History Documentaries Roundup

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Lisa de Moraes, "Summer TV Press Tour 2011: Ken Burns compares ‘Prohibition’ doc to present day," Washington Post, August 1, 2011
Ken Burns wants America to watch his new PBS documentary, “Prohibition,” and notice startling similarities to our current political maelstrom. At Summer TV Press Tour 2011, Burns led TV critics to that trough and suggested in the strongest possible terms that they drink deeply.>>>

Tim Younkman, "Bay City man who served as guard during Nazi Nuremberg trial featured in documentary," Bay City Times, July 28, 2011

BAY CITY — The courtroom is quiet as a corpulent figure on the witness stand — one of the highest-ranking German Nazis — proudly defends his actions during World War II. Standing next to him is a steely American guard, Bay City soldier Andrew Wendland. It’s just one of the scenes included in a newly restored 1947 documentary titled “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today,” which is being shown for the first time to North American audiences during a two-year tour of cities.>>>

Mike Boehm, "NEH gives $40 million in grants; $3.2 million to California," Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2011

. . . . L.A.’s Grammy Museum will get $550,000 to help produce “Rockin’ the Kremlin,” a film by director Jim Brown about the role American rock music played in weakening the Soviet empire. A UPI.com report last year on plans for the film said it includes an account of a 1977 Soviet tour by the Southern California-based Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that was said to play a part in capturing young Slavic imaginations, presumably helping to awaken them to the drawbacks of totalitarian rule. Brown’s past films include documentaries about Woody Guthrie, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary and a PBS series, “American Roots Music.”>>>

Rich McKay, "Post-slavery South chained to hard labor: Upcoming film shows how Atlanta relied on indentured servitude," Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 28, 2011

In the years after the Civil War, a black man could get arrested in Atlanta simply for being outside after sunset or talking loud or looking at a white woman in the “wrong way.” Those arrested could spend years in forced labor, auctioned off for pennies by the state for hard labor for the profit of big Atlantan industries. A $75 fine could take a decade of back-breaking work to pay off.>>>

Ceri Radford, "Timeshift: All the Fun of the Fair, BBC Four," Telegraph, August 3, 2011

Candyfloss bigger than your head, goldfish in plastic bags, nausea-inducing rides and inept efforts at the coconut shy: most of us have memories of the fairground, and last night’s Timeshift: All the Fun of the Fair (BBC Four) was a fond and informative trundle through its cultural history. The documentary also managed to effortlessly suggest both how different things used to be and, simultaneously, how similar.>>>

History on TV

Randall Stephens

Worth noting are a couple of history documentaries and dramatic features that are airing, or will soon air, on TV. Since John Adams premiered last year on HBO the bar has been set quite high. Corny CGI and bad acting no longer suffice. (I've finally ditched showing the rather primitive Mary Silliman's War in an American history course.) The current crop of history-related TV offerings does not disappoint.

Episodes of the PBS American Experience series on Indian history, We Shall Remain, have been beautifully presented and look well suited for the history classroom. PBS describes the series as a "multi-media project that establishes Native history as an essential part of American history. Five 90-minute documentaries spanning three hundred years tell the story of pivotal moments in U.S. history from the Native American perspective." My favorite episode so far has been Wounded Knee. Questions that this installment raises are particularly interesting and don't lend themselves to easy answers. As a bonus, full episodes can be watched here on the PBS site.

Also currently playing on PBS is WWII: Behind Closed Doors, a three-part docudrama directed by Laurence Rees. According to the PBS site, the "award-winning historian and filmmaker Laurence Rees (Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, Nazis – A Warning from History) uses documents to tell the story of the backroom deals that cost many lives but were seen as necessary evils to keep the Soviet Union in the war." "At six hours, playing out over three nights," comments a reviewer in the LA Times "'Behind Closed Doors' requires a commitment from viewers, but for anyone interested in the complexities of WWII and, indeed, the moral impossibilities of war itself, it is a commitment worth making." Attention to detail will draw in viewers. The actors are spot on. A portly, jut-jawed Paul Humpoletz plays Churchill to great effect.

There's more Churchill over at HBO. Into the Storm will premier on that channel on May 31, 9pm. The production site indicates that the movie will pick up the "story of Churchill told in HBO's award-winning film, The Gathering Storm." Into the Storm "is set against the backdrop of World War II, and offers an intimate look at the making of a nation's hero, whose prowess as a great wartime leader ultimately undermined his political career and threatened his marriage to his lifelong supporter, Clemmie."