All these wonderful things

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.

DOCNYC 2010: Thom Powers Previews the Inaugural Edition of the New Nonfiction Festival in New York

In just 9 days, New York will see the launch of DOCNYC, the new festival birthed from the folks behind NYC's Stranger Than Fiction series (Toronto International Film Festival Documentary Programmer Thom Powers, STF Executive Director Raphaela Neihausen, IFC Center head honcho John Vanco and IFC Center Director of Programs Harris Dew).  It's perhaps the biggest documentary festival launch in over five years and it's grabbing the prime real estate in early November that's soon to be vacated by primo UK Doc/Fest Sheffield.

The first edition is marked by tributes to doc superstars Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, a retrospective of work by one of this year's Honorary Oscar recipients, Kevin Brownlow, and two competition sections - Metropolis, which focuses on New York-set stories, and Viewfinders, which includes the US Premieres of Janus Metz' ARMADILLO, Kim Longinotto's PINK SARIS and Bjarte Mørner Tveit's DISCOVERIES OF A MARIONETTE and the World Premiere of Robert Greene's KATI WITH AN I (following a sneak preview earlier this year at True/False).

We talked to Thom Powers (who was, full disclosure, my co-chair for the first two editions of the Cinema Eye Honors and who serves on Cinema Eye's Advisory Board) about the inaugural festival, his broader ideas for a "nonfiction festival" and what's exciting and scaring him nine days out.

ATWT: I guess I want to start with the other stuff, the non-film elements, because that's one of the things I think is so exciting about DOCNYC and what you're doing, because it's not just films and it's not just panels about films.

Thom Powers: It's not.  Film I would say is an 80 or 90 percent core of what we're doing this year but the longterm goal of this festival is to enrich the other aspects over the years.  And the heart of this is the daylong symposia that we have called Doc Convergence.  That's kind of where I laid down an initial structure for ways in which I want to invigorate this festival with all kinds of different documentary voices, not just filmmakers.  At Doc Convergence we have photographers, including Pulitzer Prize winner David Turnley, we have cartoonists, such as Joe Sacco, Linda Barry, we have people from the world of performance and also writing, such as Lawrence Wright, who did "My Trip to Al Qaeda", which was turned into a film by Alex Gibney, and Moises Kaufman, who's done these documentary-based theatrical works, including The Laramie Project, that was turned into a film.

Toronto 2010: Thom Powers on This Year's Amazing Doc Line-Up

Last week we wrote about this year's pretty stellar documentary line-up at Toronto.  Previously - while he was at the Traverse City Film Festival - we had a chance to talk with Toronto documentary programmer (and full disclosure, our friend and colleague on the first several years of Cinema Eye) Thom Powers about the program.

We were interested in what might be new and unexpected from the veterans in this year's line-up as well as what effect - if any - Thom's role in his new festival (Doc NYC) might have on the program.  Here's our conversation:

ATWT: This has been a pretty high-profile year for well-known filmmakers coming out with new films.  Sundance was chock-a-block full of big name titles and from just the quick look at your list: Longinotto, Morris, Herzog, Gibney, Wiseman, Jørgen Leth, Charles Ferguson, Ondi Timoner – it’s a high profile pack of filmmakers.

Thom: It is indeed.  As the season was kind of rolling out I’d hear Werner Herzog has a new film, Errol Morris has a new film, every week brought a new revelation in that way.  I can’t really think of a line-up I’ve had before that was so packed.  And one of the things in creating this line-up was in making room for some new filmmakers, like we were able to do with THE PIPE and WINDFALL and a film that I want to bring to your attention called THE SOUND OF MUMBAI: A MUSICAL, which is about slum children in Mumbai, India presenting a performance of The Sound of Music with a classical orchestra.  That film had me choked up pretty much all the way through it and it’s actually hard for me to even think about without getting choked up again.

Toronto 2010: New Docs from Errol Morris, Kim Longinotto, Alex Gibney, Ondi Timoner and Werner Herzog in 3D

indieWIRE has the latest on an amazing Toronto Film Festival documentary lineup, including the second nonfiction Gala of Thom Powers' tenure at TIFF - Thom Zimmy's Bruce Springsteen doc THE PROMISE: THE MAKING OF DARKNESS AT THE EDGE OF TOWN  (his first was 2006' SHUT UP AND SING), along with a handful of world premieres from masters of the documentary form: TABLOID from Errol Morris, PINK SARIS from Kim Longinotto, CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER from Alex Gibney (which had a work-in-progress screening at Tribeca) and the first 3-D feature from Werner Herzog - CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, about the cave paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Southern France.

