All these wonderful things

A Few Words about Cinema Eye 2012 and This Space

Admittedly, we’ve been a stranger around these parts lately, but more on that in a moment.

As I write this, I’m en route to Los Angeles, returning from London, where we just announced the nominees for this year’s Cinema Eye Honors (you can find the full list here).  It was a great experience on this end, terrific to see several weeks (months?) of hard work by a lot of different people come to fruition and wonderful to officially kick off this annual celebration of the artistry of nonfiction filmmaking.

I was struck by a number of things as Wednesday night ended and the word of this year’s nominations was starting to spread to nominees on all parts of the globe. 

First, I realized that I sometimes underestimate the challenge of this part of our Cinema Eye process, the period from engaging our eligible filmmakers to launching the vote to tallying the nominees to relaunching a website complete with new artwork by the amazing Ben Chlapek.  It’s not quite the massive undertaking that the actual event is, but it’s pretty close.

Second, I remembered that despite 11 categories and five (and occasionally six) slots for nominees per award, there were a number of films that I loved this year that weren’t on the Cinema Eye list.  Mostly, this makes me think that this must be yet another great year for documentary (and I do believe that it is) but I still hope that some of my favorites will be recognized elsewhere before the year is done.

So for that reason, I was particularly glad to see HOW TO DIE IN OREGON announced as one of the five films up for the IDA Award for Best Documentary today.  Here’s hoping that the Oscar shortlist and the Spirits might show some love to a couple of my other favorites.

Now, about that absence...

There’s this thing that I’ve been telling folks privately that I should finally share with those of you who still come over here from time to time, wondering why the last post was more than two months ago.

These long stretches are evidence of the fact that this nearly six and a half year endeavour is winding down.  Writing this blog has been a huge surprise for me, quite obviously.  It began as a way to chronicle the work on my film, KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON, and it became someting else, something that came to change my life in a lot of ways and somehow came to mean something to more people than one could even imagine.

It’s allowed me to meet and talk with filmmakers, travel to festivals, experience parts of this documentary life that I could have never expected.

Without the blog there is no Cinema Eye. 

But without making films there is no blog. 

And it is time to make more films.

Soon, this thing that I’ve done, often late at night after the wife and child have gone to bed, will conclude.  But the thing that it spawned, this thing of Cinema Eye that I’m so proud to share with a core of amazing friends and colleagues and with everyone who has ever been nominated in the now five years of our existence, will thrive.  And proudly so.

And there will be a new focus on the thing that inspired the blog in the first place.

This isn’t goodbye yet - and I’ll try not to make it a long, drawn out goodbye - but the end of this chapter is coming. 

Like my Cinema Eye colleague Sean Farnel said when he signed off from Hot Docs, six years was enough.

He also said, “I work for documentary.”

Allow me to second that emotion.

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.

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."

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.

Thoughts on This Year's Cinema Eye Honors

Well, that was fun. 

We wrapped the fourth annual Cinema Eye Honors 6 days ago at the newly re-opened Museum of the Moving Image (where we were still inaugurating some of their equipment and where not everything, including the thermostats, were fully operational) and now things are slowly but surely getting back into regular gear, at least around these parts.

I'm beginning to think that I should just hang a sign on the blog come the top of January that reads "Gone Fishin'" or something...

For the rest of the doc world, Cinema Eye was but one event (or series of events), a stop en route to Sundance or to tomorrow's Oscar nominations or to whatever the next festival or party or envelope opening comes to call.

But for those of us who've been working behind the scenes on this year's ceremony, this year was something really quite special.

While I always love the event/ceremony, and it's great to see so many friends, colleagues and people I admire, this year was particularly important to us as it marked the first time that we produced the event entirely by ourselves.  We obviously had a lot of help - people who gave of their time and talents, sponsors who contributed cash and bottles of gin and spaces in which we could hand out very heavy, seemingly-dangerous trophies.

But this year was a truly hand-made event and it resonated personally because I knew how much work we all had put into it.

I so fortunate to have a great team, particularly my partners Nathan Truesdell and Esther Robinson.  The three of us have been meeting and talking and conspiring over ways to pull off Cinema Eye 2011 pretty much since the day after Cinema Eye 2010.  And I'd be lying if I said that we weren't already talking about Cinema Eye 2012.

For us, Cinema Eye is about celebrating collaborations and recognizing the work of the entire team that makes these movies that we love.  So, it's kind of essential that the three of us know how to riff off of each other, to know when to push and pull, and to trust in the others' core belief about the thing that we are doing (which, in our minds at least, is more than about handing out trophies).  Because Esther and I get to stand on the stage and crack-wise, it's important to emphasize that this is truly a 3-headed monster and that Nate's contributions to Cinema Eye throughout the year have been intrinsic to its success.

Beyond my two co-conspirators, we have a great crew of extended family, led by our nominations chair Sean Farnel and our advisory board chair Andrea Meditch.  The two of them, as well as our numerous advisors (special shout outs to Matt Dentler, Thom Powers, Rachel Rosen, Debra Zimmerman and Ryan Harrington), keep steering us down the right path.

This year, we had special assists from Brian Geldin, Lainey Hughes, Jennifer Razor, Ingrid Kopp, Natalie Difford, Maxyne Franklin, Robert Greene, James Benson, Bernardo Britto and Michael Forstein.  We had our amazing design team - our art director Ryan Nelson and our lead illustrator Ben Chlapek who created all the amazing graphics for this years films.  Plus we had the onstage talents of The Quavers (T. Griffin, Catherine McRae and Dennis Cronin) who kicked off the show with an excerpt from Sam Green and Dave Cerf's UTOPIA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS, narrated by Mr. Green himself.

