Rob Nelson is a film critic based in Minneapolis. A member of the National Society of Film Critics since 1998, he recently completed his graduate thesis paper on the ‘70s-era proto-fake newsmaking of Sunn Classic Pictures, whose hugely profitable pseudo-documentaries about Noah’s Ark and Bigfoot, et. al, mirrored the neo-con rise that culminated in an aging movie star’s election to the presidency. His book about women documentarians will be published in 2018.
Person to Person: Lucy Walker’s Small-P Political Documentaries
“I always think of myself as a ‘small-p political’ person,” says documentarian Lucy Walker, whose films include The Crash Reel, Waste Land, and Countdown to Zero. “The things that have the most impact on me are personal stories, stories of individuals. I believe that human beings mirror one another. We look to each other to relate to one another and learn. So in my movies I try to allow the audience to experience a world they’ve never seen through people they wouldn’t otherwise meet.”
