Greed is good--but most would agree it is not. But what if it's greed for good? Washington, DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff began his political career as a conservative College Republican building a movement around Ronald Reagan's election and that president's fervor for smaller government. Thirty years later, Abramoff is serving time in Federal prison, convicted of multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion.

Abramoff's spectacular rise-and-fall is documented in filmmaker Alex Gibney's upcoming Casino Jack and the United States of Money. The music-driven, information-saturated exposé takes on the multi-faceted Abramoff, who represented interests from the Mariana Islands of the South Pacific to Russia, and became notorious for the $45 million he persuaded American Indian tribes to pay him for his lobbying efforts on behalf of the gaming industry.

"He was just a wild, larger-than-life character; he seemed to represent this out-of-control approach to money and politics," says Gibney, who decided to investigate the disgraced lobbyist, finding him spectacularly interesting, but not necessarily in a good way. "I think he is at the heart of a total breakdown of the system. He was not an exception to the rule; he was an exaggeration of business as usual." Abramoff's advocacy efforts on behalf of his clients at first pushed the boundaries of campaign finance laws but eventually crossed the line into illegal acts such as bribery, tax evasion-and perhaps even accessory to murder.

The film's subject dovetails well with two of Gibney's earlier projects: his Academy Award-wining Taxi to the Dark Side and the Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. "I seem to be interested in the process of corruption," he maintains, noting that Casino Jack tackles political corruption; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room examines economic corruption and Taxi to the Dark Side reveals spiritual corruption. 

"It gets in my craw when the powerful abuse the weak," Gibney explains of his choices. "I don't like it when people take more than what they are entitled to: that doesn't reckon with the fundamental idea of fairness that our society is supposed to be all about. The mistake is to think of Jack [Abramoff] as a bad apple, when he's the spectacular evidence of the rotten barrel." His fall became a convenient mechanism, whereby everyone else could say, "Everything is good now," when in fact it's worse, notes Gibney of the state of a US political infrastructure powered by political contributions rather than its citizens.

Gibney contends that Abramoff's earliest mindset was that of an idealist, but with the view that the ends justify the means. "People who are idealistic assume about themselves a kind of goodness, that cannot be besmirched by breaking a few rules here or there, so that's where they always get into trouble," he believes. Cutting corners eventually leads to greater transgressions.

Unlike Gibney's current untitled feature-length project on Eliot Spitzer (which will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival as a work-in-progress), Casino Jack's main idea has a certain simplicity: too much money in politics is a very bad thing. The Spitzer story is more complicated, and is structured more like a Greek tragedy, Gibney reveals. He believes the former New York Governor fell prey to the same hubris shown in the very executives he had once investigated. However, both films clearly demonstrate "the blood sport our political system has become," says Gibney.

The filmmaker was able to visit Abramoff at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, but the Department of Justice wouldn't approve filmed interviews. No audio recording or note-taking either ("Not even a pencil," says Gibney). Nor was he able to shoot in the US Capitol building: he had an idea for B-roll--janitors literally sweeping up the building--but that request to film was nixed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. "They found that a threat to the Republic," the director laughs.

An immense amount of information is imparted in the briskly paced film, which has been edited down eight minutes since its premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.  Because Abramoff was such a multi-tentacled operator, and traveled around the world on behalf of his clients, his peripatetic nature influenced the film's structure and cinematic style. There were numerous money trails to follow. And each of environments was captured in a different way, from a sweeping Steadicam shot of a casino floor, to an aerial overview of the tropical Mariana Islands to refracted, Cubist-like angles of Washington, DC.

Gibney also relied on film clips to illustrate the moral conflicts within US politics and lobbyists like Abramoff. Among the films excerpted are Frank Capra's iconic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Patton, a film lionized by the College Republicans; and a closing clip from The Natural, which speaks both to corruption and the mythic power of the American dream. Interviews were shot on HD, utilizing two cameras: one was placed directly in front of subject, the other at a 90-degree angle. "I like the shifting perspective," Gibney explains. "Sometimes you see interesting things in that hard-side angle." He also uses the second camera's footage to jump the angle within an interview rather than using an extraneous cutaway.

