Chris White is P.O.V.'s director of programming & production. He spent two days at the Realscreen Summit in Washington, D.C. last week, hearing producers pitch their films at a speed pitching session. Here's the inside scoop from a programmer's perspective, and some tips on how to craft a successful speed pitch.
As a select group of independent documentary filmmakers make their way through the snow banks in Park City, Utah, each hoping their film will be the next non-fiction phenom to fetch five or ten million dollars, there is another event 2000 miles away in Washington, DC, where other producers try to sell their wares. Suits, ties and sports coats replace the fur-lined boots and goggles of the Wasatch Mountains, but the hopes are the same — get the work out there, get it seen by as many people as possible, and make some money to pay the rent.
The Realscreen Summit, sponsored by the Canadian Brunico Communications, is a market and meeting place for producers and programmers of non-fiction work of all genres. The atmosphere is decidedly more commercial than Sundance, with less emphasis on filmmaking as an art form than on programming as commodity. The industry presence at the Summit is dominated by media giants such as Discovery Communications and A&E Television Networks. There are 45(!) delegates listed under the Discovery banner, and that's not including six for Animal Planet and six for the Travel Channel, both channels owned by DCI. A&E has eleven people attending, with twelve more representing the History Channel. Among many other broadcasters, PBS is sending a few people, with HBO, Sundance and P.O.V. each sending one lone representative to add a little seasoning to the stew.
So I don my trench coat and head to gloomy D.C. for two days of meetings with producers. I've been invited to participate in the "speed pitching" session and to give a 30-minute talk about P.O.V. and our submission and selection process. I have individual meetings with about 15 producers lined up on top of that, so time is short.
This is the last of our live reports from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Cynthia Lopez is P.O.V./AmDoc's Vice President. This festival marked her eighth year attending Sundance. What follows is her personal diary of the high and low points of last week's Sundance Film Festival.
You just never know what's going to happen when you go to Sundance — and this year was no exception. As I shared past experiences with my colleague and first-time attendee Simon Kilmurry, I had no idea of the drama that lay ahead. But before I get to that, I'll start from the beginning.
Thursday, January 17:
We arrived at the Salt Lake City airport without any delays directly from PBS's annual Creative Summit held this year in San Francisco where executive producers, creative directors, marketing people and online producers come together to discuss the latest in best practices, trends in broadcasting, media research and demographic/audience information.
I picked up my industry pass at The Yarrow in record time — thank you Sundance and Cara Mertes! Later, I headed to our hotel, the Copper Bottom Inn, to return phone calls and to finalize plans for the P.O.V. annual party on Sunday.
We ate at Chez Betty, an intimate restaurant owned by Jerry Garcia. No, not the singer. If it's your first time at Sundance, then having a meal there is a must; it's often a site for celebrities, if you're into star-gazing.
Friday, January 18:
7:30 am: Finally, I was on my way to see my first Sundance Docs, a series of shorts at the Prospector Theater. Among them, I had two absolute favorites: Farewell Packets of Ten by director Ken Wardrop and Pilgrimage by Tadashi Nakamura. If you want to quit smoking you have to see these old ladies trying to have a conversation; it's a hoot! It made me laugh so hard; comedy this natural isn't easy to find. Pilgrimage, on the other hand, made me cry — which is difficult for me in 22 minutes! I am not that wound up. The film feels like an Asian hip-hop music video, and explores the tragic history of the Japanese concentration camps in California during World War II.
Inspired by the growing number of docs about food that have been coming out lately, P.O.V. staffer Jessica Lee recently took another look at an older film that inspired her.
Recent documentaries such as The Price of Sugar, King Corn, and Black Gold address how food is inextricably linked to politics and social justice. For those interested in watching an older film that takes a look at the business and politics of food, check out Ilha das Flores, a 13-minute 1989 documentary short by Brazilian filmmaker Jorge Furtado.
I had never heard of Ilha das Flores before I saw it as a student in a film course. I found the film affecting and provocative, and when I did some research about it, I learned that it was both critically acclaimed and very well known. The film won the Silver Bear award at the 1990 Berlin Film Festival, and in a show of populist acclaim, IMDB users voted it one of the top 50 documentaries of all time (as of January 28, 2008 it was ranked #11).
Environmental issues are a hot topic this election year. David Nanasi caught up with P.O.V. alum Judith Helfand (A Healthy Baby Girl, P.O.V. 1997 and True Lives 2005, and The Uprising of '34, P.O.V. 1995) and Daniel B. Gold to hear more about what they've been doing to support their latest film, Everything's Cool.
Both Everything's Cool and your previous film, Blue Vinyl, have centered on environmental themes. What drew you to the subject?
Judith: Sometimes stories and themes choose us. Personally, my focus on the environment as a filmmaker is the result of an unnatural turn of events — when I was 25, I was diagnosed with cancer from in utero exposure to the anti-miscarriage drug and synthetic hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES), which my mom took when she was pregnant with me in 1963. Within minutes of my diagnosis, the "environment" became personal. It was not out there in "nature," but in here — in our bodies, in our homes and apartments, inextricably linked to our relationships with our mothers and fathers, in our ability or inability to reproduce, parent and protect our young.
That experience led me to make A Healthy Baby Girl, an autobiographical film that reframed the toxics issue into a story about family, and how one generation unwittingly poisoned the next.
That film naturally led to its sequel Blue Vinyl, which I was truly fortunate to co-direct and co-produce with Daniel Gold. Dan also shot the film and received a Sundance Excellence in Cinematography award. I think the cinematic and political challenges we faced with Blue Vinyl — and the great feeling that comes from making a movie that has the narrative capacity to both entertain and be in service of a movement — inspired us to tackle global warming, which Dr. Heidi Cullen, the Weather Channel climatologist who is featured in Everything's Cool calls the "mother of all environmental problems."
