All these wonderful things

Richard "Ricky" Leacock, 1921-2011

Richard "Ricky" Leacock, the London-born filmmaker whose work with Robert Drew and D.A. Pennebaker would revolutionize and come to define a generation's view of documentary film, has died in Paris at the age of 89.

Reports of Leacock's death began to circulate on Twitter several hours ago and the French film site Allocine.com confirmed Leacock's passing.  The Paris-based documentary festival Cinéma du Réel, which opens today, is planning to dedicate a portion of the festival to Leacock.  Leacock and his partner/collaborator Valerie Lalonde moved to Paris in 1989 where they made such films as LES OEUFS ET LA COQUE.

Born in 1921, Leacock would make his first film, CANARY BANANAS (about his father's banana plantation on the Canary Islands) at the age of just 14.  As Leacock recounted on his exceptional website:

"I wrote a detailed script with little drawings of each shot. Polly was script-clerk, Noel was my assistant. My father provided us with an ancient Morris-Oxford touring car. We made reflectors of plywood covered with silver paint, and we smoked cigars because that is what they did in Hollywood! Back at school I edited with rewinds and cement splices. Then we projected. I knew even then that the script was not sacred, that in filming you found things to be different and adjusted accordingly."

Soon after making CANARY BANANAS, Leacock would have the opportunity to meet Robert Flaherty, who happened to be the father of two of Leacock's classmates.

"He was outside in the schoolyard with a 16mm Kodak Cine-Special (a very fancy camera) mounted on a huge tripod (an Akeley-Gyro) and was filming Barbara McDermott combing her long blond hair. He went on and on. He changed angles, he changed lenses, but he went on and on and I thought, “He must be mad!” and she just kept on combing her hair. Later that day, Bill Hunter brought me to his room and introduced me to Mr. Flaherty and his wife Frances. Hunter had shown them my film and they said some nice things about it, though Mrs. Flaherty mentioned that they were not that impressed by the chop-chop editing of the water sequence. Mr. Flaherty concluded by saying that “Someday we will work together...” or some such, which I took with a huge pinch of salt."

Bigger Than Michael?: BieberDoc Becomes Highest Grossing Concert/Music Film of All Time

According to weekend box office estimates, the Justin Bieber 3D documentary NEVER SAY NEVER has now inched past MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT to become the highest grossing music or concert documentary of all time.  NEVER is now estimated to have grossed $72.2M through Sunday, while the postumous Jackson film tapped out at $72.1.  NEVER, which was directed by Jon Chu, was released by Paramount; THIS IS IT was distributed by Sony in October 2009.  Official figures will be released tomorrow.

NEVER SAY NEVER now sits just half a million behind JACKASS: NUMBER TWO (another Paramount title) at number five on the all time nonfiction chart.  The number three film, MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, looks safe in its position with $77.4M, as the Bieber doc is shedding screens and ticket sales with each week.

DRAGONSLAYER Wins Jury Prize, Cinematography at SXSW

DRAGONSLAYER, the debut film from Tristan Patterson, took two prizes at SXSW tonight - the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary in the 8-film competition as well as the Cinematography prize for DP Eric Koretz.

It was the first year that SXSW Film added craft awards to its competitions.  The editing prize was presented to Kyle Henry & Heather Courtney for Courtney's WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, while the award for Music Score went to The Fishermen Three + Ben Fries for Ian Cheney's THE CITY DARK.

The Audience Award was presented to Vikram Gandhi's controversial KUMARÉ, which features the filmmaker posing as a spiritual guru.  During one of the film's premiere screening, an audience member asked Gandhi to apologize to the other people in his film saying that she felt humiliated for them.  

This year's documentary jury included Sky Sitney, Artistic Director of Silverdocs, Mark Olsen of the LA Times and Lisa Schwartzbaum of Entertainment Weekly.

Watch a teaser trailer for DRAGONSLAYER after the jump.

A Few Thoughts About This Year's Miami Film Festival

This was the second year in a row that I didn't make it to Park City for Sundance.  I had been toying with the idea of going pretty much even as the festival was starting up, but what with Sundance coming directly on the heels of this year's Cinema Eye Honors (and the multiple snow storms that struck New York while I was on the east coast), the notion of getting myself to Utah and more snow in the midst of recuperating from a months-long project was too daunting.

So, like last year, I eagerly awaited my first opportunity to see this year's new batch of films, no matter if word on the street was that this year wasn't shaping up to be on par with last (when 4 Sundance premieres would eventually make it to the Oscars and a handful of others were considered high profile snubs).

Luckily I'd been invited to participate in two different film festival juries in the first quarter of 2011.  Between the two, I'd end up seeing 13 of the docs that had premiered at Sundance.

I saw the majority of these while at the Miami Film Festival, which I attended last week.  Toronto International Film Festival doc programmer Thom Powers (also responsible for DOC NYC, Stranger Than Fiction and my co-hort in getting the Cinema Eye Honors off the ground) joined the team in Miami this year and invited me to be part of a jury that included Sheffield Doc/Fest Director Heather Croall and Jeremy Kay, the US Editor for Screen International.

BIEBER Doc Hits $68 Million, #6 All-Time, Spawns Wild Oscar Forecasting

JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER, the year's first docbuster, is wrapping up its 4th weekend in theaters, now positioned as the #6 highest grossing nonfiction feature of all time.  NEVER took in another (estimated) $4.3M since Friday and is set to close in on the $70M range by next weekend. 

That would put the film in the company of the three films that currently reside at #3-5 on the all-time chart: MARCH OF THE PENGUINS ($77M), JACKASS: NUMBER TWO ($73M) and MICHAEL JACKSON THIS IS IT ($72M).

