But Mr. Demme's work here doesn't rank with his strongest achievements in music documentary, much less his close-to-the-bone sequences with Mr. Young.
The richly observed films are sprawling and intimate, dense with the raw material of human endeavor and discourse, and free from the ready-made storylines and messaging of mainstream documentary, much less voiceover.
Much less than resembling a documentary depicting the gray area of a political campaign like DA Pennebaker's The War Room or even some of HBO's great documentaries, The Case Against 8 makes for a film that smells suspiciously like the work of a public relations firm.
Yet the debate over racing thoroughbreds on any drugs is precisely the kind of issue that you would expect to be addressed — much less mentioned — in a documentary that features what would soon be the most famous dead horse in America since Ruffian, the spectacular filly who was fatally injured in 1975.
While undoubtedly true of much of the foreign work incorporated in the programmes - notably early films from Franju, Polanski, Truffaut and Chabrol - this was much less evident in the British contribution, documentaries which emerged like dutiful responses to a classroom exercise in looking at how the other half lives in a classbound society.
These shifting paradigms fit in much less snugly when it comes to documentaries though.
As she explains in new BBC Three documentary Kirsten's Topless Ambition, fellow female presenters with much less experience are now way ahead.
Later, Mr. Montgomery wrote that "Mr. Obama has failed to provide any valid, certified documentary evidence to legally establish birth in this country, much less to citizen parents.
"Despite several lawsuits challenging Mr. Obama's constitutional eligibility and place of birth, Mr. Obama has failed to provide any valid, certified documentary evidence to legally establish birth in this country, much less to citizen parents.
