SFFILM 61 Day 4: Smoke

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival began Wednesday and runs through April 17th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

Image from Smoke provided by SFFILM

Smoke (USA: Wayne Wang, 1995)
playing: 7:30 tonight at Dolby Cinema as part of the festival's Tribute to Wayne Wang

I believe I saw Smoke years ago, perhaps shortly after it was released onto videocassette (I seem to associate it with those Blockbuster plastic cases) but I barely remember it at all. I definitely recommend listening to its director talk about how he protected this Miramax release from the meddling of Harvey Weinstein in his recent KQED interview.

I'm interested in this screening for two main reasons beyond refreshing my memory of what at the time was apparently a forgettable movie for me (albeit one that I've heard others talk of more positively in the meantime). One is that I'm interested in hearing the director of great San Francisco (and not just Chinatown) films like Chan is Missing and Dim Sum: a Little Bit of Heart speak about his work in person; he'll be interviewed by the auteur of Colma: the Musical and Fruit Fly, H.P. Mendoza.

The other reason is my curiosity about the Dolby Cinema, which as far as I know has only opened to the general public for ticketed screenings twice: during the first weekend of the San Francisco International Film Festival last year, and during the first weekend of the festival this year. In 2017 I took advantage of the occasion only for one film, Score: A Film Music Documentary, which certainly showed off the sound capabilities of the space well by way of Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Hans Zimmer etc (it was heavy on big-budgeted Hollywood symphonic music and barely addressed anything foreign or indie for better and worse). This year I want to see how it stacks up when showing work shot by a great cinematographer, and I think Adam Holender, who shot Midnight Cowboy and Puzzle of a Downfall Child a quarter century before spending time as something of a Miramax house DP, lensing Boaz Yakin's Fresh a year before Smoke and M. Night Shyamalan's studio debut Wide Awake a few years after, qualifies. Normally I'd want to see a movie made during the 35mm era (even if at the tail end, by many though not all accounts) on 35mm but I've heard miraculous things about the Dolby's deep blacks and I want to see them tested out on a new remastered digital "print" so I can know precisely what photochemical restorations are up against these days.

Unfortunately at this writing all advance tickets to Smoke are unavailable, but you can check the SFFILM website again at the daily "noon release" of tickets to some (not all) SFFILM shows, or wait in the RUSH line to see if you can be seated at the time of the screening. Just remember to eat dinner beforehand; no food or drink of any kind is allowed inside the Dolby, and they check you bags to make sure you won't be a scofflaw.

SFFILM61 Day 4
Other festival options: The first screenings of Golden Gate Award nominated shorts are today, all at the Roxie: narratives & documentaries in one program, animation in another, and experimental works in a third. It's also the second of three SFFILM screenings of Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof's A Man of Integrity, 9:30 tonight at SFMOMA.

Non-SFFILM option: I can't limit myself to just one: if I weren't going to SFFILM I'd be sorely tempted by tonight's female-focused Other Cinema line-up or the 100-year old Mary Pickford film Stella Maris, with a screenplay by San Francisco's own Frances Marion, screening in 16mm at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont.

SFFILM 61 Day 3: Avraham

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival began Wednesday and runs through April 17th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

Image from Avraham supplied by SFFILM

Avraham (USA: Nathaniel Dorsky, 2014)
playing: 6:00 tonight at SFMOMA as part of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award presentation, and at 5:45 Sunday April 15 at BAMPFA.

Avraham is, like all of Nathaniel Dorsky's recent films, an extraordinary beautiful silent 16mm film intended to be projected at 18 frames per second (rather than the 24 fps standard cemented in the early sound-film era), which he calls "sacred speed" and considers "gentler" than the faster pace most of us are accustomed to viewing films at. As Jeremy Polacek writes, Dorsky's films "hover on the rim of recognition, not quite perceptible, because knowing would somehow be less." Unlike his other works, however, Avraham was named before it was filmed, making it a break from the filmmaker's prior work in that it directly and explicitly dialogues with Dorsky's Jewish heritage.

