The Sundance Film Festival produced another hit this year with the inauguration of "House of Docs." For years, festival organizers have attempted to put the documentary competition on an equal footing with fiction features. For the cognoscenti, it has become a cliché, albeit a true one, that the docs are the films to see in Park City. But trying to get to conflicting, far-flung screenings and connect with other documentary enthusiasts was sometimes difficult. The much-discussed Hollywoodization and overcrowding of the festival also tended to marginalize documentarians. "House Of Docs" has
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One measure of Frederick Wiseman's renown is the size of the large, enthusiastic crowds that braved harsh winter weather to attend "Frederick Wiseman: American Filmmaker." The retrospective, held at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater from Jan. 28 through Feb.24, included all 30 of Wiseman's feature-length documentaries, from the long-suppressed Titicut Follies (1961) through his most recent, Belfast, Maine (1999). The event was organized in association with the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, which, as part of the series, presented Wiseman with the 2000 Irene Diamond
Eight documentaries screened at this year's Slamdance 2000. The festival shared some traits with the Sundance Festival, most notably the difficulty with which docs could be located in the catalogue. Documentaries were mixed among the competition and special screening films in the Slamdance catalogue, a spiral-bound faux school notebook that was other wise a triumph of from and function. Realizing that audiences were demanding docs, and in keeping with the ad hoc nature of the festival, press relations chief Margot Gerber put together a hand-written list of the docs and taped it to the press
The country is Portugal, as it enters the 21 st century with its relatively newfound democracy. At the invitation of the 10th Encontros Internacionais de Cinema Documental (International Encounters in Documentary Cinema) in Lisbon, I showed up at the festival and the preceding documentary conference in November 1999, not quite knowing what to expect since it was my first visit. The warmth, energy and passion at both events was infectious, and although my hosts kept me busy from 9 A.M. to 2 A.M. for six days, I felt refreshed and rejuvenated by the people I met and the films I saw. The three
Dear IDA Members: As this issue of ID goes to bed, the first virtual film festival—Yahoo's On Line Film Festival—is streaming on the World Wide Web! (www.onlinefilmfestival.com) During the last century, film festivals became an integral part of every documentary filmmaker's release strategy. We are all familiar with stories about the most recent documentary "discovery" from Sundance, Berlin, New York, Yamagata or Amsterdam. The fortunate few that received press attention at festivals often then secured limited theatrical distribution, faithful art house audiences, critical acclaim and
The Sundance Film Festival has always provided a home for documentary-makers, veterans and rookies alike, to share their work and war stories with a receptive community. Documentaries get equal billing with dramatic features, and over the past few years, docs have caught that sacred Sundance buzz like nothing else. Sundance 2000 upped the ante this year, not only introducing digital projection for several of the documentaries, but also opening the House of Docs. I arrived in Park City just in time for the World Premiere of Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury, which chronicles the rise and
Beads of sweat ran down the starving filmmaker's face. He held the crisp Anamorphic sub-master between his teeth as he struggled around the Convergence Jungle, trying not to think about what his wife would say when she learned they had to mortgage the house...again. Suddenly, he saw it. A lamp. A magic lamp. He scrambled to grab it and rubbed it incessantly, conditioned as he was to force people to listen to him. Slowly, the Genie came out. Flipping mindlessly though his appointment book, he asked. "And who are you?" "I'm the filmmaker." "What do you want?" "I want a conference where people
A review of 'A New History of Documentary Film,' by Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane.
The breadth and depth of the Internet are unfathomable--in both the information it contains and the services it provides. I can now work, shop for groceries and have a great social life, all without leaving my bedroom. This new, virtual world is laden with egregious irony and a myriad of possibilities. One such possibility has emerged over the past few years that has taken the movie rental industry by storm. In the past, to rent my favorite documentary, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot's The Corporation, my experience would be a multi-step process that would involve (1) driving to the nearest