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whenever a celebrity gets the peace prize for being a celebrity who does interesting or important stuff, but whose primarily thing is being a celebrity, it makes me wonder what the point of the nobel prize is. i dont say this because i am concerned one way or another about this awarding of the peace prize to gore and the head of the un commission on climate change. i just wonder why it doesnt ever seem to be awarded to less visible folk who devote their lives and resources to the grinding work of trying to affect change on the ground, day in day out. why the peace prize is not given to a group like medecins san frontiers, for example, i'll never understand.
but yes---i think that its nice that folk are able to feel a degree of pride in this.
sidebar: folk dont seem to know what a documentary is, still.
a documentary is an argument about the world:the point is to make an argument about the world, not to tell you what the world is.
this is *the* foundational principle of documentary as a cinematic form.
so if there are factual errors in a documentary, they can and should be exposed and become part of the debate--but the point of such a film is to generate debate.
if a documentary simply told you how the world is, the debate would be unnecessary, meaningless.
so the claims above that factual errors might or do exist in the film is empty as a judgment about the documentary status of the film. that folk are worked up about the film enough to care is an index that the film does--and does well--what conventional documentary is supposed to do. so you make the point, you loose the argument.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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