Incident at Oglala

Great doc. Here's an idea, how about a Making of a Murderer: Leonard Peltier, so he has a chance at freedom instead of some rapey white guy.

Free Leonard.

A thorough and unfussy act of scholarship, an attempt to get at all the angles of an uncertain event and consider whether or not justice was properly rendered. Apted lays it all out, like a man trying to get every puzzle piece on the table because staring at the entirety of it will be the only way to spot the solution. It does what the finest documentaries do: it stirs you with the sturdiness of its facts instead of the bombast of its opinions.

Coming in with merely a trivial understanding of the case of Leonard Peltier, I leave this film with not only a sense of the socio-political context of the situation but also the emotions behind it on both sides. Succeeding where most docs fail, Incident at Oglala is simultaneously informational and cinematic. It takes a page out of Morris's playbook, using creative techniques such as re-enactments to make it obvious how absurd and subjective the story becomes. Apted is a skilled documentarist.

A passion subject for Apted (see Thunderheart) it makes for a pretty interesting look at a now almost forgotten chapter for our government and dealing with native Americans.

This should be required viewing in classrooms across "America".