Academy AwardsTop 10 Documentaries of 2006by Erik Moe Spike Lee combined artistry, music, and political fire in giving voice to the victims of Katrina with When the Levees Broke. Few docs caused as much of a stir in 2006 as Al Gore's super-scary Powerpoint presentation concert film An Inconvenient Truth. Iraq War documentaries continued to inform and enrage. Religious fervor of varying extremes came to light in Jesus Camp and Jonestown. Doug Block found the universal in the deeply personal with 51 Birch Street.
This list considers only films that were well-distributed nationally in the U.S. (theatrically or on TV) or were widely available on DVD by mid December. Artfully voicing the frustrations and the tenacity of the Gulf Coast region, Spike Lee's four-hour film on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is a powerful indictment of the government's failings and warns of the dangers of hiding and forgetting America's poor. Terrance Blanchard's perfectly scored original soundtrack elevates the documentary further. Al Gore's presentation on global warming lived up to its hype as "the most terrifying film you will see" and moved the debate once and for all past "does global warming exist?" to the "what do we do about it" phase. Directed by Davis Guggenheim. 3. 51 Birch StreetDoug Block set out to mine his father's mysterious past. The resulting film is a masterpiece meditation on family bonds, memory, life, love and death. 4. Jonestown: The Life and Times of People's TempleThis portrait of the Peoples Temple movement that culminated in the mass suicide of over 900 at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 illustrates the seduction of Jim Jones' charismatic evangelism and plays back the tragic collapse through the eyes of survivors and family members. Micheal Apted's lifelong project documenting the lives of a dozen-plus Britons continues to be one of the greatest experiments in the history of cinema. This latest installment continues 42 Up's trend toward critique of the film series and its effect on the lives of the participants. This complicated study of the underground would-be superstar Daniel Johnston and his lifelong battle with mental illness is heartbreaking and incredulous. Directed by Jeff Feuerzeig. For the Vietnam generation, Sir! No Sir! acknowledges the country's debt to vast numbers of soldiers who were forced to choose between duty and conscience. For their children and grandchildren, this documentary is an eye-opening counterpoint to the re-written history of the 1960s and 70s that has sought to characterize "activists" as a marginal group of uninformed trouble-makers. In a sometimes mind-numbing field of Iraq War documentaries, Deborah Scranton's The War Tapes stands out with its vivid portrait of the lives of three U.S. soldiers. Relying on handheld camera footage shot in Iraq by the troops themselves, the film reveals much more than an embedded journalist could have found. Additional footage of family life going on while the soldiers are away adds another layer of poignancy. At a summer camp for religious fundamentalists, youngsters are trained to be soldiers in the culture wars. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's film shows the rich and sophisticated parallel culture that exists for children of American religious fundamentalists. With Brave New Films, Robert Greenwald has built a factory for quick and dirty (but well researched and spot-on) full-length documentaries about the state of union. Sure, Greenwald didn't invent liberal muckraking, but he's shown the power of the net-roots to deliver eyeballs, spike DVD sales, and just maybe helped shift the power of Congress in 2006 with exposes on Wal-Mart (The High Cost of Low Price), Tom DeLay (The Big Buy) and Halliburton (Iraq for Sale). Ten films is never enough for summarizing an entire year of nonfiction. Other excellent documentaries included: The Bridge, Darwin's Nightmare, Deliver Us From Evil, Iraq in Fragments, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Our Brand is Crisis, and This Film is Not Yet Rated.
What films would you have added (or left off)? Post your comments to the top docs of '06 discussion on the About Documentaries blog. | 
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