Steady Diet of Film

Documentary festivals in the News

• AJ Schnack has a great interview with True/False festival co-director, David Wilson. My favorite excerpt:

Most important advice I find myself giving filmmakers coming into T/F is to relax. They're not going to make a sale (though they may make some good friends). They don't need to stand out on the street corner and hand out postcards (their screening will be full already). They don't need to constantly be texting people from a party to see what else is going on - that's it. That party. It'll probably be a good one, so just enjoy.

• Big Sky just wrapped up their 2009 festival, New West Missoula has a piece up about local outreach the festival is doing for area students. Wherein producer Mike Bonfiglio (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Crude) advises kids to drop out of school.

• Documentary stalwart Frederick Wiseman discusses his foray into the dvd market with the Chicago Tribune. Wiseman will be screening and discussing his films at DePaul University this week.

•Hot Docs programmer Sean Farnel catalogs the death of the American Documentary New Wave (1999-2007) and provides a glimpse into what the present and future hold.

Sundance 2008: the Year the Docs Roared.

I'll go ahead and say what anyone who went to the Sundance film festival or followed the coverage is thinking: this year was fairly drab for narrative films. Going into the festival the most buzzed about films were documentaries (American Teen, An American Soldier/the Recruiter), the first sale was a documentary (Up the Yangtze), the most controversial films were documentaries (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Art Star and the Sudanese Twins) and the most raucous Q&A was at a documentary screening (Stronger, Better, Faster).

Documentaries also covered a much wider breadth of subjects than the narratives' increasingly cliched parameters of "dysfunctional family forced out of their comfort zone and is forced to confront their differences which brings them closer together". There were portraits of artists that took creative license with the concert film form (CSNY: Deja Vu, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, U2 3D), the ecological (Flow: For Love of Water, Fields of Fuel), horrific moments in history coming to roost (the Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, Traces of the Trade, Nerakhoon), cannibals (Stranded: I've Come From the Plane that Crashed in the Mountains) and the black helicopter contingency (I.O.U.S.A., Secrecy).

There were also two docs in particular that embodied what I love in scrappy, low-budget documentaries. Be Like the Others about transgender people in Iran (where it's illegal to be gay but not to have a sex change operation) and Slingshot Hip Hop about political Palestinian rap groups (bringing a total of four concepts and themes that make many Americans extremely uncomfortable) tell intimate, personal stories that never could have been on a large scale. Neither film has secured distribution deals yet but I hope to be writing soon about their forthcoming theatrical and dvd releases.

After the jump are the winners of the Sundance documentary awards.

Related: PopMatters, Documentaries Rule at Sundance.

Big Sky Doc Film Festival announces 2008 line-up!

In the shadow of Sundance's opening night (check out Sarah Jo Marks' overview here), the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival announced their 2008 line-up this today. Over the course of 6 days in February the fest will screen 54 features and 37 shorts from 40 different countries.

In the fest's short five year they've screened docs that went on to have successful theatrical and television runs (Favela Rising, the Cats of Mirikitani, Horns and Halos, Hardwood, Alice Sees the Light) as well as odd-duck audience favorites such as Stealing Altitude  and this year's Getting Eve Off described as such:

Getting Eve Off is a look at the Missoula resident prostitute as she attempts to legitimize her "pay-for-play" Maternal Order of St. Eve church.

Missoula!

Full line-up after the jump.

Scaredy Cat, the POV online shorts film festival choice this quarter

 
Starting December 10th until March 10th PBS's Online Short Film Festival (hosted by P.O.V.) will be streaming free online Andy Blubaugh's film Scaredycat. The 15-minute experimental documentary, examining the role fear plays in our daily lives, starts out as somewhat precious picture of the film-maker's OCD. But when Blubaugh delves into his recent mugging and assault as a point of departure (illustrated with animation and his 911 phone call) to look at PTSD, mandatory sentencing laws and emotional closure the film reaches surprising depth.

I caught the film when P.O.V. bumpered it with Frieda Lee Mock's wonderful Tony Kushner documentary Wrestling with Angels and highly recommend them both.

Noir City SF line up announced

Noir City, the annual San Francisco film noir festival has announced the line up for their 6th year festivities and it is a doozy. Full schedule after the jump, highlights include:

+A tribute to Joan Leslie (with on-stage interview).

+Three films starring Ida Lupino that are practically lost to the world.

+Two Anthony Mann films including the never available on dvd Reign of Terror.

+Hangover Square which features a score by Bernard Herrmann.

+D.O.A. which was lensed by the famed cinematographer Ernest Laszlo.

+A screening of the Coen brothers' black and white noir the Man Who Wasn't There followed by Q&A with the former Mr. Angelina Jolie, Billy Bob Thornton.

The festival is hosted by the Castro Theatre and takes places January 25th - Feb 3rd.

Sundance, thoughts and lists.

The full Sundance 2008 line-up has been announced and the massive listing is available after the jump.  Highlights:

+Only two films starring former cast members of the OC... WAS IT WORTH IT, KIDS?!

+Directorial debut from legendary cinematographer Ellen Kuras.

+New films from Paul Schraeder, Morgan Spurlock, Christine Jeffs (Rain), Ole Bornedal (Night Watch), Bernard Shakey, Stacy Peralta, Stanley Tucci, Lucky McKee (May), Nanette Burstein (the Kid Stays in the Picture) and George Romero.

+A few docs that fall into the "crazy pants/black helicopter" genre Flow: For Love of Water, Secrecy, I.O.U.S.A., etc.

+Why is rape as a weapon in war the new issue du jour? Hmm...

+Michael Haneke's re-make of his own Funny Games being marketed as a straight horror movie and being included in the midnight selections.

Ones to watch:
+High concept, low budget-y goodness in the form of Sleep Dealer. "A social commentary-infused sci-fier about three strangers who attempt to break through future technological barriers to connect in a world of closed borders and virtual labor."

+Be Like the Others, an Iranian documentary about six transgender people... IN IRAN!

+Stranded: I've Come From a Plane Crashed on the Mountains. Ever since Errol Morris' First Person series I'm fascinated with plane crash survivors.

+Downloading Nancy, a Jane Austen Book Club cast reunion with Maria Bello and Amy Brenneman.

+The Deal, a Canadian comedy about a Black Muslim action film star bringing William H. Macy and LL Cool J together at last.

+Docs about a senior citizen choir who perform Sonic Youth songs (Youth@Heart), homeless people playing soccer (Kicking It) and U2 in 3-d (U2-3d)!

+A re-make of A Raisin in the Sun starring Phylicia Rashad and Puff Daddy! 

+The Black List looks a little 'a very special Dateline-ish' but Elvis Mitchell = instant win.

If anyone can spare a plane ticket to Amsterdam consider me eternally grateful!

I have serious IDFA envy. 

That's all.

It's SFIAAFF time!

Dear City of San Francisco,

You have broken my heart with multiple muggings, rampant poverty and your confounding interest in the mayor's pathologically vapid girlfriend.  But I think we are on the road to rebuilding trust after reading the schedule for the International Asian American Film Festival. 

This year the festival will have appearances from MC Hammer, Ellen Kuras, Gregg Araki and show a few hundred films over the course of 10 days including a tribute to Hong Sang-soo (whose Woman is the Future of Man is pictured above). Color me stoked. 

Yours,

SDoF

Sundance announces 2007 competition line up

... and if you think this post is too long, consider the fact that 3,287 films were submitted this year.  Sundance runs from January 18th to 28th in four fabulous Utah locations.  Ho-Rep weighs in here.  After the jump see the full line-up.