Before we dive in to the fall festival season, a look back at the festivals and films that have made this year so notable...
When we set out a couple
years ago to try to rank the world’s best documentary film festivals, there
were unintended consequences to this notion. One was that the festivals themselves might care where they
might fall on such a homemade list.
The other was that filmmakers – particularly those that were just
starting out – would take such a list as some kind of fifth gospel.
Not that we hadn’t taken it
seriously. We had. But we also knew that lists, as much as
they might spur discussion and be insanely linkable, are fallible.
And so, when we ventured out
to make a second edition of this list last winter, we tried to make it less
fallible. We asked more than 75
pros in the documentary world to weigh in on their choices. But still, but still, this is not a
perfect system, because we are not Arthur Frommer, and there were/are some
festivals that we have yet to attend.
And thus the list is second hand.
A really, really strong second hand, but still…
Thus, when we were invited
to a couple of the festivals on our list this year that we hadn’t before
experienced, there was a strong sense of excitement and no small fear that
perhaps we had led those young, nubile filmmakers astray.
Certainly, encouraging folks
to make the trek to southern Kosovo, to the decidedly buzzed-about Dokufest in
Prizren, programmed by the much beloved Veton Nurkollari,
wasn’t exactly a slam dunk, no matter what our insiders had determined in
December. After all, it’s no easy
feat to reach this cultural heritage spot in a country whose independence had
just been recognized by the International Court of Justice a couple weeks prior to this week's
fest in early August. Flights into
Pristina, Kosovo or even neighboring Skopje, Macedonia require a certain amount
of finangling, and these are followed by mountainous roads populated by traffic
and drivers that give aggressive a new reputation.
But aren’t the best
festivals worth a little bit of effort?
And Dokufest is certainly
that. Artfully programmed by Nurkollari from the best of the international documentary scene,
projected onto screens indoor and outdoor throughout the city, Dokufest is
actually creating the very notion of cinema in southern Kosovo. Because for the past decade-plus, since
the brutal war that tore up this portion of the Balkans, there has been no
cinema in Prizren, which is otherwise a town filled with culture, both ancient
and youth.
No cinema at all.
The young people of Prizren
– and they are legion (if you’re told once that the average age of Kosovars
is 25, you’ll be told it 100 times – in fact, the Isreali-made advertisement
that runs before the each of the screenings drums home the point: “Kosovo – The
Young Europeans”) are, for the very first time, encountering cinema in their
streets and in their town.
And that cinema is
documentary film.
And if that isn’t enough to give you a docu-boner, I don’t know what is.
You will see the Silverdocs’
winning THE WOMAN WITH THE 5 ELEPHANTS on the side of fortress high (really
high) above the city, with seats perched on the edge of a cliff.
You will attend a closing
night awards ceremony and screening of THE COVE, attended by the prime minister of Kosovo,
hordes of television press and a standing room only crowd.
There are other pleasures, too: the teen-aged volunteers with boundless enthusiasm and seemingly endless desire to make sure that everything is absolutely perfect (compare this to the numerous helpers at other festivals who answer questions with a shrug and the universal signal to figure it out for yourself); the all-night bars (seriously, all freaking night) with unbelievably inexpensive drinks (see my fellow jurors Pamela Cohn and Sonja Henrici for more on the above); the kids who’ve come from through the country for camping out (at Dokukamp, naturally), seeing films and dancing at the nightly rock concerts, and so much more.
But mostly, it’s the films,
and the knowledge that these breath-taking, challenging works (including the
extraordinary, jury award winning love story LA BUCCA DEL LUPO - Pamela Cohn's review is here) are
creating an incredible cinematic language for a generation of Kosovars.
It’s a beautiful thing, it
is.
Having recapped an
experience like Dokufest, it’s a little difficult to rain down similar kinds of
praise on a festival that caters to fairly well healed, progressive Americans
in southern Oregon, but we’re thoroughly overdue in offering our in-person love
for the Ashland Film Festival.
Ashland cropped up on our
list for the first time in December, based on a couple of visiting filmmakers
that had praised it as a kind of film festival heaven. Our experience there this April proved
the supporters weren’t just drunk on the local microbrew.
Also not entirely easy to get to (I don’t want to ride that prop plane into Medford ever again, despite its relative convenience), Ashland provides the perfect kind of small American town/city film festival experience that has made True/False and Camden so successful: terrifically engaged (and packed) audiences, great programming and lots of opportunities to engage your fellow filmmakers.
Combine this with one of the most hospitable staffs in film fest-land, daily happy hours and accommodations that range from the ridiculous to the sublime (bunking with locals or quaint Shakespearean-themed B&Bs) and Ashland is the kind of fest that makes you want to figure out how to become a regular. Kudos to Joanne Feinberg and her team on crafting a terrific event filled with local flavors and a lot of indie film love.
Tomorrow, more on this year's festivals to date, including thoughts on Hot Docs, Sarasota and the newest incarnation of LAFF.
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