Bowing to international pressure, the Tokyo International Film Festival announced it will screen The Cove, a documentary about the annual dolphin hunt in Taij, at the nine-day event in October The Japan Times reported.

The film was initially rejected by TIFF and had inspired Taij's sister city of Broome in Australia to severe its relationship with the Japanese town. The controversy led to festival organizers to take special consideration when adding the film.

From The Japan Times:

When organizers on Wednesday announced the lineup for the 22nd annual film festival, TIFF Chairman Tom Yoda singled out The Cove, explaining the decision to include the documentary was made after the festival had reached an agreement with the movie's producers to take full responsibility should any problems arise from the screening.

"We had initially decided not to include this movie out of concern that it may bring controversy, but we have received a lot of international criticism," Yoda said.

"It's a really good day for dolphins and Japanese people," [The Cove] director Louie Psihoyos told The Japan Times by phone from Sweden. "Japanese people for the most part do not know about the high levels of mercury in dolphin meat. This film will hopefully once and for all settle the argument these animals shouldn't be eaten for food because of extremely high levels of mercury."

Get more information about TIFF here and The Cove here.

As part of our 2009 Doc U Seminar Series, the IDA is proud to present an Evening with Ondi Timoner on Thursday, Sept. 24 in Los Angeles.

Register for the event here!

Join us for a special evening with the two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner. Filmmaker who will discuss her latest film and share the story of her unprecedented success at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. This is your chance to ask one of our community's most celebrated artists your questions about production and the art and business of documentary filmmaking! You won't want to miss this fantastic opportunity.

Ondi Timoner is the only filmmaker to ever win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize twice--first for the critically-acclaimed DiG! (2004) and more recently in 2009 for We Live In Public that the New York Times called "riveting" and "a compelling cautionary tale." Timoner graduated from Yale University cum laude and founded Interloper Films in 1994. Her short film, Recycle (2005), was a winner at the ICG Awards, and screened at both Sundance and Cannes. She is currently directing and producing Cool It, a documentary which explores the issues of global warming from a socio-economic perspective as it relates to the immediate needs of the developing world.

We Live in Public opens at the NuArt Theater on September 24.
Visit www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com for more information.

Eddie Schmidt (moderator) is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, writer/producer, and commentator, as well as the Board President of the International Documentary Association (IDA). Feature credits include producing & co-writing the acclaimed IFC documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, producing and shooting HBO's powerful Twist Of Faith (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), and producing the groundbreaking teenage mosaic Chain Camera. All three films were released theatrically and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

*** Space is VERY limited, so be sure to reserve a seat soon!

A clip from the Doc U seminar with Robert Greenwald is available on our website:
http://www.documentary.org/content/video/7623
And on the IDA YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmR4pVM7HUw

IDA members: $35 advance purchase; $45 at the door
Non-members: $45 advance purchase; $55 at the door

Join IDA now! For discounted ticket prices and more!

While promoting Capitalism: A Love Story at the Toronto International Film Festival today Moore said that "Newspapers have slit their own throats. Good riddance."

Moore accused newspapers of following profits over what the readers want. He also had a zinger or two for the Republicans, saying that newspaper organizations supported GOP candidates who have discouraged reading and education with their policies. He predicted that daily newspapers would be a thing of the past in a coupe of years.

See the whole conference below. What do you think about Moore's comments? Sound off now!

Get the latest updates, news and reactions coming out of TIFF in our News on the Doc section here.

R. J. Cutler's The September Issue, which captures both the process of producing the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine and the intramural tension between Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Creative Director Grace Coddington, exceeded $1 million at the box office in its third week of release.  Following aan opening two-week run in New York City,. The film rolled out wide across the country-and pulled in over $700,000 over the weekend, for a cumulative gross total of $1,283,000, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. The September Issue is the sixth million dollar-grosser of 09, and with It Might Get Loud showing potential and Capitalism: A Love Story destined to join Michael Moore's trophy case of commercial successes, docs are looking to close out the decade relatively strongly--albeit in a platform of steadily declining promise.

