Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
It's head-scratching season again, which is to say: it's Oscar time. Last week, the shortlist of 15 documentaries being considered for the five Academy Award nominations was announced. And, sure enough, there were some head-scratchers out there.
The most confounding was the exclusion of Michael Moore's Capitalism. Sure, this further confirms what I said a few weeks ago that he's lost his luster but the Academy took things way too far. Almost as surprising was that RJ Cutler's The September Issue didn't get a chance at a nod, and perhaps not as surprising but equally unjust was that Sacha Gervasi's Anvil: The Story of Anvil was left out in the cold.
Read more after the jump...
A few weeks ago, I spoke with Tod Lending, director of 
I got to ruminating over these questions when I began considering how, this September, we saw the two most popular documentary filmmakers release new works practically right on top of each other: Ken Burns' 
Tod Lending: It came about in an interesting way. It was the first time I was approached by a foundation for an RFP (a request for proposal). They sent it out to 16 filmmakers across the country and we were to submit a preliminary proposal that clearly stated our interests and intentions. The Wallace Foundation wanted us to look at the issue of principal leadership. Each filmmaker sent in 5-page proposals, and then they gave 3 out of the 16 filmmakers $10,000 grants to further the proposal. 
The writer, Michael Cieply, asserts that the report, which is based on interviews with some 50 doc filmmakers, "came to some conclusions that could shock those schooled in conventional journalistic ethics."
So I was interested in watching 
However, it can get really tricky when you have two conflicting liberal social agendas, and the film addresses just one, and pretty much ignores the other. I'm talking about this week's POV broadcast of 
In a statement about the joint venture with Chipotle, Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner carefully asserts that Chipotle is a company "on the right track." Indeed, in addition to serving fresh-tasting food, the chain's beans are about 30% organic, which is either a laudable or laughable statistic, depending on your point of view.
I was most moved by the long shot of an empty park at dusk, the light fading in the trees. It is foreboding at the same time that it is utterly mundane, as we hear the sister talk about finding out about her brother's death. As joggers run by, the shot of the park, where the crime occurred, goes on so long, it almost has an anti-cinematic quality. Eventually, the lights come on in the park and the sister breathes heavily. The camera doesn't move; it feels like one of those Warhol real-time movies. (Read more in the 
Sorry to hear you didn't like the film; I certainly can't please everyone. I find discussions about opinions to be fairly pointless because in the subjective evaluation of things artistic, there is no right or wrong. For example, you weren't crazy about the editing; 
Suzy, Tony, Neil, et al. (The 
But Style Wars shows that there was plenty of beauty poking up between the grime and filth. I remember that time period vividly (most of all, the screeching sound of the trains), and so I have to insist that anyone who lives in New York City, or cares about this city, should check out the film. From its breathtaking opening (which I mentioned during my Best Moments post), to the on-the-street interviews, and most of all to showing the great trains and graffiti of New York, Style Wars does more to recapture that era of New York City than any Serpico or Dog Day Afternoon or Tootsie ever could. Check out 
And now, this weekend, we have 
The questions are rising again, with Cohen's latest film, Bruno, slated for July. The 
4: 
The restoration of Hearts and Minds was done by Mike Pogorzelski, the chief archivist for the Motion Picture Academy. They used their own lab and went over the film literally frame by frame. What they came up with is more than a restoration in my view; I'd call it a rejuvenation. The picture actually looks better, fresher with more articulation than it did when we first completed the film in 1974. The sound has also been refreshed in a way that makes it sharper, more legible in a way that's rare in documentaries. God knows how much they spent on this process, but it took two years.
Vassiliki Khonsari: I wanted the music to contribute to the story line. I did not want the music to just be there to push the images along. The music in Pulling John is there to heighten the existing narrative and mood, while avoiding expectations. Because it's an arm-wrestling movie, people may immediately associate arm-wrestling as a bar-room activity, with oil-guzzling truck drivers as the participants, which lends itself to a very rock 'n' roll/hard rock music style. However, the personal journeys we were conveying and the reality of the characters in Pulling John, are very far from just hard rock, so using rock music would make the movie one-dimensional. Instead, I wanted to focus on playing with the audience's perceptions of what they were seeing — arm-wrestling, set against music that would recall a more noble sound recognition. Whether it is a superman, epic sound for John Brzenks' intro piece, or a more warrior-samurai sound for John when he is at the table competing in Japan, or even as basic as Alexey's very Russian polka, we wanted the music to recall another story, to compliment the existing one.