The challenge is at the heart of the global warming messaging problem, and is in fact at the heart of the story we tell — it is what animates our characters: how do you collapse the future (the real-life threat of an ever-warming world and our short-sighted addiction to oil) into the present and make the message urgent enough to take action before it's too late?
After completing that piece, Gregory traveled to Afghanistan and has since spent many months there, reporting for outlets like NPR, Slate magazine and Washington Monthly magazine. This month he is working on a piece for P.O.V. about what Afghani people think of America, Americans and the U.S. military as part of our continuing "What Do They Think of Us?" series.
Sabir with his would-be matchmakers, Miriam (left) and Nikaj (right) Image from This American Life website
For today's media guide, I want to recommend a radio story that Gregory recently filed from Afghanistan that aired earlier this month on NPR's amazing This American Life, entitled "A Good Year for Grand Gestures."* It's a charming story about an Afghani man (with great hair) who meets a woman and falls in love, and some foreign aid workers who try to help him find happiness. Along the way, you learn a little bit about (not) dating in Afghanistan, the custom of "dowry recycling" and different perspectives on what makes a good marriage.
Miriam and her husband were development workers in Afghanistan. They'd had a whirlwind romance themselves, so when they heard that their driver, Sabir, was in love, but didn't have enough money to propose to the girl, they made a grand romantic gesture: they gave him $10,000 to pay for the dowry and the wedding. ...They soon find out making a lasting love match isn't as simple as writing a check. Gregory Warner reports. (16 minutes) link
* Note: You have to forward through the five minute prologue to get to Gregory's piece, or give it a listen. I enjoyed that story, too.
Now that the big dance is over, I thought I'd take a moment to wrap things up. Once again, the biggest buzz at Sundance was generated by the documentary lineup. Nanette Burstein's American Teen was the rare exception in an otherwise sedate year for film buyers. What's nice about this of course, is that we can "focus on film," as the festival encourages — and for me, that means looking back on a few films that really stood out.
Patti Smith: Dream of Life (P.O.V. 2008-2009), Steven Sebring's hypnotic ten-year collaboration with the singer herself would land at the top of my list of films that I wish I had seen at Sundance. Yesterday, Sebring and Phillip Hunt Watch won a much-deserved Excellence in Cinematography Award for Dream of Life, with Grand Jury prizes in the doc category going to Man on Wire (World Cinema) and Trouble the Water. (A complete list of award winners is available here.)
Other docs from the festival that I'm anxious to see also got enthusiastic responses from Sundance-goers as well. I'm looking forward to catching American Teen, I.O.U.S.A., Bigger, Stronger Faster, Fields of Fuel, The Recruiter, and The Greatest Silence. Luckily, I live in New York City and will probably be able to catch these films at any of several theatres that screen indy docs. But since we're not all within arm's reach of that kind of venue, I'd like to remind you that you can see at least three of the docs from this year's Sundance Film Festival on P.O.V. — you can catch Nerakhoon, Patti Smith: Dream of Life and Traces of the Trade on your local PBS station in 2008 and 2009. Sign up for the P.O.V. newsletter for broadcast reminders and to connect to your local station.
On January 21, Katrina Browne's Traces of the Trade had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Afterwards, she was joined onstage by her relatives, descendants of the DeWolf family, who appeared in the film and are now participating in audience discussions about their family's role in the slave trade. Browne's cousin Tom DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade, his personal story of the family's journey. He answered a few questions about what it was like to attend the festival as the subject of a documentary that was being shown there.
Q: I'm curious about what it's like to be at Sundance as the subject of a documentary that is premiering there.
Tom DeWolf: It is both exhilarating and a little daunting. All of us who are part of Traces of the Trade are committed to its mission and the outreach we're doing with community groups, churches, schools, historical museums and the public at large. Seven out of the ten family members who went on the journey were able to make it to Sundance, along with several members of the film crew. Many of us join Katrina Browne, our cousin the filmmaker, at each screening to interact with the audiences after the film ends.
Q: Have you been recognized?
DeWolf: A few times. It is an odd sensation to have people recognize you because they've seen you in a film, but you've not met them before.
Last year, P.O.V. partnered with the WBGH Lab in Boston to support the great work they are doing there. The Lab assists young mediamakers in creating short films and encourages them to experiment with new ways of making and interacting with content. It's very cool, cutting-edge stuff. Every few months, the Lab announces an open call on their website offering filmmakers the opportunity to submit proposals for short films or media projects related to a specific theme. Selected applicants receive funding to complete their projects, input during the production process from professional media makers and a place to showcase their work.
Earlier this week, the Lab and the National Black Programming Consortium announced the five selected filmmakers who will receive funding and editorial support for their three-minute films, which explore issues of racism, expulsion of African Americans from communities, and reparations.
The works-in-progress will be up on their site through Sunday with the hope that site visitors will offer reactions and suggestions for improving the films. The shorts are pretty amazing for a first cut, very provocative and worth a look. My favorite featured some students from John Jay High School in my old neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, talking about their tense relationship with the community. I probably walked by that high school over a hundred times during my five years in the Slope, and I have to admit I never knew anything about it, or the students that went there. It's so great to see these teenagers picking up cameras and telling their own stories, rather than letting others tell their stories for them.
Update: The WGBH Lab has announced a new Open Call for submissions today. It's called "Watch Over Me." Forty-four million Americans are caring for aging relatives and friends. Are you one of them? If so, tell them your story. (Monday, January 28)
Journalist and Doc Soup columnist Tom Roston is at Sundance this week, checking out all the doc-related happenings in Park City.
My dancing days are done! I'm back home from Sundance, and well-satiated by a great dose of documentaries. It's been a pretty remarkable festival for docs. Despite some pre-festival chatter that docs might get a cold reception, the films at Sundance showed a real diversity of subject matter and accomplishments in craft — and ranged from mainstream docs with high production values (Made in America and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden) to lower-budget films that still tell a strong story. The non-fiction form was clearly alive and kicking in Park City; you could even overhear news about the latest doc acquisitions on the ubiquitious shuttle buses. Among the under-the-radar (until now) docs that were getting the best buzz are Nerakhoon: (The Betrayal), Trouble the Water, Anvil!: The Story of Anvil, Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed in the Mountains, and The Order of Myths.