Here's a list of the top grossing docs of 2009 to date:

1) Earth           $32,011,576

2) Food, Inc.   $ 4,205,402

3) Waltz With Bashir   $ 2,283,849

4) Valentino: The Last Emperor         $ 1,755,134

5) Every Little Step      $ 1,709,679

6) The September Issue  $1,283,000

7) Tyson          $ 887,918

8) It Might Get Loud               $ 802,000

9) The Wonder of It All            $ 744,298

10) The Cross: The Arthur Blessit Story         $ 741,557

HBO continued to de facto ownership of the Emmys, taking five in the nonfiction categories at the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony last Saturday in Los Angeles, including the prestigious Governors Award for the indefatigable Sheila Nevins; and two each for The Alzheimer's Project and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, for which Marina Zenovich took the Outstanding Directing and, with Joe Bini and P.G. Morgan, Outstanding Writer honors.

The other multiple winner in nonfiction was HISTORY's 102 Minutes that Shaped America, which was honored for Outstanding Nonfiction Special, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

The Creative Arts Emmys, the edited telecast of which airs September 18 on E!, is a forerunner to the Primetime Emmys, which airs September 20 on CBS. The News and Documentary Emmy Awards, presented by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts & Science, happens September 21 at the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Lincoln Center.

Governors Award

Sheila Nevins, President, HBO Documentary Films

Outstanding Children's Nonfiction Program

Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? with Maria Shriver (HBO; HBO Documentary Films and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health in association with the Alzheimer's Association, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Geoffrey Beene Gives Back Alzheimer's Initiative, and Planet Grande Pictures)
Executive Producers: Sheila Nevins, Maria Shriver
Supervising Producer: Veronica Brady
Producers: Eamon Harrington, John Watkin
Series Producer: John Hoffman

Nick News With Linda Ellerbee Coming Home: When Parents Return from War (Nickelodeon ; Nickelodeon in association with Lucky Duck Productions)
Executive Producers: Linda Ellerbee, Rolfe Tessem
Supervising Producer: Wally Berger
Producers: Mark Lyons, Martin Toub

Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations-- Laos (Travel Channel; Zero Point Zero Production, Inc.
Cameras: Todd Liebler, Zach Zamboni

Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (HBO; Milwood Pictures, Graceful Pictures, BBC, Antidote Films in association with HBO Documentary Films and ThinkFilm)
Director: Marina Zenovich

Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking

The Memory Loss Tapes (HBO; HBO Documentary Films and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health in association with the Alzheimer's Association, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Geoffrey Beene Gives Back Alzheimer's Initiative, and Sceneworks)
Executive Producers: Sheila Nevins, Maria Shriver
Series Producer: John Hoffman
Producers: Shari Cookson, Nick Doob

Outstanding Nonfiction Series

American Masters (PBS; Thirteen/WNET American Masters)
Executive Producer: Susan Lacy
Series Producer: Prudence Glass
Supervising Producer: Julie Sacks
Producer: Judy Kinberg

Outstanding Nonfiction Special

102 Minutes That Changed America (HISTORY; Produced by Siskel/Jacobs Productions for History)
Executive Producers: Greg Jacobs, Jon Siskel, Susan Werbe
Producer: Nicole Rittenmeyer

Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming

This American Life: John Smith (Showtime; Showtime Presents in association with Chicago Public Radio, Killer Films, Inc., Left/Right, Inc)
Editor: Joe Beshenkovsky

Outstanding Picture Editing-Short Form

Stand Up to Cancer (ABC, CBS, NBC; Rock Paper Scissors)
Editors: David Brodie, Andy Grieve

Outstanding Reality Program

Intervention (A&E)
Executive Producers: Gary Benz, Michael Brandon, Sam Mettler, Dan Partland, Robert Sharenow, Colleeen Conway; Supervising Producer: Jeff Grogan; Producers: Trisha Kirk Redding, Sarah Skibitzke, Kurth Schemper.

