DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
P.O.V. Blog / March 2008
Update your calendars — Tom Roston's Doc Soup, featuring the scoop on the documentary world, is moving to Mondays.
Last week, Regal Cinemas announced that the chain will double the number of IMAX theaters that it runs nationwide, adding another 31 large-format screens by 2010. That will bring the total of IMAX screens in Regal theaters to 52.
The IMAX format is mostly known for its sometimes cheesy fare, space and oceanic adventures, and blockbuster entertainments (The Matrix, Spider-Man 3, Star Wars Episode III, etc. have made it to the super-big screens). But the news prompted me to imagine whether there might be a chance for some strong, narrative documentaries ending up on IMAX. It's cool that concert docs such as U2:3D and Martin Scorsese's upcoming film about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, are making it to IMAX, but wouldn't it have been incredible to see last year's In the Shadow of the Moon, about the Apollo space missions to the moon or Deep Water, the story of a doomed sea adventure, on an IMAX screen? For that matter, what about Grizzly Man, Touching the Void, Manda Bala or Into Great Silence? The list goes on —War/Dance, Tupac: Resurrection, Manufactured Landscapes... How cool would it be to see an Errol Morris documentary in this format?
I know, I know — this is pie-in-the-sky thinking. Most of these films probably couldn't be properly transferred, and if they could, they probably woudn't be able to get the box office numbers that would justify the exhibitor expense. Still, there are plenty of individuals out there who have money to burn and a lot of faith in the power of docs (Jeff Skoll, can you hear me?). And there are plenty of IMAX theaters associated with educational institutions, so perhaps one could be prompted to give it a try.
It reminds of the first time I saw Koyanisqaatsi; it was actually at the Beacon Theater in New York City, on a giant screen. Phillip Glass performed the score — live — and I can still feel the walls shaking. It was truly a religious experience. In fact, that's the first documentary I'd love to see transferred to IMAX. Godfrey Reggio's phenomenal portrait of the dangerous imbalance between humanity and nature on our planet would be incredible on the big, big screen. Any billionaire backers out there?
Get ready to park yourself on the couch on Tuesday nights this summer (or, set up your Tivo to record), because P.O.V. has just announced our 2008 schedule, and as usual, we'll be presenting a slate of insightful and thought-provoking documentaries.
We're back on your local PBS stations starting Tuesday, June 24 at 10 PM (always check your local listings) with films that explore election-year issues including war and peace, health care, border issues, and race relations. This year's P.O.V. films also take you on journeys into family burdens of the not-so-distant past, into the weirdly familiar backrooms of Japanese politics, and up one of the world's most fabled — and fast disappearing — waterways: China's Yangtze River. Plus, the best Johnny Cash documentary ever.
Check out our full 2008 T.V. Schedule.
Today, we're previewing the first film on our schedule, which airs on June 24. In Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North, first-time filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery — her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana and sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, Traces of the Trade, an Official Selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide.
For more previews of 2008 P.O.V. films, check out our TV Schedule.
Cinematical reviews the Iraq War documentary Body of War, directed by former talk show host Phil Donahue and filmmaker Ellen Spiro. Read an interview with the filmmakers, along with Tomas Young, the Iraq War veteran who is the subject of the film, at Democracy Now!
The New York Times reviewed Benson Lee's Planet B-Boy, a documentary about break dancers who compete in an international competition. The Times calls the film "fun, sometimes thrilling and packed with illuminating details and striking personalities." In a longer review, film blog The House Next Door describes the various rivalries that erupt at the international break dancing championships, and says that Lee's "sense of pacing may be straight out of an ESPN highlight reel, but his dramatic scope is novelistic." Planet B-Boy is playing in New York and Los Angeles.
PBS program Frontline is airing Bush's War, a two-part special that tells the story of how the Iraq war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the government. Watch the full program on Frontline's website.
