That's Life

A documentary is the sum of relationships during a period of shared action and living; a composition made from the sparks generated during a meeting of hearts and minds. Documentary makers have an ardent respect for the integrity of the actua4 for the primwy of the truth in the lives of real people, great and small. The documentarians mission is not to change or evade destiny, but rather to embrace its substance. -Michael Rabiger accomplished film/video documentarian Chicago, 1987

Pondering the shifting sands of time.

Walking the straight and narrow.

Fanning the flames of passion.

Intersecting an historic crossroad.

Approaching the point of no return.

Entering unknown territory. You name it, you can tape it. Whatever your topic, whatever your goal, cliched approach or fresh and new, the video documentary requires only a point of view.

It was once believed that the documentary should pretend to objectivity:

all-seeing, all-knowing, completely non-judgmental. The camera as dispassionate eye.

No longer. The emergence of documentary "new journalists" like Michael Moore (Roger & Me), Claude Lanzmann (Shoah), and Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line) has made explicit what was implicit all along: The good documentary is an effective, artistic piece of propaganda.

"We need more documentaries," Moore asserts, "made by people who hate documentaries."

Maybe that'…