By Nathan Duke
French director Jean-luc Godard once said that “film is truth at 24 frames per second.” Many of the city's top critics will discuss their favorite films, which reveal the truth about a variety of subjects, at Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image's eighth annual New York Film Critics Circle series this month.Each year, participating critics select and present films around a chosen theme. This year's series – Critics Choice: Great Documentaries – will run till Feb. 28 and feature 24 films, including documentaries about musicians, tyrannical leaders, the Vietnam War, quirky artists, wrongly accused prisoners, salesmen and man vs. Mother Nature.David Schwartz, the museum's chief curator, said this year's theme was chosen, in part, due to a recent resurgence in interest for non-fiction films from moviegoers.”With the recent commercial and critical success of 'An Inconvenient Truth' and 'Shut Up and Sing,' it is clear that the documentary form is alive and well,” he said. “This series has remarkable range.”Screenings with introductions by high-profile city critics include Dziga Vertov's 1927 classic “The Man with the Movie Camera,” which will be presented by The Village Voice's J. Hoberman on Jan. 14; “Bright Leaves,” which will be introduced by Lisa Schwarzbaum, of Entertainment Weekly, on Jan. 28; and “General Idi Amin Dada,” which will be presented by The New York Observer's Andrew Sarris on Feb. 9 and 10.Other films to be shown during the series include Werner Herzog's “Grizzly Man,” “Shut Up and Sing” with the Dixie Chicks, the notorious shockumentary “Mondo Cane,” Martin Scorsese's “The Last Waltz,” Albert and David Maysles' “Salesman,” two critically acclaimed documentaries about victims of the U.S. legal system – Joe Berlinger's “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” and Errol Morris' “The Thin Blue Line” – and two controversial films about the Vietnam War, “In the Year of the Pig” and “Winter Soldier.”The series will also include a preview of the new 2 1/2-hour documentary “Lake of Fire” by director Tony Kaye (“American History X”). The film, which has been in production for more than 16 years and will be released theatrically in 2007, is a sprawling look at abortion in the United States.For the complete schedule, visit the museum's Web site at www.ammi.org.Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
