All these wonderful things

PARADISE LOST Subjects Freed After 18-year Miscarriage of Justice

 

Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin, three men collectively known as the "West Memphis 3", were freed from prison today after more than 16 years.  The three were wrongly convicted in the 1994 murders of three young boys, a court case that was documented in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's landmark 1996 documentary PARADISE LOST: THE CHILD MURDERS AT ROBIN HOOD HILLS, which aired on HBO.

The news comes just weeks before PURGATORY, the third film in the PARADISE LOST trilogy, is set to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

More from CBS News:

The deal reached Friday is what's known as an Alford plea. Normally, when defendants plead guilty in criminal cases, they admit that they've done the crime in question. But in an Alford plea, defendants are allowed to insist they're innocent, says Kay Levine, a former prosecutor who now teaches criminal law and criminal procedure at Emory University in Atlanta. She is not involved with the Arkansas case.

"It's not an insane strategy decision," Levine said. But, she added: "It's incredibly troubling to us as a free society that people would plead guilty to something that they actually did not do."

In a clip from the forthcoming film [embedded below], Echols is seen telling Berlinger and Sinofsky that if it weren't for the films, he would already be dead.  "I really do believe these people would have gotten away with murdering me if it would not have been for what you guys did, for being there in the very beginning and getting this whole thing on tape so that the rest of the world sees what was happening.  If not for that, these people would have murdered me, swept this under the rug and I wouldn't be anything but a memory right now."

In a statement today, Berlinger said, "What greater gift to a filmmaker than to see their work actually having real world impact."

Peter Richardson on Filming His Powerfully Quiet Prize-Winner, HOW TO DIE IN OREGON

Before I saw Peter Richardson's HOW TO DIE IN OREGON, I'd heard over and over that it was a incredibly difficult film to get through.  In our now-annual interview in December, Sundance programmers David Courier and Caroline Libresco described the film to me as "devastating". There were reports of walkouts at Sundance (where the film won the Grand Jury Prize) and HBO's Sheila Nevins, the film's Executive Producer, even told the New York Times that the film was so wrenching, that "half her staff...refused to watch the whole film".

“Nobody wants to stare death in the face, and that’s the reason nobody wants to see this film,” Ms. Nevins said over breakfast at the nearby Canyons Ski Resort. “Don’t get me wrong — it’s very harsh, a very hard watch. But ultimately it’s an important film about courage, about dignity, about compassion.”

So you might imagine my trepidation in watching the film, which I did for the jury at this year's Ashland Film Festival (we, too, awarded HOW TO DIE our Grand Jury Prize, and not because of the regional topicality).  I mean, watching people die?  Who wants to do that?

I won't lie to you and say that I wasn't affected by the film for hours afterward or that, more than two months later, images from the film don't continue to haunt me. 

But this film is not an impossible watch and you shouldn't shy away from it when it premieres on HBO tomorrow night.  For such a loud subject, HOW TO DIE IN OREGON is a quiet, sensitive, beautifully made film that reveals Richardson to be a tremendously gifted artist.  I'd go further than that: the relationship that Richardson formed with his key subject, Cody Curtis (and her family) is what making documentaries is all about.

The moments, late in the film, that Richardson and Curtis and the camera share are some of the most complex, moving shots I've seen this year.  Without words, they convey a range of emotion.  That we get to see them is due to one thing: Richardson knew to keep the camera on.

I had the chance to query Richardson as part of a panel discussion in Ashland and also through a few questions at him during The Soapbox open forum I hosted at Hot Docs.  I asked him last week if I could re-visit some of those questions via email.

All these wonderful things:  Can you talk a bit about the genesis of this project and any trepidation you might have felt at the onset?  Obviously you must have known that one of the keys to getting the film you wanted would be to find someone or multiple someones who agree to let you follow their death process.

Peter Richardson: The actual inspiration for the film came in a rather serendipitous moment.  It was 2006, the morning I was leaving for Sundance with my first film, CLEAR CUT: THE STORY OF PHILOMATH, OREGON.  I was leaving the airport hotel in Portland early that morning and as I opened my door and looked down I saw the USA Today that had been delivered.  The above-the-fold headline on the right-hand column (as I remember it) announced the US Supreme Court ruling upholding Oregon's Death with Dignity Law.  The law had been challenged by the Bush Administration, went all the way to the Supreme Court, and was ultimately upheld in a split decision.  And this happened to be the morning that decision was announced.  So I saw that headline and it was very clear to me in that moment that I should make this film. 

