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Summer Docs

Here’s my top-10 list of new or recent docs to watch this summer:

1. “The Fourth Estate” (Showtime)
2. “Five Came Back” (Netflix)
3. “King in the Wilderness” (HBO)
4. “RBG” (in theaters)
5. “Vietnam” (on DVD, iTunes, Amazon Prime)
6. “The Keepers” (Netflix)
7. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (in theaters)
8. “Faces, Places” (Netflix)
9. “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library” (on DVD)
10. “Bobby Kennedy for President” (Netflix)

Please also consider the updated cut of a film series I worked on with Henry Louis Gates Jr.: “Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise” (PBS/Thirteen Passport). We also co-authored the series companion book.

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Operation Experimentation

Source: Oglethorpe University

Words to live by for anyone embarking on a career, including filmmaking, in these heightened and uncertain times, from one called to lead in a far more dire, far more ominous time:

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Commencement Address at Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia, May 22, 1932