Documentaries are as old as film itself with non-fiction, explanatory, motion pictures literally documenting events in the 19th century. A mainstay of factual television broadcasting documentaries have recently broken new ground with a series of high profile, lucrative, theatrical releases such as Super Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11 and most notably Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Peak oil proponents have also adopted the format with the 2004 release of End of Suburbia, Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature in 2005 and The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil early 2006. More recently two new documentaries have been touring the film festivals in search of distribution deals, first Oil Crash: A Crude Awakening and towards the end of the year Crude Impact.

Director, James Wood, was able to screen his film, Crude Impact to the delegates at the ASPO-USA conference in Boston (Oct06) and co-producer/director, Ray McCormack, screened his film, Oil Crash: A Crude Awakening in London (Nov06).

One of The Oil Drum's main objectives is to educate and raise awareness of energy depletion and specifically peak oil. How successful have End of Suburbia and the rest been at addressing these goals and how influential can documentaries be in general - is An Inconvenient Truth a turning point in the public's opinion on climate change? What role do documentaries play in educating and raising awareness of critical issues?

Below the fold we have my review of Crude Impact and Jane Cownie (from PowerSwitch) has kindly reviewed Oil Crash. Direct comparisons can't be made as I haven't seen Oil Crash nor has Jane seen Crude Impact.