Outstanding Sound Editing for Nonfiction Programming (Single Or Multi-Camera)

102 Minutes That Changed America (HISTORY; Produced by Siskel/Jacobs Productions for History)
Sound Designer: Seth Skundrick

Outstanding Sound Mixing for Nonfiction Programming (Single Or Multi-Camera)

102 Minutes That Changed America (HISTORY; Produced by Siskel/Jacobs Productions for History)
Re-Recording Mixer: Damon Trotta

Outstanding Special Class--Short-format Nonfiction Programs

Writer's Draft (Fox Movie Channel; A Fox Movie Channel production in association with Polaris Productions, Inc.)
Producer: Kenny Rhodes ;

Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (HBO; Milwood Pictures, Graceful Pictures, BBC, Antidote Films in association with HBO Documentary Films and ThinkFilm)
Writers: Joe Bini, P.G. Morgan, Marina Zenovich

The annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji was suspended due to publicity from the film, The Cove. But, sadly, it was only temporary. (via Eco Worldly)

First Run Features has acquired Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's feature documentary Bulletproof Salesman, a look at war profiteer Fidelis Cloer. An early 2010 theatrical release is planned, with home video and broadcast releases to follow. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

1997 doc Hands on a Hardbody is about to have an exclamation point added to it's name. According to Variety, the film about a Texas endurance contest is going to be turned into a Broadway musical with the assistance of High Fidelity lyricist Amanda Green and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright. If lucky, it'll follow in the footsteps of Wright's previous doc-turned-musical effort, Grey Gardens, (read our Documentary Magazine article about that right here) which proved a hit with both audiences and critics. No matter how it fares, hopefully at the very least we'll get a catchy car tune out of it like Greased Lightin'... (Variety via A.V. Club)

The Paley Center for Media announced a diverse lineup of documentaries to be screened at its tenth annual documentary festival, PaleyDocFest09, in New York throughout the month of October. Is starts Oct. 8 with The Way We Get By, which explores how different generations of war veterans come to terms with what one's service to country means. The Festival then continues with the world premiere of the American Masters Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound on October 9; Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall on October 20;The Glass House, which is about empowering abused young women in Tehran on October 21 and more. Get all info at the Paley Center's website.

Opening: September 2
Venue: Film Forum/New York City
Film: American Casino
Dir./Prod:       Leslie Cockburn
Prod.:             Andrew Cockburn
http://www.americancasinothemovie.com/

"I don't think most people really understood that they were in a casino" says award-winning financial reporter Mark Pittman. "When you're in the Street's casino, you've got to play by their rules." This film finally explains how and why over $12 trillion of our money vanished into the American Casino.

For chips, the casino used real people, like the ones we meet in Baltimore.  These are not the heedless spendthrifts of Wall Street legend, but a high school teacher, a therapist, a minister of the church.  They were sold on the American Dream as a safe investment.  Too late, they discovered the truth. Cruelly, as African-Americans, they and other minorities  were the prime targets for the subprime loans that powered the casino. According to the Federal Reserve, African-Americans were four times more likely than whites to be sold subprime loans.

We meet the players. A banker explains that the complex securities he designed were "fourth dimensional" and sold to "idiots." A senior Wall Street ratings agency executive describes being ordered to "guess" the worth of billion dollar securities. A mortgage loan salesman explains how borrowers' incomes were inflated to justify a loan.  A billionaire describes how he made a massive bet that people would lose their homes and has won $500 million, so far.

Finally, as the global financial system crumbles and outraged but impotent lawmakers fume at Wall Street titans, we see the casino's endgame: Riverside, California, a foreclosure wasteland given over to colonies of rats and methamphetamine labs, where disease-bearing mosquitoes breed in their millions on  the stagnant swimming pools of yesterday's dreams.

Filmed over twelve months in 2008, American Casino takes you inside a game that our grandchildren never wanted to play.