Independent Magazine has a number of articles on distribution for independent filmmakers. Michele Meek reviews four few internet distribution venues, including MovieFlix and Jamon, to gauge how favorable they are to filmmakers. Erin Trahan interviews Patrick Kwiakowski, CEO of indie distributor Microcinema, about how to get a short film distributed, and why he still believes in DVDs. Finally, Cynthia Close, the executive director of Documentary Education Resources, writes an open letter to filmmakers seeking distribution with useful advice about doing their research and submitting to festivals.
And finally, SpoutBlog interviews AJ Schnack, founder of the Cinema Eye Awards, and Jason Kohn, maker of the Cinema Eye Award-winning Manda Bala, on its podcast, FilmCouch.
Several months ago, Yance Ford recommended a series of short films about the Iraq War entitled War Torn for our online short film festival. After a little googling, I realized that the series is already available on the Web, at Channel Four's excellent Dispatches website. So I put the DVD aside, and moved on to the pile of films that still needed reviewing. Last week, the 5-year anniversary of the Iraq War reminded me of the series and Yance's praise for it, so I dug out the DVD, and cued it up on my computer.
The daughter of a British soldier sits in her living room.
War Torn: Stories of Separation is a collection of four shorts that tell the stories of mothers and wives whose sons and husbands have gone to fight in Iraq. Filmmaker David Modell artfully combines still photography and audio to create these incredibly moving shorts that detail the impact of the Iraq War on four British families in late 2006. The women talk about life at home, and read aloud the news of the soldiers from a distance, through the letters and text messages they sent home from the battlefield. None of the families are the same after the war enters their lives.
Irene McMillian, who was part of the team behind War Torn, described the biggest challenges the team faced in the making of the films on the Channel Four website.
What we found to be the greatest obstacle to reporting the correspondence was not the transitory nature of it, it was the fear of the imagined consequences for the soldiers if they indulged in candid expression of their thoughts and feelings.
Here everything goes on behind closed doors. Many of the parents I spoke to want the public to understand what life is like for them and those at war and were only too happy to share their letters, only to be shocked by the absolute refusal to cooperate by their children. This left many parents bewildered and unable to understand such a high level of hostility to the idea. Some parents were threatened with no more letters, or a considerable censoring of information. [link]
After watching these films and reading through the site, I found myself thinking about my own father's service in World War II and his unwillingness to talk about it much with my mother, myself and my sister. He was at war long before our family (and I) existed, and I wondered what he was like before the war — had it changed him, too? — and how my life might have been different if he had served in Vietnam instead, during my childhood. These intimate stories inspired me to reflect on my own family's experience with war in a way that a lot of the nightly news interviews I've seen with soldiers' families haven't. The combination of the women's voices, the use of still photography and the thoughtful pacing invites viewers to put themselves in these women's places and imagine what would happen if one of our own family members was sent to Iraq.
It's a tear-filled journey, but an important one, I think. Watch War Torn.*
* WARNING: These videos contain some strong language.
Yance Ford, P.O.V.'s series producer, muses on Tongues Untied, a landmark P.O.V. film — and one of the most controversial. The film has just been released on DVD by Strand Releasing.
Brother to Brother. Brother to Brother.
Brother to Brother. Brother to Brother.
Five men recite this phrase in staccato rhythm during the hypnotic opening of the film Tongues Untied (P.O.V. 1991) by Marlon Riggs, which is being released this week on DVD. I watched the film for the umpteenth time as I prepared to write this post and found myself nostalgic (again) for the days when black men of all orientations addressed each other as "brother" — rather than "nigger" or "nigga" — or however you spell it. Riggs ends the film with the statement "Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act." He was right then and he remains so. But I digress.
If, on July 16th, 1991, you were living in a market where your local PBS station hadn't refused to air the program, you would have witnessed what is still the most sage analysis of blackness, gay identity and racism ever captured on film. Tongues Untied aired during the vitriolic culture wars of the 90s (as opposed to the Internet-fuelled semi-polite culture wars of the new century) and quickly became the whipping boy of the late Senator Jesse Helms. Helms infamously called the film "Tongues United" while ranting against it, PBS, the NEA and homosexuals from the Senate floor.
