All these wonderful things

IDA Nominates EXIT, THE OATH, STEAM OF LIFE, SWEETGRASS & WASTE LAND for Top Doc

Last week, the International Documentary Association announced its five nominees for Best Documentary and Best Short, along with nominees and recipients of a number of its other awards that will be handed out Friday night December 3 in Los Angeles.

And in somewhat of a departure for the organization – but in keeping with the new tone and direction set by President Eddie Schmidt and Executive Director Michael Lumpkin – the five films selected for Best Documentary largely eschewed political topics, causes and agendas, focusing instead on character studies and artistic themes.

The nominated films are Banksy’s EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, Laura Poitras’ THE OATH, Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen’s STEAM OF LIFE, Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s SWEETGRASS and Lucy Walker’s WASTE LAND.

THE OATH and SWEETGRASS were both previously nominated for the Gotham Award for Best Documentary.  STEAM OF LIFE and WASTE LAND both qualified for Oscar consideration through the IDA’s DocuWeeks program.

The IDA also gave a nod to another film about art and burgeoning artists, awarding the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Filmmaker to MARWENCOL director Jeff Malmberg.

Notably not on the IDA’s list – presumed Oscar frontrunners INSIDE JOB, RESTREPO, A FILM UNFINISHED, THE TILLMAN STORY and WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”.

In the short film category, HBO nearly swept the nominees, garnering 4 of the 5 nominees for their films, including 2 of last year’s Oscar nominees – THE LAST TRUCK: CLOSING OF A GM PLANT by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert and THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF GOVERNOR BOOTH GARDNER by Daniel Junge.

Next up on the awards docket is the announcement of this year’s Cinema Eye nominees, coming tomorrow at Doc/Fest in Sheffield, UK.

A full list of IDA nominees is after the jump.

The Monday Brief: A Strong Start for RESTREPO, A Good Move for LAFF and 8 For Oscar

For all intents and purposes, the documentary year - though just half over - has reached a wrap point.  The films of the first half of the year have come to the end (or nearly have) of their festival runs.  Nearly every major American documentary festival showcase has come and gone.

Time now to take our only major break in the year - the two-plus months between the festivals of June and the unveiling of fall titles in Toronto, which then kicks off a busy theatrical season, the lead up to the European fests of late October and November and awards season.

Speaking of, here's a piece of Oscar trivia you might be interested in:

In the past five years, only one film - last year's THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS - wasn't screened by this point in the year and went on to be nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar.

So, chances are, we've already seen this year's five nominees. 

And while your scanning this year's titles in your head (THE OATH, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, LAST TRAIN HOME, A FILM UNFINISHED, GASLAND, INSIDE JOB, THE TILLMAN STORY are just a few that figure to play in the mix) you might wonder which of this year's most popular titles (OCEANS, BABIES, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK) might be able to crack through the Academy's "serious ceiling".

And you might look at this week's box office returns to see how one film, which may be one of a few frontrunners at this point, happened to do with audiences...

That film is Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's RESTREPO and the answer is, quite well actually.  Buoyed perhaps by Junger's literary star-power (if not its Sundance Grand Jury prize, which has been hit and miss in terms of theatrical payoff for docs recently), RESTREPO opened this weekend to more than $15K on each of its two screens, battling back the notion that folks aren't clamoring for nonfiction (or fiction for that matter) pieces about current US wars.  The film - currently only in NYC and LA - heads to SF, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia in time for the Independence Day weekend.

Sticking with box office for a moment, two of the aforementioned successes - Banksy's EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and Ricki Stern & Annie Sundberg's JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK - continued to do well at the North American box office, according to estimates at Box Office Mojo.  EXIT picked up nearly another $75K in its 11th weekend, taking its cume to $2.65M.  And JOAN scored another $365K in its 4th weekend, for a total-to-date of $716K.  That film is now in 86 theaters and may hit the $1M mark after this coming holiday weekend.

But perhaps the biggest heat around a documentary film this past week centered on the television debut of one of the year's best and most important films, Josh Fox' GASLAND.  We have a full post up today about the natural gas industry's attempts to smear Fox and his film.