Opening: September 9
Film:               Crude
Dir./Prod:       Joe Berlinger
Prods.:                        Michael Bonfiglio, J.R. DeLeon, Richard Stratton
Distributor:    First Run Features
http://www.crudethemovie.com/

Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous "Amazon Chernobyl" case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

Opening: September 11
Venue:            Cinema Village/NYC
Film:               Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
Dir./Prod:       Margarita Jimeno
Prod.:                         Darya Zhuk
Distributor:    Lorber Films
http://www.lorberfilms.com/gogol-bordello-non-stop/

Gogol Bordello Non-Stop is a lo-fi, high-energy documentary about New York City's most notoriously entertaining band, led by frontman Eugene Hütz. Filmmaker and fan Margarita Jimeno follows the band on a five-year journey from underground legend to international phenomenon, taking in the reckless, raucous sights and sounds of a band whom Hütz describes as "dedicated to creating an insane party atmosphere to deliver messages of social and political commentary." A wildly entertaining celebration of the definitive fun-de-siècle band,

Opening: September 11
Film:               No Impact Man
Dir./Prod:       Laura Gabbert
Dir.:                Justin Schein
Prod.:                         Eden Wurmfeld
Distributor:    Oscilloscope Pictures
http://www.noimpactdoc.com/index_m.php

Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year. It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption and no garbage.

No problem--at least for Colin. But he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.

Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein's film provides an intriguing inside look into the experiment that became a national fascination and media sensation, while examining the familial strains and strengthened bonds that result from Colin and Michelle's struggle with their radical lifestyle change.

Opening: September 11
Venue:            Landmark Magnolia Theater/Dallas, TX; Angelika Film Center, Houston, TX
Film:               The Horse Boy
Dir.:                Michel Orion Scott
Prod.:             Rupert Isaacson
Distributor:    Zeitgeist Films
http://www.horseboymovie.com/

How far would you travel to heal someone you love? An intensely personal yet an epic spiritual journey, The Horse Boy follows one Texas couple and their autistic son as they trek on horseback through Outer Mongolia in a desperate attempt to treat his condition with shamanic healing. When 2-year-old Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert Isaacson, a writer and former horse trainer, and his wife, Kristin Neff, a psychology professor, sought the best possible medical care for their son--but traditional therapies had little effect. Then they discovered that Rowan has a profound affinity for animals--particularly horses--and the family set off on a quest for a possible cure.

The Horse Boy is part travel adventure, part insight into shamanic tradition and part intimate look at the autistic mind. In telling one family's extraordinary story, the film gives voice to the thousands who display amazing courage and creativity every day in the battle against the mysterious and heartbreaking epidemic.

Opening: September 11
Venue:            Anthology Film Archives/New York City
Film:               The Painter Sam Francis
Dir.:                Jeffrey Perkins
http://www.thepaintersamfrancis.com/Site/Home.html

Forty years in the making, The Painter Sam Francis is Mr. Perkins's lyrical and intimate portrait of a friend, mentor and leading light of American abstract art.

The film retraces Francis' life and career from his childhood in California to his artistic maturation in post-World War II Paris, his time spent in Japan, and his return to the United States. Hinging on an interview that Perkins conducted with Francis in 1973, as well as extended scenes of the artist at work in the studio, the film provides deep insight into a man for whom creativity was a powerful life-sustaining force.

Interviews with friends, family, and fellow artists--including Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, Bruce Conner, Alfred Leslie and others--illuminate a mysterious and complex personality, and its reflection in a body of work that is simultaneously diverse and singular.

Opening: September 11
Film:               Walt & El Grupo
Dir.:                Theodore Thomas
Prod.:             Kuniko Okubo
Distributor:    Walt Disney Family Foundation Films
http://www.waltandelgrupo.com/

 For ten weeks in 1941, Walt Disney, his wife Lilly, and sixteen colleagues from his studio visited nations in Latin America to gather story material for a series of films with South American themes.  The feature documentary film Walt & El Grupo uses this framing device to explore inter-American relations, provide a rare glimpse into the artists who were part of the magic of Disney's "golden age", and give an unprecedented look at the 39 year-old Walt Disney during one of the most challenging times of his entire life. 

Opening: September 16
Venue:            Film Forum/New York City
Film:               The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Dirs./Prods.:               Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith
http://www.mostdangerousman.org/

1971: America is embroiled in a dirty war based on lies. A president is abusing the power of his office, ignoring the will of the people, Congress and the courts. He promises peace while planning a war without end.

