Slamdance, the scrappy, frisky counterpoint to Sundance, has announced its Shorts and Special Screenings competitions, along with its Feature competitions.

Notable among the special screenings is And Everything Is Going Fine, Steven Soderbergh's  long-awaited doc on Spaulding Gray, the late monologuist/performance artist who committed suicide in 2004. The Documentary Feature competition includes a profile of William S. Burroughs (William Burroughs: A Man Within), a look at Bolivian women wrestlers (Mamachas Del Ring) and a reunion of the greatest artists in the rocksteady genre from 1960s Jamaica (Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae)

The doc shorts in competition include DocuWeeks 09 participant point of entry (Dir.: Zeus Quijano Jr.), 2008 IDA Short Documentary Award nominee Redemption Stone - The Life and Times of Tom Lewis (Dir.: Tom Dziedzic), and a profile of an Aborigine artist (Not a Willing Participant; Dir.: Alex Barnes)

Here's the documentary lineup:

Special Screenings

I Am Comic (Dir.: Jordan Brady; US)--Stand-up comedians reveal the art and occupational hazards of their craft. With Sarah Silverman, Tommy Davidson, Carrot Top, Kathy Griffin, Carlos Mencia, Jeff Foxworthy and Phyllis Diller

And Everything Is Going Fine  (Dir.: Steven Soderbergh; US)--An intimate documentary about the life and work of the late performance artist Spaulding Gray.

Documentary Competition--Feature Length (All films are from the US unless otherwise noted)

American Jihadist (Dir.: Mark Claywell)--What makes a man willing to kill and die for his religion?

Biker Fox (Dir.: Jeremy Lamberton)--By taking the road less traveled, Biker Fox leads you to another dimension by "cogitating positive vibes to the cortex of your cerebellum" in this part documentary, part self-help testimonial.

Candyman (Dir.: Costa Botes)--Candyman is the story of the rise and fall of David Klein, the man who invented Jelly Belly jelly beans. With Weird Al Yankovich

General Orders No. 9 (Dir.: Robert Persons)--Take one last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over. A history of the State of Georgia or Anywhere. Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road becomes...

Mamachas Del Ring (Dir.: Betty M. Park)--Bolivian women wrestlers throw down in the ring in this documentary about what it really means to fight like a girl. Carmen Rosa the Champion is their passionate leader, and is faced with a brutal decision when she is forced to choose between her love of sport and love of her family.

Mind of a Demon: The Larry Linkogle Story (Dir.: Adam Barker)--The birth of freestyle motocross became the demise of the sport's most infamous legend. Narrated by Lemmy.

Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae (Dir.: Stascha Bader; Canada)--The singers and musicians of Jamaica's Golden Age of music, Rocksteady, come together after 40 years to record an album of their greatest hits, to perform together again at a reunion concert in Kingston, and to tell their story. With Rita Marley

William Burroughs: A Man Within (Dir.: Yony Leyser)--Leyser paints a tender portrait of the Beat author and American icon, whose works at once savaged conservative ideals, spawned vibrant countercultural movements and reconfigured 20th century culture. With David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sant, Peter Weller, Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson.

Documentary Competition (all films are from the US unless otherwise noted):

point of entry (Dir.: Zeus Quijano Jr.)--An intimate look at modern immigration.

Bout that Bout (Dir.: Nico Sabenorio)--High school seniors in rural Florida come of age competing in an illegal after-school fight club.

Cease & Desist (Dir.: John Carluccio--Branding, addiction, sneaker culture and legal infringement are explored when artist/designer Ari Saal Forman mashes-ups the lively Newport cigarette brand into a cool Nike-like sneaker.

Close to Home (Dir.: Theo Rigby)--The story of a father broken from the murder of his son, and a daughter waiting for the father that she once had.

Finding D.Q.U. (Dir.: Christopher Newman)--In 2005 D-Q University, California's only tribal college, was shut down after a 35-year struggle, but its supporters fight to hold on to a dream that was never fully realized.

Not a Willing Participant (Dir.: Alex Barnes; Australia)--Aboriginal artist Vernon Ah Kee has been selected to represent Australia at the prestigious 53rd Venice Biennale of art. How will his important cultural work be perceived by the rest of the world?

Poinciana Sunrise (Dir.: Chuck Gomez)--The life and spirit of the "Queen of the Road", the only female member of The Highwaymen, a group of African-American Florida artists who created a beautiful and historic record of landscapes now lost to developers and modernization.

Q & A (Dir.: Tim & Mike Rauch)--Joshua Littman, an inquisitive 12-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome, interviews his mother Sarah about everything from cockroaches to her feelings about him as a son.

Redemption Stone - The Life and Times of Tom Lewis  (Dir.: Tom Dziedzic)--A spiritual vision inspires Tom Lewis, a storyteller of quiet power, to open a neighborhood safe haven called The Fishing School and to turn hardship into hope for the children in his community.

The Individualist (Dir.: Zoë Banks)--Tinkerer, musician, and inventor of the world's first solid-state heat engine, Ridgway Banks quietly solved the clean energy problem in his workshop 35 years ago, without fame, fortune or attention.

The Sundowner (Dir.: Steve Christolos)--An engineer becomes a man of the sea on his handcrafted fifty-three foot sailboat, with the incredible ambition to sail around the world.