It was interesting to observe the selling of Nanette Burstein's doc American Teen, bought on Tuesday by Paramount Vantage for a reported $1 million for world rights, except for the U.K. It's a natural fit — Paramount Vantage and MTV are both owned by Viacom — but it was a deal that took a long time to hammer out. About 36 hours before the announcement, I was told by one "Indiewood" head involved in the negotiations that American Teen had sold to Sony Pictures Classics, but that never came to fruition. There was lots of talk about the film's fate last weekend, proving once again that documentaries are now the fodder of the same heated conjecture and behind-the-scenes sniping and dealing as fiction features. (Nerakhoon director Ellen Kuras suggested to me that this evolution may not be such a great thing, but we'll get into that another day.)
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked at Sundance with two special events. The first was a panel discussion moderated by Orlando Bagwell (Ford Foundation) with panelists U.S. Rep. John Conyers (Chair of the House Judiciary Committee), Dedrick Muhammad (scholar and researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies), and Katrina Browne (director, Traces of the Trade).
I'll say from the outset that the time allotted to the panel was way too short. A discussion on the legacy of slavery and the myths of history deserves far more than one hour. In fact, by the time people got settled, heard introductions and watched some film clips, there was only half an hour for presentations and discussion — shamefully short for an emotional and very important topic, and a bit of a disservice to moderator, panelists and audience.
Dedrick Muhammad, Katrina Browne, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers spoke about the legacy of the slave trade at Sundance on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
That said, despite the short time, the conversation was illuminating. Traces of the Trade painfully excavates the legacy of the slave trade through the story of the De Wolf family — the largest slave trading family in the U.S. Katrina, a De Wolf descendent, was shocked when she discovered this legacy. So, to cut a long, fascinating and brave story short, she invited relatives to go on a journey to examine the legacy of the trade and the inherited complicity that has seeped through subsequent generations.
P.O.V. correspondent Kris Wilton spent the day with cinematographer-turned-documentary-director Ellen Kuras at the Sundance Film Festial on Sunday, January 20.
Ellen Kuras is a legendary director of photography who has worked with an impressive array of directors, including Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Michel Gondry on some of the most stunning films of the last twenty years. She's the unprecedented three-time winner of the Best Dramatic Cinematography award at Sundance — for Swoon (1992), Angela (1995), and Personal Velocity (2002) — and she's back in Park City in a big way this year with some exciting new projects. She's here to premiere her directorial debut, the feature-length documentary Nerakhoon (The Betrayal), which was co-produced by P.O.V. | American Documentary, and will air on P.O.V. in 2008/2009. She is also busy promoting one of the festival's hottest tickets, Gondry's latest effort, Be Kind Rewind, which stars Jack Black, Mos Def and Mia Farrow, for which she was the director of photography. (This is Ellen's third collaboration with Gondry: she also shot his music documentary Block Party and the Academy Award-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.)
Ellen Kuras being interviewed at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
You might think a day in the life of this dynamic, award-winning cinematographer/director would be a non-stop whirlwind of parties and business meetings, but half of this day was actually spent shepherding family and crew members around Park City and worrying whether everyone was having fun. Over the course of the several hours I spent with Ellen, her colleagues and family described a person who is focused and driven, who can juggle multiple projects and get the impossible done, but who is above all, kind, generous and devoted to taking care of the people around her.
At the end of a panel hosted by Women in Film on Sunday afternoon, fellow speaker and actress Patricia Clarkson showed the audience that she was wearing an extra festival badge that Ellen had given her that said "Ellen Kuras." "How cool would it be to be Ellen Kuras for a day?" Clarkson asked. The answer, I found out after spending some time with her, was "Very exhausting, but very cool!"
Here's a rundown of a day with Ellen Kuras at Sundance.
7:30 - Ellen is sharing a house with her brother Jeffrey Kuras and sisters Carolyn Landolfo and Pam Kuras (who was the accountant for Nerakhoon) in Park City. As soon as she gets up, she makes coffee for everyone and spends some time chatting with her sisters. She makes sure that everyone knows the plan for the day before getting in her car to pick up Nerakhoon co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath.
10:00 - Ellen and Thavi are interviewed live by the Sundance Channel about Nerakhoon. Following the interview, she goes back to the house to mobilize the troops. Everyone gets into the car and Ellen plays chauffeur, dropping family and friends off on Main Street, the heart of the festival, before rushing onto her next stop.
Journalist and Doc Soup columnist Tom Roston is at Sundance this week, checking out all the doc-related happenings in Park City.
I'm writing this post while waiting on line for Morgan Spurlock's latest doc, the much anticipated Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? (Sample chatter from other people waiting in the queue: "I love Morgan." "Me too, but I was still thinking of going to eat at McDonald's before this.") Things have been busy here in Park City! I've been meaning to write about the past 36 hours of happenings, but they're piling up like a ten-foot snowdrift.
Here's a quick taste: I saw Anvil: The Story of Anvil by Sacha Gervasi, an incredibly funny and actually very deep documentary about the eponymous heavy metal band from Canada. It plays like This is Spinal Tap — but for real. I also saw Ellen Kuras's Neerakhoon (The Betrayal), about a Laotian family that emigrated to the U.S. Kuras' film is epic — the imagery and pacing reminded me of the work of Terrence Malick. (See pics from the premiere of Nerakhoon on Monday.) I also sent two emissaries to watch Flow: For the Love of Water by Irena Salima and asked them to report back to me. They said the film was a searing dissection of the business of water, and then they made me feel really bad about the bottle of water I was clutching in my hands.