One man, at the center of power, armed with a safe full of secret documents, leaks the truth about the Vietnam War to The New York Times. He risks life in prison to end the war he helped plan. His act of conscience and desperation triggers a Constitutional crisis, Watergate, the only Presidential resignation in history--and finally helps end the war.

Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America"

And three decades later, he's still at it.

This documentary tells a story we need now.

Opening:        September 18
Film:               FUEL
Dir./Prod.:      Josh Tickell
Prod.:             Rebecca Harrell
www.thefuelfilm.com

FUEL is a comprehensive and entertaining look at energy in America: a history of where we have been, our present predicament and a solution to our dependence on foreign oil.

Rousing and reactionary, FUEL is an amazing, in-depth, personal journey of oil use and abuse as it examines wide-ranging energy solutions other than oil, the faltering US auto and petroleum industries, and the latest stirrings of the American mindset toward alternative energy.

Opening: September 19
Venue:     On the pier at Solar One; 23rd Street @ the East River/New York City
Film:   Burning in the Sun
Dirs./Prods.:               Cambria Matlow, Morgan Robinson
www.birdgirlproductions.com; http //rooftopfilms.bside.com/2009/films/burninginthesun_rooftopfilms2009

Twenty-six-year-old charmer Daniel Dembele is equal parts West African and European, and looking to make his mark on the world. A chance encounter while managing a café in Europe convinces him to return to his homeland in Mali and start a local business building solar panels--the first of its kind in the sun-drenched nation. Daniel's goal is to electrify the households of rural communities, 99 percent of which live without power. Burning in the Sun tells the story of Daniel's journey growing the shaky startup into a viable company, and of the business' impact on Daniel's first customers in the tiny village of Banko. Taking controversial stances on climate change, poverty and African self-sufficiency, the film explores what it means to grow up as a man, and what it takes to prosper as a nation.

 Opening: September 21-"Global Premiere"
Film:   The Age of Stupid
Dir.:                Franny Armstrong
Prod.: Lizzie Gillett
http://www.ageofstupid.net/

The Age of Stupid is the new cinema documentary from Franny Armstrong, director of McLibel. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching "archive" footage from 2008 and asking: Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

On September 21, the eve of the UN General Assembly's climate session, The Age of Stupid will be launched internationally at the biggest and greenest live film event the world has ever seen. A-list celebrities will walk the green carpet to a solar-powered cinema tent in downtown New York, linked by satellite to 700 cinemas in 50+ countries.*

As an INclusive, rather than EXclusive event, everyone is invited to go to their local theatre to watch the VIPs arrive in Manhattan by bike, rickshaw, electric car and sailing boat, before braving the paparazzi on the green carpet (made from recycled soda bottles).  Following the screening of The Age of Stupid, there will be a further 40-minute event featuring Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson, Mary Robinson, the film's director Franny Armstrong, the star of the film Pete Postlethwaite and other leading thinkers, celebrities and political figures from around the world. There will be live music from Radiohead's Thom Yorke and satellite links to scientists working in the Indonesian Rainforest and at the melting glaciers in the Himalayas. A group of children will speak from the very room in Copenhagen in which all our futures will be decided at the UN climate summit in December. 

Opening:        September 23
Film:               Capitalism: A Love Story                              
Dir./Prod.:      Michael Moore
Distributor:    Paramount Vantage/Overture        
http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/

In the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece Roger & Me, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and, by default, the rest of the world). But this time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene is wider than Flint, Michigan. From Middle America to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan, Michael Moore once again takes filmgoers into uncharted territory.

Opening:        September 23
Venue:            Cinema Village/New York City
Film:               In Search of Beethoven                                
Dir.:                Phil Grabsky
http://www.insearchofbeethoven.com/

In Search of Beethoven has brought together the world's leading performers and experts on Beethoven to reveal new insights into this legendary composer. As with director Phil Grabsky's previous film, In Search of Mozart, In Search of Beethoven takes a comprehensive look at the composer's life through his musical output, documenting each piece of music in concert with Beethoven's biography and letters. Grabsky traveled across Europe and North America to interview historians and musicians between rehearsals and performances, and filmed a remarkable 55 performances as well.

