The Film Independent's 2008 Spirit Award nominees were announced on Tuesday, and quite a few of the docs (in both the Best Documentary category and the Truer Than Fiction category) are already available on DVD. Here's your chance to check out some of the nominated films well before the winners are announced on February 23, 2008.
Star Spangled Blues (2006) is a contemplative and moving look at why we fight war. Narrated by Iranian-American Gita Saedi, the film uses archival materials, memoir and music to weave together Gita's story of a once pacifist cousin serving in Iran, the rise and fall of two empires that span centuries, and hope as seen in her son and the next generation. The film is all the more startling when you take into consideration the fact that it was written, shot and edited in just five days.
The nominations for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced on Monday morning by ceremony hosts Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow in Los Angeles. The Spirit Awards celebrate independent (and low budget) filmmaking. Eligible films must be at least 70 minutes long, and the cost of the completed film, including post-production, must be under $20 million to qualify for consideration.
2008 Best Documentary Nominations
(Award given to the director)
So you've got a great idea for a documentary short, and you want to get started making your film. But how do you light your shoot? What music is legal for you to use? What releases should you have your subjects sign? How do you edit, compress and upload your video?
Luckily, there's a ton of resources on the Internet for making documentary shorts. A great place to get started is the Make Docs section of FourDocs, an online documentary community sponsored by Britain's Channel Four. FourDocs allows users to watch short docs (usually around three or four minutes in length) uploaded by community members, and you can also upload your own short doc to the site for review. The Make Docs area takes you through the process of creating a documentary short from beginning to end, covering topics like storytelling, copyright, shooting, sound and many more. This is an extensive, thorough collection of guides: Beginners will learn how to cover all the bases, and more advanced doc-makers will still learn something new.
Each week, we'll highlight links from the "Watching" and "Reading" sidebars on the right side of the page.
WATCHING
Independent Lens' Please Vote For Me, about children competing to be class monitor in China, made the shortlist for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Thanksgiving: a time for family, food, more food and for some, football. But for those of us who aren't interested in football but still keen to sit on the couch and watch TV while digesting our turkey, there are a number of recent food-related documentaries that are both entertaining and provocative.
from Our Daily Bread
Our Daily Bread, the 2006 documentary by Austrian Nikolaus Geyrhalter, is an elegant, unblinking look at the European food production industry. Made without narration, music or talking heads, the film presents beautifully composed scenes — from the killing floors of poultry factories to the symmetrical, endless farming fields — that reveal where modern food comes from.
Fifteen films have been shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, and not everyone's happy about the list. Notable omissions include In the Shadow of the Moon, a rapturously reviewed film that saw NASA astronauts remembering their missions to space during the 1960s and 1970s, and The Devil Came on Horseback, the devastating and affecting documentary that tells the story of the genocide in Darfur through the eyes of a former U.S. Marine.
There will be lots of rumblings about what's on the shortlist (and what's been left off) in the coming weeks. Doc blogger Agnes Varnum calls the list "uninspiring" but it's filmmaker and blogger AJ Schnack that really lays into the Academy. In a scathing post, Schnack says that the Academy has "...closed their eyes, their ears, their doors" by preferring a "competent, conventionally-styled film that maintains an even keel" rather than "film[s] that swing for the fences."
A little background on the Academy Award for Best Documentary: It's been a controversial topic for many years. Films that have been excluded from nomination include The Thin Blue Line (1988), Paris is Bruning (1991), Roger and Me (1989), Hoop Dreams (1994) and Grizzy Man (2005).
In honor of Thanksgiving, I took a spin around YouTube this weekend to see whether there were any good cooking or food-related videos worth watching.
The first video I stumbled across was produced by a group called Cooking Up a Story. They have been producing videos and posting them on YouTube since May of last year. They want to tell "stories about real people and their special connections to food and sustainable living." The videos have a D-I-Y ethos to them, but actually showcase some solid editing, good storytelling sensibility and charming interviewees who are clearly unscripted. I watched a video about urban fruit gleaning in Portland, Oregon and I was hooked. I ended up watching five more in the same sitting.
Our weekly doc roundup collects critical reactions to some current documentary releases in the theaters and on DVD.
IN THEATERS NOW
It's a sparse week for documentary releases in the theaters. The only major release is Rob VanAlkemade'sWhat Would Jesus Buy, which follows the anti-consumerist Reverend Billy, a performance artist and mock evangelist who organizes the Church of Stop Shopping. The film, produced by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame, receives generally positive reviews, with the Village Voice calling it "Slick, well-paced and tremendously entertaining," and the New York Times pronouncing it "...fast and funny." Some reviewers, however, complain that the issue-based doc "...doesn't have much to say." As an addendum to the story, Reverend Billy was arrested in June in New York City, accused of harassing police officers by reciting the First Amendment at a rally in Union Square Park. Yesterday, the Manhattan district attorney's office dropped the charges against him.
The Starz Denver Film Festival is taking place this week and I just listened to a great podcast of a panel held yesterday about the role of documentary filmmakers in covering the war in Iraq. The festival is featuring several new non-fiction films about Iraq including Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan's Soldiers of Conscience, and Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker.