Riggs never backed down from these and the many other attacks he faced, and defended not only his right to make his work and have it aired on PBS, but to have the tax dollars of gay Americans (no pun intended) considered in the discussion of what deserves public funding. A month after the broadcast, Riggs wrote in Current Magazine:
Paradoxically, the Tongues Untied censorship hysteria has helped re-kindle an essential public debate: who is to have access to so-called "public" media and on what terms? Who should represent "minority" perspectives and experience? Above all, who has the authority to draw the thin line between innocuous "diversity" and unacceptable "deviance"?
Sixteen years and two wars later, we still haven't answered these questions, and Riggs' landmark film remains a relevant as ever.
Riggs' essay for Current can be read in its entirety here. The dvd is available at Strand Releasing. It's also part of the P.O.V. 20th Anniversary Collection.
Anne del Castillo, P.O.V.'s director of development, was in California last week for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. She saw some great films while she was there — here's her report on what to look out for.
Presented by the Center for Asian American Media, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is the nation's largest showcase for more than 120 new Asian and Asian American films. Festival director Chi-hui Yang and his team always put together an amazing lineup and events. In just the two days that I was there, I saw a range of films that reflect the broad diversity of Asian and Asian American cinema. The festival took place over 11 days, so this is just a tiny slice of what was shown there.
At P.O.V., we've had the good fortune of working with Oscar-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu on the broadcast of her stunning documentary In the Realms of the Unreal (P.O.V. 2005) about outsider artist Henry Darger, so I was eager to see her narrative feature debut. It wasn't until the film was introduced that I realized I'd been mixing up my cultural references: Ping Pong Playa is about a Chinese-American wannabe hip-hop b-ball player, and not a Latino update of Beach Blanket Bingo. Though some might say the film is predictable, for me it was reminiscent of a John Hughes film, with Jimmy Tsai as the reluctant, if not implausible, hero, "C-dub," who must cast aside his aspirations to become the first Chinese-American basketball star in order to defend his family's honor in the Golden Cock Ping Pong Tournament. Though a dramatic departure from her documentary work, Yu proves to be just as skilled at producing an off-the-wall, hilarious comedy.
On the other side of the spectrum is 19-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf's Buddha Collapsed from Shame. The beautiful, but devastating film set in Afghanistan marks the feature debut of the youngest daughter of Iranian filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar). The film opens with the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, setting the atmosphere for the rest of the film, which plays like a documentary as we follow little Baktay in her quest to go to school like her friend Abbas. Along the way, she is confronted with one hurdle after another, and the film succeeds in depicting the sense of terror that years of violence and struggle have imposed on the country. The film received the Peace Prize at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.
Read more after the jump...
The documentary blogosphere weighs in with reactions to the inaugural Cinema Eye Awards held last week in New York City. Our own Yance Ford offered her reaction last week. The Reeler Blog's S.T. VanAirsdale summarizes the evening as well, calling it an evening "organized by friends for friends" and criticizing the awards for bowing to the establishment orbit. Mark Rosenberg at the Rooftop Films Blog praises the awards but also suggests improvements for future iterations of the awards, including creating an "Underexposed Award" for films that didn't get a theatrical release.
The trailer for Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris's much-anticipated documentary about Abu Ghraib, has been released. (via The Documentary Blog).
Cinematical reviews a number of documentaries from the recent SXSW film festival, including Some Assembly Required, about teams of middle school kids from around the country who compete in the National Toy Competition; Bama Girl, an examination of race through the Homecoming Queen competition at the University of Alabama; Intimidad, the story of a young, poor Mexican couple saving up money to buy a piece of property for themselves; and We Are Wizards, a look at Harry Potter fandom, and the "Wizard Rock" bands that have been formed by Harry Potter fans. For more reviews of SXSW films, visit Cinematical.
The Independent Blog writers were also at SXSW, and they wonder whether the films screened there will find a wider audience.
Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
One of my favorite bands in the 1980s, Depeche Mode, used to sing: "get the balance right."
I might be the first person to quote David Gahan in defense of the mission of the nonfiction writer (what a way to hack at my own credibility), but that's the state I'm in. I have always tried to be fair in my writing, as was the case in a story I wrote for The New York Observer last week about Celia Maysles and her new documentary Wild Blue Yonder. Her film is about trying to come to terms with the memory of her late father David Masyles, the legendary documentarian who made such iconic films as Salesman (P.O.V. 1990), Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens with his brother, Albert Maysles. She made the film as a way to resolve her own identity crisis as well as to get people talking about her father again. The problem was, when she approached her uncle Albert, he refused to grant her access to footage of her dad because of a legal dispute he'd had over the rights to the films he had made with his brother and also, he says, because he's making his own autobiographical film.
I spent a fair amount of time with Celia, getting to know her and her motivations as best I could. Unfortunately, Albert declined to talk with me other than issuing a statement. I ended up writing a story that I crafted as objectively and as respectfully as possible. But sometimes, you just can't win. When I went to the Cinema Eye Honors this week, a documentary filmmaker who is close to Celia told me at the after party that my piece was "snarky." Huh? I can't recall a snippet of snark in the entire piece. I do, however, recall several instances where I pulled punches. If you care to, please read the piece, and let me know where there's snark. I don't see it.
I asked my accuser where the "snark" was, but couldn't elicit an answer. Was it because I spend a lot of time discussing the dispute between Celia's family and her uncle? Please — Celia and many of the people involved in the film admitted that that tension drove the film — so you know it's got to drive an article about the making of the film.
Or maybe it's "snarky" because I quote director Bruce Sinofsky dissing Albert Masyles. But, wait — he actually said those things. And frankly, more was said, but I decided not to include even more contentious comments from other filmmakers, partly because one of the interviewees was probably drunk at the time, but mostly because I thought it wasn't necessary to go there to tell the story I was trying to tell.
So, harrumph. It's just another reminder that you can't please everyone. But it strikes me as ironic that a documentary filmmaker couldn't empathize with a writer's endeavor to tell a truthful story that is also compelling. It's always harder when you're on the other side of the pen/camera/keypad.
Watching
ESPN presents the documentary Black Magic, the story of basketball players at historically black colleges and universities during the Civil Rights Era.
Jessica Yu's (In the Realm of the Unreal, P.O.V. 2005) Protagonist.
Alive in Baghdad, a weekly news program by Iraqi journalists distributed online.
Hard Road Home on PBS's Independent Lens.
Reading
"Sister Dorothy" and "Wellness" Big Winners at SXSW From indieWire
The Maysles Maze: Documentarian's Daughter Searches for Dad
Tom Roston talks to Celia Maysles about Wild Blue Yonder, her new film about documentary legend David Maysles. From The Observer
Chicago 10 Director Brett Morgen
Morgen talks to indieWire about his film, which revisits the events of the 1968 Democratic Convention.
Top 25 Festivals for Documentaries
Filmmaker and blogger AJ Schnack surveys the best festivals that showcase nonfiction film.
Cinema Eye Honors: Audience Choice Award
Vote for your favorite documentary of 2007 from nine nominees.
Yance Ford, P.O.V.'s series producer, attended the inaugural Cinema Eye Awards on March 18th. She writes in with some of her thoughts on what she liked and didn't like about the awards. For a complete list of winners, visit the website of the Cinema Eye Honors.
Gathered in decidedly more casual attire than the Academy Awards, the docuratti (the non-profit version of the gliterratti) celebrated the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors on Tuesday night at the IFC Center in NYC. Launched by filmmaker AJ Schnack and documentary programmer Thom Powers this past year, and sponsored by distributor Indie Pix, the Cinema Eye Honors were born out of frustration over many industry awards (like the Oscars) giving short shrift to documentary films that pushed the craft envelope.
