Documentaries are as old as film. Even silent films feature documentaries. One early form of documentary, though you may not think of it as such, was the newsreel. Many people learned about the Great War by watching the newsreels. Unfortunately, the medium didn't work so well when it came to exposing the public to Leon Theremin's new invention. Eventually, sound happened, and the news got louder.

You will notice something about that voiceover, though. Even though all it's doing is describing the weather – a less controversial subject in 1959 than it is today – the voiceover is hectoring, persuasive, even propagandistic. In fact, newsreels of all eras come across as propaganda, no matter where they come from or what they're describing. They leave the modern viewer feeling detached, and possibly a little queasy, especially when they add callous attitudes to the mix.

It may seem odd, but 'documentary' film is almost always propaganda. Most of it has an educational or didactic intent. Think about the types of 'factual' film: training films, school films, public service films, and whatever those nature documentaries on television are supposed to be besides what the people at my house call 'predator porn'. They all want to teach something, which means they have a more or less clearly defined purpose in mind. Even a newsreel like the 'summertime' one above has a propaganda-like theme: look how much fun we're having in New York in the summer. Oh, and how it's okay to leer at all the women in the city. . . you can learn a lot from old newsreels, but you may wish you hadn't. You can write a good one, if you're pure of heart and rigorous of method.

So beware when documentary film makers claim to be mere observers of the 'reality' they present in their films. If they believe that themselves, they're deluded. If you believe it as an audience member, you become a victim of propaganda. You need to view each and every 'documentary' film you see as if it came clearly stamped, 'Made by UFA Verlag, Berlin, 1942: Joseph Goebbels personally vetted this film.' That's true, even if the propaganda. . . er, documentary film is well-made by honest folk. If the film was made in the 21st Century, neither of those criteria will probably apply.

Take the film I watched the other night – please, and hurl it a great distance. It was called American Anarchist. I didn't bother to find out anything about the film maker before I started watching this: I was too eager to hear from William Powell, the author of the Anarchist Cookbook, an almost legendary volume of dissident lore from my college days. I found Mr Powell a fascinating, and in many ways admirable person. But the film about him made me mad enough to spit. That was the film maker's fault, so I looked him up.

What I found out was that the film maker, Charlie Siskel, is a former lawyer and long-time associate of Michael Moore. His television work has been nominated for an Emmy. He is the nephew of a famous US film critic. With so much experience, I would expect better work than this.

William Powell wrote the Anarchist Cookbook in four months when he was 19 years old, using information from the public library, declassified military manuals, and counterculture publications like the Berkeley Barb. As he has explained in print, Powell was angry at 19, like a lot of his contemporaries. He was angry at the government, he was opposed to the Vietnam War, and he didn't want to go and die in it. So he wrote this book – an act that makes sense when you're a bright, angry teenager. Somebody else published it. Powell outgrew the book, but the publisher didn't. Powell didn't own the copyright, and couldn't do anything about its continued publication.

Powell was never an anarchist. He never joined the SDS or Weathermen. Instead, he became an international educator. He won awards for this. He was widely respected, and his death last year was considered a loss to the field. Which you will find out, sort of, in this documentary. But first, you will have to sit through 80 minutes of bullying by the off-camera Siskel, who seems to have appointed himself the Witch-Smeller Pursuivant.

Siskel believes – or wants us to believe he believes – that Powell's book is responsible for dozens of acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder in the United States, based on the fact that the perpetrators owned a copy of some version of the Anarchist Cookbook. In the world of this documentary, a nuanced discussion of the issue of causation here is not possible. Powell wrote the book: Powell is responsible. Siskel's task in making the film is to get him comfortable, then make him admit it on camera. If he doesn't seem repentant enough, badger him some more. This goes on for a while, which explains the spitting on my part.

The problem with this kind of 'documentary' is that the film maker seems to be proceeding from a script in his head: one he wrote before he ever met the subject. The storyline, and the conclusions to be drawn, are clear from the outset. The only point of actually making the film is to get footage that can be edited to tell the story that's already on the storyboard.

That's the way to make a fiction film. That's not the way to make a factual film, in my opinion. What happened to accidental discoveries? How might the story change along the way, once you meet the people and find out their side of things? What about depth, insight, and nuance? How about some real research into the publication history of the Anarchist Cookbook? Who were the publishers who sold it over the years? What was their agenda? How did reception change over time? Is the book as sold today anything like the book William Powell wrote in the library in 1971? What about these terrorists and killers? Was the book really instrumental in their actions, or just one of many texts they consulted after forming an intention to do harm? Was the book even helpful to would-be mayhem makers? Go look the original up online at archive.org. I won't link to it, so nobody will say h2g2 supports terrorism, which it doesn't. We only support thinking, which is a pretty scary proposition, apparently.

I am proud of the amateur reviewers on Amazon.com. Go look them up. Dozens have written to complain about this documentary. They say things like, '. . . the interviewer clearly had an agenda. . . ' and '. . . it's not like it's a nuanced examination. . . ' Or, as a viewer at my house commented, 'The more you like the subject of the interview, the more you hate the documentarian.' It's a relief to know that this kind of poor film-making isn't snowing the audience. Maybe they've learned something after all those years of snide newsreels.

What's the take-home here? When you write 'fact', acknowledge up-front that you're going to have an agenda. You've come to a conclusion, and you're going to try to get your point across. But do it responsibly. Watch out for those pesky nuances. Be open to facts that contradict your previously held views. Don't write before you research. Above all, listen. Listen to your sources. Be rigorous in your work. You owe a debt to the truth. Otherwise, you might find yourself wincing when you realise how you'd covered the story before you knew all the facts.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

17.07.17 Front Page

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