Steven Sebrings's film Patti Smith: Dream of Life premiered at Sundance on Sunday. Steven is a fashion photographer and he has been working on the film for the past twelve years since meeting Patti on a shoot for Spin magazine. Shot entirely on 16mm (unheard of these days), the film is an impressionistic portrait of an artist, a far cry from the standard artist bios one is used to. Full of Smith's poetry, vintage performance and themes of loss and life, Steven brings a visual style that complements Smith's own work. The overall tone is elegiac, and ultimately hopeful. Patti pays tribute to artists who have been a part of her life and an inspiration to her work: Rimbaud, William Burroughs, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bob Dylan, William Blake, Jim Morrison and, of course, her late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith.
During the Q&A Smith and Sebring talked about their collaboration. According to Smith and Sebring trust is the essential element in their relationship that has developed through their many years of working together. The film was enthusiastically received by the audience. Patti's son Jackson (now 25) who was sitting behind me, had the loudest laugh in the theater as he watched himself as a thirteen year old on screen wearing a knight's helmet (you had to be there!) that had been given to him by the band on his birthday.
Patti Smith performing at Sundance
The evening culminated in an amazingly intimate concert by Patti and her band at the overheated Kimball Arts Center — probably the coolest event of the festival (more photos). She gave a dynamic performance including "Gloria" and a wonderful cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which she called a "great American folk song." The film now goes on to screen at the Berlin Film Festival and should have a theatrical release later this year. The film will have its television premiere on P.O.V. in 2009.
We hosted our annual P.O.V. brunch on Sunday — a welcome relief from the hectic pace of screenings, parties and general mischief that seems to be the Sundance routine. First to arrive was Steven Sebring and Patti Smith — an artist who changed my life at a formative stage. Steven's film Patti Smith: Dream of Life is an elegiac composition that beautifully integrates Patti's life as a mother, rock musician, artist and poet, activist and ultimately, as she says, "as a worker." It's been a highlight to meet Patti and spend a few minutes with her. Some of the band — Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty — arrived a little later. The band members have yet to see the film, so the premiere will be the first time. (More on that later.)
The Smith family — Jesse, Patti and Jackson — with filmmaker Steven Sebring
The brunch is a chance to catch up with P.O.V. friends and filmmakers whose work will or has been a part of P.O.V. in the past. P.O.V. alums in attendance included Thomas Allen Harris, Yvonne Welbon, Paul Stekler, Tasha Oldham and Alex Rivera. Alex's debut feature Sleep Dealer is creating a buzz at the festival.
It was a thrill to be able to announce that Traces of the Trade, Katrina Browne's wrenching examination of the legacy of the North's leadership in the slave trade, through her own family's complicity, will be part of P.O.V.'s 2008 lineup. Katrina brought her production team, including Elizabeth Delude-Dix and Jude Ray, and several members of the family including Tom DeWolf, who has written a new memoir based on his experience in the film, Inheriting the Trade (Beacon Press).
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning in Los Angeles. Here's the list for documentary film.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
NO END IN SIGHT
Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
OPERATION HOMECOMING: WRITING THE WARTIME EXPERIENCE
Richard E. Robbins
SICKO
Michael Moore and Meghan O'Hara
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
WAR/DANCE
Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
FREEHELD
Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth
LA CORONA (THE CROWN)
Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega
SALIM BABA
Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello
SARI'S MOTHER
James Longley
This is the second nomination for filmmakers Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine — winner, 2002) and Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room — nominee, 2005), and the first Academy Award nomination for the rest of the documentary feature group.
Filmmakers Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath premiered their film, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal), earlier today at the Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Kuras has spent the last 23 years chronicling the family's extraordinary journey in this deeply personal, poetic and emotional film. P.O.V. correspondent Kris Wilton was there with her camera to document the event.
Filmmakers Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath embrace after Nerakhoon screening
Nerakhoon will have its national broadcast premiere on P.O.V. later this year on PBS. View the entire photo slideshow on P.O.V.'s Flickr channel.
Journalist and Doc Soup columnist Tom Roston checks in with more news from the Sundance Film Festival.
The first screening I attend at Sundance is a real happening. Saturday afternoon's premiere of American Teen is filmmaker Nanette Burstein's return to Sundance after six years. (Burstein had previously produced The Kid Stays in the Picture, about Paramount producer Robert Evans, which was at Sundance in 2002.)
For American Teen, Burstein spent a year with the kids of a high school in Warsaw, Indiana. Festival programmer John Cooper introduced Burstein as one of our great documentarians who's redefining the genre. The theater was packed and very excited. It's great to see that there's finally a documentary that adds a complex wrinkle to all the teenage junk we can catch 24/7 in reality television land. American Teen is really special: it intimately captures the lives of these kid and then goes a step further by animating their inner lives with some cutting edge animation.
Filmmaker Nanette Burstein (far right) and teens from American Teen at Sundance
It seems like everyone was there — Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice; Michael Barker, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics; and head of U.S. Theatrical for ThinkFilm, Mark Urman, among others. I can't say exactly when documentaries started pulling in all the top dogs of Indiewood, but it's happening in full effect this year.
I spoke with Urman before the movie started and he told me he was excited for it, but he was still humming over Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which he said was fantastic. He indicated, however, that he probably wouldn't be buying its domestic rights for ThinkFilm. "It's complicated," he said. Sure enough, HBO announced this morning that they purchased the rights to the film, which examines the Polanski's sex scandal involving a young girl that occurred thirty years ago.
So, back to the American Teen screening. The lights went down and the movie began. It was especially amusing to watch the lives of these kids — sex, zits and all — unfold on screen as a mother and teenage daughter sitting in front of me repeatedly whispered to each other, aghast and amused at the intimate details revealed in the film.
When the credits rolled, the crowd justifiably went nuts, hooting and hollering. Burstein came up and answered questions with the kids from the film. The highlight was the "geek" in the group, who admitted to not having had a date in the year and a half since the film was shot. "That'll change!" yelled one woman in the crowd to the cheers of the audience. I'm sure these kids will be getting a good/weird taste of celebrity in the days to come.