Wahid's Mobile Bookstore (Dir.: Anjoo Khosia; US & India)--Nine-year-old Wahid makes a living selling pirated international bestsellers to customers stopping in their cars at traffic intersections in Mumbai, India.

Introduced by IDA Board President Eddie Schmidt as "the woman who holds the fate of your documentary career in her hands," Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and past executive producer of POV, held court for well over two-and-a-half intermissionless hours before a rapt audience for this the final Doc U of 2009. Among the attendees included Academy Award nominee Chuck Braverman; the venerable Marina Goldavskaya, the 2008 IDA Preservation and Scholarship Award honoree; Patricia Finneran, the New York-based senior consultant to the Documentary Film Program; and Kristin Feeley, manager of the Documentary Film program. Mertes noted that the Sundancers in the house had bypassed their own holiday party to attend this yuletide presentation.

Mertes discussed an early inspiration: Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, which she saw growing up in Kansas, and was the prime spark in opening up cinematic possibilities for her. She showed Cut Piece, a short, rarely seen work by the Maysles Brothers, that captures a young Yoko Ono performing a conceptual art piece on stage at Carnegie Hall, in which she invites members of the audience to come up and cut off pieces of her clothing until she's nearly naked. I had seen the film before the 2007 WACK exhibit on feminist art from the 60s and 70s, and I was struck by the mastery of the cinematography, how the Maysles Brothers elegantly capture Yoko Ono the art piece, Yoko Ono the artist, and Yoko Ono the human being-and, as Schmidt pointed out at Doc U, Yoko Ono, the documentary subject. It was this kind of conceptual art, and the video art that people like Yvonne Rainier were doing, that drew Mertes to this form. "I loved the fringes in all its spaces," she noted.

Mertes evolved from directing to producing and executive producing, all the while studying the masters, citing Barbara Kopple's Harlan County USA, as a great example of dramatic storytelling with the framing of the faces and the crosscuts of looks. "The answers lie in the classic work," Mertes advised the audience. And from there she cued up the first ten minutes of The Times of Harvey Milk-another prime mover for her in her early days in 1980s New York. She programmed Independent Focus, a showcase for vanguard work that ran on WNET Thirteen on Sunday nights at 11:00. Gus Van Sant's Male Noche and Spike Lee's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads and Bill Viola's I Do Not Know What I Do Not Have were among the works she programmed. And when her boss, Mark Weiss, went on to launch POV in 1988, she continued to run the local version, showing Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied prior to its culture wars-fanning national airing on POV in 1991, thereby joining Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe in the Far Right's Pantheon of Shame. "It was an era-defining piece," Mertes noted of Tongues Untied, Riggs' meditation on black gay identity. "Marlon Riggs made it for friends in San Francisco, and it destabilized PBS. PBS never recovered from the culture wars."

Between Independent Focus and POV, Mertes produced Signal to Noise, a documentary series about television and media literacy. With grants from ITVS and CPB, she commissioned 21 pieces from 17 artists. Although she didn't screen clips from that production, she did screen the promo piece for POV's 15th anniversary, which she oversaw during her seven-year tenure as executive producer, during which she also worked with filmmakers to develop websites and a community engagement program for each film that aired on the series. And one of her last acts there was providing the first funds for Robert Kenner's hit Food Inc. "Docs based on books tend to be successful," she noted, citing the ready-made audience for Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Schlosser and Pollan both make extensive appearances in the film, and Schlosser is a co-producer. Sundance 2010 will be presenting Michael Winterbottom's Shock Doctrine, based on Naomi Klein's best-selling book of the same name.

As for Sundance--both the festival and the institute--"Everyone is informed and at the top of their game" with respect to programmatic decision-making. The Sundance staff has a deep knowledge about documentary-where the form has been, where it's going, who the key players are, etc., "We're looking for new voices that surprise us," she said, citing Adele Horne's The Tailenders , Eric Daniel Metzgar's The Chances of the World Changing and Marshall Curry's Street Fight as works that grabbed her in the first minute of viewing--the kind of works that "define the language and the topic on their own terms...You get the programmers curious about the choices you're making. There's a purpose to the work that's true to the story and its characters."

Mertes also screened experts from Sundance's Stories of Change initiative, funded by the Skoll Foundation, which pairs filmmakers with social entrepreneurs. One of the films, To Catch a Dollar, about Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus' efforts to replicate his microfinancing model in Queens, NY, filmmaker Gayle Ferrarro overhauled the entire narrative after taking her film to the Sundance Labs; Mertes showed clips from both versions-one from Yunus' POV, and the other from the POV of the Queens-based women who were beneficiaries of his entrepreneurship.

Mertes described the Labs as a "documentary village," with six advisors working with the filmmakers to "bring the film from good to great." She emphasized that there is a firewall between the Documentary Program and the festival and that there's no guarantee that a film coming out of the Labs or the funding program will be accepted into the festival-although nine docs from the program will be premiering at Sundance 2010. 

Taking questions from the audience, Mertes advised one filmmaker, "Don't be afraid to wait" until your film is ready to be submitted to Sundance, and that even if the film doesn't get in, "programmers talk to programmers " on the festival circuit and that your film might be right for SXSW or Tribeca. Responding to a question about what docs are not being made, she noted that she was not seeing enough experimental filmmaking, most likely because that's not where the funding is; foundations and individual like films that will have an impact. Mertes also cited the "tyranny of the character-driven film"--itself driven by broadcasters who are looking for millions of viewers. She cited Jessica Yu (Protagonist; Into the Realms of the Real) as a filmmaker who subverts the traditional storytelling strategy, with impressive results.

