DocuWeeks 2009 Launch Party

It began in 1997 as DOCtober, and over the next dozen years, the theatrical documentary showcase took on various incarnations and locations. And last Thursday, the three-weeks long, bicoastal DocuWeeks 2009 launched at the ArcLight Hollywood, with a screening of Greg Barker’s Sergio, followed by a classy reception. This sequence, a reversal of previous years, worked much better for those of us who, in previous openers, would have to fast-forward our networking and noshing in order to catch the screening.

HBO Documentary Films generously sponsored both the screening and the reception, and the Doyenne of Docs herself, Sheila Nevins, introduced the film, noting, “I know so many people here, it’s like a wake!” Nancy Abraham, HBO Documentary Films’ senior vice president, handled the Q&A afterwards.

And Sergio itself, based on the book Chasing the Flame by Samantha Power, is a hybrid of a profile of Sergio Viera de Mello, the charismatic High Commissioner of the United Nations, and a minute-by-minute re-creation of his final day, August 19, 2003, when a terrorist bomb struck UN headquarters in Baghdad. A rich layering of recollections from Sergio’s fiancée, the military paramedics who valiantly tried to save him and his colleague who lost both his legs in the attack; artfully rendered re-enactments, as performed by the paramedics themselves; and archival footage of Sergio’s remarkable career make for a profoundly moving elegy to a “man of action and of reflection.”

One of the paramedics, Sergeant Bill Von Zehle, joined Barker, Abraham and producer Julie Goldman on stage for a conversation. The Sergeant praised Sergio’s selflessness, how he wanted to make sure everyone else got out before he was saved. He also talked about why the excavation equipment had taken so long to get to the headquarters—the Army was based near the airport, and had to negotiate their way through “Sniper’s Alley”; in addition, the Iraqis had looted their equipment in the early days of the war. Barker revealed that Sergio’s first wife and two sons “decided to keep the memory of Sergio private” and not appear on camera, and that it had taken Sergio’s fiancée, Carolina Larriera, several months to feel comfortable about telling her story on camera. The interview lasted nine hours.

Discussion of the film continued at the party, where many of the DocuWeeks filmmakers—Gene Rosow from DIRT! The Movie; Lee Storey from Smile ‘Til It Hurts, Zeus Quijano from point of entry; Frank Stiefell from Ingelore; NC Heikin from Kimjongilia; Bristol Baughan from Racing Dreams—sampled the ample selection of crudités with the likes of dynamo blogger/filmmaker AJ Schnack, Geoffrey Smith, whose The English Surgeon was opening in LA that weekend, and Eva Orner from Taxi to the Dark Side. The IDA Board, led by President Eddie Schmidt, was well represented, as were the IDA staff and the documentary community it so ably serves. The nonfiction faithful hung around well past midnight, holding forth in various booths around the room, deeply engaged in discussion about the weeks of riveting docs to come, unaware of and indifferent to the late hour.