The American cinema vérité movement—rhyming roughly alongside a culture-wide jones for truth-seeking that also gave rise to confessional poetry, singer-songwriter folk, and the post-Cassavetes American New Wave—was a short-lived airburst of principle, and David and Albert Maysles were its twin firebrands. Or so it seemed then, based on a small number of films, and upon the neo-genre itself supposedly rectifying the fakery-clotted crapola of Disney docs and agenda-dominated issue films. Perhaps a disappointment in the short run—both Pennebaker and the Maysleses ended up being far too game for riding in the roadie bus and filming pop concerts—cinema vérité proved to be a historical prophecy, not the running-with-the-devil antithesis to the documentary tradition but the tradition itself. Today vérité is a way of life; anyone can, and often it seems everybody will, make their own downloadable high-res/digital-video doc, sans budget, prospectus, outline, or point to prove.... More >>>