Gibney opted to narrate Casino Jack himself. "It feels more honest," he says. "I'm writing the copy; why not speak it?" In addition to the narration, Gibney and his team underscored the documentary's mix of news footage, interviews and film clips with a diverse soundtrack of contemporary, hip-hop and blues music by such artists as Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Costello and New Orleans' Wild Tchoupitoulas. Song choices reveal deeper truths and add a pulse to the film that Gibney describes as "a toe-tapping Greek chorus that comments on the action or reflects the place and environment."

Throughout Casino Jack, Abramoff's skills as a lobbyist are in evidence. Former staffer Neil Volz contends that his former boss "could sweet-talk a dog off a meat truck." One can only wish that he had turned his considerable talents to good. "Sadly, he defined good as doing what he did," Gibney maintains. Lobbying remains pervasive in Washington, and true campaign finance reform is not imminent. Campaigns are staggeringly expensive and time-consuming. Gibney suggests that nothing has fundamentally changed since the Abramoff scandal: "The biggest problem we have is that money is able to exert a force of power [on Washington] that's irresistible. We need try to find a way to take money out of politics; unless that happens we're done."

Casino Jack and the United States of Money is scheduled for release May 7 from Magnolia Pictures. Participant Media is handling the social action campaign.

Kathy A. McDonald is a writer based in Los Angeles.

Hanover House picked up North American rights to Marshall Curry's doc Racing Dreams, which follows the lives of three young racers as they compete in the World Karting Association's National Pavement Series. The film was named the best doc at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and will be released in theaters Friday, May 21.

HBO has acquired the U.S. TV rights to the documentary Teenage Paparazzo, directed by actor Adrian Grenier. The film chronicles the true story of a relationship between 14-year-old paparazzo Austin Visschedyk and Grenier. The doc will debut on HBO this fall.

Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired North American distribution rights to Yael Hersonski's doc A Film Unfinished, which deconstructs a Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. The film premiered at Sundance this year and won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award. The film will open in August in limited release and a national release will follow.

The Cinema Guild has acquired video/VOD release rights to Agnes Varda's Cinevardaphoto, which is actually a trio of short films. The release date has been set for August 31.

Additionally, DOC: The Documentary Channel, a specialty channel that airs documentary programming announced it has entered into an agreement with DIRECTV that doubles the number of subscribers who can view DOC to 25 million.

The 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival gets a new neighborhood after four years in Westwood. Following the parent company's Film Independent's moving the Independent Spirit Awards from Santa Monica to Downtown LA this year (June 17-27), the high-profile festival will showcase its screenings in several venues there, with LA Live, the sprawling entertainment campus whose tenants include the Staples Center, Regal Cinemas and the Grammy Museum, among others, serving as the designated hub. The festival will also present its screenings and events at the REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), the Downtown Independent, the Orpheum Theatre and California Plaza. And LAFF will continue its tradition of nighttime screenings at the outdoor John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood.

"The festival's move to downtown Los Angeles allows us a unique opportunity to celebrate the history and future of our City," said Festival Director Rebecca Yeldham in a statement. "Our new location will continue to pave the way for LAFF to realize its potential as an international destination event, and unites our filmmakers and audiences with the diverse arts community that exists downtown.

LAFF is currently working on the fine details of the move, including tackling the high-price of parking downtown. Elise Freimuth, publicity manager at Film Independent, the parent company of the Los Angeles Film Festival, says "We've actually negotiated a parking rate for Festival patrons at LA Live: It will be $5 for the first 4 hours and $8 for the whole day...Plus, we're arranging free shuttles on the weekend to go between the venues."

More updates to come as they are announced. Get more information at the Los Angeles Film Festival website.

Join IDA members, IDA staff and board members! Connect with the documentary community, share your projects, meet new friends, and build your professional network. It all starts at 6 p.m.

See photos from past IDA mixers here, here and right here.

RSVP for this free event and get all of the info on parking, taking the Metro and more for this great networking opportunity here.

Conventional wisdom leads most filmmakers to tour the festival circuit for a year and then, once they secure distribution, open commercially, with the goal to reach a large audience through positive press, and then generate significant distribution revenue. Yet a commercial run in theaters doesn't often come close to the full houses many filmmakers will have enjoyed at festivals. Increasingly, filmmakers are being more strategic, narrowing down a few A-list festivals as platforms to launch their film theatrically and looking into alternative venues such as museums and universities, to better control how their film gets out there.

