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Essential SF: 'Berkeley in the '60s,' 'Brother Outsider,' 'Weather Underground'

By Michael Fox

Three Bay Area documentaries provide an invaluable corrective to the historical revisionism practiced by calculating conservatives, cynical politicians, and the middle-of-the-road mainstream media.

Historical documentaries have a staid, ho-hum reputation with large swaths of the citizenry, who taint them by association with either the musty educational films they watched in public schools or ponderous marathons that get the highest billing on public television. It also must be acknowledged that, for many viewers, the past lacks the relevance and immediacy of verité social-issue docs. However, just as the breadth and style of written biographies has expanded far beyond the once-standard neutral assemblage of facts, contemporary documentaries more often embrace point of view, creative structures, dramatic storytelling, unique characters and moral complexity.