The Audient gets authentic

Hey! Welcome to the post where I introduce you to my new monthly viewing series for 2020.

I had a topic all lined up, maybe for as long as the past year, but recent events have changed my thinking on the subject, and now that one will have to wait until 2021.

I couldn't help but notice that my top 20 of 2019 contained four -- count 'em, four -- documentaries, those being Hail Satan? (#7), The Australian Dream (#12), Apollo 11 (#13) and Fyre (#19). To give you some idea how different this is from recent years, my highest ranked 2018 documentary was Whitney at #29 and my highest ranked 2017 documentary was Quest at #17. (And, I actually had no documentaries in my top 25 of the decade -- shame shame.)

There has been an explanation for this, and in fact, it involves Quest. Quest was the final film I watched as part of my association with HRAFF, the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, for which I vetted films for the 2016-2017 festivals. I didn't actually vet Quest, but watched it as the closing night film of the festival. And obviously really liked it.

But at that point it was too little, too late. I had already decided that I was not going to vet films again in 2018, as it added five (!) additional viewings per week from mid-August through late-January, and that was just too much for me. I was staying on top of the workload and still attending to my other viewing duties, but my wife was none too pleased with it.

The other problem was, an unexpected thing was happening -- or maybe, a thing I should have expected to happen but didn't:

I was starting to hate human rights documentaries.

And actually, what's more, I was starting to hate documentaries, period.

This won't do, not a for a cinephile. And yet you can't forcefully lift your aversion to something. If you're burned out on something, you're burned out on it, and only time heals that wound.

I think time may finally be catching up. And if so, I want to strike while the iron is hot.

So in 2020, I'm going to be watching documentaries. But not just any documentary. I'm still sick of the most common type of documentary I think we see nowadays, the prototypical example of which is a movie I have not seen. That prototypical example is called Chicken People, and it's about show chickens. That's right, chickens who compete in shows like their dog counterparts who compete in shows. Frivolous subjects like this just waste my time and yours, and even if Chicken People is actually a good movie, it offends my sensibilities as a person trying to rekindle his love of documentaries.

I'm not going to spend 2020 watching Chicken People.

In fact, I'm going to go into documentary's hallowed past and see the classic documentaries I haven't seen, the ones that really mattered, the ones that would either scoff at or laugh in the face of Chicken People. One per month, 12 in total.

I love the idea, but I do have to set some ground rules. Well, I guess just one. And that is, to figure out a line of demarcation between "classic documentaries" and "new documentaries."

I can't think of just one title that would function as a turning point, so instead, I'm going to look to my own life.

At first I thought of watching only documentaries from before the year I was born, 1973, but I decided that was too limiting. Part of my hesitation is that I already have a couple candidates in mind that are from later in the 1970s. So we need to look forward.

I probably didn't see a single documentary in the entire 1980s, or if I did, I'm not aware what it might be. I started really getting into film around 1990, and I probably saw my first doco soon after that. Something like Hoop Dreams comes to mind as a possible contender, but that was in 1994 and I know I would have started my documentary career before then.

So I've chosen 1990 as that cutoff, which is nice and even as the start of a decade. It'll also allow me to consider only movies that I wouldn't have naturally come across when they played in theaters, because I wasn't into that sort of thing yet.

As luck would have it -- "luck" -- this series also has a clever title that fits in with my preferred alliterative naming scheme. I'm going to call it Audient Authentic, which I slightly prefer over Authentic Audient. The latter makes it sound like I'm not usually being authentic with you. I hope I always am.

But I also think this gets in the idea that not only are these movies non-fiction, but they are non-fiction in a truly authentic way, when the documentary was seen as a serious-minded tool for revealing life's truths rather than a vehicle to put quirky stories into the world. I'm not saying every movie I watch will be a sober depress-fest, but I can guarantee you, there will not be the 1960s equivalent of Chicken People.

I've got a first title in mind that I plan to watch and post about before the end of January, and from there I'll bushwhack a path through the 20th century's best documentaries I have not yet seen.

I hope you'll join me.