"Shoving Reality Into A Parking Meter": Best Documentaries of 2011 (thus far...)

2011 has thus far stood out as a stupendously exciting year in the history of documentaries. Caught up in this excitement, I’ve compiled a (highly provisional) list of the best docs released to date in 2011.

Looking over the list, conflict over who gets to define what reality is represents a recurrent point of exploration in many of these films, as do struggles over who is permitted control over his or her own story and who is not. Transformation of one sort or another pops up in nearly every title on the list. Indeed, several of these films provocatively rebuild the documentary form itself from the ground up, compelling...