All these wonderful things

Bar-Lev, Ferguson, Hetherington, Junger & Weyermann Among 10 Invited to Join Academy

[Filmmakers Amir Bar-Lev (left) and Tim Hetherington at the Cinema Eye Honors Nominees Reception in January in New York City.  Photo by Simon Luethi.]

In what constitutes the largest, single-year class of invites to the Academy's Documentary Branch in years, ten have been invited to join AMPAS, including recently minted Oscar winner Charles Ferguson, filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev (MY KID COULD PAINT THAT, THE TILLMAN STORY), Participant Media EVP Diane Weyermann and Davis Guggenheim's producing partner Leslie Chilcott.

The headline, though, was the Academy's invitation to RESTREPO filmmakers' Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger.  It's almost unheard of for the Academy to invite filmmakers based on a single feature film, even if it's Oscar nominated, and is almost certainly a reaction to Hetherington's death in Libya two months ago.  Hetherington is the Academy's first posthumous invitee.

The invite list also includes Carl Deal, whose partner on TROUBLE THE WATER, Tia Lessin, was invited to join a couple years ago, as well as three recently nominated for the Academy's Documentary Short prize: Jon Alpert (CHINA'S UNNATURAL DISASTER: THE TEARS OF THE SICHUAN PROVINCE) and Thomas Lennon & Ruby Yang (THE WARRIORS OF QIUGANG), who won the Short Oscar a few years ago for THE BLOOD OF THE YINGZHOU DISTRICT.

Sean Farnel Steps Down at Hot Docs

[Sean Farnel, right, with Hot Docs' Executive Director Chris McDonald and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock at Opening Night of Hot Docs 2011.  Photo from the Hot Docs website by Joseph Michael.]

In what accounts for major news around here, Sean Farnel announced last night, via his blog, that he was stepping down from his role as Hot Docs' Director of Programming.  After six years at Hot Docs, which followed a six year run programming documentaries at the Toronto International Film Festival, Farnel said that it was time to move on:

"Five years is usually enough to get the job done (give or take a bonus year). As at tiff, I depart with pride, having significantly advanced the programmes on which I worked. It seems unlikely that we could’ve put together a better festival then we did with this past Hot Docs...

Few, if any, international film festivals have enjoyed more growth then Hot Docs since 2005. Having just announced another record event, with over 150,000 admissions and a 24 per cent increase in earned revenues, the Festival has more then tripled its audience over the past six years. With that, Hot Docs is now a close second to IDFA as the world’s largest documentary film festival. The Festival has become one of Toronto’s most significant and beloved cultural events."

Although Farnel is departing, he is not exiting the scene.  This week he'll serve as a juror at the Silverdocs Film Festival (which kicks off tonight). 

Steve James' Epic Nonfiction THE INTERRUPTERS Takes Sheffield Jury Prize

The hugely successful, first summer edition of the Sheffield Doc/Fest wound to a close this morning as delegates began to take trains back to London and as the festival's presented it's awards in a lively ceremony at the Showroom Cinema.

And when it was all over, it was THE INTERRUPTERS, Steve James' extraordinary look at a team of gang violence preventers in Chicago, that took home the Special Jury Prize, the top award at Sheffield.  It was the first major festival award for THE INTERRUPTERS, which premiered out of competition at Sundance and which received the Jury Prize from the Miami Film Festival in March (Full Disclosure: I was a member of the Miami jury, along with Sheffield Director Heather Croall).

The jury win by THE INTERRUPTERS solidifies the belief that the film will be a strong, and perhaps the leading, contender for end-of-the-year awards and honors.  The film is certainly one of the best nonfiction features in recent years and a classic example of verite filmmaking that has largely been supplanted by the more constructed work of the past decade.

The Special Jury also an honorary mention to Alma Har'el's BOMBAY BEACH, which received the World Documentary Competition prize at Tribeca earlier this year.  BEACH and fellow Special Jury competition title CALVET, a world premiere here, were two of the most buzzed about films at this year's festival.  Other films in the Special Jury competition included AT NIGHT I FLY, Barbara Kopple's GUN FIGHT, Sundance award winner HELL AND BACK AGAIN and IDFA 2010 champ POSITION AMONG THE STARS.

Sheffield Doc/Fest Takes JUSTIN BIEBER Seriously, and So Should You

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat.  Jon Chu's JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER will not cure disease.  It's a bit long (there's a saggy middle section that could have been whipped into better shape) and the central conceit - a build-up to the tween heart-throb's big concert at Madison Square Garden - is, as they say, paper-thin.

