Talking Heads

I use to idolize documentaries. They investigate pressing social questions whose answers affect all of us. You see places you might not otherwise see, you meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet. PBS documentaries were the pinnacle of film as a medium, in my eyes.

My high school students think documentaries are boring. They see old “experts” talking and using big words, and it doesn't bring topics alive for them. So they don't get excited when I bring film into the classroom by showing a documentary.

They've helped me see that, yeah, documentaries are kind of boring. Most of them follow a standard format in presenting their subject, even a standard aesthetic. If you can predict the shots that go into a film you've never seen or even heard of, it's not very artistic.

Rebel is a documentary that goes beyond the typical components of a PBS documentary. Instead of blurry re-enactments where you can't see actors' faces, you get high-definition, color scenes where actors actually talk. Not perfectly accurate historically, maybe. But traditional documentary storytelling needs to evolve, or people like my students are not going to find them relevant or exciting.