I have a particular interest in the way films exist as records of the world around us, and I've spent a good deal of time and energy investigating how the great tradition of experimental filmmakers in my hometown (most notably, in partnership with my friend Brecht Andersch, Christopher Maclaine, but I've also worked on the pychogeographic implications of films by San Francisco-based artists like Bruce Baillie, James Broughton, ruth weiss, Sidney Peterson, Curt McDowell, etc.) So it's tempting, knowing that Mr. Dorsky is a resident of my childhood neighborhood of the Richmond District, to attempt to identify the places and objects, the store windows and sidewalks, that his camera captures in his films. I have learned to resist this temptation, however, for several reasons. First, watching his purely cinematic films in this way feels very much at cross-purposes to their intentions and to the calming, meditational magic that they can work on the viewer when their rhythms and explosions of nurturing light and beauty are understood not as representation but as structures of images unto themselves. Second, trying to identify these images and place them in the world outside the film, is almost always impossible, even for someone familiar with the streets he is shooting in. I'm convinced that Dorsky knows exactly how long to hold a shot so that it can cut to another one just a moment before recognition can register, and almost always chooses to use this knowledge.

I say "almost always" because of shots like the one shown above, from Avraham, is an exception, as I recall. I saw Avraham one and three quarter times (long story; short version: the projector belt broke the first time through) back in November 2015, and I recall being shocked by the camera's attention to this magnificent tree that I was able to recognize as the one growing out of Mallard Lake in Golden Gate Park. Even the majority of viewers of Avraham who don't recognize the tree as deeply as Golden Gate Park frequenters might, I suspect if I ask anyone who'd seen the film if they remember that tree, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. I got a distinct sense that Dorsky wanted us to see it with a different set of eyes than we see most of the things in his films, which is why he allowed it to risk a representational quality that earlier films I've seen generally don't flirt with. Though I haven't seen some of the works Dorsky has filmed in the interim -- I've seen Intimations but not Autumn or The Dreamer, which is why I'm pleased that all three join Avraham in tonight's program -- at least the first two of the seven films in Dorsky's geographically-themed (and named) Arboretum Cycle, Elohim and Abaton seem to me to continue this representational risk, and I don't think it's pure coincidence that a) the first of these films, like Avraham, has a Hebrew word as its title (the second is Greek) or that b) Mallard Lake is less than a mile from Golden Gate Park's Arboretum.

As you can see, I'm very happy with the SFFILM decision to give their POV Award to Dorsky. I'm a fan, and we have many mutual friends. I can't wait to see these 16mm prints in the refurbished SFMOMA space, which in its prior incarnation was often singled out by Dorsky as a particular favorite place to show his work. He's already announced that on June 14th he'll be back to screen at SFMOMA, this time with the Arboretum Cycle, the seven films shot and edited since he completed the four screening tonight. Moreover, while the POV Award annually goes to moving image artists working in various modes, from documentary to animated short to video art and gallery-style installation, to my mind (and according to an SFFILM press release) Dorsky is the first pure "experimental filmmaker" to have gotten the award since Pat O'Neill did fifteen years ago.

SFFILM61 Day 3
Other festival options: Tonight the new-for-2018 SFFILM festival venue Creativity Theatre hosts the first SFFILM screening of Amy Scott's documentary Hal, about the director of one of the 1970s' most remarkable streak of American narrative features, running from The Landlord through Being There & including shot-in-Northern California classics Harold And Maude (entirely local) and Bound For Glory (partly shot in Isleton & Stockton). Tonight also marks the first SFFILM screenings of Edouard Deluc's Gaugin: Voyage to Tahiti (early in his career Dorsky received an Emmy for his photography for a documentary on Gaugin, incidentally) and Paul Schrader's First Reformed, both at the Victoria. Schrader is expected to attend his film.

Non-SFFILM option: Palo Alto's all-35mm gem (which I've seen the main subject of this blog post attend on several occasions) the Stanford Theatre begins its new April-June calendar, this one focused mostly on thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock and others. Tonight's (as well as tomorrow's and Sunday's) double-bill is the George Cukor-directed 1944 version of Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury, along with the 1943 Best Picture Oscar winner Casablanca. I've never really thought of Casablanca as a thriller before but it does seem to share some DNA with films like Ministry of Fear and Notorious, both of which come later in the Stanford season.