Further, most music docs have the benefit of an artist's long history to reflect on, a career and personal arc that includes the ups and downs of year's of hard touring and music biz shenanigans.  Halfway through NEVER, I came to the abrupt realization that Justin Bieber's entire career has been shorter than production on my current film. 

That said, NEVER SAY NEVER, which had its major film festival debut here at the Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK after a hugely successful stateside theatrical release (#4 all time), is a film that announces early on that it intends to be much, much better than it has to be.  And by the end, the film delivers so many moments of pure, giddy joy that most of the docmakers who saw it (including more than a few repeat viewers) were bouncing through the streets of Sheffield for hours afterward.

I say most, but I did not say all.  At least a couple seemed to view the film with hostility and there were a number of others I spoke to later in the evening who openly scoffed at the film.  Indeed, check the film's IMDb page and you will see a string of 1-star reviews from folks who hate NEVER SAY NEVER, hate Justin, hate the screaming girls who love him so much.

So why did I and a number of others (who have not, as far as I can tell, taken leave of their senses) fall for this 3-D ode to a 16 year old whose music I did not recognize (nor did I find it particularly catchy)? 

Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011: Head Programmer Hussain Currimbhoy on the Move to June and This Year's Hidden Gems

[Morgan Spurlock kicked off this year's Sheffield Doc/Fest last night with the Opening Night screening of POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD.  Photo by Michelle Heighway from the Sheffield Doc/Fest Flickr page.]

With the inaugural summer edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest now up and running, it's past time to run an interview that we did in the last couple of weeks with Sheffield's Head Programmer Hussain Currimbhoy. 

We were curious about how the switch to summer changed his programming process (particularly since he just did this last November) and asked him to tip off some titles from this year's programme.

We just arrived in the UK and are about to head up to Sheffield (once our bag catches up with us).  We'll have more about this year's festival in the coming days.

All these wonderful things: First, I want to ask you about the the logistics of changing to June and how it affected your programming practices.  Were there films that you saw for November but you told the filmmakers, we want to hold off on showing this until June?  And how important were festivals like Sundance or SXSW in terms of putting potential films on your radar?

Hussain Currimbhoy: There were some titles I was eye-balling, stalking if you will, starting from around June 2010. But I knew they would not be ready for November. Because of the new time slot there were a lot of unknowns from a programming point of view. Since I began in 2007 the film submissions season gradually received more and more submissions. We are used to receiving 1200-1500 unsolicited submissions a year and I figured, OK, we might get half of that since we have less time, it's over the Christmas holidays, and despite making plenty of noise about it, some sources might not know we moved to June.

So what happened? We still got well over 1200 films! I admit it was rather... absorbing to get through that many films with the previewers with much less time. But we managed to get some beauties out of the submissions.

Indeed the Sundance and SXSW programmes were vital and ultimately a particularly rich well for us because we could access the films quickly and were able to capitalise on the media buzz and distributor interest the festivals raised for their films. Instant classics like BEATS, RHYMES, LIFE; THE INTERRUPTERS, HELL AND BACK AGAIN, BECOMING CHAZ – these were films I fell in love immediately and I remember just grinning like an idiot all day and feeling over the moon when I confirmed them for Doc/Fest. I also nabbed some glorious docs from Berllinale like BOMBAY BEACH and MAMA AFRICA. Hot Docs and Tribeca Film Festival were also very important to the programming pools.

Securing the films from filmmakers I look up to made me feel like the move to June was working. It felt good and it felt right, you know? It was like asking a really hot girl out, thinking there was little chance she would say yes, then – cut to: having dinner with the really hot girl and feeling like you da man!. As we got bigger, vital and powerful films I realised that this mad move to June was not so mad. it would clearly expand the profile and enhance relevance of Doc/Fest, not just in the UK but internationally. As a programmer what excited me was realising that the possibilities of programming choices seemed fresher, manifold and just more interesting. It was actually invigorating to investigate new veins for films.

ATWT: What's been the best thing about the move so far and has the short window between November's fest and next month's fest been the biggest challenge?

HC: The Doc/Fest team discussed the move to June quite some time before we announced it, so we were all mentally prepared – that is the most important thing when one embarks on an endeavour like this! The mental energy was there, but the body was saying: dude, read a book, please! It was hard to find the energy to start viewing so soon as the festival can knock it out of you for weeks after ward. That was perhaps the hardest thing for me - going straight back into vewing after November. I opened submissions right after the festival and found myself glued to the screen(s) while reassessing what filmmakers schedules were. I was on annual leave too in December, that really didn’t help the work load!