Thom Powers strode to the podium to the Jackson Five to open the evening's festivities. He was followed shortly by AJ Schnack singing a brief song about Manda Bala, one of the nominated films, to the tune of Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Powers and Schnack, co-chairs of the Cinema Eye Honors, were ebullient as they welcomed many of documentary films' greatest names to the virgin outing of Cinema Eye. Working in partnership with the folks at Indie Pix and producer Pamela Cohn, Schnack and Powers pulled off a minor miracle (they planned the event in just a few months), and our congratulations go out to them.
The ceremony was energetic and punctuated by tributes to St. Claire Bourne and Tony Silver, documentary pioneers who died unexpectedly in recent months. The pre-ceremony gathering was jovial (and smartly lacked alcohol) as documentary folk from far and wide turned out in an enormous show of support for the new awards. The knowledge and experience in the IFC theater last night was incredible. Presenters included Sam Pollard, Barbara Koppel, Ross Kauffman, Molly Thompson, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, Marshall Curry, Alex Gibney and Alan Berliner; the groundbreaking documentaries represented by those names are astounding, never mind the rest of the audience.
For its first time out, Cinema Eye has done a tremendous service to the documentary community in the same do-it-yourself spirit that gets films made. I overheard the phrase "well, next year" often, and I'm sure that in the coming months, AJ, Thom and Indie Pix (with lots of input, no doubt) will improve upon their model for the 2009 Cinema Eye Awards. My personal suggestion would include a discussion about how films with a limited festival life that go straight to TV might be included in the awards. I'd also like to see the list of craft categories expanded to include composition, writing and sound. I know that these questions and others are on the minds of everyone at Cinema Eye, and I look forward to hearing and contributing to the coming conversations.
I know Thom Powers to be a thoughtful, passionate programmer and a great filmmaker in his own right. But his opening remarks included a remark that I found troubling. He said that "distributors don't get it, critics don't get it and the general public doesn't get it. We wanted to fill [this auditorium] with people who get it." I'll be the first to agree that independent documentary does not get the recognition it deserves, but I don't think that the problem is the fact that the general public doesn't "get it." The problem is that the general public doesn't get to see it. And as long as the documentary community prioritizes theatrical release and festival runs over broadcast, the public will continue to miss a large and dynamic body of work. I say this not just because P.O.V. is a broadcast outlet. I say this because when I looked around the IFC last night and saw the amazing collection of people in that theater, I wanted to ask everyone, what comes next? What do you do after tonight? How to you capture this energy and turn it into something sustainable?
More after the jump...
Earlier this month, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar hit the road with Made in L.A. (P.O.V. 2007), visiting organizations and schools throughout Northern California. The film was received enthusiastically by standing-room-only crowds from Santa Cruz to San Diego. Almudena wrote in to share the experience with us and to encourage other filmmakers to tap into the strength of local community organizations.
We've just returned from an extraordinary week-long screening tour in Northern California with our documentary Made in L.A. It has been an intense and invigorating experience, and I wanted to share the story in case it can be helpful to other filmmakers and organizers.
Q&A after a screening.
The tour evolved organically — several groups in the area had contacted us after Made in L.A. was broadcast on P.O.V. on September 4th (the day after Labor Day) to invite us to come present the film in their community, university or school. The idea of a regional tour started to emerge as we heard from several groups in Northern California. In addition to the groups that had reached out to us, we contacted a few additional universities, and ended up with a five-day, seven-screening itinerary: in San Francisco at the Brava Theater, Palo Alto with Progressive Jewish Alliance, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford, Sacramento State University, UC Davis, and at the United Students Against Sweatshops High School Conference.
Read more after the jump...
Earlier this month, I headed to Austin for my first SXSW festival. I attended both the interactive and film portions of the festival, and found myself quickly overwhelmed by all the panels, conversations and parties that transform this college town into a creative mecca every March. I kept thinking, if I were ten years younger, I would be in heaven right now. My twenty-something self would have fit right in with the crowd attending this year's festival. The interactive crowd, in particular, was flamboyantly dressed, friendly, intelligent and passionate about the Web. By Saturday, I knew I had to pace my thirty-something self, or I would find myself slumped over my keyboard twittering ZZZzzz's to the world.
