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Reality Check

  1. September 17, 2012 06:50 AM

    How to recount a plague

    A new documentary about AIDS is the best one in the past few years

    By Alissa Quart

    How to Survive A Plague is the best AIDS documentary I’ve seen. Why? Because it is important, yes, but so are so many other AIDS docs out this year and last, including Vito, HBO’s recent documentary about film scholar and gay activist Vito Russo, and We Were Here, 2011’s film about survivors of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco....

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  2. August 27, 2012 06:50 AM

    Is Project Runway saving criticism?

    It may well be, Reality Check columnist Alissa Quart says

    By Alissa Quart

    This Thursday, I was watching an episode of the 10th season of the now ancient and seemingly irrelevant Lifetime show Project Runway: It was the one where fashion-challenged friends arrived for a humiliating makeover involving shiny fabrics. But watching it, I was reminded for the hundredth time that the show is one of last bastions of no-holds-barred criticism. That is:...

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  3. August 13, 2012 06:50 AM

    Collapsing the line between documentary and fiction

    A new film, The Ambassador, exhibits "performance journalism," a combination of art and reporting

    By Alissa Quart

    This week, you can on-demand a documentary that uses insanely unorthodox methods to get at the truth and judge for yourself whether this approach is acceptable for nonfiction, or not. The film in question is by Danish director Mads Brugger. The Ambassador restyles investigative journalism and documentary into something we could call “performance journalism,” a one-of-a-kind combination of performance art,...

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  4. July 30, 2012 06:50 AM

    Viral before the Internet

    Things spread, but the content, often documentary, was darker and weirder

    By Alissa Quart

    Was there viral documentary film and video before the Internets? You bet. As Kliph Nesteroff wrote recently in The Awl, viralness or “virality” as he calls it, was around long before the Nyan cat.

    Lots of documentary footage circulated and had an impact way before the Web through now-dead media: mimeographs, public access cable, and videotapes. As Nesteroff puts it,...

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  5. July 16, 2012 06:50 AM

    Vimeo: AuteurTube

    YouTube can make amateurs rich, but the video pros are congregating elsewhere

    By Alissa Quart

    The Times mag the other week noticed that amateur star “YouTubers” could make six figures through the site’s comedy channels.

    But people filming verite vignettes or shooting true tales professionally are probably posting on Vimeo. What's Vimeo, you say? It’s is a video-sharing company where users upload their film work, all in high definition, in a player without advertising. There...

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  6. July 2, 2012 07:00 AM

    Push Girls transcends its genre

    Viewers might come for the drama, but they'll stay for the realness that seeps through

    By Alissa Quart

    In her new column, Reality Check, Alissa Quart delves into all things documentary.

    The new Sundance Channel reality-show Push Girls, about four paralyzed women, is unexpectedly riveting. It's also unseemly.

    It’s the story of four friends in Hollywood who have been paralyzed from the neck or waist down by accidents or illness. They all try—and mostly succeed—to live independently despite...

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