Journalist and Doc Soup columnist Tom Roston is at Sundance this week, checking out all the doc-related happenings in Park City.
They should call it the Sundoc Film Festival. I get on my flight to Salt Lake City yesterday, and the guy in the row in front of me is wearing a baseball cap and sweatshirt that both say, "Bigger, Stronger, Faster," aka the title of Christopher Bell's documentary about America's win-at-all-costs pressures, as told through his brothers' spiraling into steroid use. Turns out, the man in front of me is the Christopher Bell's dad. He keeps quiet, but proud mom is with him and very forthcoming about a big party Delta Airlines is sponsoring for the film, and how ESPN and other media outlets will be there. It's a strange thing, though, when your son happens to be a documentary filmmaker who has turned his lens on your own family; it can be a mixed blessing. When she describes her other sons' steroid use, she says, "That's not who they are," while slowly squeezing the back of the seat. My conversation with her made me want to see Bigger, Stronger, Faster and decide for myself.
After I land, talk by the baggage claim is about the first three sales acquisitions to be announced — yup, they're all docs. HBO snapped up Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell's The Black List: Volume One, a set of interviews with notable African-Americans; Fortissimo Films nabbed CSNY Déjà Vu, about Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, directed by Neil Young; and Zeitgeist Films bought Up The Yangtze by first-time documentarian Yung Chang, which tells the story of the building of the Three Gorges Dam in China and its economic and personal impact on two young Chinese workers.
It's tempting to think that such fast sales (they were all announced on Thursday, the first day of the festival) were already in the works. And, sure enough, the makers The Black List had a previous relationship with buyer HBO, and that the company had been tracking the film progress. I was told by one person close to the film that the purchase came about "quite naturally."
All three films sound intriguing, but I am most interested in seeing Up the Yangtze. Alas, tonight's screening happens to be at the same time as Gonzalo Arijon's Stranded: I've Come from a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains, the documentary about survival and cannibalism in the Andes that I was planning to go see. Ah, decisions, decisions.
Oh, wait: and this just in: another acquisition was announced this morning, and this one looks to be a totally fresh, on-the-ground purchase; The Weinstein Company bought international rights to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which gets at the roots of the director's exile that began in the 70s. The film just screened last night.
Things move fast here at Sundance. I'm off for more docs, more parties and more news. I'll be checking back in throughout the week with more tidbits from Sundance, so stay tuned!
Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
Hey, so enough talk about 2007, the year that was (or wasn't, depending on your perspective): The 2008 documentary season really begins this week with the Sundance Film Festival, which kicked off yesterday. With no less than forty documentaries in the fest this year, it's a documentary-lovers dream. The only danger is to overindulge. I'm used to catching about 20 or so movies during the festival, but this will be the first time I am going to almost exclusively be watching docs. Not sure how that's going to feel, but I'll make sure to bring a lot of Kleenex. That said, when I consider the Sundance films I've already lined up to see, there's an impressively diverse range of subject matter, filmmakers, and tone. Here are just a few of the documentaries that I've got on my radar:
American Teen
Director Nanette Burstein, who co-directed 2002's The Kid Stays in the Picture with Brett Morgen, returns with this in-depth look at four Indiana high school kids. Apparently, this really gets deep into the life of teens, and I am willing to bet Burstein's film is going to be a much-needed antidote to the reality TV programming that gives us a very warped (and artificial) vision of kids today.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
It's hard to ignore a doc about Thompson, the outrageous drug-addled journalist. It's even more difficult when you see that it's directed by Alex Gibney, the man responsible for the Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and this month's Taxi to the Dark Side. That's three films about three very different subjects. This film merges interviews, film clips, and readings and, like most things Gonzo, should be quite a ride.
For two weeks each January, the film world turns its attention to Park City, Utah. The Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the U.S., brings out the stars, the buyers and filmmakers from around the world. This year's festival will begin on Thursday, January 17.
For documentary filmmakers, having a film selected for the prestigious documentary competition or the world cinema documentary competition is an exciting opportunity to showcase their work to a film-loving audience. Here's a roundup of interviews with some of the documentary filmmakers at Sundance '08. Stayed tuned to the P.O.V. Blog for more coverage from Park City and exclusive interviews from the festival.
I finally saw the much hyped, wildly-acclaimed independent fictional film Once last weekend. Once, which follows an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant around Dublin as they meet, make music, record an album and maybe fall in love, was one of the hot tickets of Sundance '07, and ended up on many best-of lists at the year's end. Though I was at Sundance in '07, I didn't make it to a single screening of this or any other narrative film. Now, I can finally watch it on my own couch! Another reason why I love Netflix.
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová star in the fictional film Once
I liked the film. I liked the characters and the scenes where the female lead pulls a Hoover vacuum around the streets of Dublin, but it took me a while to get into the film. I spent the first thirty minutes begging the DP to keep the camera steady.
I'm not the first to take note of the shooting style of Once, and it has been noted by many critics that the film was shot in "documentary style." I suppose "documentary style" refers to uber-handheld shooting and shaky framing. In Once, I found this shooting style very distracting — especially when the two lead characters are singing together for the first time in a music store. The camera is in constant motion around the piano, and when the camera finally keeps still and fixes on lead actor Glen Hansard's face, I shouted "Finally - a tripod!"
"Third, has anyone outside of the WGA seen the top doc vote-getter, The Camden 28? The film was release [sic] by First Look in July on 1 screen and earned under $10,000. How in God's name did this movie end up being the biggest vote getter at the Guild?"
