All these wonderful things

TORONTO 2011: Doc Premieres from Herzog, Wiseman, Demme, Gibney, Spurlock, Yu, Hustwit, Fricke, Broomfield & Churchill and Berlinger & Sinofsky

[A scene from Davis Guggenheim's new U2 documentary FROM THE SKY DOWN, which was previously announced as this year's TIFF Opening Night film.]

[Editor's Note: Charlotte Cook checks in from London with her thoughts on this year's Toronto International Film Festival documentary line-up.  We'll have more on this in the coming days.]

The majority of documentaries playing at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival were announced Wednesday. We had already learned that this year’s festival would be special for documentaries when Davis Guggenheim’s U2 doc, FROM THE SKY DOWN was announces as the first documentary ever to open TIFF.  Also previously announced was Cameron Crowe’s 20-year history of another popular rock band, PEARL JAM TWENTY.

As we have come to expect, TIFF pulls no punches with a programme full of big name directors such as Werner Herzog, Jonathan Demme, Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney and Fred Wiseman.

Gary Hustwit brings the final part of his design trilogy (which began with HELVETICA and OBJECTIFIED) with URBANIZED, which ventures into how the design of our cities and buildings affects our lives. Another Part Three joining the line-up is PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky which is already building anticipated buzz.

Mark Cousins’ THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY clocks in at 900mins (15 hours), but is likely to be a joy for the completist documentary nerds among us.

It’s great to see the excellent THIS IS NOT A FILM (IN FILM NIST) by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi, which premiered at this year’s Cannes after being smuggled into the country on a USB stick buried inside a cake due to Jafar Panahi’s incarceration and current working ban.

Other eagerly anticipated films are Jessica Yu’s LAST CALL AT THE OASIS, which looks at the current water crisis and Ron Fricke's sequel to Baraka, SAMSARA. One of the most talked about before premiering, and likely after, is SARAH PALIN - YOU BETCHA! by Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill.

The line-up is also notably drawn from a multitude of different countries, with Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile and Austria to name a few.

Talking to CP24, Toronto's Documentary Film Programmer Thom Powers said of this year's line-up "It's kind of an insane embarrassment of riches."

The full documentary line-up so far is below, with more to be added:

THE BOY WHO WAS KING by Andrey Paounov (Bulgaria)
CAPRICHOSOS DE SAN TELMO by Alison Murray (Argentina/Canada)
ARIRANGA by Kim Ki-Duk (South Korea)
COMIC-CON: EPISODE IV - A FAN'S HOPE by Morgan Spurlock (USA)
CRAZY HORSE by Frederick Wiseman (France/USA)
DARK GIRLS by Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry (USA)
DUCH, MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL by Rithy Panh (France/Cambodia)
FATHERLAND (TIERRA DE LOS PADRES) by Nicolás Prividera (Argentina)
FIRST POSITION by Bess Kargman (USA)
FROM THE SKY DOWN by Davis Guggenheim (USA)
GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING by Corinna Belz (Germany)
GIRL MODEL by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon (USA)
I'M CAROLYN PARKER: THE GOOD, THE MAD, AND THE BEAUTIFUL by Jonathan Demme (USA)
IN MY MOTHER'S ARMS by Atia Al Daradji Mohamed Al Daradji (Iraq/Netherlands/UK)
INTO THE ABYSS by Werner Herzog (USA)
LAST CALL AT THE OASIS by Jessica Yu (USA)
THE LAST DOGS OF WINTER by Costa Botes (New Zealand)
THE LAST GLADIATORS by Alex Gibney (USA)
PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (USA)
PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE by Stephen Kessler (USA)
PEARL JAM TWENTY by Cameron Crowe (USA)
PINA by Wim Wenders (Germany/France)
SAMASARA (Originally from Sanskrit) by Ron Fricke (USA)
SARAH PALIN - YOU BETCHA! by Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill (UK)
THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY by Mark Cousins (UK)
THE TALL MAN Tony Krawitz, (Australia)
THIS IS NOT A FILM (IN FILM NIST) by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi (Iran)
UNDEFEATED by Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin (USA)
URBANIZED by Gary Hustwit (USA and UK)
WHORES' GLORY by Michael Glawogger (Austria/Germany)
THE YEAR OF THE TIGER (EL AÑO DEL TIGRE) by Sebastián Lelio (Chile)

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."

