide. All that's missing
is the obligatory survey question: Are you more or less
likely to purchase this brand in the future? 
-Robert Abele 

The Elephant in the Living Room

Don't be misled: The only animals you'll see in a living
room in this doc are a cougar and a Burmese python. (The
runaway-slitheraway?- Gabon viper is nabbed in a
garage.) Director Michael Webber's fast-moving,
bittersweet film reveals a world of dangerous and
entirely unregulated pets (lions, tigers, bears) raised
behind closed doors. Much of the action takes place in
suburban Ohio, a state that rivals parts of Florida for
nuisance alligators. Hidden cameras rolling, we attend a
reptile show where dads cart off snakes that could
devour their offspring. But the real drama lies in the
interplay between a passionate cop who moonlights as an
exotic-animal rescuer and a sympathetic sadsack who
can't bear to part with his full-grown African lions.
The cat owner's tear-jerking travails drive home the
filmmaker's point better than any finger-wagging
activist ever could. 
-Michael Mechanic 

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Director Andrew Rossi opens his doc with shots of clunky
presses spitting out broadsheets-footage that feels
dated, and that's the point. He catches the Gray Lady at
a moment when print is waning and the bosses are
scrambling for ways-a paywall?-to survive the impending
digital era. Rossi becomes "part of the furniture" at
Times HQ as journos mull the value of Twitter, whether
to publish WikiLeaks docs, and how best to cover the
demise of newspapers. And while the film's big
unanswered questions might leave viewers feeling
untethered, the paper's personalities-from editors'
goofy antics to reporters coaxing sources into going on
the record-leave us believing that all the news that's
fit to print isn't doomed quite yet. "Of course we will
survive," insists media columnist David Carr, the film's
smack-talking star. "You," he reminds his fellow
journos, "are a bunch of tenacious motherfuckers!" 
-Maddie Oatman

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Revisiting the Black Power movement of the '60s and '70s
through the lens of the era's Swedish journalists? It's
a strange premise for a doc, but filmmaker Göran Hugo
Olsson has dug up tons of old 16 mm footage, adding
commentary from civil rights icons (Angela Davis, Harry
Belafonte) and contemporary hip-hop artists (Erykah
Badu, Questlove, Talib Kweli). Despite some great
scenes-children of Black Panthers singing "pick up your
guns" and Davis' moving prison interview about the
Birmingham church bombing-Olsson's depiction of the
struggle comes off as something you'd grudgingly watch
in a high-school history class. As Badu says, "It's
about the story." And this version, while informative,
is rarely moving. 
-Anna Pulley 

American Teacher

When Rhena Jasey decided to become a public-school
teacher, her friends were appalled: "You went to
Harvard!" she recalls them saying. "You should be a
doctor or a lawyer." Jasey is one of four teachers
profiled by director Vanessa Roth and coproducers Dave
Eggers and Nínive Calegari as they address the hottest
question in education reform: how to attract and retain
great teachers? That, education experts agree, is the
single most effective thing a school can do to boost
student achievement. Real wages for teachers, the
filmmakers argue, have been in a 30-year decline. One
subject, a history teacher and coach, makes just $54,000
after 15 years on the job. He supplements that by
driving a forklift-indeed, the film reports that 31
percent of US teachers take second jobs to get by. But
instead of support, they get the blame for lackluster
test scores. With more than half of the nation's 3.2
million public pedagogues coming up for retirement in
the next decade, American Teacher succeeds in reframing
education's abstract ideological battles in terms of
kitchen-table realities. 
-Kristina Rizga

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