SFFILM 61 Day 2: Barry

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival began last night and runs through April 17th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

Image from Barry supplied by SFFILM

Barry (USA: Bill Hader & Alex Berg, 2018)
playing: 6:00 tonight only at the Victoria

This is perhaps a perverse choice for the initial daily spotlight from a dedicated cinema blogger who has never seen an episode of Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, The Wire, Six Feet Under, or practically any of the marquee titles in the era of "prestige television" that has turned the attention of many potential attendees of thoughtful film presentation toward their home screens with the force of a rare-earth magnet. But this crime comedy series, the first three episodes of which are screening tonight with actors Sarah Goldberg and Henry Winkler (yes, "The Fonz" and the director of Memories of Me and Cop and a Half) expected to attend in lieu of co-creators Hader and Berg, happens to be the only thing playing the festival today that I've had a chance to sample so early in the festival. I spent last weekend in Los Angeles (missing a BAMPFA screening of Salaam Cinema that I later learned was a harbinger of a larger Mohsen Makhmalbaf retrospective there this Fall) and though I didn't go to any movies, my fiancée and I did relax on one of our hosts' comfy couches where she showed us the first (and thus far only available) episode of Barry via her HBO streaming set-up. I wouldn't say I was immediately hooked by the set-up of the eponymous affectless Afghanistan War vet (Hader) being manipulated by an oily opportunist (Stephen Root) to use his savant-like military skills to earn a living as a hit man, but I can't deny enjoying the "worlds collide" frictions that emerge when Barry stumbles into an acting class run by a pricey coach (Winkler) from the "tear-'em-down-to-build-'em-up" school, and befriends one of the more volatile students (Goldberg), and the backstage/showbiz humor hits a little closer to where I live. I'm not sure I'm likely to give up a rare chance to see a foreign film just to catch this on a much bigger screen (even with talent in tow) but if there was nothing else in its slot calling my name, I certainly would consider it, especially knowing how long it will likely take me to get around to watching it as a non-subscriber to HBO.

The paradox of the television vs. cinema debate is that, at least under current conventions in this country, television is prohibited from being legally presented in cinemas while movies screen everywhere from IMAX houses to, eventually (and dishearteningly), smartphones. So the kind of rare opportunity to see a new show that, if it isn't quite on the artistic level of Fassbinder, is certainly destined to be more popular than Eight Hours Don't Make A Day, will surely be of interest to viewers who find more appeal in serialized, character-driven narratives than the kinds of narrative-exploding cinematic attractions I tend to seek out. Who knows, perhaps some TV fans will stick around to check out more of the festival, which is certainly a home for a sort of binge watching they might not be so familiar with.

SFFILM61 Day 2
Other festival options: Speaking of film festival television, as of this writing there are still a few FREE tickets for tonight's 8:45PM screening of BBC/PBS co-production Civilizations: How Do We Look (episode 2) at SFMOMA. I doubt it's crucial to have seen episode 1 before diving into this. It's in fact the only one the SFFILM free events not currently at RUSH status. Today also marks the first festival screenings of titles like The Rider, The Workshop, and Angels Wear White, to name a few I've heard strong advance word about.

Non-SFFILM option: Tonight is Artist Television Access's monthly 8PM Open Screening event, where anyone can show their work to the assembled masses on Valencia Street's last outpost of underground, un-gentrified cinema. A wonderful article on ATA's Open Screenings was published earlier this year in Xpress Magazine.

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival: Forgetting the Alamo?

Image from ★ supplied by SFFILM

Since last September, my moviegoing habits have been dramatically altered. As any longtime reader of this blog (and/or its appallingly garish predecessor) would probably guess, I've for many years treated the San Francisco Bay Area cinema scene like my own personal buffet table, sampling as many different kinds of films as I could from different eras, genres, nations and formats (with an admitted bias towards 35mm, 16mm and 70mm, especially for films originating in those gauges) at any venue I could reasonably visit, given the limits of time, money and public transportation. It has seemed to me that too many people are looking for any excuse not to go to the cinema, an attitude I've found dismaying.