Submitting to and playing at some festivals may help, but when filmmakers think of the festival circuit primarily as a direct exhibition tour that will lead to a distribution deal-or even a distribution mechanism itself-they are often disappointed. Filmmaker Paul Devlin truly adheres to the definition of a theater, whether the big screen is in a festival, museum, planetarium or university venue, taking advantage of what he calls "alt-theatrical screenings." His third feature documentary, BLAST!, completed in 2008, reached its core audience of science and astronomy enthusiasts, as it tells the story of Devlin's brother Mark, leading a tenacious team of scientists who try to understand the birth and evolution of the galaxies by launching a revolutionary new telescope under a NASA high-altitude balloon.

BLAST! premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs in spring 2008, launching the film's festival run, where it screened at the Sheffield Doc/Fest in England, the Florida Film Festival, and the Vedere La Scienza Festival in Milan, Italy, where it won Best Documentary honors. The film was not accepted, however, into the same festivals that had showcased Devlin's previous film Power Trip (2003), including the Tribeca Film Festival and SilverDocs.

Distribution strategies for BLAST! evolved from the film's screenings at the IFC Center and Cinema Village in New York City. The reviews from this run led to further press interest and a National Public Radio interview with Mark Devlin, on its Science Friday program, which reaches up to 1.5 million listeners. Stephen Colbert, a science enthusiast and a fan of the NPR program, booked Mark on The Colbert Report, which gave the movie a big push, leading to speaking engagements at exhibition spaces throughout the country.

BLAST! continued on the alternative theatrical venue circuit, including a screening at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting, which capitalized on the fact that 2009 was the Year of Astronomy. Devlin explains, "It's rare to have a theatrical feature film on astronomy make it into the marketplace, so I think it was an exciting event for astronomers in their real working environment. There were 150 to 200 people in attendance." Additional screening venues included the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and ScienceWorks in Ashland, Oregon, among numerous others. Future screenings will be held at Cal Poly Pomona University, Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Explorers Club in New York, as well as a television broadcast on KVCR in San Bernardino, California.

Peabody Award-winning director Aviva Kempner strategized with Jewish film festivals to act as a platform for individual city screenings nationwide for her 2009 documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. The film tells the story of Gertrude Berg, known as "The First Lady of Radio," CBS' first family sitcom heroine, and the first female actress to win an Emmy. She gained fame and success as the creator, writer, producer and star of the Depression and World War II-era hit radio show-turned-TV sitcom, The Goldbergs, which aired on CBS from 1949 through 1956.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg garnered attention at the High Falls International Film Festival in Rochester, New York, which, in keeping with local heroines Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton, honors women in film--both behind the camera and on the screen. The film subsequently played at Lincoln Plaza in New York City. Kempner, along with Wendy Lidell, president of International Film Circuit Inc., exhibited the film through Jewish film festivals in Boston and San Francisco, the latter of which honored Kempner with a Lifetime Achievement Award, increasing press awareness and reviews. Her film opened commercially in San Francisco right after the festival. She and Lidell subsequently embarked on a national theatrical tour last summer.

Mitchell Block, executive producer and co-creator of the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Carrier, and president of the distribution company Direct Cinema Ltd., deems festivals a business--to rent condos, bring in tourists and accept submission fees--rather than an artistic venue for filmmakers to attract core audiences. The awards and exposure one gains from the festival circuit do not necessarily produce direct outcome if the goals are to secure a distribution deal and get your core audience to see the film. Festivals yield many "award-winning" films, but, as Block explains, "It's like Lake Woebegone, where all of the children are slightly above normal." So if festivals are your priority, keep in mind that even a prestigious venue like Sundance doesn't always lead to money or more work, and awards don't always pay the bills.

But speaker fees do, and in Devlin's case, the BLAST! theatrical release indirectly led him and his brother on a nationwide tour to universities, planetariums and museums. "The whole idea of ‘theatrical' is evolving," Devlin notes. "It used to be you played in big theaters across the country and used this derogatory term of ‘non-theatrical' to describe anything else." His speaking engagements in 2009 included one at Ohio State University that earned him a $10,000 speaker fee. This venue was an exception, as Devlin and his brother's fees range from $3,000 to $5,000. If they don't show up to the screenings, they negotiate a fee of $150 to $1,000. Appearances continue through 2010.

As his alt-theatrical strategy began to bear fruit, Devlin hired a producer of marketing and distribution, whose job is to book venues. "When you go to a distributor, you put your film up for adoption," Devlin asserts. "If you want to raise your own film the way you would raise a child, then you've got to do it yourself. So in essence, we've hired a nanny."

