All these wonderful things

Do or Don't: A Documentarian Dissents

Earlier today, indieWIRE featured an article by former NewFest Artistic Director Basil Tsiokos headlined "Good Advice! 8 Documentary Dos and Don'ts from a Vet Programmer".  The text of the item itself was culled from a series of tweets that Tsiokos had posted over the past several weeks to his twitter account, most of which began "Dear documentary filmmakers".

The tweets were responses to films that Tsiokos had been watching for an unnamed purpose (festival? grant program? broadcaster?) and varied between sound advice ("Dear filmmakers: when submitting your DVD for festival/broadcast consideration, do not affix labels. They affect playability. Negatively.") and bemused criticism ("Dear documentary filmmakers: your incessant narration is driving me to drink. Shut up already and let the images tell the story.").

Over the past week or so, several tweets lost their humor and began targeting the anonymous films & filmmakers whose screeners happened to land in Basil's lap:

"Dear Documentary Filmmaker Whose Short I Just Watched: watching your 20 minute "art" film = watching paint dry. at least it wasn't longer."

"Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Next time, please try to have a point before making your film. Filming your search for one is not new or fun."

"Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Next time, hire a good sound person so that I won't have to hear background noise or dead air in every scene."

This string of tweets resulted in a mea culpa that Basil posted last Saturday morning:

"Dear Documentary Filmmakers: My comments seem to be coming off less instructive/funny and more asshole-ish. Not my intent. Will watch that."

INTERVIEW: Kim Longinotto on Her Adam Lambert Obsession and Her Idea of a Perfect Sunday

This Friday, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC will launch its two-week retrospective on the great British filmmaker Kim Longinotto, whose ROUGH AUNTIES won the International Grand Jury Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Before sitting down to talk with Longinotto at Toronto's Hot Docs Festival on Tuesday (where ROUGH AUNTIES is screening), I was pondering what questions I wanted to ask of her.  Low and behold I picked up a copy of Canada's free music magazine Exclaim and found an interview with Depeche Mode's Martin Gore with questions that I suspected were not among those that were usually being fired at Longinotto, whom MOMA describes, quite appropriately, as follows:

"One of the foremost documentary filmmakers working today, Kim Longinotto is renowned internationally for her compellingly human portraits and her sensitive and compassionate treatment of difficult topics. By seeking out, observing, and following the untold stories of women's daily lives, she has created cinéma vérité portraits of the larger society and cultural customs."

So, herewith, we query Kim Longinotto with exactly the same questions posed to Depeche Mode's Gore.  The result is an interview that will long remain one of our favorites:

What are you up to?
I’m just about to do a panel thing (here at Hot Docs) with Tabitha Jackson, who I rather like.  She’s at Channel 4.  I get to ask her questions.

What are your current fixations?
My current fixation is (American Idol contestant) Adam Lambert.  Can I be honest?  I think that the battle between him and Danny Gokey is a battle for the soul of America.  I think what’s interesting is that he says that he’s been watching (the show) since he was 18 and he waited to audition until he was 27.  I think he was waiting until America was ready for (a gay contestant).

Why do you live where you do?
I live near the Arsenal football grounds.  I started living there because I rented with my favorite flat mate of all time, Colin.  He had a place there and we shared a one bedroom flat.  We’ve now graduated to a house.  It’s a very nice place to live.

Name something you consider a mind-altering work of art:
The thing I saw that most affected me in the last couple of years was THE LIVES OF OTHERS and I thought a lot about why it affected me.  Here is this story where a guy is spying on these people and he falls in love with them.  He's looking at them through this tiny hole.  And, in a way, I hope that is what documentary does.  You fall in love with the people you watch and it changes the way you see the world.  It was a very hopeful film about what films can do.

And also Thomas Turgoose in THIS IS ENGLAND.  He was the young boy.  I thought he was wonderful.