On Friday, Dec. 4 Anvil! The Story of Anvil and Australian film Salt took home the top honors at the 2009 International Documentary Association Documentary Awards. Read all about the evening, other winners and honorees right here.

Below are some great pics from the evening.

Filmmaker Mai Iskander won the IDA Humanitas Award for Garbage Dreams, which also screened at this year's IDA DocuWeeks showcase. "It was such a great experience to show the film at DocuWeeks," she said. "Everybody was so supportive and the venues were excellent and it was nice to have the theatrical showcase with such other great movies. Getting this award is such a great honor for me and the people profiled in the film."

Rounding out the Sundance 2010 lineup are the shorts, and among the doc shorts include Born Sweet, from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Cynthia Wade (Freeheld); and The Fence, from Sundance frequenter Rory Kennedy, which will open the festival in a unique opening night smorgasbord of one narrative film, one documentary and one shorts program consisting of a US dramatic short, US documentary short, international dramatic short, and an animated short film.

Here's the lineup of US and international doc shorts:

US DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

Born Sweet (Director: Cynthia Wade) -- Arsenic-laced water has poisoned a 15-year-old-boy from a small, rural village in Cambodia, who fashions dreams for karaoke stardom.

Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No (Director: James Blagden)--In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, here's the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter.

Drunk History: Douglass & Lincoln (Director: Jeremy Konner; Screenwriter: Derek Waters) -- On March 22, Jen Kirkman drank two bottles of wine and then discussed a historical event. Cast: Don Cheadle and Will Ferrell

Drunk History: Tesla & Edison (Director: Jeremy Konner; Screenwriter: Derek Waters) -- On January 7, Duncan Trussell drank a six-pack of beer...then a half a bottle of absinthe...and then he discussed a historical event. Cast: John C. Reilly and Crispin Glover.

The Fence (Director: Rory Kennedy; Screenwriter: Mark Bailey) -- In October 2006, the United States government decided to build a 700-mile fence along its Mexican border. Three years and $3.1 billion later, the film investigates the impact of the project, revealing how its stated goals--containing illegal immigration, cracking down on drug trafficking, and protecting America from terrorists--have given way to unforeseen consequences.

Last Address (Director: Ira Sachs) -- A composition of exterior images from the last residential addresses of a group of New York City artists who died of AIDS.

Let's Harvest the Organs of Death Row Inmates (Directors: Chris Weller and Max Joseph; Screenwriter: Graeme Wood) -- In 2008, 37 death row inmates were executed. None of their organs were donated. Considering that there are currently 2,775 people on the waiting list for a heart transplant, the film makes the case for harvesting healthy organs from death row inmates.

Mr. Okra (Director and screenwriter: T.G. Herrington) -- An intimate look at one of New Orleans' most colorful characters, the charismatic vegetable salesman Mr. Okra, who provides a glimpse into the soul of an American city.

Para Fuera (Director: Nicholas Jasenovec) -- A intimate portrait of Dr. Richard J. Bing on his 100th birthday.

The Poodle Trainer (Director: Vance Malone) -- Irina Markova, a solitary Russian poodle trainer, reveals her transcendent relationship with her dogs, the childhood tragedy that sparked a lifetime of working with animals, and the welcome isolation behind the red velvet curtains of the circus.

The S From Hell (Director: Rodney Ascher) -- A documentary-cum-horror film about the scariest corporate symbol in history, the 1964 Screen Gems logo, aka The S From Hell. Built around interviews with survivors still traumatized from viewing the logo after shows like Bewitched or The Monkees, the film brings their stories to life with animation, found footage, and re-enactments.

Thompson (Director: Jason Tippet) -- Since second grade, Matt and Ryan have shared the bond of speech impediments, weapons and things that go fast. But as their last days of high school speed by, the two friends find that their go-carts, dirt bikes, and RC cars can't outrun adulthood.

Quadrangle (Director: Amy Grappell) -- An unconventional look at two "conventional" couples that swapped partners and lived in a group marriage in the early 1970s, hoping to pioneer an alternative to divorce and the way people would live in the future.

INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

Bus / Israel (Director and screenwriter: Yasmine Novak) -- An examination of those that live their lives amidst the complex rules, walls, soldiers and permits that make up the Israel/Palestine bus system.

Glottal Opera / Australia (Director: John Fink; Screenwriters: John Fink and Sally Stevens) -- Mesmerizing, disturbing, hilarious, disgusting, compelling, repelling.

Notes on the Other / Spain (Director: Sergio Oksman; Screenwriters: Carlos Mugiro and Sergio Oksman) -- Each summer, a crowd of Ernest Hemingway doubles meet in Key West, Florida, to choose the authentic Hemingway after Hemingway's death. One day in 1924, the real Ernest Hemingway also wanted to be someone else. This film is the story of this hypothesis.

Photograph of Jesus / United Kingdom (Director: Laurie Hill) -- Real-life archives become the stage where fact and fiction collide, belief runs amok and unruly images have a life of their own.

Wagah / Germany (Directors: Supriyo Sen and Najaf Bilgrami) -- A visual illustration that documents a single evening where 20,000 people dance and sing daily at the only checkpoint between India and Pakistan.