Arthur Bradford: It's been a pretty roundabout journey really. We had a great debut in Toronto and felt a lot of excitement. But that was September 10th, 2001, and by the next morning people had more important things on their minds. But the doc got picked up for broadcast by HBO/Cinemax and was later released on DVD; it also played on several local PBS stations. So it was successful in our eyes. I went on to write fiction and continued working at the summer camp where we all first met. We did a bunch of festival screenings and college tours with the cast and had some interesting offers for future projects. The best one was a chance to bring the team to the Democratic and Republican conventions in 2004. We made a half hour special for Trio, the cable network, and we got surprisingly good access to big name politicians and celebrities like Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Ben Affleck. The special turned out so well it led us to think that maybe we could make a series of half-hour broadcasts. We shopped the idea around and MTV showed interest and funded a pilot in 2006. Ronnie, one of our stars, got leukemia and we considered not continuing, but everyone else felt strongly about it and we found a new reporter, Jeremy Vest, who is a great addition. Ronnie is in remission now, but still too fragile to travel with us. Anyway, after a huge amount of deliberation on the part of MTV, they picked up our show for a series and we got to work, very excited about the opportunity.
When I say that the show is "new," that's kind of a misnomer. I saw this in doc feature form — with the same title on the same subject — the night before September 11 (yeah, that 9/11) at the Toronto Film Festival. I was drawn to it because I went to grade school with Arthur Bradford, who is the man behind the film's genesis. Arthur had been working at a summer camp for people with disabilities when he introduced a video camera to them. And then things took off. 
Rafferty is an interesting guy: he made his biggest splash with 1982's The Atomic Cafe, the doc that compiled U.S. propaganda films from the 1940s and1950s about the atomic bomb. Since then, he's directed a few other films I hadn't heard of (and he worked as the cameraman on Michael Moore's Roger and Me and D.A. Pennebaker's The War Room). He went to Harvard himself — and he also happens to be a cousin of former President George W. Bush, who was at Yale in 1968. 
I was really intrigued by Omaar, who related his own personal history as a Somali/British filmmaker, connecting his roots to that of a boy herding goats in Somalia. I looked up Omaar and saw that he's a pretty big deal in the UK, having been a frontline reporter for the BBC in Iraq for many years. (The Washington Post apparently called him the "Scud Stud.")
Here's my moment of blasphemy: I actually didn't love Man on Wire. I am embarrassed to say it, because everyone so universally adores this doc. And I recognize what a great bit of filmmaking it is. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I especially liked the archival footage. And to top it off, I grew up in New York City and have some murky memories of the actual wire walk, so I feel a personal connection to the moment.
There's a bunch of other compelling docs to look out for, including Liz Garbus' Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech which takes her out of prisons and more intimate settings into a more macro arena; Dirt! The Movie (sounds good to me — I'm there); and I'm definitely going to see Good Hair, in which Chris Rock grapples with the very important political issue of African-Americans and their hair. This could be one of the most popular docs of 2009. In fact, I wonder if Rock tackles the hair on the subject of the other hotly anticipated doc-to-see in 2009, the one about Barack Obama. 
But there's much more to it than that. Reading the Milk production notes, I noticed that Van Sant gives props to the work of Fredrick Wiseman and none other than the granddaddy of docs, Robert Flaherty. "The reason that we like [Wiseman] is that he is usually shooting something completely compelling and somewhat rough," Van Sant says. "Because the situations he is filming in don't allow elaborate equipment or lights. Yet he is completely relaxed in the face of very intense places and people."
I wrote 
And I've talked about how dramatically moving it is (I defy anyone to sit through it without shedding a tear). But I recently learned from Kuras that there is something else to add about this powerful doc: the music. 
And have you heard that actor Edward Norton is producing a War Room-type doc, following the Obama campaign? It's being helmed by newbie documentary directors Amy Rice and Alicia Sims. Will this be the next War Room? Or much more? It certainly has the potential to be. The last I heard, HBO is rumored to be circling the film, with the intent of airing it in the early part of 2009. That'll be a must-see.
But the guy who gets to sit alone in a chair and wag his finger, is Patrick Creadon, who directed Wordplay in 2006, and who brought us 
On November 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered in a parking lot in western Pennsylvania; the prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John's, Canada, where she announced that she was pregnant with Andrew's child. She named the little boy Zachary.
Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Andrew's oldest friend, began making a film for little Zachary as a way for him to get to know the father he'd never meet. But when Shirley Turner was released on bail in Canada and was given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the United States, the film's focus shifted to Zachary's grandparents, David and Kathleen Bagby, and their desperate efforts to win custody of the boy from the woman they knew had murdered their son.
This idea started with the really impressive box office receipts for Bill Maher's Religulous. The movie has already made more than $4 million, and, let's be honest here (
Maher is taking it to world religions and he doesn't show mercy on the faithful plebes who aren't as quick-witted as he is. In fact, he dances circles around them so mercilessly, the film teeters on pushing its viewers to feel sympathy for even the most backward religious zealot. He doesn't bother interviewing levelheaded individuals who can talk sensibly about their faith. He takes it to the crackpots. 