What has been your most memorable or inspirational gig and why?
I was at a Clash gig in Notre Dame Church in London and a guy got beaten to death.  They were punching him to death.  People were just standing around watching.  I was shouting but I couldn’t stop it.  There’s another one – they’re both terrible experiences.  It was a Buju Banton gig and it was a song, an anti-gay song that was "kill gay men" and everyone was holding up their lighters.  And I was with a friend and I was shouting and my friend was telling me not to shout.  Both of these stories, they're terrible, are about being powerless.  I liked Buju until then.  Never listened to him since.

Who Are the Most Important Documentary Directors?

Over at the Doculink listserv, there's been an ongoing discussion the past couple weeks about "the top 20 documentary filmmakers".  Part of the discussion has been - define top 20.  Is it top 20 of all time?  Top 20 currently active?  Most influential? 

But what began as pondering a list for 20, instead became a free-for-all, with folks there throwing out names of esteemed filmmakers until the total list numbered more than 150.  Now some of these were more than a bit nonsensical (what to make of someone proposing a filmmaker whose debut film is just now, unremarkably, hitting film festivals), and a few others were makers of single great films.  Others were documentary stalwarts as series producers, editors or cinematographers.

What follows, after the jump, is a curation of Doculink's original list.  For our standards, we're choosing the terminology "most important" - which could mean influential, indicative of a movement or an era, or that they created masterpieces of the form.  We've removed the one hit wonders and we've created an addendum list for noteworthy filmmakers who are in the early stages of their nonfiction careers.  And we've added a few folks who seemed particularly conspicuous in their absence.

Despite what feels like an exhaustive process, we're certain that we've yet to include some essential filmmakers.  So, let's take this list as a starting point.  Who do you think are the most important documentary filmmakers?  Who should be on the list?  Who is an emerging voice that should be included?  Is there anyone who shouldn't be here?

Ken Burns Loses Longtime Financial Backer GM

In another sign of troubling economic times, PBS doco king Ken Burns has apparently lost the support of General Motors, which has backed the filmmaker for more than two decades.  A spokesperson said that "the company's financial crisis has forced GM to rein in such spending".

According to the NY Times, GM paid for 35 percent of Burns' production budgets and underwrote corresponding education and marketing campaigns. 

In a discussion on the online industry bulletin board Doculink, some bemoaned Burns' loss, fearing it would send him into the general nonfiction funding pool, perhaps siphoning funds that might be available to other filmmakers. 

An Open Letter From MAN ON WIRE Producer Simon Chinn

A few times on the blog we've had the privilege of running items from folks who didn't take too kindly to this or that which had been said or written.  We tend to look at these as necessary reminders of not taking this whole nonfiction internet hustle too seriously.  

And, when it comes, we're always grateful for your kindness, whether in emails or in person.  

Today, we have an open letter from MAN ON WIRE producer Simon Chinn.  I asked Simon if he would write a bit about his experiences during this past year and in this current, very busy award season - he and director James Marsh just won the BAFTA for Best British Film, they are nominated on Saturday for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and on Sunday for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.  He did just that, but also - and maybe it's the Valentines Day spirit going 'round -  through some bouquets in our general direction.  We promise that we won't make a habit of it.

We will, however, offer our thanks to all of this year's feature nominees in at both the Spirit Awards and the Oscars for giving us some of their time to talk about this past year and the films that they have made.

OPEN LETTER TO ‘ALL THESE WONDERFUL THINGS’
From Simon Chinn, Producer of Man on Wire

Dear AJ,

Firstly, thanks so much for all your support over the past year.  I expect many of your readers will be wondering whether I might have slipped you a tenner to 'encourage' all your kind words about MAN ON WIRE. The truth is rather more mundane: we've never actually met or even spoken - so I guess you must simply have liked the film!  We appreciated, in particular, your blog a few weeks ago in which you argued - very eloquently I might add - that MAN ON WIRE should be considered for a Best Picture Oscar.  It'll never happen of course, but it's nice to have someone like you think it should.