Birthing a film to a higher-profile theatrical distributor would have been less cost-effective and less hands-on for both Devlin and Kempner. Kempner's previous film, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000), about the first major Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues, earned $1.7 million in box office revenue. However, Kempner explains, "It was a different feeling for Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg because I knew my base was older people. The best thing for me to do was get those older people in the theaters before they die and before the big art movies come out in the fall."

To date, Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg has earned $1.13 million in box office revenue. That number might have been even higher, ironically, were it not for her core audience: senior citizens, who pay discounted ticket prices, which, according to Kempner, meant 25 percent less revenue. She jokes, "It could be $1.17 million in revenue. I always tell Wendy to put an asterisk."

The rewards for filmmakers investing their time and money on self-distribution outweigh the risks of solely prioritizing festivals; net ticket revenue goes to the filmmaker's team, rather than directly to the film festival. "I don't think being programmed at a festival should be a goal, unless you are a student or independently wealthy," Block maintains. "Filmmaking is a business. Either make films to change the world or to make money, or to do both."

In addition, Block advises, sell your film before you make it. If the film does not have a television sale and/or theatrical deal in place before entering a festival, then the filmmakers should try to shop the work before showcasing it at festivals. Block cautions, "Films are worth more not finished than finished, since distributors and networks have different needs, markets, and deals for works-in-progress versus finished works." Devlin pitched BLAST! as a work-in-progress at the 2007 Hot Docs Forum, and international commissioning editors, including the BBC and Discovery Canada, came on board for TV distribution.

High-profile festivals generally reach a primary audience comprised of journalists, sponsors, agents, distributors, filmmakers, festival programmers, etc. But if a film can reach its core audience where the filmmaker controls the exhibition and distribution, then alternative distribution strategies--coupled with a well-positioned festival launch--may continue to be the wave of the future.

For Devlin and Kempner, self-distribution or some hybrid thereof--with festivals as one component, but not the driving one in their overall distribution plan--proved to be the optimal strategy for their respective films. For Devlin, targeting astronomy and science enthusiasts made the most sense, while Kempner's audience of senior citizens, the Jewish demographic and feminist groups helped drive box office revenues past the $1 million mark. Rather than put their films up for adoption through distribution, as Devlin suggested earlier, both filmmakers nurtured their films through adulthood.

It's been a flurry of activity over the past couple of days-Spring Break must be over. Magnolia Pictures is beefing up its doc slate for 2010, headed by the much anticipated omnibus project Freakonomics, based on the best-selling 2005 book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, in which the authors, an economist and a journalist, respectively, apply economic theory to a diverse range of phenomena in contemporary culture. The doc, which will close the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, is comprised of cinematic chapters, helmed by some of the most prominent names in nonfiction-the ubiquitous Alex Gibney, whose film Casino Jack and the United States of Money comes out May 7, also through Magnolia; Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, whose 12^th and Delaware airs this August on HBO; Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me); Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight); and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong). Chad Troutwine, who produced the ensemble piece Paris, Je T'Aime, is producing Freakonomics with Dan O'Mearta and Chris Romano. Michael Ciepley of The New York Times feels that Magnolia might have a hit on its hands, and with its previous hit, Food, Inc., having been inspired by two best-sellers, Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, he's probably right. The film opens in theaters this fall.

Another omnibus project, Convention, has found a home with Sundance Selects, which will release the film on-demand May 12, then in theaters beginning June 4 in New York City. The film documents the behind-the-scenes run-up to the historic 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. AJ Schnack was the ringleader of the project, gathering together an impressive ensemble of docmakers to make it happen: Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert (The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant); Laura Poitras (The Oath); Paul Taylor (We Are Together); and Daniel Junge (The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner). "This is an extremely well made and entertaining documentary of a historic event that will delight anyone with even a remote interest in national politics," said Jonathan Sehring of Sundance Selects, in a statement. "We are thrilled to be working with AJ and the all-star team of directors he has assembled. We think this is a great film for all our platforms."

Schnack commented, in the statement, "Having the opportunity to work closely with some    of my favorite filmmakers during the historic convention week was tremendously inspiring. I'm very excited about our new partnership with Sundance Selects and am glad that viewers of all political stripes will soon have a chance to see the film."

Elsewhere in acquisition-land, Arthouse Films picked up Lucy Walker's Waste Land, which won audience awards at both Sundance and Berlin this year. The film, which will be released some time this year, follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials.

