In a recent post on her blog, Agnes Varnum proposes the idea of “Trifecta” which she defines as: “3 films that … together [showing] different facets of an issue that have given me a new way to look at or think about something happening in our world.” I think this is a really powerful idea.

Agnes is careful to point out in a reply to a comment that I made that she is not talking about a “sidebar” in a film festival that may give you three tries at the same topic in similar ways. She wants three shots from different sides that illuminate something going on in a useful and stimulating way.

IndiePix is releasing 8 documentaries in cooperation with the Full Frame Documentary Festival that achieve this goal (we hope!). But there are other examples, too …
You can see the Katrina films described here. One of them is a full length treatment of 300 families airlifted to Utah; another is about 16 people, 7 dogs and 8 cats who weather the storm in a New Orleans attic; another is about an Iraq war vet who struggles with his Traumatic Stress Syndrome while trying to find a way to be helpful; a fourth is a short film about a defiant woman on the Mississippi coast who struggles with her insurance company as she tries to put some pieces back together. We believe that this collection makes a really important statement about the Katrina Experience — and that’s why we’re putting everything we have into see that Libraries (exclusively, only libraries) have a chance to buy this set for their patrons and students.

There’s another developing example in the immigration issues area: “Crossing Arizona”, that we recently showcased at our Woodstock in the City screening series focusing on immigration from Mexico; and “Sentenced Home”, an award winning film we are talking to the filmmakers about, that details how the deportation decisions have impacted three Thai men and there families after September 11, 2001.

The idea that documentaries on similar subjects can show more reality than the evening news has got to be fundamentally true and convincing!