But after Tim League, the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse, LLC admitted nearly seven months ago that he'd secretly hired back a former employee who had resigned after confessing to sexual assault, I could no longer see myself supporting the local link in his growing national cinema chain in any way. I'd attended and enjoyed dozens of screenings at the New Mission Theatre since it had been refurbished and reopened under Alamo auspices in late 2015. I had (and still have) nothing but respect for the New Mission employees and programming. But I wanted Tim League and his Austin-based enablers to feel some repercussions for their extremely (if not criminally) poor judgement. So on September 12, 2017 I sold back all my advance tickets to Alamo screenings and said goodbye to the staff of Lost Weekend video, which for the past few years has been housed in the New Mission lobby. I haven't been back inside the building since. (Now I limit my DVD/Blu-Ray rentals to what I can find at Faye's or Video Wave). With more damning details about Alamo's Austin operations coming out since, I don't regret anything except that I don't see as many of my cinephile peers coming to the same decision as I'd expected. I do remain hopeful that someday League might publicly answer the hard questions about his management decisions and make meaningful amends so that his brand, which had traded so heavily on themes of inclusiveness, progressive politics, and respect for the patron experience, can begin to be genuinely rehabilitated. So far reports of company changes have felt like little more than window dressing.

Depriving myself of the Alamo Drafthouse was a big change for someone who prided himself on seeking out as many of the best, most unique screenings in the region as he could, but it was an easy decision. Harder was taking the next logical step of writing to the many local film presenters and organizations that have partnered with Alamo to hold events at the New Mission in the years since it re-opened, asking their intentions about involving Alamo in future presentations and making clear that I wouldn't be attending their events held at any venue if they continued to work with League's company. Few organizations got back to me and none wanted me to publish their response publicly, for reasons I can only speculate on. (My best guess is that making public statements on this topic puts a festival at a disadvantage when negotiating with other venues?) But when organizations I'd previously supported, such as SF Sketchfest, Noise Pop, or the Jewish Film Institute, continued hosting events at the New Mission, I determined not to attend or promote their events at other venues like the Castro, no matter how appealing they were.

Image from Ravenous supplied by SFFILM

With this as the backdrop, I was thrilled to discover at last month's press conference for the San Francisco International Film Festival that in 2018 SFFILM would not be using the New Mission as a festival venue as they had in 2016 and 2017. From my perspective, SFFILM was the first established Bay Area film organization to publicly partner with Alamo Drafthouse, LLC when for their 2015 festival they brought Tim League on to guest curate and co-host their annual (rebranded from "Late Show") "Dark Wave" screenings at the Roxie and the Clay, months before construction on the New Mission was completed. As the longest-running film festival in town (not to mention, depending on your definitions, in the Western Hemisphere), SFFILM often sets trends that other major nearby film festivals follow. It feels only right that they be the first film festival to publicly distance themselves from the Alamo Drafthouse in the wake of Tim League's misjudgments, especially since such an action dovetails so neatly with the "Bay Area values" that were frequently touted at the press conference and in subsequent write-ups, and with SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan's remarks found on the inside cover of the festival program guide, and reprinted online.

To be sure, SFFILM's distancing from the Drafthouse was not a forcefully presented statement, but it it was clearly presented, and that's good enough for me. When I asked at the press conference if the decision not to use the New Mission this year was due to the scandals at the company's Texas headquarters, Cowan responded that SFFILM looks forward to continuing its relationship with the Alamo Drafthouse in the future as the latter's issues were being resolved, but that the festival would take a break from the New Mission this year while that was happening. It may not have been the rousing battle cry for institutional change at the Drafthouse that I'd dreamed of, but having a major regional festival put a pause on its partnership is still one of the very few concrete consequences for that company I can think of happening in the past months. Nonetheless, I'm not too surprised that, Lincoln Specter's initial Bayflicks festival announcement reaction aside, none of the 2018 SFFILM previews, articles, or interviews I've come across so far (as always, David Hudson has collected the best of them) have mentioned the reason why the New Mission is not among the venues this year. Six months on from the initial reporting on Harvey Weinstein's far fouler misdeeds, it sometimes feels like there's a general fatigue with #MeToo in the film industry, sadly, as a noble and important movement is now being improperly co-opted as a shield for the cowardly actions of ignoble institutions. Of course the Tim League story predates all of this, but it never really got enough traction to be taken seriously outside a few insular circles that most Bay Area journalists probably aren't paying close attention to. Perhaps if it's talked about more in the context of SFFILM's decision the overall conversation might change, even nationally. I hope so.