Your suggestion, however, must have had some influence on the BAFTA judging committee... It was a particular thrill - and a complete surprise - to pick up the BAFTA for Best British Film last Sunday night at London's Royal Opera House, beating the likes of such noted epics as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, HUNGER, MAMMA MIA! and IN BRUGES.  In the moment that Sharon Stone opened her gold envelope, MAN ON WIRE became only the second documentary - after TOUCHING THE VOID - to win that particular prize. It was a great night for nonfiction films generally and proof, if any more were needed, that documentaries can touch people as powerfully as the very best feature dramas (a point I also made in my acceptance speech).  James Marsh and I had, at the start of the evening, made a wager about the result - we both lost.  We were totally gobsmacked.

And now onto the Oscars!  It's turning out to be a pretty surreal few weeks. James put it so well, I thought, when, in his reaction to the news of the Oscar nomination a few weeks ago, he said simply that it was "preposterous" that a documentary filmmaker should be breathing the same air, if just for one night, as the Hollywood A-list.  And that's exactly how I feel.  It's been such a good year for documentaries (critically at least) and it's a genuine honour to be competing in a field of such strong and distinctive films which have all, in their own way, so moved and inspired audiences. Whichever film triumphs at the Kodak Theater on February 22nd will be a worthy winner.

The BAFTA win and Academy nomination cap an extraordinary year for us.  This time last year we'd just returned home from Sundance '08 where we'd won two prizes - the Jury and Audience Awards - in our category.  At the time, it felt it couldn't get much better. We were jubilant when we heard we'd been selected for Sundance in the first place and we'd rushed the film through post-production to get it finished in time for its Park City premiere.  We felt pretty confident that we had a decent film on our hands but, of course, when you live and breathe a project this intensely for months and years, you increasingly lose any sense of objective judgment.  What would audiences make of it?  What would distributors?

Oscar Nominee Ellen Kuras on Two Decades of Cameras, Film Stocks and Edit Systems

Recently, I was talking with Ellen Kuras and the subject of her lengthy (more than two decades) devotion to THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) transitioned into a discussion about how technology has changed during that time.  I asked Ellen if she could write about the various pieces of equipment that she used through the production of her Oscar-nominated feature:

At first, I didn't own a camera because I wasn't even a DP. At that point.  I considered myself a director, a filmmaker.  It was only after a few shoots that I wanted to try my own hand at creating the images and finding meaning in the images to convey a story.

At first I had rented an ARRI SR2 regular 16mm camera package with a Zeiss-10-100mm lens, and a 9.5mm superspeed with three magazines and a tripod.  Interestingly enough, I am still in touch with the two people who helped me at the equipment house where I rented back in 1984.  One of them - Peter Abel - has one of the most successful equipment companies that specializes in HD equipment in NYC. I rented the SR2 until I managed to find my own.

In 1986, when my friend Ellen Bruno wanted to go to Cambodia for her thesis project, I recommended the documentary cameraman for whom I had been working as an assistant at the time.  About a month before the trip, the cameraman was unable to make the trip so he recommended me as a replacement.  This being a small project, Ellen didn't have the money to rent a separate camera package for three weeks.  I was so intent on taking this opportunity to shoot what would be my first documentary, that I called everybody I knew in the states and in France to find and buy a used camera.  What must have been a stroke of fate, I happened to be at a small get-together where friends from the Maine Photographic Workshop invited.  I mentioned to them that I was looking for a camera.

A friend pointed out a stranger in the corner, "Go ask that guy, he has an Arri SR2 to sell."  To my great fortune, that person was an equipment broker who had a brand new Arri SR2 camera from a company that specializes in making medical films.  After buying the 16mm camera, they shifted shortly thereafter to shooting 1" video. 

I called all of my family members to borrow the money to buy this camera.  The kit came with a stellar 10-100mm Zeiss zoom lens, and a 9.5 superspeed prime. I later added an amazing  9-50mm cook zoom lens that Pete Abel had found for me. This camera package soon became an extension of my body!  It also later enabled me to shoot feature films like SWOON, POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA, ROY COHN/JACK SMITH, amongst other films.

Moving into 35mm exclusively in the early 90's and not shooting as much on THE BETRAYAL, I sold that camera so that I could support myself for a few months without working in order to have some time in the editing room on THE BETRAYAL.  Thereafter any filming that I did was on either an Aaton or an SR3 that I rented or borrowed from friends. 