Above all, In Search of Beethoven addresses the romantic myth that Beethoven was a heroic, tormented figure battling to overcome his tragic fate, struck down by deafness, who searched for his "immortal beloved," but remained unmarried. It delves beyond the image of the tortured, cantankerous, unhinged personality, to reveal someone quite different and far more interesting.

Opening:        September 25
Film:               Lord, Save Us From Your Followers 
Dir.:                Dan Merchant
http://lordsaveusthemovie.com/

If you were to meet ten average Americans on the street, nine of them would say they believe in God. So why is the Gospel of Love dividing America?
Dan Merchant put on his bumper-sticker-clad jumpsuit and decided to find the reason. After talking with scores of men and women on streets all across the nation, and also interviewing many well-known activists in today's "Culture Wars," Merchant realized that the public discussion of faith doesn't have to be contentious.
From its opening Talking Heads sequence through its touching look at faith in action, Lord, Save Us From Your Followers is a fast-paced, highly engaging documentary that explores the collision of faith and culture in America while opening up this important conversation to all of us.

Opening: September 25
Film:   The Providence Effect
Dir./Prod.:                  Rollin Binzer
Distributor:                Slowhand Cinema Releasing
http://www.theprovidenceeffect.com/

Paul J. Adams III, an African-American man with activist roots in the 1960s civil rights movement, came from a family of teachers. After being black-listed himself as a teacher in Alabama because of his civil rights activities, he moved to Chicago, received a master's degree in psychology, and then landed a job as guidance counselor at Providence St. Mel, an all-black parochial school on Chicago's notorious drug-ridden, gang-ruled West Side.

A year after his arrival, Adams became principal, only to be told the following year that Chicago's archdiocese was going to close the school. After orchestrating a fundraising campaign that received national and local media attention, funds poured in and enabled Adams to buy the school from the Sisters of Providence and convert it to a nonprofit independent school. To ward off thieves and vandals, he literally moved into the empty nuns' quarters of the convent inside the school.   

He then set about achieving a new goal:  To turn Providence St. Mel into a first rank college preparatory school, and its African-American student body into a corps of driven, disciplined, high-achieving students. 

That was over 30 years ago.  Since then, 100 percent of Providence St. Mel graduates have been accepted to college--half of them, during the last seven years, to first tier and Ivy League colleges and universities.   

The road from failing inner city school to a pre-K-through-12 educational system that produces graduates who attend Ivy League colleges and universities was not a smooth one. The Providence Effect traces the school's development from a struggling shoe-string budget dream into a school and a method of teaching that produces not only inspired students, but parents, teachers and administrators dedicated to settling for nothing less than the highest expectations.

Opening: September 30
Venue:            Film Forum/New York City
Film:   An American Journey
Dir.:                Philippe Séclier
Distributor:                Lorber Films
http //www.unvoyageamericain.com/pages/en_lefilm.html

 In contemporary photography, everybody agrees there is a "before" and an "after" The Americans, Robert Frank's 1958 photographic manifesto.

Half a century later, French director Philippe Séclier decided to follow in Frank's footsteps to explore the spirit of the "Beat Generation" and the impact of his book, The Americans, not only on the art of photography, but also on American culture.

From Texas to Montana, Nebraska to Louisiana, New York to San Francisco, An American Journey is a 15,000 miles odyssey through contemporary America, moving between past and present, photography and cinema, and two Americas, separated by time.

Five men in El Salvador, including a police officer, were arrested Wednesday in connection with the killing of French filmmaker and photographer Christian Poveda last week, the country's attorney general's office said.

A sixth man who allegedly ordered the murder was already in prison, according to a statement from the agency, CNN reported.

Poveda, whose documentary La Vida Loca follows the lifestyle and violence of the Mara 18 street gang in El Salvador was found shot dead on September 2.

Of those arrested, four were members of the Mara 18 gang, and one was National Civil Police Officer Juan Napoleon, the attorney general's office said.

La Vida Loca is slated for wider international release this month. Find out more about the film on its official website. 

Some first reactions:

Variety: By returning to his roots, professional gadfly Michael Moore turns in one of his best films with Capitalism: A Love Story.