Finally, I can't forget our sponsors, without whom there would have been no Cinema Eye this year - particularly our partners at the Museum of the Moving Image (David Schwartz and Rachael Rakes) who dealt with us even as they were still opening their doors, but also everyone at the Documentary Channel, the Economist, HBO Documentary Films, A&E IndieFilms, SnagFilms, POV, Abel Cine Tech, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Hot Docs, Camden International Film Festival, Hudson Hotel, Danish Film Institute, Maine Distilleries and the Film Sales Company.

You'll get to see the fruits of this labor - in slightly abbreviated form - when the ceremony airs on the Documentary Channel (available on DirectTV, Dish and some cable systems) this Sunday night at 8 PM eastern and pacific.

I don't think it matters if the winners are known; the on-camera reactions and the speeches - particularly the one you may have read about from Banksy - are more fun to watch than just reading the recaps, as good as many of them were.

But if you're interested in other's thoughts/recaps about this year's event, you can find them from Brian Brooks at indieWIRE, Matt Singer at IFC, Steve Pond at The Wrap, Scott Macauley at Filmmaker Magazine, Jennifer Merin at about.com and Melena Ryzik at The New York Times' The Carpetbagger blog.

One last, personal, note:  As I said before we announced the final award of the evening, I want to congratulate all of this year's nominees.  We talk a lot about what an extraordinary year it was, but I don't talk as often - here on the blog, at least - about how inspiring, how personally rejuvinating, the artistic achievements of this year have been.  So while Cinema Eye is centered around this idea of voting and winning and being nominated, I want to send my personal thanks to the filmmakers of 2010 and thank them for the numerous ways in which they call on me to be a better filmmaker.

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. 

Banksy (Yes, Banksy) on Thierry, EXIT Skepticism & Documentary Filmmaking as Punk

Note - The second in a series of interviews with the directors of some of our favorite nonfiction features of 2010...

Whenever the subject of EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP has come up in casual or not-so-casual conversation over the past year, a vigorous discussion has followed.  I've seen master filmmakers, newcomers, film critics and non-pros all engage in excited, lengthy dissections of the film - sometimes about what's real, what they suspect is not - often about the film's profound take on art and commerce.  In the end, no matter what point of view the individual holds, the conclusion seems to always be that it's a major work in the nonfiction canon.

One would be forgiven for not expecting all this when Sundance announced EXIT as a late addition to the 2010 festival.  The debut film by Banksy - the anonymous British artist who gained notoriety and fame for his often-politically charged work that would turn up in some very unusual places (inside museum galleries, on the West Bank wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians) - EXIT would leave the festival spurring numerous distribution offers and go out on its own, working with sales agent John Sloss and distributor Richard Abramowitz to bring the film to theatres in the spring.  And after a somewhat surprising (relief was more like it) inclusion on the Academy's Documentary Feature shortlist, the film finds itself smack in the middle of Best-of-the-Year conversations.  It's nominated for the Documentary prize at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and it's up for 6 awards at next months Cinema Eye Honors, including Outstanding Feature and Outstanding Debut, not to mention the numerous film critics prizes its been garnering (yesterday, it was announced as the Best Documentary and Best First Feature on indieWIRE's annual critics poll).

Over the past month, we've had the opportunity to spend some time with the team behind EXIT - producer Jaimie D'Cruz and editor Chris King - including hosting the duo at a screening here in Los Angeles at Cinefamily earlier this month.  In their presence, I witnessed numerous others trying to find out what Banksy thinks of this or that. 

I had my own questions and Banksy and team were kind enough to get me his answers (via email, of course)...

All these wonderful things: One thing I've heard repeatedly from members of your team was that, early on, you were alone in your conviction that Thierry could and should be the narrative focus of the film - long before his show in LA that concludes the movie.  What drew you to Thierry as a film character and, aside from the fact that he had a lot of archival material about street art at his fingertips, why did you think that he could sustain the film's narrative arc?
 
Banksy: Thierry’s entertainment potential wasn’t difficult to spot - he actually walks into doors and falls down stairs. It was like hanging out with Groucho Marx but with funnier facial hair. Thierry arrived at a point when my world was becoming infested with hipsters and heavy irony, so his exuberant man-child innocence was fun to be around. Maybe I convinced myself Thierry was a good subject just because I liked him. I’d be lying if I told you the first time I met him I thought ‘this man’s life will deliver a good narrative arc’.
 
From the outset there are problems with any movie about graffiti because all the good artists refuse to show their face on camera. I needed the film to be fronted by a personality the audience could engage with. The producer Robert Evans said that ‘vulnerability’ is the most important quality in a movie star and that’s a hard thing to portray if all your interviewees have masks over their faces.
 
ATWT: It's clear in the film that you rely on a team of people to create your artwork.  What, if anything, was different about the filmmaking process, and the work you did with that team - Jaimie and Chris and others?  And how did you know when you'd found the right collaborators?
 
B: I paint my own pictures but I get a lot of help building stuff and installing it. I have a great little team, but I tell you what - they all hate this fucking film. They don’t care if its effective, they feel very strongly that Mr Brainwash is undeserving of all the attention. Most street artists feel the same. This film has made me extremely unpopular in my community.