Former Rocky Mountain News film critic Robert Denerstein moderated a wide-ranging discussion about the war, the films being made about it, and whether doc filmmakers are filling a gap in news coverage about the war that Americans are seeing on TV. The panel included filmmakers Weimberg, Ryan, and Davenport, as well as Iraq War veteran Spc. Russell Peterson and Iraq native, retired pychatrist, and Middle East consultant Dr. David Kazzaz.
During the Docs 3.0 panel at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, my fellow panelist Paula Le Dieu talked about how Web technologies are allowing for new forms of storytelling, specifically through what she called visualization. Here are some of the visualization websites she highlighted, which provide visitors a new understanding of very complex data sets and encourage them to see the stories behind the sometimes-impenetrable numbers and statistics in the news.
breathingearth.com
BreathingEarth presents the carbon dioxide emission, birth rates and death rates of every country in the world in real-time. The pulsating stars representing birth and death, and the flares of red representing carbon emission, are elegant, hypnotic and frightening at the same time.
Freida Lee Mock's Academy Award® winning documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision premiered on P.O.V. in 1996. It was 25 years ago today that the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was dedicated in Washington D.C. On this anniversary date, we take a look back at the film, which follows a decade in the life of this visionary artist. Freida Lee Mock returns to P.O.V. on December 12th, 2007 with her new film about another extraordinary artist: Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
Visionary artist Maya Lin. By Adam Stoltman
On November 13, 1982, the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. It was one of the most bitterly disputed public monuments in American history. Only 21 when her design for the Washington, D.C. Vietnam Veterans Memorial was chosen in 1981, Maya Lin has never shied away from controversy.
Her starkly simple slash of polished black granite inscribed with the 57,661 names of those who died in Vietnam was viciously attacked as "dishonorable," "a scar," and "a black hole," but Lin remained committed to her vision, and the Memorial, a moving tribute to sacrifice and quiet heroism, was built as planned. Since then, Lin has completed a succession of eloquent, startlingly original monuments and sculptures that confront vital American social issues.
Read more and watch an interview with filmmaker Freida Lee Mock after the jump...
I just came back from the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest. In addition to screenings around the clock, there were a host of great panels, presentations, pitch sessions and parties. Director Heather Croall and staff should be congratulated for putting on a fantastic event.
According to the festival's website, more than 1200 delegates from around the world attended the event. Some of the highlights included the European premiere of Grant Gee's Joy Division, a Channel Four interview with acclaimed filmmaker Kim Longinotto, master classes with Louis Theroux and Brian Hill and more.
I spoke about P.O.V. and our work with Web 2.0 technologies around documentary films on the Docs 3.0 panel (part of the festival's DigiDocs 360 program) and served as one of the judges for the Crossover and Cross-Media Challenge pitch competitions. I also tried to watch as many films as I could (though I didn't see nearly as many as I wanted), and had a number of interesting conversations in the Showroom Bar, the social hub of the festival. Sheffield Doc/Fest is one of the premiere documentary festivals in the world, and for filmmakers, members of the documentary industry and documentary fans, it's five intense days of talking, watching and living docs.
Since joining P.O.V. in 2000, Irene has developed P.O.V.'s Youth Views into a year-round project that works with youth, educators and youth-serving organizations to use P.O.V. films as a tool for youth engagement. An award-winning community organizer and filmmaker, she is a graduate of Educational Video Center's High School Documentary Workshop and City-as-School High School.
I want to know who will stand up to Rhode Island & remove that "awful" word "Plantation", on every l... More » susie shaw r.i. resident
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October 10, 2008
I want to know who will stand up to Rhode Island & remove that "awful" word "Plantation", on every l... More » susie shaw r.i. resident
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October 10, 2008
Hi Paul,
The quote which begins Up the Yangtze is:
By three methods may we learn wisdom:
First, by... More » Andrew Catauro
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October 10, 2008
Hi! can anyone remember that quote of Confucius in this film ? Thanks,Paul. More » Paul
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October 10, 2008
I was on a Yangtze cruise in May 2007. I was curious about the conditions of those who served us ve... More » Nancy C
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October 10, 2008
Come to a screening of Soldiers of Conscience, and learn more about conscientious objectors. Visit the KNPB local screenings page for more information.
Michael Moore's Sicko named Best Documentary at the 17th annual Gotham Awards on Tuesday night.
The Webby Awards name 12 "most influential online videos of all time."
Watch daily reports from the International Documentary Film Festival going on this week in Amsterdam, as well as trailers and shorts on IDFA TV.
Check out Wholphin, the new DVD magazine of rare and unseen short films from McSweeney's.
A new documentary about crusader Ralph Nader comes to PBS's Independent Lens in December. Watch the trailer.
If you live in Milwaukee, you have two chances to catch 
Independent Lens' 
Fifteen films have been 
The first video I stumbled across was produced by a group called 
Since joining P.O.V. in 2000, Irene has developed P.O.V.'s Youth Views into a year-round project that works with youth, educators and youth-serving organizations to use P.O.V. films as a tool for youth engagement. An award-winning community organizer and filmmaker, she is a graduate of Educational Video Center's High School Documentary Workshop and City-as-School High School.