The Hollywood Reporter: His talent is evident in creating two hours of engrossing cinema by contrasting a fast-moving montage of '50s archive images extolling free enterprise with the economic disaster of the present. Given the desperate state of the world economy, this provocative film should find attentive audiences along with many angry detractors who will give it free publicity.

Time: Capitalism: A Love Story does not quite measure up to Moore's Sicko in its cumulative power, and it is unlikely to equal Fahrenheit 9/11 in political impact. In many ways, though, this is Moore's magnum opus: the grandest statement of his career-long belief that big business is screwing the hard-working little guy while government connives in the atrocity.

The Guardian UK: If Michael Moore's latest documentary lacks the clean punch of his best-known work, it can only be because the crime scene is so vast.

The Independent: This is all familiar stuff. Moore delivers his arguments in his usual scattergun fashion, mixing archive footage, interviews, sarcastic voice-overs and his own interventions. (He spends a lot of time on Wall Street trying to make citizen's arrests of bankers.) When you unpick the rousing rhetoric you quickly realise that contradictions and syllogisms abound. Coherence isn't his strong point. Even so, this is moving and entertaining fare.

Judge for yourself when the move comes out October 2. In the meantime, check www.michaelmoore.com for the latest updates and watch the trailer here:

This book, purportedly about one of the major figures in American documentary film, was a huge disappointment. It's badly written, but what made me furious was the waste of an opportunity to do something valuable. I don't think it unreasonable to expect that a book titled with the name of a person (Albert Maysles) should tell us quite a bit about the person. Certainly it should be more than the convoluted, yet surprisingly simplistic, notions of the author about that person's work. But that's all we get: an almost stream-of-consciousness outpouring of tenuous connections from secondary sources, put together in a way that may have made sense to the author, but is not very helpful to the reader.

The author of the book, Joe McElhaney, an associate professor of film studies at Hunter College, reminds me of a young cameraman I sent to the Italian market in Philadelphia to get a few shots of tomatoes for a film on migrant workers. Because those shots wouldn't take a whole roll of film, I told him to shoot anything else he thought was interesting. When we screened the dailies, I saw some very good, very interesting shots of the market in the early morning--produce trucks, people opening their stores, trash burning in oil drums, kids on the way to school--and then, at the very end of the reel, when I'd almost given up hope, there were 30 seconds of beautiful images of tomatoes. "Good," I said. "I was beginning to wonder." The cameraman said, "This voice in my head kept saying, ‘When you're sent to the market to shoot tomatoes, you'd better come back with some shots of tomatoes.'" I'm afraid if McElhaney had been that cameraman, he would have forgotten to shoot the tomatoes.

In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell sets out "the 10,000 hour rule" and quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin, who says, "In study after study--of composers, basketball players, writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals and what have you-- this number comes up again and again. . . No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time."

This rule presumably also holds true for world-class cameramen and documentarians. And I'd like to know a lot more about how Maysles spent those first 10,000 hours of his documentary life--what mistakes he made, and what he learned from them; what theories he may have developed as a result of shooting his very first films in the Soviet Union--not so much as a documentarian, but as a psychologist gathering data; what it meant to him--at the time and looking back--to be one of the select few at Drew Associates, including Ricky Leacock, DA Pennebaker and of course Robert Drew, who were creating a new kind of American documentary. The book doesn't tell us.

It tells us that Albert Maysles was a Jew in Irish Boston, and suggests this may have affected his films. We learn that he served in the tank corps in World War II and went to college on the G.I. Bill, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology. His brother David also earned a BA in psychology. Do you think that had anything to do with the kind of personal documentaries they made that closely observe human behavior? Did it make Al a better shooter or David a better interviewer? We'll never know.

You'll find no mention of Maysles's marriage or his children in the book except for an author's acknowledgment to Maysles's daughter Sara, who "patiently took me through the company's photographs."

