Is THE WOLFPACK part of an ethnographic documentary tradition that seeks to display the “strange” for spectator enjoyment? Or does it consistently work against this tradition of depicting its main subjects as human caricatures? Joshua Glick reflects on the film as part of his series of reviews of classic and contemporary documentaries.

On Tuesday, September 29, 2016, Docs In Progress honored director Marshall Curry and editor Matthew Hamachek at our first ever Documentary Inspiration Awards.  Enthusiastic audience members braved the pounding rain to join us for the evening of conversation with the filmmakers and a screening of their Academy Award-nominated collaboration IF A TREE FALLS.  Relive the event with a wrap-up from board member Sam Meddis and tweets from volunteer Cheree Dillon and board member Chithra Jeyaram.

By Guest Contributor Josh Glick, Assistant Professor of English and Film at Hendrix College, Mellon Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University in the Integrated Humanities

Watching Life Itself  (2014) in Washington D.C.’s E Street Cinema, I felt director Steve James’s recent portrait of the late Roger Ebert strike a personal chord. As a wide-eyed teenager attending a summer program at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 2001, I was fortunate to be exposed to the writing of Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and Manny Farber as part of a broader menu of cultural criticism. Reading film reviews helped me to cultivate an appetite for all kinds of movies. Now, as it’s my job to teach others a critical awareness of how moving images shape and are shaped by the world around us, I have come to appreciate how it is often the written word that coaxes even the most reluctant spectators to become eager viewers.