Each week, we'll highlight links from the "Watching" and "Reading" sidebars on the right side of the page.
WATCHING
Michael Moore's Sicko named Best Documentary at the 17th annual Gotham Awards on Tuesday night.
The Webby Awards name 12 "most influential online videos of all time."
Watch daily reports from the International Documentary Film Festival going on this week in Amsterdam, as well as trailers and shorts on IDFA TV.
Check out Wholphin, the new DVD magazine of rare and unseen short films from McSweeney's.
A new documentary about crusader Ralph Nader comes to PBS's Independent Lens in December. Watch the trailer.
READING
University of Florida Blog: This week, the Documentary Institute hosts P.O.V. producer Yance Ford.
The nominations for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced on Monday morning by ceremony hosts Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow in Los Angeles. The Spirit Awards celebrate independent (and low budget) filmmaking. Eligible films must be at least 70 minutes long, and the cost of the completed film, including post-production, must be under $20 million to qualify for consideration.
2008 Best Documentary Nominations
(Award given to the director)
Crazy Love
Director: Dan Klores
Lake of Fire
Director: Tony Kaye
Manufactured Landscapes
Director: Jennifer Baichwal
The Monastery
Director: Pernille Rose Grønkjær
The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
Directors: Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker
Thanksgiving: a time for family, food, more food and for some, football. But for those of us who aren't interested in football but still keen to sit on the couch and watch TV while digesting our turkey, there are a number of recent food-related documentaries that are both entertaining and provocative.
from Our Daily Bread
Our Daily Bread, the 2006 documentary by Austrian Nikolaus Geyrhalter, is an elegant, unblinking look at the European food production industry. Made without narration, music or talking heads, the film presents beautifully composed scenes — from the killing floors of poultry factories to the symmetrical, endless farming fields — that reveal where modern food comes from.
I just came back from the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest. In addition to screenings around the clock, there were a host of great panels, presentations, pitch sessions and parties. Director Heather Croall and staff should be congratulated for putting on a fantastic event.
According to the festival's website, more than 1200 delegates from around the world attended the event. Some of the highlights included the European premiere of Grant Gee's Joy Division, a Channel Four interview with acclaimed filmmaker Kim Longinotto, master classes with Louis Theroux and Brian Hill and more.
I spoke about P.O.V. and our work with Web 2.0 technologies around documentary films on the Docs 3.0 panel (part of the festival's DigiDocs 360 program) and served as one of the judges for the Crossover and Cross-Media Challenge pitch competitions. I also tried to watch as many films as I could (though I didn't see nearly as many as I wanted), and had a number of interesting conversations in the Showroom Bar, the social hub of the festival. Sheffield Doc/Fest is one of the premiere documentary festivals in the world, and for filmmakers, members of the documentary industry and documentary fans, it's five intense days of talking, watching and living docs.