It was about a year later that I actually started production. During that time I was on the festival circuit with CLEAR CUT, so I had a lot of time to think about this film, read a lot and research.  And also really question whether I was up to the task of making it, knowing what a difficult journey it would be personally and emotionally, and also question in a way whether the film “should” be made – what would the people who appeared in the film ultimately gain from their participation, and how could the film be made in a compassionate and respectful manner when dealing with such an incredibly intimate, private and emotional subject.

Nomination Dispute on Oscar Doc Short POSTER GIRL Ignites Divisive Fight at the Academy

For most of the world, the press release sent out by the Academy one week ago today seemed simple and direct.  Headed "Oscar Credits Determined for Documentary Short Subjects", the release was only somewhat notable in that it announced the first Oscar nomination for Mitchell Block, a veteran player and somewhat controversial figure in the documentary world, for the short film POSTER GIRL, which was directed by Sara Nesson.

But what seemed simple on the outside masked an fierce dispute within the Academy's Documentary Branch.  Two different committees had ruled that Block had not done enough work on the film to qualify for an Oscar nod, but those decisions were overturned by a four-person review committee that represented the Academy's Board of Governors.  How and why the decision went to the four-person committee is at the crux of the conflict.

Perhaps none of this would be known outside of the Academy if Freida Lee Mock, the Oscar winning filmmaker and former Doc Branch Governor, had not emailed some of the details to Roger Ebert, who last Friday wrote about the dispute and then quickly deleted the blog post, reportedly after hearing from Movie City News' David Poland.  By late Friday afternoon, all that remained was Poland's own post, which was sympathetic to Block and critical of Mock, but which remained somewhat vague as to what actually happened.

While Poland suggested that the situation was a smear job against Block, conversations with a number of Academy members over the weekend reveal a much more complicated - and a far more divisive - battle than has been publicly made known.  And while the heart of the dispute rests with the Academy's real desire to limit inappropriate producer credits, it's set against a backdrop of a series of personal grudges that date back to the late 1980s.

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.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Making 12TH AND DELAWARE, How They Divide the Work & Collaborating with HBO

Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with the makers of some of my favorite nonfiction films of 2010...

One of my favorite surprises in a year of great filmmaking came when I sat down at Hot Docs in May to watch Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's 12TH AND DELAWARE.  A film positioned literally in the middle of the abortion debate could have easily been bombastic or one-sided in favor of a pro-choice position.  Instead their film is a subtle, stunningly crafted work that watches as characters on both sides of the divide deal with the women who come to them with unwanted pregnancies. 

As I wrote about the film for Sheffield Doc/Fest:

 

"There is a moment in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s new film where their protagonist – a staunchly pro-life woman who counsels pregnant women in hopes that they will decide to keep their babies – drops her cover.  In most of the conversations that Ewing and Grady capture, the woman proves masterful at masking her true intent – she seems almost motherly in offering the possibility that there are options other than abortion.  Their subject knows that if she reveals her true feelings, she risks alienating the very women she hopes to convince.  Her effort is all about the soft sell.

But one particular case proves stubborn.  And in trying to sway her, Ewing and Grady’s subject slips.  She pushes too hard, too dogmatically.  And in that moment, she loses her case – and, she fears, an innocent fetus will be sacrificed for her failure.

This moment proves that the power of nonfiction film remains as potent and as vital in 2010 as it has ever been. "

I emailed with Ewing and Grady about their characters, about the process of making 12TH AND DELAWARE - particularly their partnership with HBO Documentary Films, and how they divide up labor when they work together.

All these wonderful things: One of the things that I love about your films is that you tackle a subject that we think we know, one that might be easy to stereotype, and you give us a much deeper picture of that topic than one may expect going in.  I'll admit to wondering what you could bring to the abortion topic before I saw the film, but the truth is that you brought levels of shading that I've never seen before.  What was your process going into the film?

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady: We never set out really to make a film “about abortion,” as we didn’t think we had anything new to add to the discussion, which has become deafeningly loud by both extremes that hijacked the debate long ago. But thanks to the JESUS CAMP kids we had become aware of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, these low profile, anti-abortion centers that have quietly proliferated all over the United States. We had entered one during the making of that film and were confused as to what was happening here. There were ultrasound machines and ”medical” pamphlets but there was something else going on here.  But what? We are so glad we go the opportunity to go back to this subject and get to the bottom of it.

