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The Monday Brief: Awards Week in Los Angeles, Big Debut for ART OF THE STEAL & ND/NF Doubles Down on Docs

Our long national nightmare is almost over...

This year's Oscar race concludes in just under a week but first there's a long wind-up of activities in Los Angeles including a series of major awards-centric docuvents building to Friday night's Spirit Awards (in late night - or prime time if you're on the west coast) and Sunday's Academy Awards.

It all started last night with a fundraiser for Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush's forthcoming documentary HUNGRY IN AMERICA at Tom Collichio's Craft LA.  Inspired in part by CBS News' groundbreaking 1968 report "Hunger in America", which led to quick, bipartisan action in Washington, the duo hope to explore and explain why hunger continues to to be an issue in this country.  The benefit also served to kick off Vanity Fair's Oscar week activities and boasted a mix of doc veterans (including RJ Cutler, Participant's Diane Weyermann and Courtney Sexton, Gucci Tribeca Fund's Ryan Harrington - an EP on the Hunger doc - and Oscar nominee Roger Ross Williams) and celebrities (Topher Grace, Marcia Cross, David Arquette, Elizabeth Berkley and Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio).

Tuesday night, the IDA hosts a private event at the Standard Hotel.  Wednesday night, the Motion Picture Academy takes over the IDA's annual Oscar reception with their first annual Docs! night, featuring clips from all 10 Oscar nominated documentary films and panel discussions with the nominees.

Thursday night, LA's Cinefamily kicks off their new nonfiction series What's Up Docs with a rare reunion of groundbreaking comedy doc pioneers TVTV (more on this series in a later post).

Friday, the aforementioned Spirit Awards kick off the weekend with their move to downtown LA and two awards for docs - the just announced Chaz and Roger Ebert Truer Than Fiction prize (which will go to either 45365, BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO or EL GENERAL) and the Best Documentary Feature award, which seems likely to go to ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL.  The late night party that follows will continue the nonstop revelry leading up to Sunday's Oscars.

But all the world is not the Kodak Theatre, and so...

The Top 25 Film Festivals for Documentaries, 2nd Edition - 6 That Would've Made the List If Only They...

Previously: 9 More International Festivals That Matter

In figuring out which film festivals would make up the 2nd round of our Documentary Film Festival survey, there were a number of festivals which stood out as important and potentially monumental in the life of a film.  They have brand value (people have heard of them) and they have distributors attending (sales potential).  But they barely show any docs - not just American docs, but any docs.  So, herewith are...

Five festivals that would've made the list if only they showed more documentaries:

Cannes Film Festival

Important Recent Premieres:  MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER, A THORN IN THE HEART, TYSON, WALTZ WITH BASHIR

Our coverage of Cannes here.

Others:

Filmmaker:  "It's a market, but not really for docs."

Industry:  "If you’re a filmmaker and you get a film in Cannes, it looks really good on your resume.  Not sure it does much for the film.  You might be a little bit marginalized there.  If you’re waiting for Cannes to give you an answer and you are passing on SXSW or Full Frame or Hot Docs, then I think you’re making a huge mistake.  Even getting into Cannes may not be as good as playing 2 or 3 of these spring festivals.  99% of the time it doesn’t work out."

Industry:  "The ultimate prestige event for docs, but they take so few that it's not a must-attend."

Industry:  "I love Cannes.  Cannes is a secret to me.  Everybody’s there.  Everybody’s there from all over the world.  You can see so many films.  It’s a great value for what you can see.  But they show so few documentaries – it’s kind of crazy."

New Films? Sure. New Directors? Not So Much.

Thursday, the line-up for the 2009 edition of New Directors/New Films was announced.  Now, ND/NF is a pretty major film event, but we almost never touch on it, because we view the event as no great friend to documentary.  Nonfiction films are lucky to capture 2 or 3 slots per year, a bizarre ratio considering the quality of independent documentaries vis a vis independent narratives of late.

But this year, as the series (brought to you by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center - which also produces the docaphobic New York Film Festival) took care to highlight it's three major nonfiction selections - THE COVE and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC from Sundance and EVERY LITTLE STEP, which debuted at Toronto.

Now, we really, really liked WE LIVE IN PUBLIC and we haven't seen EVERY LITTLE STEP, although, for the sake of argument, we're gonna assume that we'll love it.

But is there anyone who considers WE LIVE IN PUBLIC director Ondi Timoner, set to run the circuit with her third feature film, a new director?  Or EVERY LITTLE STEP's James D. Stern (now directing film #4) or Adam Del Deo (#3)?

I'm sure that there's some kind of justification that I couldn't find at the ND/NF website that indicates just how these doc veterans fit the "new director" rubric.  But whatever the excuse, it strains credulity.

It might make you start to think that MOMA and the FSLC don't take nonfiction very seriously.