Capturing the Friedmans

Steward 1 Melissa Steward Research Essay English 367.01 12/8/04 Capturing the Friedmans "Home movies are about innocence--our lost fuzzy, glowing personal pasts, all horseplay, and funny hats and the promise of youth" (Cooper, 23). Andrew Jarecki's remarkable film, Capturing the Friedmans captured just what is clearly a case study of extreme family dysfunction through such home videos. At first Andrew Jarecki just wanted to do a nice little documentary

Capturing the Friedmans In 2003, Andrew Jarecki released his documentary "Capturing the Friedmans", which explores a seemingly normal middle-class families struggle when the father and son are charged with sexual abuse and molestation in 1987. The Friedman's from the outside seem like a healthy family, abiding in a fairly exclusive Great Neck, Long Island community; the father Arnold is a Columbia Graduate and a school teacher, while the mother Elaine, a housewife. They have three sons David

filmmaker Andrew Jarecki’s questionable ethics in presenting Capturing the Friedmans. More specifically, does Jarecki’s operating under the guise of neutrality “enable (him) to evade responsibility for dealing with the complexities of his material?”(Arthur 7). Furthermore, does a documentary have a moral obligation to its viewers, or is it simply there to present a riveting story? Capturing the Friedmans details the horrific case of Arthur Friedman and his son, Jessie, who were accused and convicted of

The documentaries “Night and Fog”, and “Capturing the Friedmans”, both were created to move their audience in a way to get desired reactions. Nevertheless, while they both were created to move their audience, the motivation behind the two are quite different. “Night and Fog was created to serve as a warning for people about the dangers of cruelty, while “Capturing the Friedmans was made in a way to have viewers question the guilt of the two Friedmans convicted of sexuals assault. Alain Resnais’

Capturing the Friedman’s Capturing the Friedman’s is directed by Andrew Jarecki. The film focuses on the 1980’s investigation and conviction of Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse Friedman on charges of child molestation. This film could certainly be put into the category of accidental excellence as Andrew Jarecki was initially interested in creating a documentary on New York City clowns and it was only through his interviews with David Friedman (the most successful of Manhattan clowns)

The story of Capturing the Friedman and The Imposter are unique and interesting; however, The Imposter delivers a more meaningful message and imposes stronger emotional impacts on the audience. The movie’s title, The Imposter, does a great job to capture the audience’s impression and curiosity, for they are craving to know who is the real imposter. Opposed to Capturing the Friedman, which has no one narratives the story, The Imposter uses Frederic Bourdin as the core and lead the audience through

In the works Thin Blue Line, Capturing the Friedmans, and Vertigo the creation of reality and the truth brings justice to wrongdoers, and those who have been wronged. Specifically, the documentaries Thin Blue Line, and Capturing the Friedmans create a reality that is ambiguous in an effort to show that no one actually know the truth of the situations in the documentaries. Meanwhile in the film Vertigo Scottie recreates his past lover, and inadvertently brings the truth out about her death. Thin

They might be compelled to modify the story to intensify the excitement, the conflict or the danger (Aufderheide, Jaszi and Chandra 2009). In Capturing The Friedmans, the filmmaker juxtaposes multiple formats of video resources, including the footage from the time of the criminal trial, the Friedmans’ family videos, David Friedman’s video diaries and the present-day interviews to dramatize the family rupture and their struggles (Bell,

One such case depicts this scenario, which is the Friedmans case. In the documentary, Capturing the Friedmans, former computer students who had once attended Arnold’s classes were interviewed about the situation. When asked whether they had recalled anything inappropriate going on in that class, some admitted while others denied

harder for these offender to be caught, they use their status to get away with crimes. On the other hand Lower status people have nothing to lose which can help the law enforcement reporting any suspicious act from higher status people. In “Capturing the Friedmans” Friendmans is your typical middle class American family. Arnold was a well-respected music and computer teacher, married father of three sons, Jesse one of his three sons eventually inherited his father bad tendency. You can tell by their