Oscar Goes Bigger for 2011: EXIT & 4 Other Million Dollar Grossers Lead Shortlist Pack

Yesterday afternoon, the Academy announced its documentary shortlist.  As we mentioned at the time, the headline was that EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP had defied most of the odds to hurdle what we thought would be the most difficult barrier stopping it from winning the Oscar - making the shortlist at all - while the most shocking snub was the failure to advance Laura Poitras' THE OATH, a film that we had pegged as a frontrunner and which had already been nominated for the top award at Cinema Eye, the IDA and the Gothams.

But more about those in a minute.

So, first off, it's not a terrible list.  I've seen a few folks contend that it's off-the-charts bad, and trust me, I've seen off-the-charts bad, and this isn't that.

It's curious, that's certain, but mostly because it's actually the kind of list that I think the Academy has been hoping for for years - a slick, brassy list of 15 that's chockablock full of big films and big directors: there's 5 million-dollar grossers in the bunch (the first time that has ever happened) and that doesn't include the headline-grabbing films about Pat Tillman and Eliot Spitzer and natural gas fracking, nor a just-opening, crowd-pleasing film about Brazilian garbage workers.

That makes at least 9 high-profile titles out of 15, which explains why a number of Oscar prognosticators felt pretty good about this year's list (and their pre-announcement predictions, which had centered on films that had a big theatrical launch and therefore that they'd actually heard of - not usually a good barometer).

A lot of these are big productions, too (which makes sense when you consider that Best Picture at the Oscars goes to the producers, not the directors), and for the first time in several years, many if not most of the big players seem to have a horse in the race - Sony Pictures Classics, Weinstein Co., HBO, NatGeo, Magnolia, Paramount, Cinetic, Oscilloscope (those that don't, like Roadside, either weren't really in the doc game this year or, like Zeitgeist and IFC, missed out with their own high profile titles).

And there are big name directors - two Oscar winners (Gibney and Guggenheim) and another nominee (Charles Ferguson), not to mention perhaps the world's most famous anonymous street artist.

This is the kind of shiny list that a lot of people can be (and likely are) pretty happy with, both inside and outside the Academy.

There are always going to be "snubs".  It's getting so that I dislike even using the word, because a "snub" almost implies that there's something unusual going on.  But if there are 3-5 or more "snubs" every year, it hardly seems novel.  Feels like we need a different word.

Oscar Grudgematch: "Lady Kanye" Elinor Burkett Takes Her Version of PRUDENCE to IDFA

IDFA, the world's largest (by sheer numbers) documentary film festival held each November in Amsterdam, announced its line-up this morning (we'll get to more of that in a bit), but one name jumped right out at us:

Competing in the First Appearance section of the fest is Elinor Burkett, with her film ITHEMBA.  You may remember Elinor Burkett as the producer who rushed the stage at the Oscars and silenced director Roger Ross Williams, not long after their film MUSIC BY PRUDENCE won the Academy Award for Documentary Short.  Well, soon after that became the talk of the Oscars (it was even spoofed on Letterman), it became clear that the split between Burkett and Williams (with HBO siding with Williams) was over the creative direction of the project.

Now it seems that ITHEMBA - which looks to premiere in Amsterdam - might be Burkett's version of the PRUDENCE story.  A quick google search shows ITHEMBA to be a working title for the film that Burkitt and Williams were making together - both are listed as attending "meet-and-greets" for ITHEMBA: THE DOCUMENTARY as part of a tour for the group Liyana, of which Prudence Mabhena is the lead singer.   The same link shows two Los Angeles tour dates designated as "filming for ITEMBA: THE DOCUMENTARY".

In any case, Burkett, who has long argued that her version was better than the one that took home the Oscar, now appears to have the chance to prove it.

 

Gotham Awards 2010 Nominees Include Oscar Hopefuls and Scorsese's PUBLIC SPEAKING

The Gotham Awards have just announced their nominees for 2010 and the five films nominated in the Best Documentary category are:

12TH AND DELAWARE
Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

INSIDE JOB
Directed by Charles Ferguson

THE OATH
Directed by Laura Poitras

PUBLIC SPEAKING
Directed by Martin Scorsese

SWEETGRASS
Directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

INSIDE JOB is one of the frontrunners for next year's Academy Awards and is just now rolling out in theaters in North America.  Both THE OATH and 12TH AND DELAWARE had lower-key theatrical releases earlier this year preceding their television broadcasts (THE OATH on POV and DELAWARE on HBO).  The directors of all three films - Ferguson, Poitras, Ewing & Grady - are previous Oscar nominees and favorites to make this year's Academy shortlist.

