- Doc Soup: Chronicling Child Abduction in Documentary
The 2008 documentary, Dear Zachary, has a strange power over me. Certainly, its subject — an unhinged woman kills a man, gives birth to his baby, flees to Canada where the child’s grandparents fight for his custody, and then she kills herself and the baby — is terribly tragic. It haunts me still. And so […]
- Doc Soup: The Babies Are Coming!
The babies are coming! The babies are coming! In a stroke of French-inspired genius, there’s a new documentary coming to our shores May 7 (over Mother’s Day weekend ): it’s called Babies. If distributor Focus Features is lucky, the film will captivate audiences the same way March of the Penguins (also originally from France), Winged […]
- Doc Soup: What Happened to… Avijit from “Born into Brothels”
Avijit Halder at 11 years old. Photo from Kids with Cameras. It makes sense to me to start off the “What Happened to the Subject?” series with a child who starred in a documentary, because it seems to me that we can see greater changes than with an adult subject. And, boy, has Avijit Halder, […]
- Doc Soup: When Children Are the Subjects of Docs
I often get this conflicted feeling when I watch a documentary about children, like this week’s POV broadcast of Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go: I am immediately concerned that the subjects are being exploited in some way, since they’re not really able to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be involved […]