"I'm Dead Center": Interview with Oscar Nominee Werner Herzog

On Friday, as torrential rain storms were hitting Los Angeles, we talked by phone with legendary filmmaker and first-time Oscar nominee (for ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD) Werner Herzog, about his recent work and the perception that his longtime questioning of documentary "standards" has made him somewhat of an outsider in the documentary community.

Since his much lauded, Antarctica documentary feature, Herzog has directed two narrative films - a new version (not a remake, all insist) of BAD LIEUTENANT, with Nicholas Cage in the Harvey Keitel role, and a short film based on Puccini's La Boheme that was shot in Ethiopia.  He is prepping for his new narrative feature, MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE, to star fellow Oscar nominee Michael Shannon and to be Executive Produced by David Lynch.

ATWT:  I’m always enthusiastic about this idea that you can make a film, a documentary film, in a relatively short period of time and I was always curious about GRIZZLY MAN because you did that from start to finish in less than a month, correct?

Werner Herzog:  Yes. 

ATWT:  And is that something you like doing?

WH:  In substance it is correct.  But, of course, I didn’t have final music yet and that took about two or three months more until we had the music, and then we did the mixing and in the time while we were waiting for the music, I made some slight modifications.  But very minor modifications.  But I would say the shape of the film, shooting the film was something like eighteen days and editing and writing commentary and recording commentary and doing a primitive mix was nine days. 

ATWT:  That’s obviously not the norm in documentary, to do something in such a short period of time.

WH:  It was so evident what had to be done.  And I work fast.  I do not make twenty parallel versions of the edit and then cannot decide which one would be the best.  I just do it once and then plow on until I’m through the film and then that’s the film then.

ATWT:  You know, over the last few years there’s been a lot of attention paid to this notion that you’re somewhat of an outsider amongst documentarians. 

WH:  I’m dead center.

ATWT:  I think that’s true.  But especially recently, I think that the debate that you’ve been having, your calls to expand the idea of what documentary can be – if that’s been a debate, it seems to me that you’ve won.

WH:  No, come on, it’s not winning or losing.  We are not in horse races.  No, it is just finding, how shall I say, finding an adequate answer to the massive onslaught on our sense of reality.  And I’m speaking of digital effects in cinema and photoshop and virtual realities on the net and video games and reality TV, you can continue on.  In the last decade a massive onslaught on our sense of reality and we, as filmmakers, are called upon to redefine our sense of reality.  That’s what’s behind it.  And cinema verite’s the answer of the ‘60s. 

It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about finding new answers. 

ATWT:  Now it seems that the films that are out there, certainly the films, including WALTZ WITH BASHIR in another category, that are nominated this year, these are films that correspond more to how you’ve been talking about documentary and nonfiction then perhaps what was common perception five, ten years ago.

WH:  Yeah.  But I have postulated it for feature films as well, I don’t make so much of a distinction.  I think filmmakers are called upon to respond to this challenge of virtual realities.  I just do not want to hear that it’s about winning or losing.  It is a totally necessary sort of excitement going on and I happen to be one of those who have pushed the debate early on. 

Let me put it this way – twenty, twenty-five years ago, I said the same things.  But now, of course, they resonate more because the situation has changed so dramatically. 

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH's Morgan Dews

Lucky number 13 of our series of interviews with some of 2008's top nonfiction filmmakers...

Morgan Dews' MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH had its US premiere in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, but, like Tommy Davis' ONE MINUTE TO NINE, it had already had a strong run on the international film festival circuit before it hit stateside, even though it's a truly American story.

Based on audio tape diaries and audio correspondence between his grandparents in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the film is a beautiful, dreamlike accounting of a troubled family in the midst of changing times, particularly differing attitudes toward sex, mental health and psychiatry.  It gets a US limited theatrical release via Gigantic next month.

In this exchange, Morgan talks about his discovery of the archival material at the heart of his film, convincing his family to trust him with their painful past and what he's learned about film festivals after his go 'round with MUST READ.

So part of the background of MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH is the discovery of a series of letters and audio recordings left by your grandmother, which reveals not only a very surprising dynamic between her and your grandfather, but also shines a light on the era in which they lived.  Tell me about the discovery of your grandmother's archives and your decision to make a film about them.

