Trust me, I am not happy about this. Full Battle Rattle is a very good doc: directed by Tony Gerber and Jess Moss (who made Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story which aired on P.O.V. in 2004, and I'm told is a filmmaker to look out for), the film examines a U.S. army game-simulation exercise that is conducted in California's Mojave Desert. It's basically a really elaborate version of laser tag used to train U.S. soldiers. They have a town, real Iraqi exiles who play villagers and police, U.S. soldiers who play insurgents, and then they send in American soldiers to see if they can maintain peace in the village. The film is well-shot and interesting; it's compelling to watch the simulation and illuminating to hear about the lives of the soldiers as well as the Iraqis "living" in the village.
But what struck me most about the film is how generously it treated the soldiers. Not that that's surprising, but it got me thinking about how so many of the docs about Iraq have been respectful to our soldiers. As they should be. Even Errol Morris's SOP, Gibney's Taxi to the Darkside and last year's No End in Sight by Charles Ferguson, three films that decry the war, manage to represent American soldiers as brave men and women caught up in a situation beyond their control. And, for that, I think we should take a moment to reflect: the "liberal" doc world has managed to turn out a lot of strong films about the war while honoring the humanity and sacrifices of the soldiers. (I should note that on October 16, P.O.V. will air Soldiers of Conscience; I look forward to seeing if this film can be counted along with these others). It makes me think back to Murderball, when those injured Iraqi war vets met with the disabled wheelchair rugby players. It was such a poignant moment, one of many that docs have brought us regarding American soldiers since this Iraq war mess.
So, I'll take back that initial "Ack!" and put aside all the kicking stones that many of us (including me) do regarding the withering reception docs are getting in theaters, and instead tip my hat to filmmakers like Moss and Gerber for providing a lasting document from this era that we will all be proud of.
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!
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 Meekreviews four few internet distribution venues, including MovieFlix and Jamon, to gauge how favorable they are to filmmakers. Erin Trahaninterviews 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.
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.
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...?!?!
Ah, the flush feeling of having a documentary that receives high accolades and big box office returns! As I mentioned last week, not many doc filmmakers have felt that way this year, which puts Charles Ferguson among the elite few. I was at a fancy screening and reception this week for his film No End in Sight, a great doc about how the U.S. got into such a quagmire in Iraq. The movie was shown at Scandinavia House on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The audience included former jailed New York Times journalist Judith Miller, who took copious notes. Afterwards we were whisked away in cars to be wined and dined at a private room in the Hotel Plaza Athenee. No End in Sight is deservedly winning plenty of critics' awards, has mustered $1.4 million at the box office, and there's buzz that it could be the movie to beat at the Oscars.
Ferguson was in a good mood, as well he should be. I talked to him about all the other movies this year that have not been as well received as his. For Ferguson, the two most tragically under-loved and underseen movies this year were Manda Bala by Jason Kohn, the multi-dimensional story of Brazilian culture by way of frog farming and the kidnapping epidemic there, and Hot House by Shimon Dotan, which takes a close look at Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli prison.
I haven't seen Hot House, but I had to agree with Ferguson about Manda Bala: it is one of my favorite unseen docs from this year, along with My Kid Could Paint That by Amir Bar-Lev and War/Dance by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix.
A film still from Manda Bala
At first viewing, I wasn't really taken with Manda Bala, mainly because of the poor image quality. I wasn't sure whether to blame the Angelika Theater's projector (and not just the F train rumbling underneath) for throwing off the image, or blame the poor image quality on the film itself. Ferguson, however, assured me that the film looks gorgeous when it's screened properly; director Jason Kohn used the same camera lens Stanley Kubrick developed for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even with my frustrations with the film quality, though, I was still swept away by Kohn's complex tale. The director once worked under Errol Morris and the film owes much to Morris' affectionate way with both victims of injustice and the plain bizarreness of humanity.
As the curtain rises on another entry into the blogosphere, let me quickly introduce myself: My name is Tom Roston, and I was a Senior Editor at Premiere magazine — where I covered movies 24/7 for ten years — until that publication folded this year. I have always been a passionate fan of documentaries, particularly theatrical docs, and had planned for years to write a feature celebrating the most influential documentaries of all time at Premiere. I missed my chance, so now I'm deeply grateful to the good people at P.O.V., who have thrown out a small patch of carpet on the Internet for me to expound on everything doc-related. I'll be writing a post every week here on the P.O.V. Blog, and I plan to write about whatever documentary issues are on my mind or are on the minds of P.O.V. Blog visitors like you. I'll be happy to field whatever you've got — whether it's gripes, groans or gratuitous gossip.