But now that I've got all that off my chest, I can dwell on my excitement about this year's films and guests. This year's SFFILM has plenty of events that make me feel so relieved I'll be able to attend without compromising my principles. I'll be writing about some of these in more detail in the coming days, but for now, here's my planned schedule, which if last year's schedule is any indication, will change by about 30% over the course of the next two weeks, but may still provide a good snapshot of what I'm most interested in.

Image from The Rider supplied by SFFILM

Thursday, April 5:
Chloé Zhao's The Rider, 3:30, SFMOMA
Larent Cantet's The Workshop, 6:00, Roxie
Dominique Choisy in person with My Life With James Dean, 8:30, Roxie

Friday, April 6:
Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award to Nathaniel Dorsky, presenting Avraham, Intimation, Autumn & The Dreamer in 16mm, 6:00, SFMOMA (interviewer Steve Anker also expected)
Paul Schrader presenting his First Reformed, 8:45, Victoria

Saturday, April 7:
Creativity Summit: Alex Garland in Conversation, 2:00, Creativity Theater
Shorts program Shorts 3: Animation, 5:00, Roxie (Carlotta's Face director Valentin Riedl, Oh Hi Anne director Anne McGuire, 73 Questions director Leah Nicholas & Weekends director Trevor Jimenez expected)
Tribute to Wayne Wang, presenting his Smoke, 7:30, Dolby (interviewer H.P. Mendoza also expected)

Sunday, April 8:
Guy Maddin giving the festival's annual State of Cinema address, 12:30, Victoria
Mohammad Rasoulof's A Man of Integrity, 3:15, BAMPFA
Johann Lurf's ★, 7:00, YBCA

Monday, April 9:
Hong Sangsoo's Claire's Camera, 4:00, SFMOMA
A Celebration of Oddball Films with Marc Capelle's Red Room Orchestra in 16mm, 8:00, Castro

Tuesday, April 10:
Steve Loveridge's Matangi / Maya / M.I.A., 9:00, Grand Lake

Wednesday, April 11:
Shorts program The Shape of a Surface: Experimental Shorts, including some in 16mm, 6:30, Roxie (unnamed director(s) expected)
Blonde Redhead with I Was Born, But... in 35mm, 8:00, Castro

Thursday, April 12:
Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not A Witch, 6:00, Roxie
Kornél Mundruczó's Jupiter's Moon, 9:30, Castro

Friday, April 13:
Sandi Tan presenting her Shirkers, 6:00, BAMPFA
Ulises Porra Guardiola & Silvina Schnicer presenting their Tigre, 8:30, BAMPFA

Saturday, April 14:
Mel Novikoff Award to Annette Insdorff, presenting Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be in 35mm, 1:00, SFMOMA (interviewer Anita Monga also expected)
No evening SFFILM screening; I'm hosting a FREE open-to-the-public screening of Ricardo Gaona's Parque Central with Lizzy Brooks's Temporal Cities at 7:00, 234 Hyde Street in San Francisco, both filmmakers in person.

Sunday, April 15:
George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award to Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman, presenting End Game, 1:00, Castro (interviewer B. Ruby Rich also expected)
Robert Greene's Bisbee '17, 4:00, Creativity Theatre
Gus Van Sant presenting his Don't Worry He Won't Get Far On Foot, 7:00, Castro (composer Danny Elfman also expected)