Walker's other Sundance 2010 film, Countdown to Zero, which explores the dangerous presence of nuclear weaponry around the world, will be released theatrically July 9 through Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media.

Finally, as reported in indieWire, Balcony Releasing is distributing The Sun behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom to US theaters this spring. The film, directed and produced by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, opened March 31 in New York City.

Photo: Civil Rights March on Washington, DC, August 28, 1963. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration

Eyes on the Prize, the definitive documentary series on the American Civil Rights Movement, is finally coming out on DVD this Tuesday, April 6. The series, which aired on PBS in 1987 to universal acclaim and is currently airing on consecutive Thursdays this month, covers the period from 1954, the year of the murder of Emmett Till and the Montgomery bus boycott, to 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery march and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

The late Henry Hampton created and executive-produced this monumental project through his Boston-based production company, Blackside, Inc.; although there had been documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement before, no one had ever tackled something of this scope and magnitude. The series went on to win six Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and a DuPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. In addition, Hampton earned an IDA Career Achievement Award in 1997, among many other honors, and passed away a year later.

Among the many Blackside alums who worked on Eyes on the Prize in various capacities include Orlando Bagwell, Jon Else, Sam Pollard, Michael Chin, Bob Richman and Laurie Kahn-Levitt. Bagwell, now director of the media, arts and culture division at the Ford Foundation, was instrumental in helping to secure the funding to clear the music and footage rights, which had expired in the early 2000s.

Blackside also produced Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1965-1985), which aired in the early 1990s. The artistic personnel of that series included Lillian Benson, Paul Stekler, Louis Massiah, Carroll Blue and Noland Walker. The rights on that series, however, are still unsecured.

Sheila Curran Benson, who produced, directed and wrote two of the episodes in Eyes on the Prize, wrote an article for the June 2005 issue of Documentary magazine about the long struggle to clear the rights to the series. For more on the series itself, click here.

On a sad note, Steve Ascher, whose wife and filmmaking partner, Jeanne Jordan, edited one of the episodes in Eyes on the Prize, reports that Robert Lavelle, who was vice president of Blackside, Inc. and was the driving force behind and editor of the Eyes on the Prize companion volumes, passed away on March 27. He had struggled with brain cancer for the past three years. "His career has been a study in passion for social justice," Ascher maintained in an e-mail to me. Lavelle had worked on companion books and outreach programs in conjunction with such documentaries as School: The Story of American Public Education, Malcolm X: Make It Plain and Local News, among others. For more information about Lavelle, click here.

Opening in theaters this month this month amid a flurry of festivals are some noteworthy docs. Connie Field's Have You Heard from Johannesburg, a sprawling, seven-part, ten-years-in-the-making series about the history of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, comes to Film Form in New York. The project is a counterpart, of sorts, to the monumental Eyes on the Prize, Blackside's definitive series on the American Civil Rights Movement, which Field herself explored in her 1994 Academy Award-nominated film Freedom on my Mind.

Also coming to the big screen are Michel Gondry's The Thorn in the Heart, a personal take on his family; When You're Strange, Tom DiCillio's doc about The Doors; and Oceans, DisneyNature's follow-up to its 2009 box office smash, Earth. Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, director/producer and co-director, respectively, of the 2002 hit Winged Migration, helmed Oceans.

Opening:                    April 2
Venues:                      Roxie Cinema/San Francisco; Elmwood TheaterBerkeley, CA; Rafael Film Center, San Rafael, CA
Film:                           Breath Made Visible
Dir./Prod./Wtr.:           Ruedi Gerber                       
Distributor:                 Argot Pictures
http://www.breathmadevisible.com/

Breath Made Visible is the first feature documentary about the life and career of Anna Halprin. The film takes its audience from Halprin's initial explorations of dance in her childhood to the experimental performances conducted on a dance deck under Californian redwood trees, through her spectacular tours in Europe, her withdrawal from the stage due to illness, and, finally, her triumphant return.

Opening:                    April 2
Venue:                       Village East/New York City
Film:                          The Thorn in the Heart
Dir./Wtr.:                    Michel Gondry
Distributor:                Oscilloscope Laboratories
http://www.oscilloscope.net/shop/view_film.php?ID=15

The Thorn in the Heart (L'Epine dans le Coeur) is filmmaker Michel Gondry's personal look at the life of Gondry family matriarch, Michel's aunt Suzette Gondry, and her relationship with her son, Jean-Yves. Michel examines Suzette's years as a schoolteacher and her life in rural France. During the course of filming the documentary, Michel unearths new family stories and uses his camera to explore them in a subtle and sensitive way.