Our Oscar and Spirit Awards Predictions

With Los Angeles abuzz in pre-Oscar festivities, it seems that it's become time to weigh in on this year's awards and to offer a few predictions about who might go home with some hardware.

Saturday afternoon, amidst what is predicted to be a stormy and cold Spirit Awards under the tent in Santa Monica, it seems safe to say that the Documentary Feature award will go to either EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP or RESTREPO.  The history of the Spirit Awards is that, in the documentary category at least, exposure/box office potency = the win. Only twice in the ten years of the Best Documentary award has the winner not been a film with the highest box office take - last year was one of those when ANVIL! topped FOOD, INC.

[Check out our list of all of the Spirit Awards nominees and winners in the documentary categories here.]

With that said, it's hard to imagine that the FIND membership will go with MARWENCOL or SWEETGRASS, which had lower-profile theatrical releases, or to THUNDER SOUL, which is set to be released by Roadside Attractions this fall.

Just by tradition alone, you'd have to pick EXIT as the winner here.  It grossed about three times the amount that RESTREPO did, and it fits in with the pop culture themes that tend to win on Saturday (i.e. previous winners DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, SOME KIND OF MONSTER, ANVIL!).  A non-pop culture, vérite-style film, which, aside from a sprinkling of interviews with the subjects, RESTREPO is, hasn't won the Documentary award at the Spirits since 2000 (DARK DAYS).

Note: MARWENCOL and SWEETGRASS, along with SUMMER PASTURE, were nominated for the Spirit Awards' grant prize, the Truer Than Fiction Award, which recognizes upcoming nonfiction filmmakers (and which has been won in the past by Bill and Turner Ross (45365), Margaret Brown (THE ORDER OF MYTHS) and Ian Olds & Garrett Scott (OPERATION: DREAMLAND).  For the first time in the Spirit Awards history, this award (along with the other grant prizes for upcoming narrative filmmaker and producer) will not be announced during the Spirit Awards themselves - they were shifted to a brunch event that took place in January.  MARWENCOL was named as this year's winner.

So, if EXIT looks like a straight-away winner at the Spirit Awards, then the question is whether Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz triumph on Sunday afternoon in the Kodak Theatre.

Charles Ferguson Wins the DGA Documentary Award for INSIDE JOB

Saturday night in Los Angeles, Charles Ferguson picked up the DGA Award for INSIDE JOB, winning top honors from a field that included Davis Guggenheim (WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'), Alex Gibney (CLIENT 9), Lixin Fan (LAST TRAIN HOME) and Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger (RESTREPO).

The presentation of the award picked up some unexpected humor/irony as presenter Helen Mirren lamented the poor financial state of documentary filmmakers just before presenting the award to Ferguson, who a decade ago sold his software company to Microsoft for more than $100 million dollars.

The DGA win is an important one for the Oscar-nominated INSIDE JOB, which was regarded as this year's Oscar favorite after its debut last May at Cannes, but which, in terms of major awards, had only scored a New York Film Critics Circle prize prior to Saturday, where it narrowly topped the surging EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (also Oscar-nommed).  EXIT director Banksy was not nominated for the DGA award.

Other than the NYFCC, the few times that INSIDE JOB has gone head-to-head with EXIT, neither film came out the victor.  Both were nominated for Audience Choice and Production at the Cinema Eye Honors (JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK and LAST TRAIN HOME took those awards, respectively, although EXIT did win two awards including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature) and for the Broadcast Film Critics Award (where WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' won).  JOB was nomned for the Gotham Award, but lost out to THE OATH.

The Day Before: Predicting This Year's Oscar Doc Feature Nods

Early tomorrow morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will unveil the five feature films that will stand as this year's Documentary Feature representatives on Oscar night.  We've been talking for months about what a great year this has been for documentary - and it was amazing last week to be able to celebrate that year at Cinema Eye - but for many folks, it's this list of five that will forever stand for the year in documentary 2010.

But who makes the list?

One thing that many Oscar watchers miss about this part of the Documentary Feature voting is that the process allows branch members to show their support, as well as their dislike, of each of the 15 films on the shortlist.  Voters have ranked all 15 films on a scale of 6-10, with 6 being the lowest.  If there's more than a couple voters (and it may not even take that many) who give that low score of "6" to a film, it's enough to remove it from contention.