I grew up very close with my grandmother Allis. I spent a lot of time up at her place in Vermont and had pretty much free rein of the woods and attic and shed. I'm not sure if she showed me their old 8mm home moves or I just dug them up, but from a very early age I was setting up screenings and watching them.

My mother and uncles were already sick of them as children. All they could remember is their father chasing them around with huge lights and making them do multiple takes coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. My brother and cousins weren't interested in them so when Allis died in 2001 I took the 200 odd reels back with me to Barcelona.

I took my time splicing them onto bigger reels and taking notes on all the footage. There was only a little more than eight hours of material, but all that film is unwieldy. I thought I could use Allis' letters or a memoir that she had written and make an interesting short film out of the material.

Then in spring of 2004 two interesting things happened. First I got a package of cds from my Uncle Bruce. He had found the dictaphone letters in a box somewhere, bought a machine on eBay and transferred it all to CD and sent it out to the whole family. Now these are about ten hours of audio letters my grandparents and their children sent back and forth when Charley, my grandfather, was away on business.

Secondly, I went out to dinner with Bruce's ex-wife Barbara.  We hadn't seen each other since their divorce in the 80s.  She hadn't had such a great relationship with Allis. When I told her I had all of Allis' home movies she asked me if I was going to be using the tapes. I asked if she meant the dictaphone letters and she said no. She said about the time Bruce had been sent to the mental institution, Allis had driven around with a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder making diaries to give to her shrink.

I was pretty excited. Barbara assured me that these tapes still existed. I made some calls and sure enough, they were still out in the shed. I arranged for them to come to my mothers for our first big family Thanksgiving since Allis died. We got a reel to reel tape recorder and I spent thanksgiving week putting it all onto a hard-drive.

Once I got home and heard the tapes I realized that there was a very different film in there. It also really excited me that the material mirrored the outrageous pressure to conformity of the fifties that lead to the social upheaval of the '60s. This story is really about what that process looks like inside a suburban home with the shades drawn.

The tapes are so intimate and revealing, I kept wondering whether there was ever any thought within your family that maybe it's not such a good idea if Morgan turns these into a movie?

Yes. In fact when I told my mother and uncles that I was making a film out of these tapes they were pretty taken aback. "Yikes!" they said, "and listen, that's a box of random recordings of the worst moments of the worst years of our childhood. We don't even know what's in there."

I said that in order to find funding for the film, they were going to have to trust me and sign release forms. They said, "Make your film and show it to us, and if we're OK with we'll sign the forms."

A lot of people told me that this could be a real disaster. But I think when people put their stories in your hands you have a big responsibility to portray them in a way that they find acceptable. I don't think having a release relieves you from your responsibility. Plus this is about how my family disintegrated forty years ago. This is something that we're all still recovering from and the last thing I would do is something to make things hard for us again.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with ONE MINUTE TO NINE's Tommy Davis

#12 in a series.

Tommy Davis' ONE MINUTE TO NINE - the story of Wendy Maldonado's last days before reporting to prison for killing her abusive husband - had its premiere at the 2007 Locarno Film Festival, but it made its mark stateside with a much talked about US premiere at SXSW last March.  From there, Davis' film attracted the attention of HBO, which will release the film later this year.  It was one of my favorite films of 2008 as noted yesterday in our recap of the year's best films.

In this exchange, Davis talks about discovering his subject and racing the clock to film in a scant five days, how he tackled the film's revelations as well as its centerpiece 911 phone call.

ATWT: Let me say first off that I don't think I was as emotionally drained after watching a movie this year as I was with ONE MINUTE TO NINE.  When the film finished, I just sat silently for a while because it was such a moving and wrenching experience.  Much of that is not just from the events that took place but by how you chose to unfold this for the audience.  A lot of the key facts of this story are laid on the table at the very beginning of the film, yet you keep surprising the audience - not in gimmicky ways - by the way you play with chronology and memory.  How much of your process did you have from the start and how much of it came during the post process with your editor Luis de Leon?