LAFF and Silverdocs have both wrapped (we had the winners yesterday) for 2010.  LAFF has since announced their Audience Awards, with prizes going to both Mark Landsman's THUNDER SOUL (Documentary Audience Award) and Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith's PRESUMED GUILTY (International Audience Award).  We're also pleased to note that OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" music video (which we had a hand in) picked up the LAFF Audience Award for Music Videos.

The (Post-Holiday) Brief: Silverdocs and LAFF Previews, 86 Films Eligible for Cinema Eye and CONVENTION in NYC

Hard to believe but it's June 1...

The beginning of June is also the end of something, the end of the first half of our documentary year - one that begins with the announcement of the Sundance line-up and the annual gathering of the doc world in Amsterdam.

Six months ago we were just hearing about LAST TRAIN HOME, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, THE OATH, RESTREPO, GASLAND, 12th AND DELAWARE, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and the rest.  Now, with last week's announcement of the Silverdocs line-up, that six month stretch starts to wrap itself up.

Not that we won't hear about the above films for the rest of the year (we will, particularly at awards season), but Silverdocs signals the changing of the guard, the last major, domestic festival gasp for many of the creme of 2010's documentary crop and the first glimpse of a few films that will be stalwarts on the fall festival tour.

And the beginning of June reminds us that the unveiling of the Toronto line-up, when the fall season really begins in earnest, is less than two months away.

Summer is here.

Silverdocs will kick off its 8th edition in just over three weeks, leading with opening night omnibus doc FREAKONOMICS and closing with Amir Bar-Lev's THE TILLMAN STORY, both of which should be of strong interest to the DC-adjacent crowd.  Competition titles include several festival favorites, including Doug Block's THE KIDS GROW UP, Alexandra Codina's MONICA AND DAVID (which won Tribeca), Robin Hessman's MY PERESTROIKA, Julia Bacha's BUDRUS, Yael Hersonski's A FILM UNFINISHED (which won Hot Docs, Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith's PRESUMED GUILTY and Christian Frei's SPACE TOURISTS.

Silverdocs will also share a few competition titles with it's cross-country rival LAFF, which gets the jump this year by opening five days earlier than Silverdocs.  Los Angeles is set to premiere Malcolm Murray's CAMERA, CAMERA and Aaron Schock's CIRCO, both of which will then head to Silver Springs.  The two fests will also offer Davis Guggenheim's WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, the first time we've seen that film screen since it debuted in Park City earlier this year.  They'll also share FREAKONOMICS, TILLMAN, Jeff Malmberg's MARWENCOL, Sam Green's UTOPIA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS, Mads Brügger's THE RED CHAPEL, Alexandre O. Philippe's THE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCAS and others.

If I were headed to Silver Springs this year, I'd certainly want to catch Stephen Kijak's STONES IN EXILE - the 60 minute making-of "Exile on Main Street" doc which made such a splash in Cannes, as well as Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood's ON COAL RIVER, which chronicles a community action against Massey Energy prior to that company's coal mine disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia.  Plus, there's a terrific line-up of 40+ shorts, including a few of the best shorts we've seen in years - Sergio Oksman's NOTES ON THE OTHER and Vance Malone's THE POODLE TRAINER.

Silverdocs is also gonna fete Frederick Wiseman (although they don't have his latest, BOXING GYM, which was just at Cannes) and will screen Oliver Stone's SOUTH OF THE BORDER, a profile of South American heads of state, which should make some kind of news, one suspects.

We will be covering the Los Angeles Film Fest, which will host large outdoor screenings of the GEORGE LUCAS doc and Mark Landsman's THUNDER SOUL and one of the first (if not the first) post-Sundance screening of Mark Lewis' 3-D doc, CANE TOADS: THE CONQUEST.  LAFF makes its move from Westwood to downtown Los Angeles (HQing itself at the LA Live complex) and while we weren't big fans of this year's LA Live-based Spirit Awards, we're cautiously optimistic about the relocation of the film festival.