Trying to hit the right balance between the frenetic pace of the interactive offerings and the (somewhat) slower pace of the film fest, I headed to the movies on Sunday to see the doc that piqued my personal interest the most. Beautiful Losers had its world premiere in Austin to a nearly packed house at the Paramount Theater on Congress Street. The film by Aaron Ross and Joshua Leonard was billed as a "collective portrait of ten artists" who sparked the "most influential cultural movement of our generation."
The artists documented included some favorites of mine — Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey — and others I wasn't as familiar with, so I was very excited to learn more about the early days of the D-I-Y movement, their inspiration and the story of how they became who they are today in the art world.
More after the jump...
Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
As promised last week, I bring you the worst documentaries of all time! It's really hard to imagine such a list could be cobbled together, but after I perused the top-rated documentaries based on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes, I was curious to see what would show up at the bottom. So, here's the list of the most poorly-reviewed films on the site (the highest rating is a 10):
See the list after the jump...
Anne del Castillo, P.O.V.'s director of development and special projects, just returned from SXSW. She reports on what it was like to return to her old stomping grounds in Austin.
I remember a conversation that I had with film bloggers Joel Heller, Agnes Varnum, and Sarah Jo Marks at SXSW last year: Joel told us that he'd stopped doing "real-time" blogging during festivals, because it was too much to balance screening, connecting and distilling all at once. This year, having attempted my first "blog report" from SXSW, I now get what he was saying. Following is a hybrid on-the-spot/look-back at my three-day, whirlwind run at the festival.
Friday: My "Secondary" Life
7:20 a.m. When I get to the security check-in at Newark Airport, I'm told by airport security that my driver's license has expired. I have no other ID on me, and my flight is in 30 minutes. "Does this mean I'm going to miss my flight?" I ask. The security agent assures me that it won't, "but it will take a little longer to board," as he streaks pink highlighter and scribbles S's all over my boarding pass. "We've got a secondary!" he hollers to his colleagues, who proceed to take turns announcing my arrival at each checkpoint — from the conveyor belt, to the puffer detector, and into the isolation booth for baggage hand-check. Finally, the secondary is cleared for passage to the gates.
Austin: Day 1.
1:30 p.m. I'm at the convention center waiting in line to pick up my badge when SXSW producer Matt Dentler walks over to give me a warm Texas welcome. He looks remarkably unfazed by the fact that it's opening day of the festival — we could just as well have been meeting for coffee, and I'm reminded of why I enjoy coming to SXSW.
Read more after the jump....
Congratulations to Tony Gerber and P.O.V. alum Jesse Moss (Speedo, P.O.V. '04) whose film Full Battle Rattle took the Special Jury Award!
They Killed Sister Dorothy by Daniel Junge won both the Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award.
Click here to see the full list of awards.
Helene Klodawsky's No More Tears Sister, a documentary about Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, a tireless crusader for human rights in Sri Lanka, aired on P.O.V. in 2006. Her latest film, Family Motel, will have its New York premiere this weekend as part of the Canadian Front series at the Museum of Modern Art.
This weekend, Helene Klodawsky's Family Motel will have its New York premiere at the Museum of Modern Art. The film follows Ayan, a Somalian refugee in Canada, and her two daughters as they struggle to cope with a sudden eviction and find themselves in a motel in a seedy neighborhood. The film is Klodawsky's first fiction feature, and it was shot on location with a nonprofessional cast.
The film has been well received in Canada, where Family Motel recently won the Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance Through Film, from one of Quebec's largest festivals, Les Rendez-vous du Cinema Quebecois. "... this is a film of great cinematographic quality that has extremely rich content and a moving and captivating story," explained the jury.
