To tell the truth : a history of documentary film
(DVD) 

Episode titles on container: Working for change : documenting hard times (1929-1941); The strategy of truth : documentary goes to war (1933-1945).

Originally produced in 2012 as episodes 2 and 3 of a 6-episode documentary film series; later broadcast on television.

Special features: Interviews: Alec Baldwin on the importance of documentaries (3 min.); Agnes Varda on the making of documentaries (19 min.); Jeffrey Richards on the British documentaries of the 30s and 40s (15 min.); Jo Fox on German and British propaganda (12 min.); David Culbert on German and American documentary propaganda (10 min.) ; Film historian Kevin Brownlow on Leni Riefenstahl and German propaganda (13 min.).

Editors, Cindy Kaplan Rooney (Working for change), Omry Maoz (The strategy of truth) ; music, Teese Gohl ; camera, Joel Shapiro, Michael Miles.

Working for change: Narrator, Alec Baldwin ; interviewees, Leo Hurwitz, Pare Lorentz, John Grierson, Leo Seltzer.

The strategy of truth: Narrator, Alec Baldwin ; interviewees, Kevin Brownlow, William Greaves, Mary Louise Jennings, Charles Wolfe.

Working for change: Explores the birth of the social documentary in the U.S. and U.K. during the years of the Great Depression and the New Deal, featuring interviews with several of the people who helped define and shape the form.

The strategy of truth: Examines the role of film as propaganda during World War II and the different forms it took in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany, raising the central question of whether a film can be both documentary, reflecting the truth, and propaganda.

Rating: Not rated.

DVD; all regions; widescreen presentation.

Closed-captioned.