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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."

The Monday Brief: Sundance! Spirits! IDA! Gothams! Is This the Biggest Week of the Year?

The Monday Brief is back and just in time - as a month full of European mega-fests comes to a close (and VIDEOCRACY takes Sheffield, TRASH HUMPERS shocks Copenhagen and LAST TRAIN HOME conquers Amsterdam) and what may just be the biggest week of the year...

The Gothams kick off the award season in New York tonight as high profile docs FOOD, INC., GOOD HAIR and TYSON take on underdogs MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER and PARADISE.  In addition to those, festival favorite OCTOBER COUNTRY is up as the sole nonfiction title in the Films Not Yet Playing at a Theater Near You category. 

Here's a piece of trivia - in the five years that the Gothams have awarded a Best Documentary prize, the winning film has never gone on to win the Oscar, which is pretty good news if you're betting on THE COVE in March.

For the first time, the Gothams will be streaming live here, starting at 8 PM eastern tonight.

Then early tomorrow - probably before some Gotham revelers have gone to bed - Film Independent will announced nominations for its Spirit Awards.  Worth watching - will FOOD, INC. sweep the major doc award nominations prior to the Oscars?  Will the Spirits act (consciously or no) as a corrective on some of Oscar's snubs (I'm looking at you ANVIL, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC and SEPTEMBER ISSUE)? 

Also worth watching are the nominations in the Truer Than Fiction category, which recognize films and filmmakers who have not yet received the attention they deserve.

Then, on Wednesday, the dam will fully break as the Sundance Film Festival announces its competition films for 2010.  Here's what we know already - after what many agreed was a lackluster 2009 festival, next year's Sundance is shaping up (on paper at least) to be a barn-burner for docs.  At least three films from Oscar nominated filmmakers are on tap, along with 2 new films from folks who took Sundance by storm with their previous features, plus a veteran Sundance filmmaker is back as producer on a debut feature.

And that's not even including LAST TRAIN HOME, the IDFA-champ that everyone and their mother expects to show in Park City (along with 2 or 3 or more titles from the just-wrapped European doc circuit).

By the way, if you haven't checked it out yet, gander at the newly re-designed Sundance fest website, which leads off with a retro graphic manifesto:

"REBEL.  This is the renewed rebellion.  This is the re-charged fight against the establishment of the expected.  This is the rebirth of the battle for brave new ideas.  This is Sundance, reminded.  And this is your call to join us."

That's a whole lot of "re" words. 

And what does it say, exactly, that John Cooper's first year at the helm begins with the declaration that Sundance needed a rebirth and a re-charge?  (Although, again, after last year, you won't get much argument from these's parts.)  Slogans aside, the week's first peak at this year's line-up will give our first clues as to whether there's a true revolution (a "re" word they didn't use) afoot.

The Monday Brief: Indie Film in Hell - The Bloodbath, CineVegas & Polanski, But Signs of Hope With Ondi Timoner's Innovations, CAPITALISM, SEPTEMBER & IT MIGHT GET LOUD

Is the entire indie film world going to hell?  That's been the question vibrating through our community for the past several weeks, particularly after a Toronto International Film Festival that was light on sales and a summary paper issued by Anne Thompson, in which she labeled this year's TIFF an "indie bloodbath":

"The old independent market is over. A new one will take its place. But we are smack in the middle between the end of one paradigm and the start of another, and it’s a scary place indeed...

If nobody knew anything before, they know even less now. The one sure thing is that moviemakers will now PAY to get their films released. The few remaining distributors can sit back and wait for movies to drop in their laps, often with P & A funds attached. All hopes of a hot sale at a festivals were dashed this year."

And if you think filmmakers going to festivals have it bad, what about the festivals themselves?  This year has seen an unprecedented upheaval, as five of the top 10 festivals for documentaries saw a change in leadership (Sundance, Silverdocs, Los Angeles, Tribeca and Full Frame) and a number of film festivals found themselves making news - Toronto over its choice of Tel Aviv for its City to City Spotlight, Los Angeles in its battle with the BANANAS!* filmmakers and lawyers from Dole, SF Jewish Film over its screening of RACHEL, Tokyo due to its rejection-then-capitulation/acceptance of THE COVE, not to mention the coup at the Denver Film Society.  And what does it say about the New York Film Festival if most of NYC's indie film cognoscenti took the first flights out of town to be in Austin for Fantastic Fest, just as NYFF was opening?

Now we learn that CineVegas, one of the best regional festivals in the US, will not be back for its 2010 edition (although they state publicly that they will try to return sometime after that) and yesterday  the news that filmmaker Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland as he was en route to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Zurich Film Festival.