Monday, April 16:
Robin Aubert's Ravenous, 8:45, Victoria

Tuesday, April 17:
Bing Liu's Minding the Gap, 8:45, Roxie

Direct Cinema and the Vietnam War

Basic Traning screen capture from DVD Talk review

The 1974 Peter Davis film Hearts and Minds, screens in 35mm today (along with Carolee Schneemann's 1966 16mm short Viet-Flakes) as the midway point in BAMPFA's excellent series Documenting Vietnam: Self-Portraits of America at War, timed with the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, which we saw a haunting, intimate portrait of from the perpetrators' POV last week in Joseph Strick's 1970 Interviews With My Lai Veterans. It's a film that contains exactly what its title promises: it consists entirely with one-on-one interviews (with very few interjections from the questioner) with five participants in the tragic event, each expressing different shades of regret. It was paired with a very good 16mm print of Frederick Wiseman's intensely immersive Basic Training, which eschews interviews by placing the camera as a kind of unacknowledged observer in the Fort Knox universe. Though Wiseman has rejected the term "Direct Cinema" and his name has been scrubbed from its contradictory wikipedia page, Basic Training hews to the precepts of the concept as described in books like Betsy A. McLane's A New History of Documentary Film and Erik Barnouw's Documentary: a History of the Non-Fiction Film. Placing the two films together is a reminder that the Vietnam War occured at the same time as great debates about non-fiction filmmaking techniques.

Hearts and Minds begins with an extremely memorable sequence. Vietnamese children are playing, and farmers are working in a seemingly idyllic rice paddy, free from any visible signs of war. Then, quite suddenly, a soldier walks into the frame. In addition to being a suitable metaphor for Western involvement in Southeast Asia, the image raises an important question: how was it captured? Did Davis or one of his cameramen plant a tripod in front of a known patrol path and wait? Or was the soldier directed to walk this particular route for the benefit of the shot? This question is related to an inherent limitation of the Direct Cinema approach: though filmmakers of that "school" say they avoid telling the subjects of their films to perform or repeat an action, sometimes it's not evident from the footage itself, except perhaps to the most sophisticated viewer, whether or not this guideline was actually hewed to. We must either a) trust that a Direct Cinema filmmaker is adhering to the guidelines of the method, or b) not care so much about how "pure" a piece of Direct Cinema filmmaking may be.

Many documentarians themselves take the latter approach to their filmmaking, opting for an "impure" hybrid approach that meshes Direct Cinema, cinéma vérité and other styles into kind of journalistic stew. Davis, as he reveals in his commentary track for the Criterion DVD edition of Hearts and Minds, was very much inspired by Direct Cinema when beginning his career making documentaries. The lack of a narrator in the film ties him to this group, though his reasoning for this artistic choice is not one I've encountered in readings on the movement (in Barnouw, McLane, and elsewhere): he felt a interlocutor worked as something of a blanket of safety around a war film, as a narrator would certainly sound as if at a comfortable remove from the distressing images on screen, perhaps inherently sanctioning them as a result.

Screen capture from Criterion DVD of Hearts and Minds

There are scenes in Heart and Minds that appear to utilize something like a Direct Cinema approach, for instance the scenes of the airmen wandering the streets of Saigon looking for cheap thrills. But this is not a "pure" Direct Cinema film. Subjects address the camera, whether in interviews, or in unscripted, unplanned reaction to its presence - the latter most notably in a moment where a Vietnamese man remarks "first they bomb as much as they please, then they film." The use of archival footage also seemingly dilutes "Direct Cinema" purity.

Essentially, Davis's film reveals that his allegiance to a specific approach to filmmaking is not as strong as it is to the message he wants to get across: that American involvement in the Vietnam War was ill-conceived, inevitably doomed, and caused greater harm to both nations than remaining uninvolved would have. There is little to no pretense of objectivity to be found in the film; though he gives opposing voices a say, he uses editing juxtapositions to make them seem as ridiculous or discreditable as possible within the context he's created. Cutting from General Westmoreland's platitudes about Asians' disregard for human life, to a wailing mother disrupting a burial in an attempt to join her son in his grave, is only the starkest of these.

One might say that, in using a hodge-podge of methods in the service of a particular point of view, Davis opens his film up for criticism and accusations of bias. But this only raises another question: is there any documentary which can claim to be completely free of "bias"? The Direct Cinema filmmakers may use a seemingly more "pure" filming approach, but it's always a means to put forth the subjective point of view of a "biased" individual filmmaker or group of filmmakers. Perhaps a film like Hearts and Minds which wears its political persuasion on its sleeve is more honest and, in a way, less dangerous for the discourse about objective journalism, than is a film which one way or another tries to conceal or be subtle about its maker's intentions.