SWEETGRASS premiered at last year's New York Film Festival while Scorsese's PUBLIC SPEAKING - a profile of quintissential New York writer Fran Lebowitz - is set to premiere on HBO next month.

Meanwhile, in the Gotham's Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You category - which has, at least recently, featured a single nonfiction film mixed with four fiction features - three documentaries are nominated - Robert Greene's KATI WITH AN I (set to screen in the Viewfinders Competition at next month's inaugural DOC NYC), Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Woods' ON COAL RIVER (which premiered at Silverdocs and recently screened in Camden and at NYC's Stranger Than Fiction) and Lynn True and Nelson George's SUMMER PASTURE (which screened as part of the IDA's DocuWeeks Academy qualifying series this summer).  Those films will mix it up with Laurel Nakadate's THE WOLF KNIFE and LITTLEROCK by filmmaker Mike Ott.

indieWIRE has all the nominees, led by the SW Missouri-shot narrative feature WINTER'S BONE.  The awards will be handed out on November 29.

Artists, Activists and The Enigma: Seven of 2010's Essential Nonfiction Features

No one is going to argue that this has been an extraordinary year for nonfiction film.

Film blogger Scott Feinberg has even gone so far as to declare 2010 "The Year of the Documentary" - "the strongest - or, at the very least, the deepest - year yet in the history of documentary filmmaking".

The other week I had a conversation with someone who I frequently discuss the various politics and maneauverings of the Oscar race for Best Documentary and we agreed that this year it was entirely possible to come up with three completely different lists of five nominees - and that each list would be not just acceptable but pretty sterling.

But let's take Oscar (and Cinema Eye and IDA and Spirits and Gothams and critics prizes) out of the equation for a little while...

I actually meant to write this post back in June, when I'd already seen so many tremendous films - by newcomers and veterans alike.  But I put it off because I had so many other films that I hadn't seen yet - and I still have not seen a number of the year's most talked about films (INSIDE JOB, CATFISH, TILLMAN STORY, CLIENT 9, LAST TRAIN HOME and ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE).

But - as evidenced by this intro - talking about these films as we go into October changes the conversation from the stuff I loved in early 2010 to the stuff that should be considered going into awards season.  There's little to do about that other than to plunge forward.

A final caveat - just picking these seven films from the list of great and near-great stuff I saw in 2010 was a challenge in itself.  I could easily include RESTREPO, BUDRUS, MY PERESTROIKA, SPACE TOURISTS and a handful of others.

But thus far, these are the films that have settled in with me for the long haul and these are the films that have made my documentary viewing in 2010 so exceptional:

Perhaps my favorite film of 2010 thus far is Banksy’s EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP – a skillful, note-perfect dissection of art world hype and the often thorny creative process. 

WAR DANCE, WHICH WAY HOME, ANVIL, ENGLISH SURGEON Among 2010 N&D Emmy Winners

WAR DANCE, nominated for an Oscar in 2008, took two News and Documentary Emmys last night at ceremonies in New York, including Best Documentary and Outstanding Cinematography.  The film, by Sean and Andrea Nix Fine was aired on the Sundance Channel after a theatrical release by the departed THINKFilm.  HBO's WHICH WAY HOME, which garnered Oscar and Spirit Award nominations earlier this year for director Rebecca Cammisa, received the Emmy for Outstanding Informational Programming - Long Form.

Cammisa's film had led all documentary nominees going into the night with four nominations.

As we noted when we posted about the nominees in July, the News and Documentary Emmys often seem like a golden oldies round-up, as films that burst on the festival scene in 2007 (the aforementioned War Dance) compete with more recent films - and with longer, journalistic pieces from venerable PBS programs like Frontline, Nova and Bill Moyers Journal.

Among the other feature/cinematic documentaries honored last night - Sascha Gervasi's ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, which took the Arts and Culture prize, Geoffrey Smith's THE ENGLISH SURGEON, which won the Emmy for Science and Technology program and Jeremy Simmons' THE LAST BEEKEEPER, the winner for Nature Programming.

A full list of winners can be found here.  Winners in categories where feature documentaries were competitive are after the break.