As promised, here is the second installment of Carol's blog from Sundance 2010 featuring Documentary reviews. Check back next week for her narrative film reviews.

Documentaries, oftentimes considered the poor relative of the narrative fiction film, have in the last decade enjoyed a popular renaissance. Fueled by the runaway success of Micheal Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002) and followed by stand-out docs including Capturing the Friedmans (2003), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and March Of The Penquins (2005), film acquisition executives, distributors and educators have got the message – documentaries are riding high in the popular imagination.

The technological leaps of smart-phones, the access to lightweight video cameras and the lightening rod of youtube as the omni-present conduit digesting, filtering and exhibiting films has, it seems, made everyone a filmmaker. Specialist film festivals such as IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) and Canada’s HotDocs showcase the very best of international and domestic documentaries every year; and without doubt the programming staff at Sundance are exceptionally good at sniffing out extraordinary works of non-fiction. Super Size Me (2004) and An Inconvenient Truth (2006) both world premiered in Sundance and in 2009 the festival rolled out Food Inc and The Cove, both Oscar nominated in 2010 (my bet is on The Cove). The “twentyten” program, short-listed from 1,644 feature-length documentary submissions to a final tally of 28 films for the U.S. and International doc programming strands, once again excited and delivered some gems:

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