And it has already received some great reviews:
"Family Motel is one of the most important and affecting movies I've ever taken in. It speaks for the millions of marginalized refugees in the West with a degree of realism and authenticity I don't think I've ever seen on film before. Five stars for both content and cinematic art."
(Vanity Fair)
"A hard-working Somalian immigrant and her teenage girls fall victim to high rents and payments to other family members back home and slip through the Ottawa social safety net into homelessness. This gripping NFB-Instinct Films co-production resurrects the powerful fiction/documentary tradition of alternative drama and introduces the amazing non-actor family of Nargis Jibril and daughters Asha and Sagal."
(Montreal Gazette **** four stars)
If you're in New York, check out the film at one of its two screenings at MoMA:
Saturday, March 15, 2008, 2:00 p.m., MoMA Theater 1, T1
Monday, March 17, 2008, 6:00 p.m., MoMA Theater 1, T1
For more information, visit the Canadian Front, 2008 website. Family Motel is part of the Canadian Front series, organized by Laurence Kardish of the Department of Film at MoMA, and presented in association with Telefilm Canada.
Anne del Castillo, P.O.V.'s director of development and special projects, is in Austin for SXSW. The former Austin resident reminisces about her favorite movie theater and looks forward to checking it out while she's in town for the festival.
I'm really excited to go back to Austin for SXSW. Though I'm a native New Yorker (and proud of it), Austin is truly my second home. It's changed since I left in 2002 — revitalization has rendered downtown Austin almost unrecognizable to me, so that each year when I return for SXSW, I wonder if I'll find my old haunts. Fortunately, one place I can count on is the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema — the best place to see a film, hands down. Apart from the fact that you can order burgers and a pitcher of beer while watching a movie, the Alamo is a standout for its innovative programming and ongoing support of the local film scene.
Full disclosure: I got to work with the Alamo when I was at the Austin Film Society, and the owners Tim and Karrie League are good friends. But that aside, the Alamo really is an Austin institution; in 2005, Entertainment Weekly ranked it #1 among movie theaters around the country "doing it right."
And with good reason.
Read more about the Alamo after the jump...
Every Friday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the state of the documentary world in his column, Tom Roston's Doc Soup.
Are you as much of a Rotten Tomatoes junkie as I am? I've always enjoyed perusing the site's compilations of critical reactions to a film. It's about as indispensable to me as imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, where you can get information about the producers, cast, release dates and more on a film. Well, last week, I was intrigued by the polarizing reaction to Brett Morgen's Chicago 10 (The New York Times hated it, while The Boston Globe and Washington Post loved it). While looking at the various reactions to the film on Rotten Tomatoes, I began wondering what highest rated docs of all time might be. After an exhaustive (though admittedly not very scientific) search, this is what I found at the top of the list:
Still from Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, U.S.A.
Harlan County, U.S.A.
By Barbara Kopple (1976)
Rating: 9.3
Ken Burns' The Civil War
By Ken Burns (1991)
Rating: 9.2
American Dream
By Barbara Kopple (1990)
Rating: 9.1
Shoah
By Claude Lanzmann (1985)
Rating: 9
Salesman
By Albert Maysles (1968)
Rating: 8.8
Read more after the jump...
Watching
Big Think
"YouTube for smart people" (via Utne Reader Blog)
The Future of Documentary
Pat Aufderheide talks with WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi (starts at 4 minute mark)
Reading
Documentary Shorts Are Seeing New Opportunities For Life
indieWire reports on new distribution models for short films.
Documentary filmmakers, Michael Moore is here to save you!
Moore announces new foundation that will subsidize theaters to screen indie films. (via Steady Diet of Film)
Is PBS Still Necessary?
New York Times article about whether public television is still needed in today's cable TV landscape.
IN THEATERS
From The Unforeseen
Laura Dunn's The Unforeseen, executive produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, tells the story of massive real estate developments near Austin, Texas and their impact on the environment. The film, called "part straight-ahead land-war documentary and part elegiac contemplation of the earth and what humans do to it" by Salon, has received positive reviews from most critics (including our own Tom Roston). The Onion's A.V. Club says that "the movie wavers between Sundance-friendly issue film and spiritual reverie," while Entertainment Weekly gives the film a B in its short review.
The Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen chronicles the anti-war protests outside the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and the conspiracy trial of the demonstrators that followed a year later. Morgen, who also made The Kid Stays in the Picture, takes an audacious approach to The Chicago 10 by re-creating the trial through motion-capture animation, and using music by the likes of Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, and the Beastie Boys. In a rave review, The Washington Post says "Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America." The Chicago Tribune, however, says it's "inconsistent," praising the film for its use of news footage and resisting the urge to provide "outright commentary," while admonishing it for not taking its subject seriously enough. (See the trailer on YouTube.)
ON DVD
The documentary The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, showed at a number of documentary film festivals and was nominated for various awards. The film follows Mr. Vig, a never-married 82-year-old man living alone in a ramshackle castle in Denmark who wants to donate his home to the Russian Orthodox Church so that it can become a monastery. A young Russian nun arrives to supervise the extensive repairs on the castle, and their contest of wills take unexpected turns as Mr. Vig and the nun begin to find common ground. The Village Voice praises the film as a "fantastic little character portrait... [which pays] prudent attention ...to aesthetic nuances." TV Guide says that despite the strangeness of the subject, filmmaker Grønkjær has crafted "a fascinating picture" and calls The Monastery a "remarkable film."
March is National Women's History Month, so why not curl up with some films from the P.O.V. archives that celebrate amazing, courageous women from around the country?
The women showcased in these three P.O.V. films — an African-American Congresswoman running for president; a Christian teenager from Lubbock, Texas; and an Asian-American architect — are very different from each other in age, race, background, and almost everything else. But what they have in common is the determination to stand up for their vision, and to share that vision with all those around them.
CHISHOLM '72 — Unbought & Unbossed
In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became the first black woman to run for president. She championed the causes of the poor, the young, minorities, gays, women, and other marginalized Americans. Despite strong, and sometimes bigoted opposition, Shirley Chisholm struck a populist progressive chord with many Americans, and carried over 151 delegates to the 1972 Democratic Convention, where she spoke from the main podium.
Chisholm '72
In 2008, when either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton will make history as the first African American or first woman Democratic candidate for the President of the United States, let us remember Shirley Chisholm, who said, "I ran because somebody had to do it first. I ran because most people thought the country was not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate. Someday — it was time in 1972 to make that someday come."
Read more after the jump...
As we blogged a couple weeks ago in our Arthouse Confidential post about independent theaters, there's a lot of cool stuff going on at local arthouse cinemas around the country. If you're lucky enough to live near one, you can take advantage of all sorts of great opportunities to see films that may be otherwise difficult to catch on the big screen — and maybe even meet the filmmakers. Even if you don't live near one, it can be a fun excuse for a little excursion. If you're in the New York area on March 16, consider a trip up to Upstate Films in Rhinebeck — about two hours from NYC — where you can catch a screening of newly-minted Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, including a Q&A with director Alex Gibney. It's sure to be a great opportunity to ask questions about the film.
Do you know of any other cool events coming up at a local independent theater near you? Leave a comment here to share it with the P.O.V. blog community — and if you have suggestions for theaters we should write about, please let us know!
IndieWire reports today that Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal's Tribeca Film Festival Institute is joining forces with Renew Media, the New York organization that has supported independent filmmakers since 1990. The new organization will be led by Renew Media's Brian Newman and combines the programs, staff, and boards of the two organizations.
"What we are trying to say is that the Institute is a year-round home for filmmakers and new media artists," Brian Newman told indieWIRE this weekend as the Tribeca Film Institute began to get the word out about its move. "We are developing it into a true institute, based in New York, with an international focus."
The new Tribeca Film Institute will also seek space in downtown Manhattan for the organization, providing a permanent space for exhibitions, screening rooms, and meetings. Full details of the merger are expected to be announced today.