The success of NEVER and the surprising positive reaction it spawned from some in the documentary world (Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim was even set to direct the film for a while), has led to some fairly fun back and forth on Twitter and elsewhere - but apparently some are starting to wonder if NEVER has what it takes to go all the way to the Oscars next year.

In a bizarre and fact-free article in the Hollywood Reporter, Shirley Halperin hears "from a source" that buzz from the various Oscar parties suggest that NEVER could be a serious contender for next year's Doc Feature Oscar:

“You’d be surprised at the caliber of people who came up to Justin at the Vanity Fair party at the Sunset Tower, most of whom had seen the movie and loved it,” says an insider. “There was even talk of putting it up for an Oscar next year in the documentary category. People appreciate that it’s not just a kids’ movie.” (THR’s Bill Higgins also noted Bieber was the star who awed the other stars at the Vanity Fair bash. The young singer would chat with someone and the buzz would immediately be: “What is Mick Jagger talking to Justin Bieber about?”)

True/False 2011 Sneak Previews from Robert Greene, Frank Piaseck Poulsen and BENDA BILILI!

The 8th Annual True/False Film Festival kicks off tonight in Columbia, MO with the fest's new Jubilee event and a sneak preview of the French film BENDA BILILI!, a documentary about a group of paraplegics who play music in the DR. Congo.  (The film screened last year at Cannes and Sheffield Doc/Fest and has its official US premiere at SXSW next week.)

Yesterday, we skimmed some of this year's True/False titles that already have premiered at Sundance and elsewhere.  But True/False often offers land-locked Americans their first chance to sneak films that will later have official premieres at SXSW, Tribeca and elsewhere.  Two years ago, Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's OCTOBER COUNTRY famously had a sneak preview here, the year prior it was Anna Broinowski's FORBIDDEN LIES that made its mark in the midwest before heading on to Full Frame and Silverdocs. 

Here's a look at some of the films that will have sneak previews at this year's T/F (film descriptions from the festival):

AT THE EDGE OF RUSSIA
Directed by Michael Marczak

Surrounded by the frozen tundra of Siberia, a young soldier comes of age at an almost-forgotten military outpost.

BENDA BILILI!
Directed by Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye

A real-life fairy tale, Benda Bilili! is a five-years-in-the-making look at a group of paraplegic Congolese musicans who go from sleeping on cardboard boxes to worldwide attention.

March Marks the Start of Festival Season with True/False, Miami and SXSW About to Unspool

Now that we've got award season out of the way (I tweeted on Monday that "Moving Cinema Eye to January was the best decision ever. I can't imagine planning an awards show right now."), we can dive full force into the films of 2011.  And nothing underlines that more than the impending launch of two major US film festivals - True/False and SXSW - and the documentary rebirth of the Miami Film Festival, courtesy of doc-master Thom Powers, that festival's new documentary programmer. 

Miami kicks off unofficially tonight with an outdoor screening of Sarah McCarthy's THE SOUND OF MUMBAI, a crowd-pleasing film that premiered in Powers' 2010 Toronto line-up and has been picked up by the folks at HBO.  During the week that follows, Miami will screen a potent round-up of the best of Sundance 2011, including James Marsh's PROJECT NIM, Morgan Spurlock's THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD, Marshall Curry's IF A TREE FALLS, Steve James' THE INTERRUPTERS, Liz Garbus' BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD, Andrew Rossi's PAGE ONE, David Weissman's WE WERE HERE, Daniele Anastasion and Eric Strauss' THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED, Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood's MAGIC TRIP and Göran Hugo Olsson's THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE.

[Full disclosure: I am on the documentary jury at the Miami Film Festival this year.]

Marsh, James, Garbus, Rossi, Ollson and Anastasion/Strauss will also be screening their films this weekend at True/False in Columbia, Missouri, where Marsh will be presented with the fest's True Vision Award (which has previously gone to Laura Poitras, Alex Gibney, Kim Longinotto and Kirby Dick) and the subjects of James' film THE INTERRUPTERS will be the beneficiaries of the fest's True Life Fund.

An Award Season (Finally) Ends as INSIDE JOB Wins; Ferguson and Marrs Defend Banksy, Enter Oscar History

In just a few minutes it was over.  A solid plug for documentaries and an outstanding year of films by presenter (and documentary doyenne-wannabe) Oprah Winfrey, a quick montage of the five nominated features, the opening of an envelope, a strong political statement from a newly-minted Oscar winning director and a thank you to the documentary community from a just-crowned Oscar winning producer. 

And then it was done.

After months of speculation and the presentation of countless peer, festival and critics awards, the Oscar went to Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs for INSIDE JOB.

Ferguson took his Oscar and seized his moment: "Forgive me, but I must start by pointing out that three years after a horrible financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail and that's wrong."

In her speech, Marrs spoke of the larger documentary community: "Having only made two films, I still feel that Charles and I are newcomers to this community, but from the beginning we've been made to feel incredibly welcome and supported for which I'm immensely grateful."

Backstage, the filmmakers were asked by questioner about their fellow nominee, Banksy, who inspired a great deal of speculation prior to the ceremony over what he might do if his film, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, won the Oscar.  Asked whether all the Banksy talk distracted from documentary, Marrs spoke out in the artist's defense:

"I would never question the integrity of another filmmaker, and I appreciate the fact that there was a film that was fun and funny, and I don't think documentarians should necessarily feel obligated to make films about these really heavy subjects. Although, in some ways, I guess making a film about art is, but I appreciated there was one like that in the mix because I think documentarians should be able to make films about whatever they want."

Ferguson added, "I thought the Banksy film was lovely.  A beautiful film."