documentaries to change the world

I just finished watching Bowling for Columbine. To be honest, I've avoided watching it and other Michael Moore films thinking they may be a little bit extreme. I have to admit - as I have before - sometimes it is easier to bury one's head in the sand and ignore the issues rather than see them right in front of our eyes. But I'm glad I watched it, and I actually liked it and was impressed by it, and yet of course I was saddened and shocked by some of the statistics about how many murders occur in the U.S. compared to Canada, England, Australia, and other countries. It reinforced what I've spoken about publicly regarding the over-exaggeration of violence in TV news and newspaper reporting (I discussed this in my talk I gave at University of North Texas in April 2007, "Changing the World One Story at a Time" - which discusses objectivity in journalism among other things). If you haven't seen the doco, I recommend it. It did sort of reinforce my desire to move to Australia! I wish there was a way to reduce our culture of violence and fear here in the States, and that is certainly something I'll be praying for and about.

The reason I chose to watch Bowling for Columbine is that I'm watching documentaries as I start to get into documentary production myself. This one won an Oscar so I figured it's important to see! Michael Moore has achieved notoriety and success, and though I don't exactly plan to follow his methods, I want to see how he puts his docos together. I've spent time in the past few days researching funding for documentaries as well as forming a nonprofit to get grants and funding for the Solomon Islands project Sean and I are discussing. Forming one here in the U.S. would allow us to receive donations from here as well as apply for grants from U.S. organizations. Everything is still very tentative and new, but it's such a cool project and has so much going for it, and it's exciting to investigate all the possibilities.