Five months into 2010 and the Cinema Eye Honors team (full disclosure: once again I'll be a co-chair for the 2011 event) has announced the 86 films that are already eligible for next year's awards - and most of the above named film titles (save for the recent premieres) are on the list.  I can't get in the business of predicting which way Cinema Eye is going to go (not only that, I'm a relatively poor soothsayer as far as nominations for that event goes), but I'm very excited about that list of films - as well as by a bunch of stuff going on behind the scenes that we will be announcing later this summer.

The Joe Berlinger/CRUDE/Chevron case continues to unfold, as Berlinger's lawyers make their case for overturning the judge's decision (that he must turn over raw footage to Chevron) to an appeals court.  Chevron, for their part, issued a press release this week that, in part, details their arguments related to the Berlinger case:

"The U.S. federal court proceedings in which Chevron seeks hidden evidence of corruption and misconduct captured by filmmaker Joe Berlinger have also centered on evidence of collusion in connection with the (Ecuadorian court appointee Richard) Cabrera’s damages report. Parts of Berlinger’s film CRUDE show plaintiffs’ lawyers Steven Donziger and Pablo Fajardo working with Carlos Beristain, one of the supposedly neutral experts on Cabrera’s team, at a focus group meeting related to Beristain’s supposedly independent health survey Cabrera relies on Beristain’s survey for his assessment of $9.5 billion in damages for excess cancer claims. While, at the direction of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Berlinger edited the DVD version of Crude to conceal Beristain’s involvement with the lawyers, the unedited scene remains in a recently released internet version of the film. This documentation of collusion supported Chevron’s successful argument to a federal court in New York that other Crude outtakes should be reviewed for further evidence of misconduct. In its recent order, the New York court ruled that the fact that this scene was cut from the final version of the DVD at the direction of plaintiffs’ lawyers is a fact suggestive of an awareness of questionable activity."

Stuff worth reading: 11/4/08 director Jeff Deutchman talks to indieWIRE about the collaborative filmmaking behind his doc (it screens at NYC's Stranger Than Fiction on June 15), which includes contributions from Margaret Brown and Henry Joost.  There are reports that Warner Bros. plans to turn Jody Lambert's festival hit OF ALL THE THINGS into a narrative feature, with Steve Carrell being chased to play Lambert's songwriting dad, Dennis.  indieWIRE has the scoop on the weekend indie box office and doc wise, the story continues to be EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP - now at $2M and still climbing.

Finally, point of personal privilege: CONVENTION, the film I made at the 2008 DNC with fellow filmmakers Steven Bognar, Daniel Junge, Laura Poitras, Julia Reichert, Paul Taylor, Nathan Truesdell and David Wilson (as well as producers Britta Erickson, Shirley Moyers and Jenny Chikes), opens this Friday at the IFC Center and a number of us will be on hand all weekend to toast the theatrical premiere and take your questions.  A couple press pieces to note:  indieWIRE re-runs their article from last summer with Brian Brooks quizzing yours truly on the making of the film.  NY Magazine nicely calls the film "wonderfully counterintuitive...a generous portrait of the true face of modern democracy—if Robert Altman made documentaries, this is what they might look like."  Previously, Variety's Eddie Cockrell said it was "a bipartisan, upbeat celebration of democracy's delicate membrane and can-do spirit".  There's some other raves out there, but we'll spare the piling on (you can also find a negative review or two of the "nothing newsworthy happens" variety, which one might argue is beside the point, but one might also be biased).

Hope you can come out this weekend to the IFC Center - say hello.

Nearly 200 Top Doc Makers Sign Open Letter of Support for Joe Berlinger

In the aftermath of a judge's ruling that may force filmmaker Joe Berlinger to hand over the outtakes from CRUDE to energy giant Chevron, nearly 200 top documentary filmmakers have signed "an open letter of support", protesting the breadth of the decision by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to allow Chevron to subpeona all of Berlinger's raw footage.

Noting that "it is understood that First Amendment protection of the journalist's privilege is never absolute", the letter goes on to note that "(t)ypically, if such privilege is successfully rebutted in court, a turn-over order demanding a document or other thing is issued..."

