Cambridge documentarian Ken Dornstein collaborated with director Amir Bar-Lev to make “Happy Valley” (2014), the harrowing investigation into the Penn State sexual abuse scandal. Now he has taken on a more personal project, which has been written about in the Sept. 28 edition of the New Yorker. The result is the three-part Frontline program, “My Brother’s Bomber.”
On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 270 passengers and crew were killed, as well as 11 people on the ground. One of those on board was Dornstein’s idolized older brother, David.
The 19-year-old Dornstein would spend the following years obsessed with the case, a passion which peaked in 2009 when the only person convicted of the crime, Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was suffering from terminal prostate cancer, was released on “compassionate grounds” by the Scottish government.
Dornstein would at last see his chance to track down and confront the surviving conspirators when rebel forces had Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy on the run in 2011. Saying goodbye to his wife and two children, he set off on his quest, covertly entering the war-torn, collapsing nation.
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A thrilling detective story, a wrenching tale of loss, a rare inside look at a chaotic turning point in history, and an exercise in reconciliation not unlike Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Look of Silence” (2014), “My Brother’s Bomber” is an extraordinary documentary experience.
Part One of “My Brother’s Bomber” can be seen on PBS on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
For more information go to www.pbs.org/
wgbh/pages/frontline/my-brothers-bomber.
Many recent documentaries have delved into the troubled, tragic lives of great musicians. Brett Morgen took on one of the most troubled and tragic in “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.” The first film about Cobain made with the cooperation of his family, it examines the torment and genius of the founder of Nirvana, who took his own life in 1994 at the age of 27. A harrowing tour of the hell and heaven of the creative imagination, it is being screened as part of the Emerson Bright Lights series. A discussion with Emerson associate professors Miranda Banks and Kristin Lieb follows. “Montage of Heck” screens Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Paramount Center’s Bright Family Screening Room, 559 Washington St., Boston.
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For more information go to web.emerson.edu/brightlights.
If you are interested in making documentary films and would like to change the world for the better, you might want to apply for a Fork Films award, which provides grants ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 to full-length nonfiction films that “foster a culture of understanding and work toward a more peaceful and just society, while utilizing powerful and artistic storytelling methods.” But you’ll have to be quick about it; the deadline is Thursday.
For more information go to www.forkfilms
.net.
Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.