"Watching the documentaries being honored tonight, I was struck over and over with how rare it is to enter the lives of these strangers so intimately," he said. "The filmmakers spend so much time with these people, it's rare to get so far inside somebody else's experience."

Anvil! The Story of Anvil took home two prizes, having already won the previously-announced IDA Music Documentary Award. During a taped introduction to the film, The Office actor Rainn Wilson called the film about the long-struggling metal band, a "heavy metal hymn to the human spirit."

When accepting their award for Music Doc, Anvil drummer Robb Reiner said, "We are living proof that things are never too late and dreams do come true."

Michael Selditch, who along with Rob Tate, won the Limited Series Award for Architecture School was proud of the documentary community he saw at the event. "In many cases, the documentaries are off to the side. To have an organization that's just focused on documentaries is great," he said while arriving before the show. Naturally, he was in a good mood arriving at the show a winner. "I've been to award shows where I've been nominated, but never was the winner. So it's kind of amazing to be in this position to know ahead of time. I'm just having a good time tonight."

Nicolas Noxon brought some humor to the event while accepting his 2009 Pioneer Award for work with National Geographic Television among others. After spinning a yarn about his younger days when he butted heads with an arrogant Orson Welles, he acknowledged that there were many other pioneers in the crowd, including Dennis Kane (head of National Geographic Television for 20 years) and producer Mel Stuart. "Mel was voted a Pioneer a few years ago, and he tells me it's not bad at all," Noxon joked.

IDA friend, attorney and independent film advocate Michael Donaldson attended the event to accept his Amicus Award for his work fighting for independent filmmakers for over 30 years. "I'm just doing what I do. I'm still trying to get my head around being on this shortlist of [previous Amicus Award winners] Steven Spielberg and John Hendricks. Other than being speechless, which is an odd thing for a lawyer, it's great," Donaldson said before the event.

When introducing this year's Career Achievement Award-winner, Errol Morris, composer Philip Glass credited Morris' storytelling, technical skills and ability to make those who work with him reach higher and achieve more than they imagined in the process (Glass has worked with Morris on multiple projects and he's Ira's cousin--who knew?).

"He absolutely redefined what our description of what a documentary film could be. He made the rules, he changed the landscape. He overhauled a whole genre of filmmaking. Now that's an achievement," said Glass, noting Morris' landmark works such as The Thin Blue Line, Standard Operating Procedure and Academy Award-winner The Fog of War. "Naturally at the beginning he was vilified for his efforts. Now he's glorified for that same work. Vilified, glorified--what more could an artist hope for?"

Well, one could ask for a double win. Sacha Gervasi, the director of Anvil! got just that when Ira Glass announced that Anvil! The Story of Anvil won the IDA's Distinguished Feature category.

Gervasi's response was total rock and roll: "F**king hell." 

See the official announcement about the 2009 IDA Award winners here.

Read up on 2009 IDA Award winners, nominees and honorees here.

Following yesterday's race-to-post announcement of the competition films at Sundance, the festival just announced its Premieres, Spotlight and New Frontier slates.

Among the Premieres, Mark Lewis returns to Sundance after a ten-year hiatus with Cane Toads: The Conquest, in which he revisits the subject of his quirky 1988 film Cane Toads, this time from a 3D perspective.  The ever-prolific Michael Winterbottom offers Shock Doctrine, drawn from Naomi Klein's book about economic policy.

The Spotlight section includes returning vets Lucy Walker, whose Waste Land is screening in the World Documentary Cinema Competition and whose Countdown to Zero screens here. Dan Klores, last at Sundance with Crazy Love, screens Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks, one of ESPN's 30 for 30 series.

The New Frontier includes Sam Green's Utopia in Four Movements, billed as a "live documentary" featuring Green himself delivering the narration in concert with Dave Cerf's soundtrack "to explore the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the 21st century."

Here are the lineups:

Premieres--Documentaries:

Cane Toads: The Conquest / USA (Director and screenwriter: Mark Lewis)--In 3D, Mark Lewis explores one of Australia's greatest environmental catastrophes as he follows the unstoppable march of the cane toad across the Australian continent. World Premiere

Shock Doctrine / USA (Directors: Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross)--Closely based on the book by award-winning journalist Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine exposes how shock is used to implement economic policy in vulnerable environments. North American Premiere

Spotlight--Documentaries:

8: The Mormon Proposition / USA(Director: Reed Cowan)--An examination of the relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the promotion and passage of California's Proposition 8 denying marriage rights for Gay and Lesbian couples. World Premiere

Catfish / USA(Directors: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman)--When a young New York City photographer is contacted on Facebook by an 8-year-old painting prodigy from rural Michigan, he becomes deeply enmeshed in her life, even falling in love with her older sister--that is, until a crack appears in her story. World Premiere

Climate Refugees / USA (Director: Michael Nash)--An over-consuming, crowded world, with depleting resources and a changing climate is giving birth to 25 million climate refugees resulting in a mass global migration and border conflicts. World Premiere

Countdown to Zero / USA (Director: Lucy Walker)--A fascinating and frightening exploration of the dangers of nuclear weapons, exposing a variety of present-day threats and featuring insights from a host of international experts and world leaders who advocate total global disarmament. World Premiere

Life 2.0 / USA(Director: Jason Spingarn-Koff)--More than an examination of new technology, the film is foremost an intimate, character-based drama about people whose lives are dramatically transformed by the virtual world called Second Life. World Premiere

