2012 class of documentaries - latimes.com At their best, documentaries shine light on a segment of society often hidden in darkened places, giving the silent a voice and viewers new perspectives to consider. Here's a rundown of the academy's documentary feature shortlist. When director Alison Klayman flew to China in 2008 to document the work of artist-activist Ai Weiwei for "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," she witnessed a clash of wills between him and the Communist government. Mix in Ai's proclivity to social media and its new global power, it's not much of a surprise that we see him arrested, his compound bulldozed and his vibrant shout muted. Bully A potent peek into the lives of three children who struggle desperately at school: Alex, a gawky and sweet middle-schooler so picked on that even his friends slug and stab him with pencils; Kelby, a 16-year-old lesbian harassed by teachers, peers and family friends for coming out; and Ja'Meya, a sensitive African American girl so brutalized by the daily school-bus commute that she brings a gun on the bus one day and consequently lands in a Mississippi juvenile detention center. Director Lee Hirsch, himself a victim of childhood bullying, hopes this becomes a consciousness-raising teaching tool to help the estimated 30 million kids who are bullied at school each year. Chasing Ice Seeing is believing, the saying goes, and "Chasing Ice" director Jeff Orlowski's film about global warming and its effects on the Arctic's melting ice caps is both beautiful cinematography and great visual politics. Acclaimed photographer James Balog, once himself a skeptic of climate change, with his time-lapse cameras shows the effects of accelerated climate warming on the planet. Detropia It's not news that the sleek, shiny Motor City of mid-to-late 20th century Detroit is nowhere to be found today, having years ago crumbled in upon itself. What is so intriguing and what filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady show in "Detropia" is just how stubborn those left in Detroit are as they search for desperately needed life- and city-saving solutions. Ethel "Ethel" is a love letter of a documentary from Ethel Kennedy's youngest daughter, Rory Kennedy, to her mother and late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, shining her heavily researched and warmly lit camera on two famous people who stood at the country's center during the violence and tumult of the '60s. Told through archival footage and often funny sibling remembrances, the film covers the triumphs, griefs and dramas of Ethel Kennedy's life. Her reaction to standing at the crux of midcentury American history: "We didn't know we were making history then," she says, but "looking back at it 50 years later, what fun." 5 Broken Cameras In "5 Broken Cameras," the Arab-Israeli conflict is documented with a perspective and voice that's rare in the Western world. The film is composed of footage shot by Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer from Bil'in, a West Bank village, using five video cameras, each representing a different part of his life prior to the camera's demise. How they're destroyed - by Israeli bullets, tear gas and various other occupational brutalities - is the thread of the film, co-directed by Guy Davidi. In between, scenes of Israeli settlers on cellphones moving in furniture are juxtaposed with scenes of violence and destruction. "I have to believe that capturing these images will have some meaning," Burnat says. The Gatekeepers To hear six former heads of Israel's secret service organization, Shin Bet, in Dror Moreh's highly provocative "The Gatekeepers" commiserate about the Arab-Israeli conflict is startling enough. To hear how these once hard-line patriots think Israel needs to move on quickly to a two-state solution or risk becoming like "Nazi Germany" is simply stunning. After 45 years of "no strategy, just tactics," these retired frontline watchers fear "we're winning every battle and losing the war." The House I Live In It would be hard to imagine anyone who considers America's 40-year war on drugs any kind of success, and in Eugene Jarecki's "The House I Live In," we're clearly shown why. Using the close relationship with his childhood African American housekeeper, whose family is decimated by the inequalities of this "war," the film weaves through the breathtaking miasma of racial, social, systemic and monetary systems that keep the battle pumping and the United States the most incarcerated population in the world. How to Survive a Plague