I like reading blogs from filmmakers, whether they're periodic reports on how a specific film is going, discussions about movies the filmmaker has been watching, or essays about anything that catches the blogger/filmmaker's attention. So you can imagine how pleased I was to learn that documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line) has just started a new blog over at the online version of The New York Times. Morris's blog is called Zoom: A Filmmaker Uncovers the Hidden Truths of Photos -- the tagline tells me that this isn't going to be a "Today we edited that scene with the banana" type of filmmaker blog.

Morris has only posted one entry thus far, but it's thought-provoking and is spurring discussions around the film-blogging universe. (I am not using the word "blogosphere.") In fact, it's already received more than 140 comments. He brings up the topic of whether a photo is "true" or "false" and demonstrates why he feels that is a ridiculous label to attach to any image. It is an interesting debate for anyone who watches documentary films, especially in light of the criticism heaped upon Michael Moore for showing footage in films like Sicko that is sometimes considered to be taken out of context or otherwise labeled as "false." Anthony Kaufman (on whose site I found the link to Morris's blog) wonders if the entry was inspired by the Abu Ghraib photos. Morris's upcoming documentary, S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure, is about the Abu Ghraib scandal. I hope Morris will post more blog entries along the same lines, although I also wouldn't mind hearing about the film he's working on, as well.