Teenage Paparazzo / USA(Director: Adrian Grenier)--A 13-year-old paparazzi boy snaps a photo of actor Adrian Grenier, leading Grenier to explore the effects of celebrity on culture. World Premiere

To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America / Bangladesh, USA (Director: Gayle Ferraro)--Tapping into the success of Muhammad Yunus after winning the Nobel Peace Prize (2006), Grameen America has opened in Queens, NY, replicating the banking model program Yunus first started in Bangladesh. World Premiere

Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks / USA (Director: Dan Klores)--Reggie Miller single-handedly crushed the hearts of Knick fans multiple times. But it was the 1995 Eastern Conference Semifinals that solidified Miller as Public Enemy #1 in New York City. World Premiere

New Frontier--Documentaries:

Utopia in Four Movements / USA (Director: Sam Green)--In this "live documentary," Sam Green's live narration blends with Dave Cerf's soundtrack to explore the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the 21st century.  World Premiere

The 2009 IDA Documentary Awards are just around the corner (this Friday, Dec. 4 to be exact), so now is the perfect time to read up on some of the just-announced winners and nominees who are vying for the top spot in the Feature Documentary and Short Documentary categories.

Check out these past Documentary magazine articles and interviews on the following films and filmmakers:

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (IDA Music Documentary Award winner, Feature Documentary nominee): This Is Anvil: Heavy Metal Doc Follows Band's 30-Year Quest for Fame

Wounded Knee (ABCNews VideoSource Award winner): Their AIM Is True: Native American Filmmakers Look to Define a New Era

The Final Inch (Pare Lorentz Award winner): Meet the Academy Award Nominees: Irene Taylor Brodsky--'The Final Inch'

Salt (Short Documentary nominee): Meet the Filmmakers: Michael Angus--'Salt'

The Solitary Life of Cranes (Short Documentary nominee): Meet the Filmmakers: Eva Weber--'The Solitary Life of Cranes'

Afghan Star (Feature Documentary nominee): Afghanistan's Got Talent: 'Afghan Star' Observes Pop Culture in a War-torn Nation

Food, Inc. (Feature Documentary nominee): Change: It's What's for Dinner: 'Food, Inc.' Takes on Agribusiness

Mugabe and the White African (Feature Documentary nominee): Meet the Filmmakers: Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson--'Mugabe and the White African'

Then, check out the latest articles on our special honorees:

Errol Morris (Career Achievement Award): Career Achievement Award--The Cinematic Investigations of Errol Morris

Nicolas Noxon (Pioneer Award): IDA Pioneer Award--Bringing Wildlife to the Small Screen: Nicolas Noxon

Michael Donaldson (Amicus Award): Amicus Award--Fair Use’s Best Friend: Michael C. Donaldson

Natalia Almada (Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award): Transcending Borders: Natalia Almada

Who will come out on top at the IDA Documentary Awards on Friday? Join us as we honor the best documentaries of the year, with host Ira Glass. Purchase tickets now to be there to find out.

Click here to read all about the already-announced winners in seleect categories, other special honorees, including Errol Morris, Nicolas Noxon, Michael Donaldson and special presenters including composer Philip Glass, The Office’s Rainn Wilson, Food Inc. director Robert Kenner and the Sundance Institute’s Cara Mertes. Current Media’s Laura Ling and Euna Lee will introduce a special tribute to filmmakers and journalists who displayed conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of truth.

Check out what others are saying about the 2009 IDA Awards. 

Natalia Almada was born in Sinaola, Mexico, to a Mexican father and an American mother, grew up in Chicago, and now maintains residences in both Brooklyn and Mexico City. It is this dual citizenship that best informs her work, that enables her to both transcend the mythical border between two nations and two cultures, and engage it with a deeper gaze--capturing the inherent dualities, nuances and grey areas, and infusing her inquiries into the predominant socioeconomic issues that define Mexican-American relations with an abiding sense of poetry and music.

Almada received her master's degree from Rhode Island School of Design--not in film, but in photography. That discipline, so predicated upon finding and capturing a soul in a frame, led her to the moving image. The three works she has produced in the past decade--All Water Has a Perfect Memory, Al Otro Lado and El General--demonstrate a singular vision, a resolve to take various sub-genres in documentary--the essay, the personal documentary, the social issue documentary and the history documentary--and make them her own.

Documentary talked with this year's Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker honoree about photography, duality, and the territory between history and memory.

You earned your MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where your main artistic discipline was photography. Talk about how that art form has informed your documentary work. How did your initial training in photography evolve into your documentary career?

Natalia Almada: I had a really inspiring video teacher at RISD and fell in love with moving images, so I proceeded to insert myself as much as I could into the film department. Yet, I still think that I think as a photographer in terms of my relationship to the image and to the frame. In some regards, I was lucky to have studied something related but different because I felt much more free to invent my own way of doing things. 

Sometimes when I'm working on grant proposals and feeling frustrated trying to write a clear treatment about a film that I haven't begun making, I think back to making my short film All Water Has a Perfect Memory. I didn't have a clue about what I was doing or what the film would be like in the end, and it was wonderful. I had an impulse and I went for it. And I let that lead to the next impulse...until one impulse after the next, I had a film. I was driven by a set of inquiries and ideas that I wanted to materialize, rather than by a desire to make a film per se. 