Toronto will also feature some of the North American debut of the breakout titles of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival - Janus Metz' ARMADILLO, Frederick Wiseman's BOXING GYM and Charles Ferguson's INSIDE JOB - and a film that is sure to stir up controversy, Ondi Timoner's COOL IT, which promises a very unconvenient look at the issue of global warming.

The Toronto slate continues what has been one of the most powerful year's for nonfiction on record, following a Sundance lineup that was chock-a-block with Oscar nominees & winners and a SXSW crop that intro'd some extraordinary new voices in documentary.

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.

The Monday Brief: Debunking Brandeis Citation in Berlinger Ruling, BABIES Rule Mother's Day & Hot Docs Wrapping

With the close of Hot Docs yesterday, we can finally exhale after a non-stop stretch of key film festivals that has swallowed up most of spring thus far - and for the majority of us (certainly those not headed to the south of France), we now have a few weeks to rest before the June festival onslaught hits...

That gives us a moment to reflect on the year thus far and the film's that are making an impact.  Earlier today we posted the first edition of the 2010 Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll, our annual round-up of festival (and, later in the year, critics and end-of-year) prizes.  No surprise that Laura Poitras' THE OATH - which has seemingly shown up with raves at every major fest this year - leads this year's list, followed by Jeff Malmberg's SXSW sensation MARWENCOL and Lucy Walker's audience fave, WASTE LAND.

But it's a film from 2009 that leads The Brief today and what it may mean for nonfiction filmmakers everywhere...

Many are still trying to figure out just how to react to the surprisingly broad ruling from US District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that may force filmmaker Joe Berlinger to turn over more than 600 hours of outtakes from his film, CRUDE, to the Chevron corporation.  As we noted Saturday, Chevron argued that the outtakes may help them defend themselves in a lawsuit brought by Ecuadorians over water contamination, charges which were detailed in Berlinger's film.

In his decision, Kaplan referenced former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis' comment that "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants", which didn't sit well with Frank Smyth of the Society to Protect Journalists:

"The irony in the judge’s choice of language is as thick as crude...

 

What would the late Supreme Court Justice Brandeis think? He made his famous sunlight statement about the need to expose bankers and investors who controlled “money trusts” to stifle competition, and he later railed against not only powerful corporations but the lawyers and other members of the bar who worked to perpetuate their power."

This news is sure to keep developing in the days and weeks to come.

Meanwhile, after months of slow going at the documentary box office, this weekend saw three major debuts and the continued success of the Disneynature franchise.

The Monday Brief: VIDEOCRACY & OCTOBER COUNTRY Open Well, More Sundance Sales & Can Anything Stop THE COVE?

Happy President's Day and Happy Day After Valentines Day as the Sundance sales and THE COVE's onward march toward Oscar continues.  But first...

It was a good (if not mind-blowing) weekend at the box office for two of our favorite documentaries of 2009, both kicking off exclusive runs at New York's IFC Center. 

Erik Gandini's VIDEOCRACY, which premiered at Toronto and took the Jury Prize at Sheffield, opened with a 3-day take of $10,000, according to figures at indieWIRE.  While the film had mixed reviews (at least Manohla gets it, while most of the other reviews seem to be at a loss to explain what they've just watched), the Lorber Films release was the top doc (per screen) of the weekend.

Meanwhile Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's OCTOBER COUNTRY, nominated for Best Doc at the Spirit Awards, winner of two Cinema Eye Honors and recipient of nearly unanimous positive notices, made $7,500 at the same theatre.  The film explands to Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon this week.

Last night, at the ACE awards (no, not the old Cable Ace awards, the American Cinema Editors), THE COVE continued its sweep of the 2010 documentary prizes.  While the film came up empty in the early going (including getting shut out of Best Doc nominations at the Gothams, Spirits and IDA Awards), the film began a December film critics' sweep that has carried well over into 2010.  Adding the Documentary Editing prize after awards from the Producers Guild and Directors Guild (not to mention three wins at Cinema Eye), it's pretty hard at this point not to expect the film to go the distance and win the Oscar.

Add to the awards bounty the fact that THE COVE continues to make news - announcing this week that a Japanese theatrical release had finally been secured - and a Oscar vote for that film suddenly becomes a vote for making real change.  Even though each of the other four nominees plays to the Academy's liberal heartstrings, none seems to offer the seemingly visceral chance to make a difference that THE COVE does.  Even the NY Times' Carpetbagger gets into the act:

"The filmmakers behind THE COVE have been open about their goal: not to win an Oscar – though they wouldn’t mind – but to stop the dolphin slaughter that the documentary depicts. They may have moved one step closer to that goal with the news that the Oscar-nominated film, which shows a secret dolphin-killing field in Taiji, Japan, will now be distributed in Japan...

