Much of it relies, like any historical examination, on documentary matter, although this is sparse for the early civilizations because of the general lack of interest in technology on the part of scribes and chroniclers.
In that case, however, the Federal Court of Appeals indicated in the course of its opinion full awareness of § 2254(d), and after an examination of the same documentary evidence on which the state court relied, it expressly concluded that the state-court finding to the contrary was not entitled to deference by reason of § 2254 d).
But the production has far too much of a political agenda simply to provide a documentary examination of the lives of reporters.
"Racing Dreams," Marshall Curry's absorbing documentary examination of the world of professional auto racing, comes at its subject craftily: from below.
Two years ago, when he staged Andrea Dunbar's drama about life on a Bradford council estate, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, he twinned it with a documentary examination of the estate as it is now.
Gibney was the director of the ultimate documentary examination of the Enron scam: "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room".
Mr. Van Sant's "Elephant" is a documentary-like examination of an ordinary day in a mostly white, middle-class high school in which the calm is splashed with a corrosive burst of violence: two boys arm themselves and begin shooting.
"Taxi to the Dark Side," an examination of American torture practices, won best documentary feature.
The documentary is an examination of paintings, thought to be 26,000 to 32,000 years old, in the Chauvet Cave in southern France.