I jest, of course. There's been a long history of tension between documentary folks who eke out a miserable living making docs, and those directors who jump the wall and enter the more lucrative world of fiction features. I've spoken with the likes of Jeffrey Blitz, who made Spellbound, and then had to suffer some slings and arrows for crossing over to make 2007's Rocket Science. "I never claimed to be just a documentary filmmaker," he told me the day Rocket Science hit theaters last year. "I'm a filmmaker." Even Michael Moore took a shot at fiction with the bomb Canadian Bacon in 1995. And I know Nanette Burstein (American Teen) is talking about her next film being a fiction feature. 
The film follows the lives of five teenagers in Warsaw, Indiana, through basketball games, heartbreak and graduation. It's really not a world apart from a lot of the reality television you can catch at home. In fact, one of the stars of the show, Megan, the "princess" in the group, told me that director Nannette Burstein told her it "would be a lot like Laguna Beach." What does set it apart is the fact that Burstein gets closer to these kids, in a more honest and unexploitative way. She shot a thousand hours of footage and really won the trust of these kids. And I have to say that the film does indeed feel different than a Laguna Beach or The Hills show because of its sincerity — but also for some cinematic tricks that Burstein implements, some to great effect (visually tracing a series of text messages that the kids send during filming) and others less so (using computer animation to visualize the subjects' fantasies).
Now, I know the subjects are quite different, and some might consider comparing a fictional film to a non-fiction film blasphemous, but I think that 9 Star Hotel director Ido Haar has managed to recreate the feeling, the mood and even the characters of Vittorio De Sica's brilliant neorealist film from 1948. De Sica's movie is a work of fiction, yes, but it did use "real" people for the crowd scenes. The film feels real, as it tells the story of a man whose bicycle is stolen as he is looking for work. He then goes out to search for the bike with his son. Not much of a plot, right? But neither is there much of a storyline in the life of the boys of 9 Star Hotel. But what both films do is depict a time and a place with what feels like seamless authenticity. And I think both films tell the same tale: ordinary men desperately trying to eke out a living. And between the soulful, hungry looks of the young men, the stark settings and the bleak final notes, I just have to see the two films in the same light. And so, maybe I should tweak what I wrote earlier: it is De Sica who who recreated a reality that has changed little in the past sixty years. And it is Haar who has managed to capture it.
I spoke with Snagfilms CEO Rick Allen (previously of the National Geographic Society and Discovery Communications), who walked me through the site."What's making this possible are two things: One, a group of investors who care about independent films and in social change, and who are willing to underwrite a big, professional expensive effort," he said. "And, two: Filmmakers who are trying to figure out the best way to use the opportunities to use digital platforms to reach an audience and to monetize their content." (In addition to watching the film online, viewers are given the opportunity to buy the dvd.)
Luckily, Roman Polanski is a great test subject because, boy, it was good. It's expertly told, well-paced, with great archival footage and strong music. But more than anything else: great access to interview subjects who are treated fairly. Director Marina Zenovich interviews the woman with whom Polanski had sex when she was 13. Although I am not sure what everyone has been saying about how objective Zenovich has been — to me, she clearly is advocating a reassessment of the public perception of Polanski (just as, I think it's fair to say, is the woman who was the victim of the crime). Sure, Zenovich does so without being dogmatic about it, but that's just because she had handled the subject matter with intelligence and just the right dose of showmanship.
I recently went to see 
Of course, they'd have to start with Roger Rabbit and Me, in which grumpy documentarian Michael Moore has to save the animated Roger Rabbit from getting fired from his job in Toontown. Wouldn't it be cute to see Moore harassing Scrooge McDuck and agitating to get the 'toon characters a fair wage? And, well, I'd love to watch Errol Morris interview Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. His truth-telling techniques strike me to be remarkably similar to the evil Queen's magical mirror, so he would certainly be able to dig to the greater truths of why Grumpy is so grumpy and, really, what exactly Snow White is doing in the woods with her seven dysfunctional friends. 
I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times 
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. 
What really makes The Unforeseen stand out is that it breaks new ground in what could be dubbed the poetic documentary genre. First-time director Laura Dunn does more than chronicle a history, she imbues it with visual resonance, taking the time to shoot Texas fields of grass and gurgling brooks with the cinematic panache that recalls the gorgeous cinematography of fiction narrative director Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line). And for good reason: long-time Austinite Malick was the executive producer of The Unforeseen. His input, as well as that of director of photography, Lee Daniel (who has shot most of Richard Linklater's films, including Slacker and Dazed and Confused), is apparent throughout the documentary. Dunn and company may even go overboard in achieving beautiful imagery, such as when a wizened farmer clutches a sickle and stands in a field watching a construction crew ripping up the earth. But I'll forgive them that. The film feels like a feature-length version of that early 1970s "Keep America Beautiful" ad with the Native American (Chief Iron Eyes Cody) wandering through garbage heaps, and eventually shedding a tear (see the ad on 
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 
