Went to a showing of The Unforeseen last night. A compassionate and effective documentary on land use planning, development and sprawl, a Laura Dunn film with Robert Redford as an exec producer and cameo.
This is an excellent piece of propaganda and an interesting popularization of daring film techniques. After, many of the people I talked to said "it was strange how it would go off on these artsy sort of things..." or "I've never seen a documentary that was so beautiful."
The film often integrated in incongruous or even comical images, giving it a sort of zen Buddhist sort of humor. Many images seemed to follow a sense of chance allowing and encouraging viewers to make mental leaps and actively participate in creating meaning. The image of children, or of a sheep escaping its fence aren't directly related to the content of the film except by a sort of synchronicity. Experiments in story-telling and even characterization give this documentary a very new feel...
What is art? What is propaganda? Propaganda attempts to persuade toward an opinion? I don't think art tries to do this.
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