"Therefore, it is astounding to us that Judge Kaplan demanded that all of the footage shot during the production of the film be handed over to the attorneys of Chevron, given that the privilege exists primarily to protect against the wholesale exposure of press files to litigant scrutiny...

At the heart of journalism lies the trust between the interviewer and his or her subject.  Individuals who agree to be interviewed by the news media are often putting themselves at great risk, especially in the case of television news and documentary film where the subject's identity and voice are presented in the final report.  If witnesses sense that their entire interviews will be scrutinized by attorneys and examined in courtrooms they will undoubtedly speak less freely.  This ruling surely will have a crippling effect on the work of investigative journalists everywhere, should it stand."

Spearheaded by filmmaker Patrick Creadon and editor Doug Blush (who worked together on WORDPLAY and I.O.U.S.A.), the letter has been signed by a veritable who's who of the documentary community, including at least 20 Oscar winners (among them: Michael Moore, Alex Gibney, Rob Epstein, Barbara Kopple, Peter Davis, Davis Guggenheim, Freida Lee Mock, James Marsh, Louie Psihoyos, Ross Kauffman, Kevin Macdonald, Jessica Yu, Cynthia Wade, Mark Harris, Steven Okazaki and Leon Gast), and even more Oscar nominees (including DA Pennebaker, Morgan Spurlock, Laura Poitras, Kirby Dick, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Jeff Blitz, James Longley, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, Ellen Kuras, Robert Kenner, Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar, Scott Kennedy, Hupert Sauper, Liz Garbus and Amy Berg) as well as dozens of the community's top filmmakers (Kim Longinotto, Jehane Noujaim, Chris Hegedus, R.J. Cutler, Nick Broomfield, Haskell Wexler, Steve James, Peter Gilbert, Ken Burns, Lucy Walker, Doug Pray and Amir Bar-Lev, among them).

[Full disclosure: I am also a signer on the letter.]

Work began on the letter on Saturday when Creadon reached out to a handful of filmmakers calling for a united community response in support of Berlinger.  A first draft on the letter was completed Sunday, with the IDA joining the effort and working with Creadon and others to finesse the language regarding the case's complex legal issues.  IDA President Eddie Schmidt took the letter to his Board of Directors, which decided to sign the letter en masse to make a statement on behalf of the organization. 

"Advocacy is an area where an organization like IDA can make a difference - and we should try to lead as much as we can," Schmidt told me.  "It seemed important to come out early and instrumentally, and luckily, we have a forward-thinking Board of Directors and an Executive Director who believe in making a stand."

Schmidt said that he was amazed at the support the letter garnered within the community in just a few short days.  "Those names say it all: who can argue with the greatest cinematic arguers of our time?"

In an email exchange, Creadon wrote about his reaction to the news as it broke last Thursday:

"I read the story in the New York Times Saturday morning and was stunned when I realized Joe was likely going to have to turn over all of his footage.  What many outside of our community do not realize is that of all the challenges facing documentary filmmakers, it's often the legal hurdles that prove to be most difficult.  And of course legal difficulties usually lead to big legal bills -- a particularly acute kind of pain that doesn't just hurt the individual but can often hurt that person's family and livelihood."

And earlier today, Blush described the chain of events that unfolded after the judge's decision was announced:

"I've worked on several films with critical interview confidentiality issues, and when I first saw the story Thursday, I was profoundly shaken by its implications.  Patrick called on Friday, and he was on fire.  He proposed bringing together doc community filmmakers around a statement of support, and wrote a first draft.  Since then, with many great suggestions and the incredible tidal wave of signatures, the statement is out there and Joe knows he's not alone in this.  My gratitude goes out to Eddie, the IDA, and this amazing global group of artists, and I believe this can be a first step to amend and increase the vital legal protections for our work."

The full text of the letter after the jump.

Filmmakers and others in the documentary community are invited to add their names to this open letter in the comments section of this post.

Reading the Oscar Tea Leaves at the Academy's Docs! Event

This year's Documentary Feature nominees (from left, producer Elise Pearlstein, FOOD, INC., director Louie Psihoyos, THE COVE, co-director Rick Goldsmith, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA, co-director Judith Ehrlich, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA, producer Lise Lense-Møller, BURMA VJ, director Anders Østergaard, BURMA VJ, director Rebecca Cammisa, WHICH WAY HOME and director Robert Kenner, FOOD, INC.  Photo credit: Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S.

