Kim Vonyar does a nice job starting down the doc road for the year in Cinematical.
But she misses the most important doc of 2007 by a country mile... Tony Kaye's best-ever-in-the-category Lake of Fire.
If you think I am exaggerating, go see the movie. It's no cuddly Moorian tour of abortion clinics with wacky right-wingers out on the lawn, happy to be humiliated by a celebrity.
If you haven’t witnessed an abortion, see this movie… you will have done so by the end, including sorting out the pieces of the fetus to make sure that all the parts are out of the mom. It’s unpleasant enough to make you wonder whether Mr. Kaye is against legal abortion. But the human kindness he shows the women who are shown in the film going through the whole process makes you realize that he is after bigger fish here… he is after truth.
You may see a film designed to demand your opinion on this issue in future. But after seeing Lake of Fire, you will have gathered the detail to consider the issue without someone trying to tell you what to think. And what more could you ever ask from a documentary?
As Shoah is to the Jewish Holocaust… as Ken Burns’ doc series was to the Civil War… as The War Room is to the modern political campaign… Lake of Fire is to the issue of abortion rights. An epic, defining, and singular achievement. And there is no question that it should win Best Documentary come February. It’s not that there won’t be some excellent films, some of which I have not seen yet, that deserve consideration. But surely none will be as ambitious and as successful in fulfilling its aspiration as Lake of Fire.
Also…
It is an annual key to look at the IDA DocuWeek screenings, which usually produce 2 or 3 of the ultimate nominees… and invariably at least one film and filmmaker very few people have seen or heard of (I have included the name of filmmakers who have been Oscar nominated, won, or were short-listed:
The Price Of Sugar
Nanking (Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman)
War/Dance
Hear And Now
Protagonist (Jessica Yu)
Steps To Eternity
Salim Baba
Sari's Mother (James Longley)
Angel's Fire (Fuego De Angel)
Gene Boy Came Home
Kurt Cobain About A Son
Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone
We Are Together (Thina Simunye)
Chops
Taxi To The Darkside (Alex Gibney)
In The Shadow Of The Moon
A Promise To The Dead: The Exile Journey Of Ariel Dorfman (Peter Raymont)
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2007/09/docs.html