DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
Michael Moore
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
In addition to the exciting tidbit that Michael Moore's next film will be a follow-up to Fahrenheit 9/11, the most enticing news from the Cannes Film Festival, which just concluded, is about an Israeli documentary called Waltz with Bashir. It's a fully animated film by a former Israeli soldier, Ari Folman, who's trying to reckon with the massacre of Palestinians (and his involvement) during the 1982 war in Lebanon. I've been a strong advocate of the brilliant animated work applied to documentaries by the likes of Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal, P.O.V. 2005). The animated documentary has pretty much become a standard, with the likes of Michael Moore (remember the brief history of America in Bowling for Columbine?) and Morgan Spurlock (Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?) using it to strong comic effect.
But in this, Waltz with Bashir, we see the possibility that a fully animated — from start to finish — documentary could be a success. The reviews have been quite positive. It recalls the recent Persepolis, or Richard Linklater's fantastic Waking Life, a trippy film about a boy in a dreamlike state, that was entirely created with rotoscopic technology in which a regular live-action film is shot in video. Animators then "draw" over the images to create an eerily life-like medium. (OK, so maybe when the same technique is used in Charles Schwab commercials it feels more annoying than eerie.)
Director Folman spent $2 million and four years making the film. First, he conducted interviews, then wrote a screenplay in which he stars as himself journeying back into his memories. The script was entirely shot in a studio (so, for example, when he talks with someone in a car, the person on the set holds a prop steering wheel). He then edited the footage into a full feature and broke that footage up into a storyboard of frames. Then, the animation team illustrated all of the frames. You can check out the trailer — I think it looks phenomenal.
Of course, a film like Waltz with Bashir poses all sorts of interesting questions, like is it a friggin' documentary in the first place if it's all reenacted — and animated, to boot?
I'd say yes, but let's wait to see the film. It's going to be released in Israel in June, and it was just picked up by the guys at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard. They released the animated films Persepolis and Triplets of Belleville and I know how smart and savvy they can be with unconventional films, so I've got a lot of hope for this one. It's due for release some time this year.
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.
Reaction to the nominations is trickling in from around the blogosphere. Most bloggers seem pretty happy with the list so far. IndieWire calls the doc line-up "a rather unsurprising group." Cinematical writer Kim Voyner predicts No End in Sight to win. Cinematical interviewed nominated filmmaker Alex Gibney a few weeks ago about Taxi to the Dark Side in San Francisco.
We'll post more good interviews from around the Web with nominees later today.
What are your thoughts on the nominee list and who do you think should win?
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.
Read more after the jump.
Our weekly doc roundup collects critical reactions to some current documentary releases in the theaters and on DVD.
IN THEATERS
from Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid, Jennifer Venditti's first film, is a portrait of a troubled, misfit 10th grader named Billy Price. The critic for the Village Voice says "I have seen more than 25 documentaries this year, and after a while they all start to run together, both structurally and thematically. Billy the Kid is utterly original in both respects," and TV Guide calls the film "...truly something special." The film is also getting raves from documentary filmmakers and bloggers. Filmmaker AJ Schnack rounds up some of the reactions on his blog, All these wonderful things. Variety's critic, however, found the film's portrayal of Billy an appallingly callous act of exploitation.
Judge for yourself: Billy the Kid opened in New York City on December 5th, and opens more widely in January of 2008. Watch the trailer.
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.
Fifteen films have been shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, and not everyone's happy about the list. Notable omissions include In the Shadow of the Moon, a rapturously reviewed film that saw NASA astronauts remembering their missions to space during the 1960s and 1970s, and The Devil Came on Horseback, the devastating and affecting documentary that tells the story of the genocide in Darfur through the eyes of a former U.S. Marine.
The Alternative Film Guide blog has a good roundup of the shortlisted films.
There will be lots of rumblings about what's on the shortlist (and what's been left off) in the coming weeks. Doc blogger Agnes Varnum calls the list "uninspiring" but it's filmmaker and blogger AJ Schnack that really lays into the Academy. In a scathing post, Schnack says that the Academy has "...closed their eyes, their ears, their doors" by preferring a "competent, conventionally-styled film that maintains an even keel" rather than "film[s] that swing for the fences."
A little background on the Academy Award for Best Documentary: It's been a controversial topic for many years. Films that have been excluded from nomination include The Thin Blue Line (1988), Paris is Bruning (1991), Roger and Me (1989), Hoop Dreams (1994) and Grizzy Man (2005).
Our weekly doc roundup collects critical reactions to some current documentary releases in the theaters and on DVD.
IN THEATERS NOW
It's a sparse week for documentary releases in the theaters. The only major release is Rob VanAlkemade's What Would Jesus Buy, which follows the anti-consumerist Reverend Billy, a performance artist and mock evangelist who organizes the Church of Stop Shopping. The film, produced by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame, receives generally positive reviews, with the Village Voice calling it "Slick, well-paced and tremendously entertaining," and the New York Times pronouncing it "...fast and funny." Some reviewers, however, complain that the issue-based doc "...doesn't have much to say." As an addendum to the story, Reverend Billy was arrested in June in New York City, accused of harassing police officers by reciting the First Amendment at a rally in Union Square Park. Yesterday, the Manhattan district attorney's office dropped the charges against him.