And because the vote is cast in secret without a jury or committee process to allow for cajoling and persuasion, in theory at least, voters can feel safe scoring down a film without needing to justify it to the group.

But there's no telling whether the voters - nearly all of them documentary filmmakers themselves - will actually hand out those low grades.

That's what makes this year - with some films that provoke very strong reactions - particularly difficult to call. 

Since Oscar's final five has never been - in its history - culled from the top five money makers, it's highly unlikely that you will see a list of five drawn exclusively from the top hits: WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN', INSIDE JOB, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, RESTREPO and THE TILLMAN STORY. 

Here on the blog, we look at history and note that it's likely that three of these top films will make the list - and we'd frankly be lying to you if we said with any assurity which three films it will be.

DGA Nominates Fan, Ferguson, Gibney, Guggenheim, Hetherington & Junger for Doc Award

The Directors Guild has announced its nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary for 2010 and indieWIRE has the list.

In short - many of the big names left standing on Oscar's Documentary Shortlist are noted by the DGA: Charles Ferguson for INSIDE JOB, Alex Gibney for CLIENT 9, Davis Guggenheim for WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for RESTREPO.  The fifth nominee is Lixin Fan, whose LAST TRAIN HOME leads all nominees for next Tuesday's Cinema Eye Honors.

The DGA rarely syncs up with the Oscars - last year's win by THE COVE's Louie Psihoyos at both is the exception that proves the rule - and usually includes at least one wild card nominee that seemingly comes out-of-the-blue.  Not this time, however, as the DGA went more mainstream in their choices than is their tradition.

The DGA Awards take place Saturday, January 29 in Los Angeles.

 

The Most Honored Documentary of 2010 is EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

After a full year in which Laura Poitras' THE OATH and Jeff Malmberg's MARWENCOL dominated our Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll with a full slate of festival jury prizes and year-end documentary awards, the onslaught of 2010's various film critics honors have handed the mantle of most honored documentary of the year to Banksy's EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP.

EXIT now has a full 24 mentions on the Honor Roll - a combination of year-end documentary award nominations and critics prizes - which is 8 ahead of the 2nd place film, MARWENCOL and 10 ahead of Poitras' THE OATH and fellow Oscar shortlisted doc, Charles Ferguson's INSIDE JOB.

Three other Oscar shortlisted features - Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's RESTREPO, Amir Bar-Lev's THE TILLMAN STORY and Davis Guggenheim's WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' have 12 mentions each. 

After being absent from the list for most of the year (the film played out of competition at Sundance and Berlin), EXIT sprinted to the top of the Honor Roll chart on the basis of a somewhat surprising critical consensus - surprising not on the merits but because critics have tended to award issue-based docs over more entertaining fare.  Even last year when ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL was making a strong year-end showing among some critics, in the end the awards tended to favor the eventual Oscar winner, Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE. 

Alex Gibney Talks Creative Choices in CLIENT 9, How He Balances His Huge Slate and the Documentary Golden Age

Note - This is the third in a series of interviews with the filmmakers behind some of my favorite nonfiction features of 2010...

A few years ago, I started referring to Alex Gibney as "the hardest working man in documentary" - but these were back in the days when the man only had two films come out in the same year.  This year, it was nearly impossible to keep track of everything Gibney was doing - from his nonfiction take on Jack Abramoff to his segment of FREAKONOMICS to his HBO project, MY TRIP TO AL QAEDA, to his eagerly anticipated film on Lance Armstrong and his just-announced Sundance 2011 feature, MAGIC TRIP.

And in the midst of all that, the Oscar winner's take on disgraced, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and the forces that may have helped bring about his fall.  I didn't see the film until a few weeks ago and I really took to it.  While Spitzer and his adversaries are crackling, great characters - and a sex scandal is always good for grabbing your attention - Gibney greatest success may be in laying bare the seeds of the global, financial meltdown in ways that are both entertaining and infuriating. 

We talked last week by phone about his latest film - including some of his somewhat controversial creative choices (including casting an actress as one of Spitzer's escorts and not revealing up front that she's actually an actress) as well as how he balances the huge slate of projects in front of him.  Caution - if you haven't seen the film or don't know anything about Spitzer's story, there are spoilers aplenty.