He raises a number of issues that trouble me. First, in the spirit of full disclosure, The Camden 28 was included in P.O.V.'s 20th anniversary season with a broadcast premiere on 9/11/2007 — and I like the film! I don't need to spend too much space here defending the film despite Poland's snide dismissal. For that, check out the review in The New York Times which says: "The Camden 28 is a brilliant merger of political outrage and filmmaking chops, and the most suspenseful movie in theaters right now." A simple Google search comes up with dozens of other notices both praising and criticizing the film — including the Grand Jury Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The film has been featured in dozens of other festivals internationally and had a limited theatrical run through the first class distributor First Run Features.
What Poland's post raises, I believe, is the more problematic issue of equating box office success with the importance of a documentary — a crude measurement. Let's get real here, the vast majority of docs have a very limited box office appeal. I can't believe that other WGA nominees made millions at the box office — despite how much I might admire The Rape of Europa and the excellent No End In Sight. Most of them make little or no money. (As far as I'm aware, the WGA does not take box office in account in their awards, God bless them.)
Sure, there is a terrific festival circuit that has evolved so that filmmakers can reach hundreds, and occasionally thousands of people. Theatrically, a tiny percentage of docs will reach major audiences. At P.O.V., we wholeheartedly support filmmakers who want to pursue these options through festivals and theatrical releases. It's an important part of the whole life of a film. But that's not where the major audience is for most films. So, where is that big audience and where does that leave doc filmmakers? Well, it may sound old fashioned, but television is still where doc filmmakers are going to reach their biggest audience, and it means that doc filmmakers (as most do) need to seek out all their audiences — not just the hyper-engaged festival and theatrical audiences.
Case in point: The Camden 28. The film has had a long festival life, and a modest but acclaimed theatrical life. But the real audience was television — over 700,000 people watched its premiere on the P.O.V. broadcast on PBS. Thousands more have watched and will watch re-broadcasts of the film. So, it seems to me that The Camden 28 is, in fact, pretty successful.
The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) recently announced the roster of nominees for their respective 2008 Awards.
Anthony Giacchino was nominated for a WGA Award for his work as the writer of The Camden 28.
The Camden 28, Written by Anthony Giacchino, First Run Features (P.O.V. 2007) Nanking, Screenplay by Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman & Elisabeth Bentley, Story by Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman, THINKFilm No End in Sight, Written by Charles Ferguson, Magnolia Pictures The Rape of Europa, Written by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen, Menemsha Films Sicko, Written by Michael Moore, Lionsgate/The Weinstein Company Taxi To The Dark Side, Written by Alex Gibney, THINKFilm
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, The War, Florentine Films Alex Gibney, Taxi to the Dark Side, Jigsaw Productions Asger Leth, Ghosts of Cite Soleil, Sony BMG Feature Films Richard Robbins, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, The Documentary Group Barbet Schroder, Terror's Advocate, Magnolia Pictures
Congratulations to P.O.V.'s own Anthony Giacchino and all the other nominees. The winners of the WGA Awards will be announced on Saturday, February 9, 2008, and the winners of the DGA Awards will be announced on Saturday, January 26, 2008.
Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
Ah, the doc world never sleeps. There I was, slowly plotting my next blog post about the January 12 deadline for submitting Oscar nomination ballots: I was going to make an 11th hour pitch for Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, the fantastic doc based on writings by U.S. soldiers in Iraq by Richard Robbins. But along comes an exciting announcement: Doc filmmaker and blogger AJ Schnack and online indie film distributor IndiePix are creating a new nonfiction film award ceremony because, as Schnack says on his blog, "there should be awards for nonfiction that [recognize] the breadth of the genre and [include] the crafts of cinematography and editing and producing."
Awesome! It's about time. Documentaries have evolved so much that they ought to be recognized for what they are now — films. Indeed, the Oscar shortlist was a pretty uninspired one to pick from and...
But wait. Schnack and co. announced their shortlist and my little miracle baby, Operation Homecoming...isn't on the list. What the...?!?!
Chuck Close — painter, photographer, printmaker — is the subject of a new documentary film by Marion Cajori, Chuck Close: An Elegant Portrait of the Art World's Leading Portraitist. Previously, Ms. Cajori had made a short film that aired on PBS in 1998 called Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress. The new feature-length film, which is an expansion of the earlier short, focuses on Close's laborious artistic process and his artist friends — including Phillip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Kiki Smith — many of whom have also served as his subjects. The film was the last work by Cajori, who died in 2006. Variety calls Chuck Close a "magisterial documentary" and says the film is "a major contribution from a cinematic master who died at the height of her powers." The New York Times writes that the film "excels ... in its depiction of the physical process of making art."
In The Business of Being Born by Abby Epstein, producer, former talk show host and Hairspray (the John Waters version) star Ricki Lake gives birth, naked, in a bathtub. The scene is certainly an attention-getter, but critics point out that the film is a serious and informative look at the process of childbirth in the U.S. Through archival footage, interviews with experts, and graphic scenes of women giving birth, the film explores natural childbearing as well as cesarean births. The Village Voice commends the film for having crafted "an absorbing, thought-provoking inquiry into what modern birth has become and how to make it better," but is critical of its "...obliviously upper-class, sanctimoniously yuppie-crunchy slant." In a three-star review, TV Guide says that the film "provides a great deal of food for thought."
Eyes on the Prize is the most comprehensive — and moving — civil rights documentary series ever made. The landmark production by Blackside — which runs a formidable 14 hours in total — was first aired on PBS in two parts in 1987 and 1990. The series traces the Civil Rights Movement from the '50s through the '80s, with particular attention to the movement's milestones, including the Emmett Till case, Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, the 1963 March on Washington, the sit-ins and Freedom Rides, riots in Detroit and Watts, and Attica prison. There are segments on the major figures of the period, including Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton.
Over the years, we've conducted hundreds of Behind the Lens interviews with P.O.V. filmmakers. These interviews air during the broadcast of the films on PBS, and are made available as podcasts and edited interviews via the P.O.V. website. But in the interest of brevity, a lot of fascinating insights, materials and advice end up on the cutting room floor. In the coming weeks and months, we'll be featuring excerpts from these Behind the Lens outtakes on the P.O.V. blog. Read on to see what our filmmakers have had to say when we ask them, "What's the one piece of advice you would give to a first-time documentary filmmaker?"
