Filed under: Everything Else, Documentary, Film Festivals, Silverdocs
Former Vice President Al Gore, whose film An Inconvenient Truth is now in theaters, presented the keynote speech at the Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Film Festival.
Gore opened with a few self-deprecating jokes, then launched into a whirlwind history of how media has been used to affect political change from the Guttenberg to the Internet (well, pre-Guttenberg actually—he noted the fact that the Koreans and Chinese had actually been using movable type for centuries). Gore was witty, inspiring, and highly intellectual. My jaw dropped hearing a main-stream American politician refer to Habermas and Adorno in a public forum. He clearly knew his audience. The speech, which focused on the idea that in order for democracy to thrive the people have to be a part of the national conversation, passed through the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the American Revolution, the Second World War, and Mussolini’s assertion that radio was his most powerful weapon, before arriving at 1980, when America elected an actor as president. “All questions of fact become questions of power,” Gore said, quoting Theodor Adorno. At times, such as classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and revolutionary America, the people have been empowered by the fact that they were a part of the conversation. But the age of print dominance ended in the 1960s, and “television, until now, has been more medieval monastery than Guttenberg.” In Medieval times, only monks could read and write, but after the invention of the printing press, those skills became widespread. Likewise, television has always been a medium practiced and controlled by a select few. But we are now at a crucial moment where people finally have access to the tools needed to participate. As documentary filmmakers, Gore concludes, “we have an opportunity to fix the democracy crisis and restart the conversation in America, to recreate a marketplace of ideas through documentary film.”
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For me, Gore’s speech was truly inspiring and a highpoint of Silverdocs. When he talked about America condoning torture and how George Washington had outlawed torture at Valley Forge, I just lost it and the tears welled up in my eyes.
Comment by Vicki Vasilopoulos 06.27.06 @ 5:47 pmThe Greek in me is always looking for a rational reason for everything, even when there isn’t one…Gore was right when he said the Rule of Reason plays less of a role in our national conversation now. But how in the world did we get to that point? And if it’s true, I’m afraid that Gore, or someone with the same intellectual heft, could never be elected in this country. He’s simply too smart, too well-read, too nuanced. I can’t help but have a nostalgia for the Great Thinkers who once ran our nation. But I remain ever hopeful — and agree with Gore — that documentary film can be a force for rebooting our sputtering democracy.