We live in the golden age of the documentary. More nonfiction films are being made and seen than ever before: 31 of the 40 all-time top grossing documentaries were released this decade. The burgeoning documentary field is what has created space for issue films like A Walk to Beautiful. The film is essentially an extended PBS special on obstetric fistula, a childbirth injury, in Ethiopia. The subject is moving, but, like most documentaries that come out these days, unless you are riveted by public television, A Walk to Beautiful isn’t for you. The audience for this film will be mostly activists and visitors to human rights festivals—in other words, the choir. With such limited appeal, do the generally unpopular, issue-focused offspring of this nonfiction boom matter?
The short answer is yes. Documentaries like A Walk to Beautiful sometimes bring attention to the issues they cover. Journalists looking to write about important but unflashy topics can use the films as a timely peg. Editors and producers won’t exactly be jumping at the bit for a piece on fistulas. If the writer covers the issue through the lens of the film, approval is much more likely. Issue documentaries are also an effective advocacy tool. Screening the film for potential activists or policy makers is an easy way to galvanize support.
The pratfalls of the issue-film explosion are similar to those for most new media: unbalanced points of view, misleading data and little oversight. Like the partisan blogs that have also proliferated this decade (Drudge Report, Huffington Post, etc), these films tend to be brazenly opinionated: think Fahrenheit 9/11, Ben Stein’s Expelled, Outfoxed and Hillary: The Movie. Advocacy for no-nonsense issues like obstetric fistulas is one thing, tendentious drive-bys that polarize and misinform are another.
The unchecked potential for inaccuracy in these films was on display with Food, Inc. As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in a recent blog post, the film seems to be incorrect about a key fact dealing with FDA statistics. In a newspaper, the next edition would print a correction. No Food, Inc 2: Fixing Our Mistakes is ever coming out.
Issue-based documentaries are flooding the market because films cut to the core of how humans operate: Image and narrative deeply affect us. As this cinematic field expands, the industry needs a method for ensuring that cinema’s poignant capacity isn’t abused.