Don't Do It! No, Really. Don't Do It!
Half-kidding but half-serious, many of our filmmakers cry, "Don't do it!" and burst into laughter. Ross McElwee, the filmmaker behind Sherman's March and Bright Leaves (P.O.V. 2005), says "Quit. Go to law school. You'll be much happier in the long run. Making films is hard." Susan Stern, who made The Self-Made Man (P.O.V. 2005) chimes in to say "Get out of the business. It's way too crowded." It's not that our filmmakers — who have each devoted years, sometimes decades, of their lives to making films — are down on the profession. But as Anne Makepeace, the filmmaker of Baby, It's You (P.O.V. 1998) and Rain In A Dry Land (P.O.V. 2007) says, "If there's anything else that you can think of [besides filmmaking] that you'd be happy doing, do it. Because [being a documentary filmmaker is] a really hard life."
Or, Just Do It
Many of the same filmmakers, though, turn around and say that if filmmaking in your blood, then you just have to go for it. After talking about the difficulties of being a filmmaker, Makepeace notes that "...there's nothing like the euphoria when it works." Zach Niles, whose first film (made in collaboration with Banker White) Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars aired on P.O.V. in 2007, says that "...the glib advice is don't do it...but my real advice is just do it." Ralph Arlyck who made Following Sean (P.O.V. 2007) relays what legendary documentarian Al Maysles said to him when he asked for advice: "Just make films." Thomas Allen Harris, the filmmaker of Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (P.O.V. 2006) gets even more specific: "Get the camera and start to shoot," he tells filmmakers, "...shooting and writing are things you can do without money."
Made any good docs lately? I just recently sat down with director Jehane Noujaim (Startup.com, Control Room), and she told me about an impressive project she's working on. First, let me ask how many filmmakers under the age of 35 (Jehane is 33) have managed to knock out two great, successful, critically-praised, culturally-significant docs? Jehane is the only one I can think of. Startup.com, which she codirected with Chris Hegedus in 2001, took a look at an Internet company that goes bust, and is a definitive inside look at the recent boom that redefined our culture and economy. Then, with 2004's Control Room, a film about the independent news outlet Al Jazeera and the people who work there, she provided an intimate understanding of the way the Arab world looked at the U.S. right at the outbreak of the Iraq war. With those two films, Jehane's been on top of two of the most important happenings on our planet in the past ten years. (Oh, and she came very close to making a film about Al Gore's failed presidential campaign, which would have made quite the hat trick.) Fifty years from now, which filmmaker will people be looking to as a witness to our time? She's got to be near the top of the list.
So what's Jehane up to next? She's trying to use the power of film to bring the world closer together, no less! She was awarded the prestigious TED Prize (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design; other winners of the TED Prize include Bono and Bill Clinton), a $100,000 grant from the non-profit foundation started by entrepreneur Chris Anderson that tries to grant the recipient one wish. Her wish? To create a day in which people across the world watch the same movies, hear the same speakers and listen to the same music, thereby breaking down some of the walls between nations and cultures. She's calling it Pangea Day (Pangea is the name for the land mass on Earth that existed some 250 million years ago before the continents went their separate ways), and the first Pangea Day will be on May 10, 2008. Up to February 15, Jehane is looking for people to submit films to be included in the four-hour event. (She even asked me if I had made one.) So, if you've made a film, or if you know someone who has, or if you know a teacher who has students who have, or if you have relatives in the Outback who live in a tree who have, then you should check out the very inspiring trailer she and her team cut together at the website for Pangea Day.
Pangea Day is taking up most of Jehane's time for now. We'll have to wait to see if this latest project is another example of her being right on top of yet another critical shift on the planet. This one, however, would be one of her own making.
Try The Soup: How have documentary films made the world a better place?
By all accounts, 2007 was a great year for American films. In addition to a slate of wildly acclaimed fictional films, a number of well regarded documentaries made their way into theaters. Unfortunately, most of those documentaries didn't fare so well at the box office. However, some of them have made it onto "Best Of" lists by film critics and bloggers at the end of the year. Hopefully, these deserving films will find a bigger audience on DVD. Head on over to your netflix queue, and check out the best documentaries of 2007 according to the critics.
No End in Sight
One documentary in particular muscled its way past the throngs of fictional films to end up on many a critics' top ten list. The film was Charles Ferguson's Iraq doc No End in Sight, which our own Tom Roston wrote about a couple of weeks ago. No End in Sight, which takes a thorough look at the politics, strategy and history of the Iraq War, was the top polling documentary in the Best Film category of the Village Voice/LA Weekly Film Poll; it also showed up on IndieWire's Critics Poll as the third best polling doc in the Best Film category (trailing Into Great Silence and Lake of Fire), and the top vote getter in the Best Documentary category. No End in Sight was also singled out by twoNew York Timesfilm critics on their year end lists, and heralded by critics from Entertainment Weekly, Slate, and many other publications.
Other documentaries that showed up on Best Film lists (comprised of both fictional and nonfictional films) included Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire, which looks at all sides of the abortion debate; Into Great Silence by Phillip Groning, about life in a French monastery; and Terror's Advocate by Barbet Schroder, which follows a controversial lawyer who has defended a Nazi war criminal, a Holocaust denier and other alleged terrorists.
The Education of Shelby Knox premiered on P.O.V. in 2005
I ran into Shelby Knox, a passionate young activist, recently in Manhattan. We first got to know each other in 2005 when P.O.V. broadcasted The Education of Shelby Knox. Still one of our most requested films by communities across the country — the film follows Shelby, a Southern Baptist high school student from a politically conservative family in Texas, as she pledged abstinence until marriage and became the Lubbock Youth Council's most vocal proponent of comprehensive sex education.
