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.

Documentary Grand Jury Prize
TROUBLE THE WATER, directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. An aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, armed with a video camera, show what survival means when they are trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, and seize a chance for a new beginning.

Special Jury Prize in Documentary
GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO, directed by Lisa F. Jackson, intimate look into the struggle of the lives of rape survivors.

Documentary World Cinema Jury Prize & World Cinema Audience Award
MAN ON WIRE/United Kingdom, directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles French artist Philippe Petit’s daring dance on a wire suspended between New York’s Twin Towers and his subsequent arrest for what would become known as “the artistic crime of the century.”

Documentary Audience Award
FIELDS OF FUEL, directed by Josh Tickell. A look at America’s addiction to oil, Tickell is a man with a plan and a Veggie Van, who is taking on big oil, big government, and big soy to find solutions in places few people have looked.

Documentary Directing Award
Nanette Burstein, director of AMERICAN TEEN, an irreverent cinema vérité which chronicles four seniors at an Indiana high school and yields a surprising snapshot of Midwestern life.

Documentary World Cinema Directing Award
Nino Kirtadze, director of DURAKOVO: VILLAGE OF FOOLS (DURAKOVO: LE VILLAGE DES FOUS)/ France. The film portrays life in a castle outside Moscow, where Mikhail Morozov rules autonomously over young initiates, laying the groundwork for a rapidly growing right-wing movement.

Documentary Editing Award
Joe Bini for his work on the film ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED. The documentary examines the public scandal and private tragedy which led to legendary director Roman Polanski’s sudden flight from the United States.

World Cinema Documentary Editing Award
Irena Dol for her work on THE ART STAR AND THE SUDANESE TWINS/New Zealand. The film profiles artist Vanessa Beecroft and how her obsession to adopt Sudanese twin orphans drives her marriage to a breaking point and fuels her controversial art.

Excellence in Documentary Cinematography Award
Phillip Hunt and Steven Sebring for their work on the film PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE, an intimate portrait of the poet, painter, musician and singer that mirrors the essence of the artist herself.

World Cinema Documentary Cinematography Award
al Massad for his work on RECYCLE /Jordan. A Jordanian family man living in the hometown of Muslim leader Abu Musa Al Zarqawi struggles to support his family and define his identity in a tense political climate.

Comments

[amankumar1236]

Looks like Sam Rockwell is having a good year as well judging by this reveiw and the earlier one for Moon.