I think I use the camera as a way to see what I see. It is almost like a mirror, in that sense. It is the process of making documentaries that I love. I really do begin from a point of curiosity and pick up my camera to go explore that thing which caught my attention. It is a pretext to look at something more closely, to look at it differently, to understand how I see it and relate to it. If I didn't have this curiosity, then I'm not sure if I would feel driven to make films.

You are the daughter of an American mother and a Mexican father, and you currently maintain homes in both Brooklyn and Mexico City. How has your bi-national/bicultural identity helped facilitate your inquiries into border dynamics, into larger questions about assimilation, immigration, multiculturalism?

I was flying from Mexico City to New York this past September when I noticed that the plane was full of unaccompanied minors. A boy who must have been about 10 was taking his little brother to the bathroom, and I had a flashback to flying with my brother back and forth when we were little. In many ways, these flights defined our childhood. Everything changed, from what we ate to the language we spoke. Without knowing, we were inside and outside in both countries and perhaps most at home in that space hovering in between. Back then, my brother and I were usually the only minors on the plane. It filled me with both sadness and hope to see all these children who I imagine were somehow inhabiting that same space in between.

Edward Said begins his biography with a quote about language that I think really describes the experience of growing up in a bicultural family and always living between two cultures. He writes, "I have never known what language I spoke first...or which one was really mine beyond any doubt. What I do know is that the two have always been together in my life, one resonating in the other, sometimes ironically, sometimes nostalgically, most often each correcting and commenting on, the other."

I don't think that my being bicultural triggers my interests in these issues as much as it shapes the way that I see things. I am interested in making the dualities and contradictions that Said describes in language, intrinsic to my films.

Your first film, All Water Has a Perfect Memory, addresses a tragic personal loss--that of your sister in a drowning accident--through home movies, photographs and manufactured images, and the off-camera recollections and reflections of your mother, father, brother and you. You were two months old when your sister died. As your brother says in the film, "You came after...That made you more independent." How did that independence better enable you to render this memory cinematically? 

I am not sure that it was the feeling of independence that led me to make All Water Has a Perfect Memory as much as it was the feeling that everyone in my family had a memory of something which I did not have. It was a sense of exclusion from this moment that deeply affected my family that led me to create a fictitious memory of my sister from the time I was very young.

Perhaps photography, more than cinema, has often been related to memory because of its relationship to the past and to time. The photograph is the memory object which tells us that something happened, that something was, and therefore that there is a memory of something. Making All Water Has a Perfect Memory was a way for me to fabricate a memory of something that I did not remember. I was interested in exploring the process of remembering and the subjectivity of memory. How could such an intimate event be remembered so differently? What were the points of amnesia, of contradiction, of similarity between each person's memory of the same moment?

In your first feature-length film, Al Otro Lado, you assemble a range of characters from both sides of the border--fishermen and farmers, corrido composers and performers, coyotes, Border Patrol agents and vigilantes--to help address a complicated array of interconnected issues, all related to the post-NAFTA world of illegal immigration and drug trafficking. But to me, the corrido, as channeled through Chalino, the Tupac-esque martyr/icon of the genre, and Magdiel, the struggling artist, is the heart and soul of the film. Talk about the challenges of maintaining the corrido through-line, while effectively addressing an ongoing sociopolitical issue.

I spent much of my childhood on a cattle ranch in Sinaloa, Mexico, and I remember the cowboys and fisherman talking about opium fields in the mountains and their adventures across the border. These issues were just a part of everyday life that everyone encountered in one shape or another. Meanwhile in the States, I went to elementary school in Chicago during the "Say No to Drugs" campaign, and I was always hyper-aware that my dual citizenship was not a privilege shared by most Mexicans. I was interested in making a film that would look at immigration and drug trafficking not from a moral perspective, but from an economic perspective, one that would look at the economic crisis as the catalyst for one to illegally immigrate or traffic. I also wanted to make a film in which the immigrants and traffickers were not reduced to being just immigrants and traffickers without history and culture.

The corrido tradition has existed for over 200 years in Mexico and has historically served as an underground musical newspaper of sorts. The protagonists of most of the contemporary corridos are drug traffickers and immigrants who've beaten the system, so I wanted to use the music in much the same way that one might use a narrator in a more traditional documentary. Rather than a voice of authority who speaks from the outside, it is the voice of the people in the film who are most often disempowered and silenced.

It was also a very obvious decision to use the corrido because it is such an integral part of Sinaloan culture. It is the music you hear coming out of car radios when you drive down the street and in every bar and bodega you walk into.

Your most recent film, El General, in a way picks up where All Water Has a Perfect Memory leaves off, in that personal memory--the audio tapes of your grandmother telling the story of her father, President Plutarco Elias Calles--serves as a touchstone for a broader and deeper exploration of how it connects to national history. While the former film is inspired by Toni Morrison's quote from her essay: "All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was," El General evoked for me a Tom Waits lyric: "And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget/That history puts a saint in every dream." 

Talk about how you addressed the challenge of rendering history and reconciling it with personal memory.

The film is precisely about that contradiction between history and memory. In her recordings, my grandmother was trying to reconcile her memories of her father with history's portrait of him. So my goal was not to render history and create a biography of Calles but rather to look at how we remember and how history is fabricated. I was not interested in resolving the contradictions but rather exploring them and allowing them to be the heart of the film.