Shelby and I spent a lot of time together that year. Along with filmmakers Marion Lipshutz and Rose Rosenblatt, she reviewed a discussion guide that helps educators and community organizers organize successful screenings of The Education of Shelby Knox. She also attended a number of events my department co-organized with high school teachers, school boards, youth groups and GLBT organizations to draw attention to and foster conversations about the debate concerning sex education in America's high schools.
One of the things that P.O.V. filmmakers do well is putting a human face on contemporary social issues. Through their storytelling, audiences don't just learn about the issues, they also deepen their understanding by seeing someone deal with the consequences of public policies. Shelby, Reverend Ed Ainsworth, and the pregnant students at her school were affected by the outcomes of the abstinence vs. comprehensive sex education debate as they played out in the Texas public school system.
If you're looking for a story of music, love, art and family this holiday season, look no further than Leah Mahan's Sweet Old Song.
Cuddle up with Sweet Old Song
The film tells the story of acclaimed musician Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, who is renowned for a lifetime of jazz, blues, folk and country music. Armstrong's roots in America's musical past, his accomplished musicianship, and his sly and charming personality led the National Endowment for the Arts to honor him as a "national treasure." But when Armstrong met Barbara Ward, a sculptor 30 years his junior, a new chapter of his life and art unfolded. Sweet Old Song is the story of Armstrong and Ward's courtship and marriage — a unique partnership that has inspired an outpouring of art and music. This creative work draws on nearly a century of African American experience, beginning with Armstrong's vivid stories and paintings of his childhood in a segregated town in Tennessee.
Chris White is P.O.V.'s director of programming & production. He spent two days at the Realscreen Summit in Washington, D.C. last week, hearing producers pitch their films at a speed pitching session. Here's the inside scoop from a programmer's perspective, and some tips on how to craft a successful speed pitch.
The Realscreen Summit, sponsored by the Canadian Brunico Communications, is a market and meeting place for producers and programmers of non-fiction work of all genres. The atmosphere is decidedly more commercial than Sundance, with less emphasis on filmmaking as an art form than on programming as commodity. The industry presence at the Summit is dominated by media giants such as Discovery Communications and A&E Television Networks. There are 45(!) delegates listed under the Discovery banner, and that's not including six for Animal Planet and six for the Travel Channel, both channels owned by DCI. A&E has eleven people attending, with twelve more representing the History Channel. Among many other broadcasters, PBS is sending a few people, with HBO, Sundance and P.O.V. each sending one lone representative to add a little seasoning to the stew.
This is the last of our live reports from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Cynthia Lopez is P.O.V./AmDoc's Vice President. This festival marked her eighth year attending Sundance. What follows is her personal diary of the high and low points of last week's Sundance Film Festival.
Inspired by the growing number of docs about food that have been coming out lately, P.O.V. staffer Jessica Lee recently took another look at an older film that inspired her.
Judith: Sometimes stories and themes choose us. Personally, my focus on the environment as a filmmaker is the result of an unnatural turn of events — when I was 25, I was diagnosed with cancer from in utero exposure to the anti-miscarriage drug and synthetic hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES), which my mom took when she was pregnant with me in 1963. Within minutes of my diagnosis, the "environment" became personal. It was not out there in "nature," but in here — in our bodies, in our homes and apartments, inextricably linked to our relationships with our mothers and fathers, in our ability or inability to reproduce, parent and protect our young. 
Now that the big dance is over, I thought I'd take a moment to wrap things up. Once again, the biggest buzz at Sundance was generated by the documentary lineup. Nanette Burstein's American Teen was the rare exception in an otherwise sedate year for film buyers. What's nice about this of course, is that we can "focus on film," as the festival encourages — and for me, that means looking back on a few films that really stood out. 
My dancing days are done! I'm back home from Sundance, and well-satiated by a great dose of documentaries. It's been a pretty remarkable festival for docs. Despite some pre-festival chatter that docs might get a cold reception, the films at Sundance showed a real diversity of subject matter and accomplishments in craft — and ranged from mainstream docs with high production values (Made in America and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden) to lower-budget films that still tell a strong story. The non-fiction form was clearly alive and kicking in Park City; you could even overhear news about the latest doc acquisitions on the ubiquitious shuttle buses. Among the under-the-radar (until now) docs that were getting the best buzz are Nerakhoon: (The Betrayal), Trouble the Water, Anvil!: The Story of Anvil, Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed in the Mountains, and The Order of Myths. 
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked at Sundance with two special events. The first was a panel discussion moderated by Orlando Bagwell (Ford Foundation) with panelists U.S. Rep. John Conyers (Chair of the House Judiciary Committee), Dedrick Muhammad (scholar and researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies), and Katrina Browne (director, Traces of the Trade).
Howard Rheingold
Blue Vinyl
New Hampshire Primary 2008
For documentary filmmakers, having a film selected for the prestigious documentary competition or the world cinema documentary competition is an exciting opportunity to showcase their work to a film-loving audience. Here's a roundup of interviews with some of the documentary filmmakers at Sundance '08. Stayed tuned to the P.O.V. Blog for more coverage from Park City and exclusive interviews from the festival.
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Beyond the Multiplex: The Year's Best Docs
Chuck Close — painter, photographer, printmaker — is the subject of a new documentary film by Marion Cajori, Chuck Close: An Elegant Portrait of the Art World's Leading Portraitist. Previously, Ms. Cajori had made a short film that aired on PBS in 1998 called Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress. The new feature-length film, which is an expansion of the earlier short, focuses on Close's laborious artistic process and his artist friends — including Phillip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Kiki Smith — many of whom have also served as his subjects. The film was the last work by Cajori, who died in 2006. Variety calls Chuck Close a "
Half-kidding but half-serious, many of our filmmakers cry, "Don't do it!" and burst into laughter. Ross McElwee, the filmmaker behind Sherman's March and 
So what's Jehane up to next? She's trying to use the power of film to bring the world closer together, no less! She was awarded the prestigious 
