Documentaries

Documentaries are a film that is trying to convey a point or idea and revolves around facts and truths. You can do it many ways and from many points of view. It can be about the making of something, trying to convey opinions of something, or an event or series of events. This post will be about two documentary films: F is for Faker and the Truth about Blackfish and will try to answer some questions that the films ask.

First lets talk about F is for Faker. The whole is talking about faker’s and the narrator at the beginning of the film promises the viewer that the first hour of the film is only truth and he does keep that promise. You can tell that the director Orson Welles like magic, one because he demonstrates some at the beginning of the film and this whole thing is about misdirection, which is what magic is all about. There are three main fakers throughout the film Elmyr de Hory who is a Hungarian art forger and the film is mostly about him and his life. He could paint in the style of many famous painters like Matisse, Modigliani, and Renoir. another is Clifford Irving, who was mentored by Elmyr and forged document that were said to be Howard Huse, and Orson Welles, who was the director and narrator of the film. There others in the film like if Howard Huse was even real or Oja Kodar who helped Orson fabricate a whole story at the later half of the film.

The whole film is done in a very strange way. It feels like you’re in a movie style poetry club the whole time with the whole style, tone, look, and sound of one. There where a lot of quick cuts back and forth and sometimes using the same footage or what looked like the same on multiple occasions. Overall it was an interesting watch but wouldn’t recommend it unless you are specifically looking for a documentary or this specific subject, mostly because of the style of how it was done

The second film we are talking about is the Truth about Blackfish. This is more of a straightforward documentary is a bit easier to watch. The film is mostly explicitly bias in that it is about one viewpoint and that is that Seaworld and other aquatic animal parks should not keep smart animals like killer whales and dolphins and have shows with them. this film is also like propaganda in that is want you the viewer to help make them stop this and it does a very good job and making both of these biases. There primary source was actual footage of the event happening which showed killer whales attacking trainers and this showed that the are dangerous in captivity but are not in the wild. the rest of the sources where actual former trainers at Seaworld that worked with the whales, news reports of the events, and autopsy reports of the people who were killed. Seaworld tried so hard to cover up the event even though everyone eventually found out the truth. They lied about statistic like the life span of killer whales and the percent of curved fins. They lied about actually event and saying that they where accidents when they where purposely done by the whales. They even tried to blame the trainers for the acts of the whales.

Over all this film completed its goal in that it was trying to shine a light on the issue and that being that there shouldn’t be killer whales in captivity and that they should be wild animals. this film was easier to watch, probably because it was more of a traditional documentary. It did show some scenes that some people will find inappropriate but it wasn’t too severe. I would maybe recommend this one to someone who likes documentaries.