In many regards the film is like a stream of consciousness between past and present. As I listened to my grandmother's memories over and over again, I had the sensation that her voice accompanied me in the present and changed the way in which I saw the things around me. She was not simply giving me a memoir of my family's past, but really changing the way I saw and understood Mexico today. It was for this reason that it became rather intuitive to begin filming on the streets of Mexico City as a way to further complicate the very contradictions that my grandmother was dealing with and look at the shadow that the past casts over the present.

There is a beautiful quote from [Chris Marker's] Sans Soleil that I use in the film: "We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is re-written." The narrator then asks, "How do we remember thirst?" I was very moved by this idea of trying to understand how we remember thirst and how we film the memory of thirst.

You both direct and edit your work, and you have edited other documentaries. How do you both reconcile the roles of director and editor--and keep them separate?

I decided to become an editor because I didn't go to film school and I thought it would be the best place to learn how to make films.

What documentary and documentary makers have served as inspirations for you?

Perhaps because my background is not in film, I find that I am inspired as much by fiction, painting, literature and other art forms as I am by documentary. There are bits and pieces of different films, quotes from certain books and feelings that I remember having while standing in front of given paintings that have inspired different aspects of my work.

I think I find encouragement to keep making films when I look at someone like Lourdes Portillo, who in many regards opened the door and paved the road for someone like me. And I don't think I could keep making films if I didn't have the support of my peers like Cristina Ibarra, Alex Rivera, Bernardo Ruiz and Vangie Griego, who are all out there making their films.

El General and All Water Has a Perfect Memory are both distributed by Women Make Movies; El General, for which Almada earned the Documentary Directing Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, will air on PBS' P.O.V. in 2010. Al Otro Lado is distributed by Subcine; it aired on P.O.V in 2006. For more about Natalia Almada and her work, go to www.altamurafilms.com.

Thomas White is editor of Documentary magazine.

It's that time of the year--the early days of the Holiday Season, the first full week of December, and the official start of Awards Season 2009-2010, when the doc community does a collective Janus-like look back and look forward. With the Gothams and Spirit nods having been announced (see Awards Roundup for details), the IDA Awards rolling out in just a matter of days, and the first in a plethora of critics awards coming out tomorrow, the Sundance Film Festival announced its slate of titles that will undoubtedly yield a crop of buzz-and-kudos-worthy docs in the year ahead.    

Alex Gibney returns with his much anticipated Casino Jack and the United States of Money, about lobbyists-turned-felon Jack Abramoff; Stanley Nelson offers Freedom Riders, about the civil rights activists in the early 1960s; Ricki Stern and Annie Sunberg are back with Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work; Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp) make their Sundance debuts with 12^th and Delaware; and Leon Gast, in his first film since the Academy Award-winning When We Were Kings, premieres Smash His Camera, about paparazzo Ron Galalla.

The World Competition includes Last Train Home (Lixin Fan), fresh from its award-winning run at IDFA; Jose Padhilla's Secrets of the Tribe; Chrisian Frei's Space Tourists; and Lucy Walker's Waste Land.

Here's the lineup:

US DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

This year's 16 films were selected from 862 submissions. Each film is a world premiere.

Bhutto (Directors: Jessica Hernandez and Johnny O'Hara; Screenwriter: Johnny O'Hara)--A riveting journey through the life and work of  recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistani prime minister and a polarizing figure in the Muslim world. World Premiere

Casino Jack & The United States of Money (Director: Alex Gibney)--A probing investigation into the lies, greed and corruption surrounding DC super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies.  World Premiere

Family Affair (Director: Chico Colvard)--An uncompromising documentary that examines resilience, survival and the capacity to accommodate a parent's past crimes in order to satisfy the longing for family. World Premiere

Freedom Riders (Director: Stanley Nelson)--The story behind a courageous band of civil rights activists called the Freedom Riders who in 1961 creatively challenged segregation in the American South. World Premiere

GasLand (Director: Josh Fox)--A cross-country odyssey uncovers toxic streams, dying livestock, flammable sinks and weakening health among rural citizens on the front lines of the natural gas drilling craze. World Premiere

I'm Pat _______ Tillman (Director: Amir Bar-Lev)--The story of professional football star and decorated US soldier Pat Tillman, whose family takes on the US government when their beloved son dies in a "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan in 2004. World Premiere

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Director: Tamra Davis)--The story of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work defined, electrified and challenged an era, and whose untimely death at age 27 has made him a cultural icon.World Premiere

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Directors: Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg)--A rare, brutally honest glimpse into the comedic process and private dramas of legendary comedian and pop icon Joan Rivers as she fights tooth and nail to keep her American dream alive. World Premiere

Lucky (Director: Jeffrey Blitz)--The story of what happens when ordinary people hit the lottery jackpot. World Premiere

My Perestroika (Director:Robin Hessman)--Intimately tracking the lives of five Muscovites who came of age just as the USSR collapsed and are adjusting to their post-Soviet reality, My Perestroika maps the contours of a nation in profound transition. World Premiere

The Oath (Director: Laura Poitras)--Filmed in Yemen, The Oath tells the story of two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a course of events that led them to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo, and the US Supreme Court. World Premiere

Restrepo (Directors: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington)--Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's year dug in with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan's most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back-breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban. World Premiere

A Small Act (Director:Jennifer Arnold)--A young Kenyan's life changes dramatically when his education is sponsored by a Swedish stranger. Years later, he founds his own scholarship program to replicate the kindness he once received. World Premiere