Add to all this what any filmmaker on the festival circuit (including this one) can tell you with certainty - for many festivals, the days of largesse have passed.  No travel, no accommodations, no screening fees.  Oh yeah, and if you want more than a couple tickets to your film, you're going to have to pay for them.

Let that sink in for a moment.

IFC's Sundance Selects Acquires ART OF THE STEAL, First TIFF '09 Doc to Sell

Two days after the close of the Toronto Film Festival - and on the same day as it screened for New York Film Festival press, Don Argott's THE ART OF THE STEAL became the first documentary from TIFF to sell when it was acquired by IFC's Sundance Selects imprint.

indieWIRE has the details:

"A bidding situation with four different buyers resulted in the deal, which is reported to have come with a substantial six figure advance. Sundance Selects - which has a mix of execs from Sundance and IFC Films handling both acquisitions and marketing - will release the film widely in theaters in 2010 in at least fifteen cities."

Sundance Selects was unveiled last month with the release of Spike Lee's PASSING STRANGE.  Our TIFF round-up of ART OF THE STEAL can be found here.

The Monday Brief: Post-Toronto Glow for ART & COLLAPSE, Moore Returns and Are These 5 Films Your Oscar Frontrunners?

The end of the Toronto International Film Festival means the two-month headlong rush toward IDFA is upon us, wherein there will be a major or mini-major film fest on pretty much every single weekend.  So get ready for Atlantic, New York, Camden, Woodstock, Mill Valley, Morelia, Pusan, Chicago, Hamptons, London, DocLisboa, Tokyo, Rome, Leipzig, Jihlava, Sheffield, AFI, Mar del Plata, Copenhagen, Denver, St. Louis, Gijon and, finally, yes, IDFA.  That's at least 23 fests of some import in just 10 weeks.  Hold onto your hats...

But before we plunge headlong into the future fall festival frenzy, we pause to think of this year's Toronto Fest filmmakers, battered and bruised from several days of screenings, press, parties and the roller coaster ride that is a major premiere date. 

While there has yet to be a major sale announced for docs at this year's Toronto Fest, we should remember that some of last year's major TIFF titles (IT MIGHT GET LOUD, MORE THAN A GAME) didn't sell until well after the festival and at least one, VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR, made very good money going it alone.  But there are rumors of a deal pending for THE ART OF THE STEAL and lots of strong critical praise for COLLAPSE, which probably left the biggest impact of any doc in Toronto.  Check out our wrap on many of the top nonfiction titles at TIFF: COLLAPSE, ART OF THE STEAL, COLONY, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA, HOW TO FOLD A FLAG, CLEANFLIX, HUGH HEFNER: PLAYBOY, ACTIVIST AND REBEL and People's Choice Award winner THE TOPP TWINS. 

NYFF Announces Line-Up, Including 5 (Count 'em) Nonfiction Titles

The New York Film Festival announced its 2009 line-up today and, surprisingly - at least for those of us who are used to the token 2 or 3 doc slots that usually offered up by NYFF - the festival will screen five nonfiction titles this year, including Don Argott's Toronto offering THE ART OF THE STEAL, GHOST TOWN, Zhao Dayong's three-part epic about rural China, and Andrey Khrzhanovsky's acclaimed hybrid film ROOM AND A HALF, which screened in Berlin.

Update: indieWIRE has a preview, including comments from a number of New York film writers and bloggers about this year's fiction roster.

All five films, with descriptions provided by NYFF, after the jump.

New York 2007: New Docs from Ed Pincus & Lucia Small, John Landis, Carmen Castillo and Peter Bogdanovich

The New York Film Festival today announced its Cannes-heavy line-up for 2007 and, in addition to eagerly anticipated feature films from Todd Haynes, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, there are several non-fiction films in the line-up.  Two are profile films from directors who saw the peak of their fame in the 70s and 80s - John Landis premieres MR WARMTH, THE DON RICKLES PROJECT, while Peter Bogdanovich unveils his long gestating (and rumored to be long troubled) TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS: RUNNIN' DOWN A DREAM.

Meanwhile, verite legend Ed Pincus has joined with filmmaker Lucia Small (who's excellent MY FATHER, THE GENIUS was on the festival circuit with me in 2002/2003) on THE AXE IN THE ATTIC, a look at the post-Katrina gulf coast.  Pincus and Small have also recently formed a new production company, Pincus & Small Films, indicating a long-awaited return to nonfiction filmmaking for Pincus after years in exile.

Finally, there is Carmen Castillo's Cannes entry CALLE SANTA FE, a personal look back at her life amidst resistance fighters in Pinochet's Chile.

A full line-up of films is in Brian Brooks' report at indieWIRE.