Opening:                    April 9
Venue:                        Anthology Film Archives/New York City
Film:                           It Came from Kuchar
Dir.:                            Jennifer M. Kroot
Distributor:                Indie Pix
 http://kucharfilm.com/

It Came from Kuchar is a hilarious and touching story of artistic obsession, compulsion and inspiration.
Long before YouTube, there were the outrageous, no-budget movies of underground, filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar. George and Mike grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s. At the age of 12, they became obsessed with Hollywood melodramas and began making their own homespun melodramas with their aunt's 8mm camera. They used their friends and family as actors and their Bronx neighborhood as their set. Early Kuchar titles featured in this film include I Was A Teenage Rumpot and Born of the Wind.
In the early 1960s, alongside Andy Warhol, the Kuchar brothers shaped the New York underground film scene. Known as the "8mm Mozarts," their films were noticeably different than other underground films of the time. They were wildly funny, but also human and vulnerable.
Their films have inspired many filmmakers, including John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and Wayne Wang (all are interviewed in this film). Despite having high profile fans, the Kuchars remain largely unknown because they are only ambitious to make movies, not to be famous.
It Came from Kuchar interweaves the brothers' lives, their admirers, a history of underground film and a "greatest hits" of Kuchar clips into a mesmerizing stream of consciousness tale.
Affectionately directed by one of George's former students, Jennifer M. Kroot, It Came From Kuchar will introduce you to the amazing Kuchar brothers--two brothers who love to make movies and continue to inspire others.

 

Opening:                    April 9
Venue:                       Cinema Village/New York City
Film:                          Nobody's Perfect
Dir.:                           Niko van Glasow
Distributor:                Lorber Films
http://www.lorberfilms.com/nobodys-perfect/nobodys-perfect/

One of the thousands of Germans born with deformities caused by the drug Thalidomide, filmmaker Niko van Glasow confronts his disability head-on in this extraordinary documentary, which follows his search for 11 other "Thalidomiders" willing to pose naked for a book of photos. With a darkly humorous touch, and no deference to political correctness, the film explores the sensitivities and feelings of the disabled in a way rarely seen on film.

Opening:                    April 9
Film:                          When You're Strange: A Film about The Doors
Dir./Wtr.:                    Tom DiCillio
Prods.:                       John Beug, Jeff Jampol, Peter Jankowski, Dick Wolf
Distributor:                Rhino Entertainment/Abramarama
http://whenyourestrangemovie.com/

When You're Strange: A Film about The Doors is the first feature documentary about The Doors. When You're Strange uncovers historic and previously unseen footage of the illustrious rock quartet and provides new insight into the revolutionary impact of its music and legacy. Directed by award-winning writer/director Tom DiCillo and narrated by Johnny Depp, the film is a riveting account of the band's history.
The film reveals an intimate perspective on the creative chemistry between drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison--four brilliant artists who made The Doors one of America's most iconic and influential rock bands. Using footage shot between the band's 1965 formation and Morrison's 1971 death, When You're Strange follows the band from the corridors of UCLA's film school, where Manzarek and Morrison met, to the stages of sold-out arenas.

Opening:                    April 14
Venue:                        Film Forum/New York City
Film:                           Have You Heard from Johannesburg
Dir./Prod.:                   Connie Field
Distributor:                 Self-distributed
http://www.clarityfilms.org/joburg/index.html
http://www.filmforum.org/films/haveyouheard.html