Smash His Camera (Director: Leon Gast)--Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sued him, and Marlon Brando broke his jaw. The story of notorious, reviled paparazzo Ron Galella opens a Pandora's Box of issues from right to privacy, freedom of the press and the ever-growing vortex of celebrity worship. World Premiere

12th & Delaware (Directors: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing)--The abortion battle continues to rage in unexpected ways on an unassuming corner in America. World Premiere

Waiting for Superman (Director: Davis Guggenheim)--Waiting for Superman examines the crisis of public education in the United States through multiple interlocking stories--from a handful of students and their families whose futures hang in the balance, to the educators and reformers trying to find real and lasting solutions within a dysfunctional system. World Premiere

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

This year's 12 films were selected from 782 international documentary submissions.

A Film Unfinished / Germany, Israel (Director: Yael Hersonski)--Film reels uncovered in Nazi archives reveal the mechanisms used to stage Warsaw Ghetto life--images which have shaped our view of history. World Premiere

Enemies of the People / Cambodia, United Kingdom (Directors: Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath)--A young journalist whose family was killed by the Khmer Rouge befriends the perpetrators of the Killing Fields genocide, evoking shocking revelations. US Premiere

Fix ME /  France, Palestinian Territories, Switzerland(Director: Raed Andoni)--When Palestinian filmmaker Raed Andoni gets a headache that won't quit, he seeks out help and insight in different forms in his hometown of Ramallah. International Premiere

His & Hers / Ireland (Director: Ken Wardrop)--Seventy Irish women offer moving insights into the relationships between women and men. North American Premiere

 Kick in Iran / Gemany (Director: Fatima Geza Abdollahyan)--The first female professional Taekwondo fighter from Iran to qualify for the Olympic Games struggles for recognition in a society where women still play a subordinate role. World Premiere

Last Train Home / Canada (Director: Lixin Fan)--Getting a train ticket in China proves a towering ordeal as a migrant worker family embarks on a journey, along with 200 million other peasants, to reunite with their distant family. US Premiere

The Red Chapel (Det Røde Kapel) / Denmark (Director: Mads Brügger)--A journalist with no scruples, a self-proclaimed spastic, and a comedian travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange visit to challenge one of the world's most notorious regimes. US Premiere

Russian Lessons / Georgia, Germany, Norway (Directors: Olga Konskaya and Andrei Nekrasov)--An investigation into Russian actions during the 2008 war in Georgia, revealing the little known story of the ethnic cleansing in the region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. World Premiere

Secrets of the Tribe / Brazil (Director: José Padilha)--Is the academic Anthropology community capable of generating real knowledge about mankind? The scandals and the infighting regarding the representation of indigenous Indians in the Amazon Basin seems to indicate that the answer may be a resounding no. World Premiere

Sins of My Father / Argentina, Colombia (Director: Nicolas Entel)--The life and times of notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar are recounted through the eyes of his son, who fled Colombia to move beyond his father's legacy. North American Premiere

Space Tourists / Switzerland (Director: Christian Frei)--A humorous and laconic view of the way billionaires depart our planet earth to travel into outer space for fun. North American Premiere

Waste Land / United Kingdom (Director: Lucy Walker)--Lives are transformed when international art star Vik Muniz collaborates with garbage pickers in the world's largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro. World Premiere

After the heated debate over the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Feature Documentary Short List announcement, The Envelope given props to the 2009 IDA Documentary Awards (taking place Fri., Dec. 4, by the way) for its list of nominees and already-announced winners in seven categories, also calling it an indicator for which way the win for the Oscar documentary may go.

Writer Paul Gaita pointed out that snubbed crowd-favorite Anvil! The Story of Anvil, and the popular Afghan Star and Diary of a Times Square Thief made the IDA's list only.

Meanwhile, Documentary Film Online called the IDA's picks, "A soothing aloe on burned skin...to quell the recent rage documentary film fans have had over The Academy Award selection process."

The Envelope also gave the IDA credit for knowing how to pick 'em in the past. From the piece:

As an indicator for which way the Oscar documentary might go, the IDA, which has been celebrating nonfiction film and filmmakers since 1982, accurately picked the 2008 best documentary feature, Man on Wire, which tied with Waltz with Bashir (a nominee for best foreign film that year) for the feature prize. It nominated the 2007 winner, Taxi to the Dark Side, but gave the prize to the PBS/Nova production Walk to Beautiful, and honored the 2006 winner, An Inconvenient Truth, with the Pare Lorentz Award (given to a filmmaker who best represents the spirit of the acclaimed documentarian) while giving top prize to Oscar nominee Iraq in Fragments.

Read the whole Envelope piece here.

Who will come out on top at the IDA Documentary Awards on Friday? Join us as we honor the best documentaries of the year, with host Ira Glass. Purchase tickets now to be there to find out.

Click here to read all about the already-announced winners in seleect categories, other special honorees, including Errol Morris, Nicolas Noxon, Michael Donaldson and special presenters including composer Philip Glass, The Office’s Rainn Wilson, Food Inc. director Robert Kenner and the Sundance Institute’s Cara Mertes. Current Media’s Laura Ling and Euna Lee will introduce a special tribute to filmmakers and journalists who displayed conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of truth.

Check out what others are saying about the 2009 IDA Awards.