"'To me the awards are the collateral in hopefully trying to create this awareness to stop what’s going on there,” [director Louie Psihoyos] said, though he did acknowledge that the Oscar nomination has made his next feature, about the effect of acidification on the oceans, easier to finance. “Career-wise, just having a nomination is an amazing achievement for everybody associated with the film,” he said. “But the real reason to try to win, for me, is that then you have 45 seconds to talk to the Japanese people. You have a platform.'"

Oscar Narrows Features to 15: First Thoughts on Snubs and Frontrunners

About an hour ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this year's Documentary Feature Shortlist.  The 15 films that made the cut are:

THE BEACHES OF AGNES
Directed by Agnes Varda

BURMA VJ
Directed by Anders Østergaard

THE COVE
Directed by Louie Psihoyos

EVERY LITTLE STEP
Directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo

FACING ALI
Directed by Pete McCormack

FOOD, INC.
Directed by Robert Kenner

GARBAGE DREAMS
Directed by Mai Iskander

LIVING IN EMERGENCY: STORIES OF DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
Directed by Mark N. Hopkins

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS
Directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith

MUGABE AND THE WHITE AFRICAN
Directed by Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey

SERGIO
Directed by Greg Barker

SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION
Directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman

UNDER OUR SKIN
Directed by Andy Abrahams Wilson

VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR
Directed by Matt Tyrnauer

WHICH WAY HOME
Directed by Rebecca Cammisa

First reactions after the jump...

And Kim Longinotto Wept...

...as Adam Lambert was runner-up on this year's American Idol.  Although he did place higher than Danny Gokey, so maybe he still prevailed in the "battle for the soul of America".

INTERVIEW: Kim Longinotto on Her Adam Lambert Obsession and Her Idea of a Perfect Sunday

This Friday, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC will launch its two-week retrospective on the great British filmmaker Kim Longinotto, whose ROUGH AUNTIES won the International Grand Jury Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Before sitting down to talk with Longinotto at Toronto's Hot Docs Festival on Tuesday (where ROUGH AUNTIES is screening), I was pondering what questions I wanted to ask of her.  Low and behold I picked up a copy of Canada's free music magazine Exclaim and found an interview with Depeche Mode's Martin Gore with questions that I suspected were not among those that were usually being fired at Longinotto, whom MOMA describes, quite appropriately, as follows:

"One of the foremost documentary filmmakers working today, Kim Longinotto is renowned internationally for her compellingly human portraits and her sensitive and compassionate treatment of difficult topics. By seeking out, observing, and following the untold stories of women's daily lives, she has created cinéma vérité portraits of the larger society and cultural customs."

So, herewith, we query Kim Longinotto with exactly the same questions posed to Depeche Mode's Gore.  The result is an interview that will long remain one of our favorites:

What are you up to?
I’m just about to do a panel thing (here at Hot Docs) with Tabitha Jackson, who I rather like.  She’s at Channel 4.  I get to ask her questions.

What are your current fixations?
My current fixation is (American Idol contestant) Adam Lambert.  Can I be honest?  I think that the battle between him and Danny Gokey is a battle for the soul of America.  I think what’s interesting is that he says that he’s been watching (the show) since he was 18 and he waited to audition until he was 27.  I think he was waiting until America was ready for (a gay contestant).

Why do you live where you do?
I live near the Arsenal football grounds.  I started living there because I rented with my favorite flat mate of all time, Colin.  He had a place there and we shared a one bedroom flat.  We’ve now graduated to a house.  It’s a very nice place to live.

Name something you consider a mind-altering work of art:
The thing I saw that most affected me in the last couple of years was THE LIVES OF OTHERS and I thought a lot about why it affected me.  Here is this story where a guy is spying on these people and he falls in love with them.  He's looking at them through this tiny hole.  And, in a way, I hope that is what documentary does.  You fall in love with the people you watch and it changes the way you see the world.  It was a very hopeful film about what films can do.

And also Thomas Turgoose in THIS IS ENGLAND.  He was the young boy.  I thought he was wonderful.

What has been your most memorable or inspirational gig and why?
I was at a Clash gig in Notre Dame Church in London and a guy got beaten to death.  They were punching him to death.  People were just standing around watching.  I was shouting but I couldn’t stop it.  There’s another one – they’re both terrible experiences.  It was a Buju Banton gig and it was a song, an anti-gay song that was "kill gay men" and everyone was holding up their lighters.  And I was with a friend and I was shouting and my friend was telling me not to shout.  Both of these stories, they're terrible, are about being powerless.  I liked Buju until then.  Never listened to him since.