National Geographic Channel Sacrifice - D-Day to Paris

Here is a description of the upcoming documentary "Sacrifice, from D-Day to the liberation of Paris" (to be aired June 4th)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9g03U-aUc4#t=22


http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2014/05/21/national-geographic-channel-relives-historic-battle-at-normandy-to-commemorate-the-70th-anniversary-of-d-day-348010/20140521ngc01/

Does anyone know the producers?

Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle, were involved in the three "Apocalypse" documentaries "First World War", "Second World War" and "The Rise of Hitler" as well as several related documentaries "Love and Sex Under Nazi Occupation" and "Eva Braun"

Frederick Lumiere made "WWII in HD".

Will this new documentary be worth watching? I liked "Apocalypse - deuxième guerre mondiale" when I borrowed it from the library. I cannot say much about its authenticity. I know in the commentary the producer says one of their objectives was to commit as many new interviews to film with eye witnesses while they are still around to tell their stories.

There has been a lot of bashing of recent documentaries on this forum. To read reviews here, it seems nothing done in the past 30 years has any journalistic integrity or value. They seem to get everything wrong, according to those who know what they are talking about.

Perhaps we are too far in time from the events for documentary film makers to offer any perspective?

 

Did anyone see it? Is it good?

 

You have to question the motivation of these documentaries...Most of what happened has been covered, and interviews have been substantial from people still young. Any re-write is usually a reflection of the makers and their own selfish desires to join the ranks of war time journalism...if everything has been covered in a field then the only avenues is to either argue against something or to "add" information...these revisions should be seen for what they are and watched accordingly.

 

Is it not true that each new generation needs its own refresher course on events of the past? How many teens know about the space race in any meaningful way? Do they know who Neal Armstrong was? Do they know who James Webb was? Or why a space telescope is being named after him?

I fear that a whole generation got "turned on" to WWII history by "Saving Private Ryan" and "Pearl Harbor". But did they push it further?

These particular documentarians are interested in the sights and sounds of world war two. The sound tracks for the documentaries are interesting in and of themselves. They created brand new sound fx libraries by recording the weapons of the era digitally. Their arguement is that the images were mostly silent and would not engage today's audiences. The tired old sound libraries used in the past for such projects were either not authentic wwII weaponry or so badly recorded and degraded as to be un-usable. So they went back to basics and re-recorded the fx for the documentaries.

Any thoughts on these subjects?

Also... I was asking what you thought specifically about these documentaries and documentarians. How good are they? How well or badly researched are they. For my money, if they repeat the same old facts in a new way, but get the facts right, they are not doing too badly.

 

One more thought, and I fear I am going to get a lot of people here pretty upset... These are french film makers. They come from a tradition of well researched, disciplined intellectual film essayists and documentarians.

Where in America a lot of pseudo-documentary entertainment film making drowns out the creditable journalistic voices (yes Michael Moore, I am talking about you). Where in the USA big business coopts a lot of the media outlets and produces propagandistic drivel (Fox "News", ahem)...

In many countries integrity in documentary film making tradition is a matter of pride. In Canada our film makers had nothing else to fall back on. There was no fiction film industry for them to express themselves in. So they made docs. This is not to say they were not making films with a definite or an agenda. Impartiality in documentary films is a myth. See what I wrote about the McKenna brothers elsewhere in these forums (esp. "Death By Moonlight".).

So Ken Burns makes "The Second World War". He is a recognized entity. How does it stack up to "Apocalypse, The Second World War"?

 

Well said.

 

Thanks, but the question stands.

Are there any reputable documentarians out there who stack up to expectations on this subject?

Do we have to refer back to documentaries made in the 1960s or 70s? Victory at Sea or World at War?

Has no new information come out since the expiration of the official secrets act and been featured in documentaries?

I have to believe that polititians of that time had a vested interest in burying the truth or selling their own version of events in order to stay in power. An interview with Winston Churchill in the late 1950s should be scrutinized very carefully. In the same way new witnesses will put events into a different perspective based on their complete life experience.

There was a terrific section in the Burns documentary about recycling during the war. A woman was laughing and describing all the efforts people made to recycle any and all materials that could be re-used for the war effort. Two whole generations that followed forgot or ignored the lessons learned by the "greatest generation" about waste disposal and recycling.

 

I think you bring up a very good point. As a teacher, it is bad form to use textbooks outdated and full of inconsistencies. However, as CAC, mentioned, many documented are overdone...but still need to be reviewed with a modern lense.

 

Anyone who has played video games, particularly, first-person-shooters(WW2-based), knows that this has been done over and over and over again. With microphones placed at varying distances and angles from the firing weapon.

 

Agreed. But it does add to the engagement of the documentry. Especially NatGeo

 

Yes, NatGeo does not do anything second rate. However, since I don't have cable, I cannot attest to the material on their cable channel.

 

Actually, since we're on the subject, it's the first channel I thought of due to the fact that I've watched 2 docs on NatGeo the last couple weeks, Hitler's Last Days and Hitler's Killing Squad. The first was just a synopsis of the late stages. It was very well done. The second was a brief history of the 2nd SS. The content doesn't rock the world, pretty much all been covered, but the clarity of the footage is remarkable. Having an HD television they really amped up the sharpness. Not as grainy. Of course, they added color which at times can take away from the footage, but they really do a nice job .

What really can make it or break it for me is the narration. I loath the narration on some of these modern docs with the old Unsolved Mysteries feel to it, lol.

 

I have seen a lot of docs. Many are just poorly researched, good footage, but just not something I want to waste my time on. I don't want to offend anyone, but I like to watch docs on the American effort in the war. I have seen some about commonwealth forces, and they just aren't what I like. Nothing really wrong with them, just not what I want to see. AHC carries a lot of war docs, I've a lot of them, some are good. Nat Geo, a lot of their just put me to sleep. I guess they show them too often, but I also see too many Alaska cop shows, and Maine cop shows. The docs are top quality, but just enough. A wider variety of subjects would. Local PBS docs are better often, with a wider variety of WWII subjects. One series I like is the Deep Sea ones about different sinkings and other military objects found on the bottom. Just my opinion. all aspects of WWII are interesting to me, but it is all in how they are presented. Many could be better than they are, the problem being that there are only so many vets left, and tired use of old footage. I also have problems with some of the recreated historical events. Sometimes the best ones are on YouTube.