But enough about me — let's start with a bang. Or, rather, the whimper heard at the box office this year by documentaries. What the heck happened? Since 2003, each year has seen at least one monster box office winner (with over $10 million in receipts) alongside at least six other films that make more than a million dollars. But not this year. The big fish was once again served up by Michael Moore (Sicko has made more than $24 million), but the only other films in the million dollar club are the Iraq War doc No End in Sight and In the Shadow of the Moon, which chronicled NASA's Apollo Mission. (In the Shadow of the Moon can hardly be seen as a financial success considering that distributor ThinkFilm paid more than $2 million to acquire the rights to release it.)
The most common explanations I've heard from distributors and filmmakers are the following: It's cyclical (so, don't worry); There's a glut of product (so, it'll sort itself out); and all independent and/or serious fiction films are taking a hit, so docs might as well too (so, don't worry, it'll sort itself out). I've also heard rumblings that it's the distributors' fault, that they're overreaching in their marketing plans, going for too mainstream an audience. And that with so many docs released in the fall season in an attempt to capitalize on Oscar heat, the films were lost in a sea of serious fictional releases. On the other hand, I've heard counter rumblings that it's the filmmakers' faults, that the films themselves are just not up to the caliber of previous years.
The Film Independent's 2008 Spirit Award nominees were announced on Tuesday, and quite a few of the docs (in both the Best Documentary category and the Truer Than Fiction category) are already available on DVD. Here's your chance to check out some of the nominated films well before the winners are announced on February 23, 2008.
Star Spangled Blues (2006) is a contemplative and moving look at why we fight war. Narrated by Iranian-American Gita Saedi, the film uses archival materials, memoir and music to weave together Gita's story of a once pacifist cousin serving in Iran, the rise and fall of two empires that span centuries, and hope as seen in her son and the next generation. The film is all the more startling when you take into consideration the fact that it was written, shot and edited in just five days.
The nominations for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced on Monday morning by ceremony hosts Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow in Los Angeles. The Spirit Awards celebrate independent (and low budget) filmmaking. Eligible films must be at least 70 minutes long, and the cost of the completed film, including post-production, must be under $20 million to qualify for consideration.
2008 Best Documentary Nominations
(Award given to the director)
The Starz Denver Film Festival is taking place this week and I just listened to a great podcast of a panel held yesterday about the role of documentary filmmakers in covering the war in Iraq. The festival is featuring several new non-fiction films about Iraq including Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan's Soldiers of Conscience, and Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker.
Former Rocky Mountain News film critic Robert Denerstein moderated a wide-ranging discussion about the war, the films being made about it, and whether doc filmmakers are filling a gap in news coverage about the war that Americans are seeing on TV. The panel included filmmakers Weimberg, Ryan, and Davenport, as well as Iraq War veteran Spc. Russell Peterson and Iraq native, retired pychatrist, and Middle East consultant Dr. David Kazzaz.
During the Docs 3.0 panel at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, my fellow panelist Paula Le Dieu talked about how Web technologies are allowing for new forms of storytelling, specifically through what she called visualization. Here are some of the visualization websites she highlighted, which provide visitors a new understanding of very complex data sets and encourage them to see the stories behind the sometimes-impenetrable numbers and statistics in the news.
breathingearth.com
BreathingEarth presents the carbon dioxide emission, birth rates and death rates of every country in the world in real-time. The pulsating stars representing birth and death, and the flares of red representing carbon emission, are elegant, hypnotic and frightening at the same time.
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Mark, Lalo and specially Tito:
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September 01, 2008
Sep 15, 6:30 pm In the Family
New York, NY
Come to a screening of In the Family, and follow filmmaker Joanna Rudnick after she tests positive for the "breast cancer gene" at age 27. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker and experts in several fields. Buy tickets at the Paley Center website.
Ack! Not another doc about Iraq! Ah yes, this Wednesday we are being treated to Full Battle Rattle, another film related to that unfortunate war we're waging, and I'm quite sure we doc fans are soon going to be treated to more newspaper stories declaring the film DOA at the BO, relegating its fate along with Taxi to the Dark Side and Standard Operating Procedure, and fictional films such as Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Lions for Lambs and Stop-Loss. 
Michael Moore's Sicko named Best Documentary at the 17th annual 
The 
Watch daily reports from the International Documentary Film Festival going on this week in Amsterdam, as well as trailers and shorts on 
Check out 
A new documentary about crusader Ralph Nader comes to PBS's Independent Lens in December. 