Have You Heard from Johannesburg is seven documentary stories, produced and directed by Connie Field, chronicling the history of the global anti-apartheid movement that took on South Africa's entrenched apartheid regime and its international supporters who considered South Africa an ally in the Cold War.
Almost 50 years ago, South Africans began to realize that their freedom struggle had to be built in nfour arenas of action: mass action, underground organization, armed struggle and international mobilization. These documentaries take viewers inside that last arena, the movement to mobilize worldwide citizen action to isolate the apartheid regime. Inspired by the courage and suffering of South Africa's people as they fought back against the violence and oppression of racism, foreign solidarity groups, in cooperation with exiled South Africans, took up the anti-apartheid cause. Working against heavy odds, in a climate of apathy or even support for the governments of Verwoerd, Vorster and P.W. Botha, campaigners challenged their governments and powerful corporations in the West to face up to the immorality of their collaboration with apartheid.
This was not just a political battle; it was economic, cultural, moral and spiritual. The struggle came to many surprising venues: it was waged in sports arenas and cathedrals, in embassies and corporate boardrooms, at fruit stands and beaches, at rock concerts and gas stations. Thousands died, but in the end, nonviolent pressures played a major part in the collapse of apartheid and thus in the stunning victory of democracy in South Africa.
The combined stories have a scope that is epic in both space and time, spanning most of the globe over half a century. Beginning with the very first session of the United Nations, and ending in 1990--when, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela, the best known leader of the African National Congress (ANC) toured the world, a free man.

Opening:                    April 16
Venue:                        Quad Cinema/New York City; Laemmle Sunset 5/Los Angeles
Film:                           The Cartel
Dir.:                             Bob Bowdon
Distributor:                  Truly Indie
http://www.thecartelmovie.com/

Teachers punished for speaking out. Principals fired for trying to do the right thing. Union leaders defending the indefensible. Bureaucrats blocking new charter schools. These are just some of the people we meet in The Cartel. The film also introduces us to teens who can't read, parents desperate for change, and teachers struggling to launch stable alternative schools for inner city kids who want to learn. We witness the tears of a little girl denied a coveted charter school spot, and we share the triumph of a Camden homeschool's first graduating class.
Together, these people and their stories offer an unforgettable look at how a widespread national crisis manifests itself in the educational failures and frustrations of individual communities. They also underscore what happens when our schools don't do their job. "These are real children whose lives are being destroyed," director Bob Bowdon explains.
The Cartel shows us our educational system like we've never seen it before. Behind every dropout factory, we discover, lurks a powerful, entrenched and self-serving cartel. But The Cartel doesn't just describe the problem. Balancing local storylines against interviews with education experts such as Clint Bolick (former president of Alliance for School Choice), Gerard Robinson (president of Black Alliance for Educational Options), and Chester Finn (president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute), The Cartel explores what dedicated parents, committed teachers, clear-eyed officials and tireless reformers are doing to make our schools better for our kids.
This movie will force the scales to fall from the eyes of policymakers, education officials, reformers, intellectuals, teachers, and taxpayers. Putting a human face on the harm done by the educational cartel, The Cartel takes us beyond the statistics, generalizations, and abstractions that typically frame our debates about education-and draws an unequivocal bottom line: If we care about our children's futures, we must insist upon far-reaching and immediate reform. And we must do it now.

Opening:                    April 16
Venue:                        Quad Cinema/New York City; Laemmle Sunset 5/Los Angeles
Film:                           Exit Through the Gift Shop
Dir.:                            Banksy
Distributor:                Producers Distribution Agency
http://www.banksyfilm.com/

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the Palestinian segregation wall in the West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop is the story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur filmmaker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner with spectacular results. Billed as "the world's first street art disaster movie," the film contains exclusive footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work. As Banksy puts it, "It's the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed."

Opening:                     April 22
Film:                           Oceans
Dirs.:                           Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud
Distributor:                  DisneyNature
http://disney.go.com/disneynature/oceans/

DisneyNature, the studio that brought you the 2009 box office hit Earth, returns with on Earth Day 2010 with Oceans. Nearly three-quarters of the earth's surface is covered by water, and Oceans boldly chronicles the mysteries that lie beneath. Directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud dive deep into the very waters that sustain all of mankind, exploring the playful splendor and the harsh reality of the wired and wonderful creatures that live within. Featuring spectacular, never-before-seen imagery captured the latest underwater technologies, Oceans offers an unprecedented look beneath the sea in a powerful, yet enchanting motion picture.

Opening:                     April 23
Venue:                        Quad Cinema/New York City
Film:                           Behind the Burly Q
Dir./Prod./Wtr.:           Leslie Zemeckis                                 
Distributor:                 First Run Features
http://www.behindtheburlyq.com/

Burlesque and vaudeville acts were America's most popular form of live entertainment in the first half of the 20th century--until cinema drove them from the mainstream. To add insult to injury, the art of burlesque became vilified and misunderstood, and was largely left out of our cultural history. By telling the intimate and surprising stories from its golden age through the women (and men!) who lived it, Behind the Burly Q reveals the true story of burlesque, even as it experiences a new renaissance.

