No paucity of doc diversity

LAST summer found audiences flocking to documentaries such as “Fahrenheit 9/11” with the fervor they once watched flicks featuring man-eating sharks and teens bouncing about on beach blankets. So what’s in store this summer?

Ever since Robert Flaherty headed north to the Arctic to film Inuits for his 1922 groundbreaking “Nanook of the North,” documentaries have transported audiences to faraway places. This summer’s “March of the Penguins” presents a year in the life of emperor penguins in Antarctica as they head to their traditional breeding ground. The cameras of “Deep Blue” dive into the ocean where sharks, whales and odd, exotic creatures live, while “Grizzly Man” and “Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America” stay on land to present two men driven by their love for the wilderness.

Many new films stay closer to home, although politics are still on the menu. Current films are “less about Democrat versus Republican

On Think Film’s summer roster is “The Last Mogul: The Life and Times of Lew Wasserman,” which in profiling the former head of MCA, Urman said, “identifies a nexus where the entertainment business,” politics and other elements “meet and serve each other’s agendas.”

A lighter, more humorous critique of Americans’ quest for the dollar is delivered by “Up for Grabs,” which follows the court battle between two baseball fans who claimed ownership of Barry Bonds’ 2001 record-breaking home run ball No.73.

“Up for Grabs” is not the only documentary that takes on a sport as a metaphor for American life. “A League of Ordinary Gentlemen” follows a season in the life of four pro bowlers.

Journeying farther from America’s shores, if ever there was a moral issue played out on the world’s stage it was certainly the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which Gen. Romeo Dallaire, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force stationed in the small African nation, tried in vain to prevent. “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire” travels with Dallaire as he returns to Rwanda.

“People want to see films other than what we get from the broadcast media and Hollywood,” said Sandra Ruch, executive director of the International Documentary Assn.

This year’s fare also includes a heightened focus on kids. In “Mad Hot Ballroom,” fifth-graders in New York City public schools learn to foxtrot, tango and waltz. Philadelphia kids learn about a bygone era of rock ‘n’ roll in “Rock School,” while South Central Los Angeles teens channel anger via “krumping,” a cool-as-all-get-out new dance style in “Rize.”

Wisdom and alternatives to conventional lifestyles are also plentiful: A lesbian couple seeking to become mothers in “Making Grace”; a country singer journeys through the South in “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus”; the world of music and sound are explored by a deaf percussionist in “Touch the Sound”; and a storyteller uses rich fables, myths and animals to present a history of the universe in “Genesis.” Storytelling takes a decidedly different form in “The Aristocrats”: 100 comedians tell one of the filthiest jokes ever told, in 100 ways. And then there’s “Murderball,” about the wild and crazy antics of quadriplegics in wheelchairs playing their own version of rugby in the Paralympic Games.

No worries, then. The last two summers have not been exceptions to the rule. The documentary genre is alive, well and kicking.