True Lies: How documentary filmmaking set the stage for reality TV.

That was 2006. Since then I haven’t made another reality show, but I am making documentaries, and I keep asking myself if they are really that much different. After all, documentary filmmakers are also purveyors of a tell-all, show-all, know-all culture. Everyday life has become pop-culture entertainment, exploited as much by big TV networks and social-media companies as by the Jacks and Jills who offer up their lives in exchange for being noticed.

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The Accidental On-Purpose Documentarian: “We’ve set the bar so low that we don’t feel any pressure from the outside,” says Mika Rättö, front man of an obscure Finnish experimental rock band called Circle, at the beginning of Esko Lönnberg’s meta-meta-documentary, Man with a Video Camera.

To be sure, Rättö’s words aren’t very reassuring to someone just sitting down to a 50-minute-long film with a jumpy timeline and English subtitles. But for artists, musicians, and documentary buffs with even a junior varsity-level of intellectual stamina, Man with a Video Camera is an interesting, experimental peek into what is often seen as an impenetrable subject: the creative process.

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Unlike some VH1 pop-doc, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 was created from archival footage discovered in a Swedish TV station. It blends beautifully shot vérité moments of urban life with intimate interviews with the era’s most famous icons, such as Stokely Carmichael talking side by side with his mom, and an impassioned prison one-on-one with Angela Davis. Read more …