All these wonderful things:  I finally got to see CLIENT 9 and I really, really liked it and one of the things that I was particularly glad to see was that it upended my expectations going in, pretty much having everything to do with how another filmmaker might have handled it, whether it would be dwelling solely on the sexual nature of what helped to bring Eliot Spitzer down or setting him up to be some kind of saint.  I love that you make a strong argument that in some ways it wasn’t the sex scandal that did him in but the fact that he’d been so mean to so many people that there was really no one to stand up for him when the scandal came down.

Alex Gibney: That’s right.  That’s absolutely right.  It’s a funny kind of film, too, because you don’t come out of it with any easy – in a way it was kind of the fun of doing it, also – but you don’t come out of it with any easy conclusion about what to think.  I think that’s important, too, this intersection of public and private, how do we think about that?  And then, you’re right, it wasn’t just the sex.  Other people have had sex scandals and they’ve survived them.  But Spitzer was like Sherman, Sherman’s march to the sea, he left people in his wake, so not only was there no one to support him, but people were viciously and eagerly and gleefully trying to bring him down. 

ATWT: Yeah, I loved that you were able to get his adversaries in this story, which is something that I think we don’t often see in terms of truly getting both sides.  And if you want to think that he was brought down by quote, unquote big business or bad Republicans, you can, but these guys come across as such great, fully formed characters.

AG: Yeah, and I had a blast talking to those people and I was fascinated by them and I think I showed them in all their complexity.  And you can see how gleeful they are in taking him on, and also how much enmity they have.  But then you step back and well, wait a minute, here’s a guy that everybody’s jumping on because he had sex with a high priced escort – we never heard about that 500 million dollar heist conducted by AIG prior to the global financial meltdown.  That’s utterly escaped our notice.  It’s so funny to me because almost nobody mentions the audio tapes of the AIG people talking about a pretty big crime prior to the economic meltdown.  It’s sort of proof positive of exactly what was going on there.  (laughter)  But it’s always eclipsed by the sex.  There’s just no doubt.

Sundance Doc Programmers Libresco & Courier on 2011's Big Themes and How the "Three G's" Led to the Doc Premiere Section

Last December, we grabbed coffee with Sundance programmers Caroline Libresco and David Courier and forecasted the festival that would unveil one month later.  We all had such a good time, we decided to make it an annual event.  So, a week or so ago, we got together for breakfast and talked about this coming year's batch of films and remembered a portion of our conversation from last year that actually might have had an effect on Sundance's program for 2011.

All these wonderful things: So when you finish the selection process and you have that first day off to reflect on what you’ve chosen each year, do you think about themes?  Maybe you think about themes while you’re actually deciding the films, but do you think, “wow, this year there were a lot of these kinds of films” or “this year will leaning toward this or that direction”?

David Courier: We actually haven’t had a day off yet, so… (laughter) But yeah, we do start to think about themes.

Caroline Libresco: And there are things that start to emerge, things we start to notice along the way and after, for sure.  And it’s really actually fun to kind of step back – even just the other day, that was the first time I really stepped back – or the day we talk to our editorial colleagues about ideas, suddenly it was just there.  There were all these interesting connections between the films.

ATWT: Does it sometimes feel like there’s something in the water that leads filmmakers toward certain topics.

DC: Yes.  If you add all the films we didn’t select, oh my God, religion and cults and the fine line between them is so much in the consciousness.  It’s insane. 

CL: And that’s throughout the festival, not just in the docs.

ATWT: Can you pinpoint any specific reason why that is the case this year?  Did something happen two or three or four years ago?

CL: I do think it has something to do with the kind of mounting power over the last decade in this country of the Christian fundamentalist movement, which is now upwards of 60 million people, 1/5 of the country, and its hold on government in the last decade.  How can you ignore it?  But it’s a lot of the (narrative) feature films in the festival and there were lots more that we didn’t end up showing, too.  It’s just fascinating.  Films in the festival like HIGHER GROUND, SOUND OF MY VOICE, SALVATION BLVD…

DC: MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, which I just like saying.

CL: THE LEDGE, just a ton of these.  People just trying to make sense of religiosity, of devout Christianity.

DC: Another big theme that’s emerged – a lot in docs, too – is the state of the media and journalism and basically the evaporation of good investigative journalism.  Journalism, the New York Times for instance, used to be “the word” and that’s no longer the case with 24 hour news and the internet and people are struggling to keep up and decide what’s real because there’s no such thing anymore as “the voice”.  So we got a lot of films that deal with that.