Opening:                    April 30
Venue:                        Laemmle Sunset 5/Los Angeles
Film:                           Dirt Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe
Dir.:                            Harry Kim                            
Distributor:                Upper Playground
http://dirtyhandsmovie.com/

Director Harry Kim spent eight tumultuous years following a young, near-schizophrenic street artist, David Choe, who devises numerous criminal schemes that make it possible for him to hitchhike across the globe. Choe skirts the legal constraints of society to "freely" create his art. His nonchalant law-breaking style lands him in jail several times, leading to his eventual demise in solitary confinement in a Tokyo prison cell. He resurfaces with a radically religious agenda and returns home with hope to overcome his criminal temptations and repair his severed relationships.
The filmmaker (who has been friends with Choe since they met at the Korean-American teenage summer camp in 1990) captures the complexity of David's life though a collage work of archived childhood home videos, still photographs, intimate artwork, animation, and eight years of footage shot on the road with the artist.

The Peabody Awards, among the most distinguished honors in media, have been around since before the Web, and before television. Indeed, this year marks the 69th edition of the Peabodys, which operate out of University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Yesterday's announcement of the 2010 awards include a bevy of documentaries, including two from PBS' Independent Lens series: Vanessa Gould's Between the Folds and Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths. Other docs to snag a Peabody include Brick City, the Sundance Channel series by Mark Benjamin and Marc Levin about Newark, New Jersey Mayor Corey Booker and the challenges running a tough city; and Thrilla in Manila, about the storied rivalry between boxers Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali. What follows is the list of documentaries, with descriptions from the Peabody Awards committee. For a complete list of all the winners, click here; for an article about the Peabody Awards from the September-October 2006 issue of Documentary magazine, click here.

A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains (Prods.: ABCNews; ABC)
A powerful documentary shot in the hollows and house trailers of Appalachia reminds us that not all critical problems lie in "developing" nations.

Independent Lens: Between the Folds (Dir.: Vanessa Gould; Prods.: Green Fuse Films, ITVS; PBS)
A beautiful documentary about the art of paper folding, it makes you gasp at the possibilities-- of paper and of human creativity.

Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times (Dir.: Peter Jones; PBS)
Digging into the lives and machinations of the first family of Los Angeles newspapers, documentary filmmaker Peter Jones finds drama enough for several feature films.

Brick City (Dirs.: Mark Benjamin, Marc Levin; Sundance Channel)
In this five-hour documentary series, the struggles of Newark's young mayor and other citizens trying to resurrect their blighted communities are sociologically instructive and dramatically compelling.

Thrilla in Manila (Dir./Prod.: John Dower; Exec. Prods.: Darlow Smithson Productions, HBO Sports, HBO Documentary Films; HBO)
Taking its title from the last of three legendary heavyweight bouts between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, the documentary pulls no punches and lays bare misconceptions about their rivalry.

FRONTLINE: The Madoff Affair (Prods./Wtrs.: Marcela Gaviria, Martin Smith; Exec. Prods.: RAINmedia, FRONTLINE; PBS),
The documentary takes viewers into the very heart of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, explaining how and why it worked for so long.

Independent Lens: The Order of Myths (Dir.: Margaret Brown; Prods.: Folly River, Inc., Netpoint Productions, Lucky Hat Entertainment, ITVS; PBS)
Margaret Brown's exploration of two Mardi Gras traditions in Mobile, Ala., one white, one black, is highly original, moving and insightful.

Iran & the West  (Prod.: Norma Percy; Exec. Prods.: Brook Lapping Productions for the BBC in association with National Geographic Channel, France 3, NHK, VPRO, SVT, RTBF, VRT, NRK, SRC/CBC, DRTV SBS, YLE, TVP and Press TV)
A spectacular, epic documentary that explains in fascinating, sometimes startling detail how the West and Iran arrived at the present standoff, it's imminently watchable and historically invaluable.

American Masters: Jerome Robbins--Something to Dance About (Dir./Prod.: Judy Kinberg; Exec. Prod.: Thirteen/WNET; PBS)
A retrospective of Robbins' life and work illustrated with dazzling performance clips and annotated with comments from noted ballet and Broadway colleagues, this brilliant documentary captured the legendary director/choreographer's "dark genius."