This year's Documentary Short nominees (from left, co-director Steven Bognar, THE LAST TRUCK, director Roger Ross Williams, MUSIC BY PRUDENCE, producer Henry Ansbacher, THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF GOVERNOR BOOTH GARDNER, co-director Julia Reichert, THE LAST TRUCK, producer Anna Wydra, RABBIT A LA BERLIN, director Barnet Konopka, RABBIT A LA BERLIN, co-director Matthew O'Neill, CHINA'S UNNATURAL DISASTER, co-director Jon Alpert, CHINA'S UNNATURAL DISASTER, director Daniel Junge, THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF GOVERNOR BOOTH GARDNER.  Photo credit:Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S.

A nice evening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills last night as this year's documentary Oscar nominees gathered for a new event hosted by the Academy called Docs!  Similar to the events the Academy has long hosted for the Foreign Language and Animation nominees, Docs! took the place of the IDA's annual salute that took place in the same venue - the Academy Theatre on Wilshire Blvd. - and on the same evening - Wednesday before the Oscars.

While the event had a similar feel, there were some nice, new touches: a smaller pre-reception for the nominees and their guests (and a small number of press) along with a panel format hosted by two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple, who made clear that her bubbly Cinema Eye appearances were no fluke.  Someone give her a show!

Kopple (far left) hosts the feature nominees, including THE COVE co-producer Fisher Stevens (fifth from left).  Photo credit: Darren Decker / ©A.M.P.A.S.

Much of the talk during the evening fell, quite naturally, to this year's potential winners, with many trying to read the tea leaves from the various Oscar screenings that have been held during the past several weeks.  While most expected THE COVE to win the feature award, there was a surprising amount of buzz for the Daniel Ellsberg doc, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA.  Noting a potential generational (and political) bias amongst the Academy's notably older screening audiences, some watchers suggested that more than a few votes might be headed toward that film as a kind of recognition for Ellsberg himself.  Indeed, as films were announced prior to their clips being shown, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN got the loudest applause.  Later, Ellsberg himself received the evening's only standing ovation, when he was prompted to stand by host Barbara Kopple.

One Oscar watcher noted that this year the vote may be particularly low in the documentary feature category as HBO held back on screenings of WHICH WAY HOME until late in the Oscar season.  Voters are not allowed to vote in the category unless they've seen all five films.

Also the topic of conversation was the surprising fade of FOOD, INC., which seemed to sit out most of the shortlist-to-nomination period.  While no one suggested FOOD, INC.'s completely out-of-the-game, comparisons were made to UP IN THE AIR in the feature category in how a once-perceived frontrunner stumbled as the season went on.

In the shorts category, I heard that there's been a great Academy response to THE LAST TRUCK, with RABBIT A LA BERLIN a somewhat surprising runner-up in terms of buzz.  But the shorts category is notably difficult to call, since viewers watch all five films at once.  In watching their clips last night, where all of the short candidates appeared to be exceptionally high quality, it appeared that any could prevail.  But if one is to judge by the reaction to the clips alone (which is an unreliable but sometimes correct predictor), the strongest applause by far was reserved for MUSIC BY PRUDENCE.

Sundance Films in Competition 2006

Indiewire has the full line-up of films in competition for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. In a separate article, Sundance's John Cooper says, "I think that this year is going to be the festival of new faces", with nearly 50 first-time feature filmmakers represented.

In the documentary competition, the films are:

"A Lion In The House," directed by Steven Bognar & Julia Reichert
Five diverse families -- each with a child fighting cancer -- navigate the ups and downs of treatment over six years, while maintaining hope in this complex portrait of human resilience. [World Premiere]

"American Blackout," directed by Ian Inaba
A stylish hard hitting documentary that recounts the fascinating career of Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and the suppression of the black vote historically and during the recent Presidential elections in Florida and Ohio. [World Premiere]