Tommy Davis: I was visiting with my Uncle Ferdinand and he was asking how the shoot in Oregon had gone.  I told him how over 5 days I had to earn Wendy's trust in order to find out about the crime, etc.  Then a friend of his, Jimmy, came over and sat down beside us.  Jimmy, had heard parts of the conversation and wanted to know what we were talking about.  Ferdinand started to fill him in.  Hearing the story retold was a minor miracle.  Ferdinand told Jimmy that as I was filming, Wendy slowly doled out the information and it created a totally natural state of suspense.

That gradual process of hearing their story was pitch perfect.  In some ways it made editing pretty seamless, because we just had to filter out things, the story was there, in the proper chronology, all we had to do was keep our eyes and ears open.

How did you find Wendy and how soon did you meet her before she is scheduled to go to prison?

I read about her story on google about a week or so before she was set to go to jail.  I got up to Oregon ASAP and went to her attorney's office.  I told him I wanted to film Wendy and he said, "She only has five days...."  A couple hours later I met Wendy and her family at a diner in Grants Pass.  They were all incredibly gracious and twelve hours later the camera was rolling.

The family was always wanting to turn on lights for me or turn down the TV and I'd say, "no, just keep doing things like you're doing".  A month or two later I was shown all of their home videos and I realized that their father had always staged scenes to make sure they looked happy and the lighting was okay.  Had I known about that when I was filming I probably would have let them turn on a light or two.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY's Daniel Junge

#11 in this series...

Daniel Junge's THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY premiered ten months ago at the SXSW Film Festival, taking Austin by storm and winning both the jury and audience awards.  Just a couple of weeks later, his previous film, IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA (which had premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival) took the top prize at AFI Dallas, capping a rare Texas documentary sweep.

After SXSW, DOROTHY was acquired by HBO, which will broadcast the film this year, and was shortlisted for the Academy Award.  The film is also currently in the news, as prosecutors in Brazil have re-opened the case against a rancher tied to Sister Dorothy's murder based on evidence presented in the film.  (Shades of ROMAN POLANSKI...)

In this exchange, Daniel (who is, full disclosure, one of the filmmakers involved in the CONVENTION project) talks about gaining access to both sides of a dramatic trial in the Amazon, the power of a great nonfiction character and working the festival circuit with two acclaimed films simultaneously.

ATWT:  Watching THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY, I was reminded of IRON LADIES and one of the things that really impressed me with that film, which was the amazing level of access that you had.  You are behind the scenes with both the prosecutors in the trial of Dorothy's murderers as well as the defense team.  How did you gain the trust of both sides of this case to allow your cameras to follow them?

Daniel Junge:  While I believe SISTER DOROTHY is more cinematic than IRON LADIES, it’s true that they both benefit from unprecedented access.  I think people are most surprised by our access to the defense team, and, in fact, at times I myself was surprised by their candor.  I think their bravado is indicative of the power structure that exists in the Amazon and ultimately which led to Dorothy's death.  Ironically, it was access to Dorothy's side of the story which was actually a more difficult and constant negotiation, which I think speaks to the stakes and what they have to lose.

The lead defense attorney, Americo Leal, is an amazing nonfiction  character.  He really could have a film all to himself.  What were your impressions onmeeting him, particularly in that he's at least nominally the villain in the last act of the film.

If you wrote Americo Leal as a fiction character he would be unbelievable.  The first day I met him I asked if we could him film him at work doing rudimentary office things, and he said, "No.  Today, I'm going to the forest to ride my Harley Davidson.  Do you want to film me doing that?"  It was at that moment I knew we had a great character and in fact a film!  I would like to react to some of the words that reviewers have used for Americo, including "villain" and "evil."  I think it's important to point out Americo is a lawyer (and a very good one) and ultimately an actor.  Furthermore, as Sister Becky points out, half of the outrageous things he says are true.  If people walk away from our film with only the portrait of a sweet nun and some evil men then I've done this story a great disservice.  Because ultimately it has to be about the systemic failures which are leading to the destruction of the forest and loss of human life in the Amazon.