We learn also that the Maysles brothers liked to work with women. The names Deborah Dickson, Kathy Dougherty, Susan Froemke, Ellen Hovde, Barbara Kopple, Muffie Meyer and Charlotte Zwerin run through the book. Each of these women worked with the Maysles as an editor and often producer and/or co-director, and each became a successful documentary filmmaker in her own right. As far as I can tell, all of them except Zwerin are still alive and still working, most of them apparently in New York City, home of Hunter College, where McElhaney teaches. So it wouldn't have been a monumental task to interview all or at least some of them about their days with the Maysles brothers: why they chose to work with them, what they learned, how this might have affected their own films, and so on--the usual questions any semi-competent documentarian would have asked. But nowhere in the book is there a quotation directly attributed to any of them that cannot be traced to some secondary source. One is left to conclude that no such interviews were done. And if, for some reason, they refused to be interviewed, that would open up another interesting line of investigation.

About the writing: The book is dull, dense and gray. Long words, long sentences, long paragraphs, the page unrelieved by so much as a subhead to break the gray and offer the reader a signpost pointing where the author intends to go next. It reads like a data dump of every note the author may have had in his computer that bears even remotely on the topic. By the time I got to page 41, I was ready to give up--too much work for too little return. But, yes, I did soldier on to the end.

I also ran a series of readability tests on the first 20 pages. On the Flesch Reading Ease Scale, the score was 36, meaning the reader needs to be well into college in order to be familiar with this kind of turgid prose. The Flesch Grade Level score was 15.4-the reading level of a college senior. The FOG Index came in at a grade level of 18.4. That's doctoral studies, where everything not written in another language might as well be, and no one expects an author to give even a moment's thought to making things easy for the reader.

Here's a representative passage:

"However, cinephilia repeatedly celebrates not simply the image but the reality that gives birth to that image, hence its attraction to the indexical; its celebration of traces, fragments, and inscriptions; its love for flawed and incomplete films; as well as its overall fascination with the production process. Cinephilia is not fixated upon fictional characters so much as the actors portraying those characters; not so much with the hermeneutics of narrative structure as with quotable dialogue; and not so much with story as with style." (My italics.)

I've been around filmmaking, and especially documentary filmmaking, for more than 40 years, and I have never, ever, heard anyone use the terms "indexical" or "hermeneutics." To whom would one say them?

The author establishes at the outset that Albert Maysles is a shooter/director who did not edit the footage or become involved in the structure of the films--and then goes on to write about structural relationships as if they had something to do with the book's subject. Case in point: the controversial close-up of Jacqueline Kennedy's hands twisting nervously behind her back as she speaks to an audience in Primary. Al Maysles got the shot--a nice piece of behavior. But in the film, her speech starts with a cut to the close-up of her hands followed by a cut to a medium shot of her speaking, seen from the crowd's point of view. Maysles had nothing to do with that structure, and all discussion of it is irrelevant.

The author writes, "Maysles stated that he has ‘a religious feeling' about the ability to capture reality." Now, "a religious feeling" about anything has to lead to something valuable, revealing-- dare I say, Important? But instead of following this up with what this means to Maysles in documentary terms and in terms of the Maysles brothers' filmography, the author wanders off into quotations from Roberto Rossellini and Andre Bazin, making a confused connection between realism in fiction films and abstracting models of reality in documentary. They are not the same.

Maysles brings up documentary reality again in an interview with the author toward the end of the book. He says, "There's this prejudice that still exists that if it's real (which that film is), then what's the contribution of the filmmaker, if it's not about direction? But in a documentary, if you're ‘directing,' you're in trouble." Again, the author does not follow this up, but asks instead what other filmmakers Maysles met at the conference he attended in Lyon, France.

In the whole book, wasn't there anything to like?

Well, the interview is interesting, not for the author's questions, which are often longer than the answers he receives, but for what Maysles manages to reveal about his work in spite of the questions he's asked.

And there's a complete filmography, which has value. Certainly if you are a graduate student working on a thesis dealing with the Maysles brothers or cinéma vérité or direct cinema, you'll find all the reference material you may require in that and the bibliography at the end of the book. Then all you need is a good idea to hold it together.

Just don't look for it in this book.

Barry Hampe is the author of Making Documentary Films and Videos, Second Edition (www.makingdocumentaryfilms.com) and is working on a new book about filming behavioral documentaries. E-mail: barry@barryhampe.com.