Today Marina Zenovich, director and producer of the Emmy® Award-winning HBO Documentary Film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, released a statement about her reaction to David Wells' admission to the press that he lied to her during the making of the film. Here it is in its entirety: 

           
            “I am perplexed by the timing of David Wells’ statement to the press that he lied in his interview with me for the documentary ROMAN POLANSKI:  WANTED AND DESIRED.   Since June of 2008, the film has been quite visible on U.S. television via HBO, in theaters and on DVD, so it is odd that David Wells has not brought this issue to my attention before.
           
            “For the record, on the day I filmed Mr. Wells at the Malibu Courthouse, February 11, 2005, he gave me a one-hour interview.  He signed a release like all my other interviewees, giving me permission to use his interview in the documentary worldwide.  At no time did I tell him that the film would not air in the United States.
           
            “Mr. Wells was always friendly and open with me.  At no point in the four years since our interview has he ever raised any issues about its content.  In fact, in a July 2008 story in The New York Times, Mr. Wells corroborated the account of events that he gave in my film.
           
            “I am astonished that he has now changed his story.  It is a sad day for documentary filmmakers when something like this happens.”

Stay tuned for more Roman Report as events continue to unfold. On Friday, documentary.org will be heading to the screening and Q&A at UCLA. If you've missed recent developments about Polanski's recent arrest and how Wanted and Desired has potentially affected the case, you can catch up with these previous posts & articles:

-The Roman Report
-Polanski Arrested in Switzerland (9/27)
-Documentary magazine's article on the film

The International Documentary Association (IDA) invites you and a guest to another great mixer. Meet professional filmmakers and network.

IDA staff and board members will help you get connected to the documentary community, share your projects, meet new friends and build your professional network.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP NOW!

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When:
Wednesady, October 7, 2009
7:00pm - 9:30pm

Where:
e3rd Steakhouse & Lounge
734 E. 3rd. Street
Los Angeles, CA

No Host Bar

Photos from Past IDA Mixers:

IDA Mixer August, 28, 2009 Post

IDA Mixer July, 15, 2009 Photos

IDA Mixers 2008 Photos

Sponsors and Affiliates:

Cinema Libre

Creative Handbook

Electric Picture Solutions

Ironweed Films

Media Professional Insurance

Video Symphony

ESPN Magazine has come up with its list of Top 10 sports documentaries. It includes Hoop Dreams, When We Were Kings and Murderball to name a few. The whole list is published over at the Stranger than Fiction blog. What are yours?

There will be no 2010 CineVegas Film Festival. Festival President Robin Greenspun and Artistic Director Trevor Groth announced today that the event will be canceled due to the economic downturn. "Given the current economic climate and the pressures it has created, we made the difficult decision to put CineVegas on hiatus for the coming year," Greenspun said in a statement. "CineVegas has become such a well respected film festival, and rather than allow the economy to affect its level of quality we have opted to put the event on hold." (via indieWIRE)

Showtime has picked up a documentary which covers New Jersey hair metal rockers Bon Jovi during the band's 2008 tour, called When We Were Beautiful. We think Jon was more beautiful with that '80s hair, but we'll take this all the same. The doc will debut on Saturday, Oct. 24. (via TV Week)

The San Francisco Film Society announced a partnership with film fundraising website IndieGoGo (indiegogo.com) to provide independent filmmakers access to a greater range of fundraising opportunities. SFFS and IndieGoGo will provide filmmakers a single-platform solution integrating fiscal sponsorship with audience-building and crowd-funding efforts, thus streamlining filmmakers' efforts to raise money and build audiences.

A documentary fan who simply states, "I love documentaries and I love making slideshows set to music" married his two passions together with a fun slideshow set to a Neutral Milk Hotel instrumental track and posted it on his blog. The video features 240 docs he's watched (in order) since he started subscribing to Netflix at the end of 2004 (see, the catalog goes deep). Check it out:

In the days since filmmaker Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland in connection with his 1977 conviction of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles, California, the blogosphere has been electrified with debate about the 76-year-old director's fate. On the one hand, over 100 filmmakers have signed a petition calling for Polanski's release, while Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times documents the sturm und drang from the conservative front, as well as from normally liberal outlets such as The Huffington Post. SpoutBlog's Christopher Campbell rounds up a wide range of opinions from the film world, including The Hot Blog's David Poland, who, in three posts, argues for Polanski's extradition.

And why the arrest now? Stephen Shaefer of the Boston Herald speculates that it was partly due to Marina's Zenovich's Emmy Award-winning Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired , in which former prosecutor David Wells admits on camera to coaching Judge Laurence Rittenbrand about sentencing guidelines, which compelled Polanski's legal team to file a motion to dismiss the case.

But not so fast: Wells yesterday admitted to The Daily Beast's Marcia Clark (the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial) that he had lied in the documentary: "I lied. I know I shouldn't have done it, but I did. The director of the documentary told me it would never air in the States. I thought it made a better story if I said I'd told the judge what to do."  Ouch.

Curiouser and curiouser...The New York Post reports that filmmaker Brett Ratner (Rush Hour; The X-Men: The Last Stand) would be producing a sequel to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which EW.com reports that Zenovich will be directing.

Tune in on Friday, when we report from the screening and Q&A at UCLA-which should be the biggest happening in Westwood since Michael Jackson's death . In the meantime, for a Documentary magazine article on the film, click here.

The Way We Get By, from director Aron Gaudet and producer Gita Pullapilly, has garnered a raft of festival awards this year, including a Special Jury Award at SXSW and an Audience Award at Full Frame. Its latest stop on its festival and self-distribution circuit is Washington, DC, for a special screening Wednesday, September 30, at the North Orientation Theater in the US Capitol.

The film, which profiles a group of senior citizens of Bangor, Maine who have been faithfully greeting soldiers at a tiny Bangor airport as they return home from their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, will screen before an audience of VIPs such as Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden; Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins; Maine Representatives Michael Michaud and Chellie Pingree; and representatives from USO and the Points of Light Institute.

The Way We Get By, of which IDA is a fiscal sponsor, profiles three of the greeters, who, in providing this service for the past five years, have found a purpose in their lives amid their personal struggles with aging, disease, loneliness, memories of war, and personal loss.  The film will air nationally on PBS's P.O.V. series on Veteran's Day, November 11. In addition, through a special partnership with Bay Area Video Coalition, ITVS and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, an interactive, online site, "Returning Home," will be launched on Veterans Day. "Returning Home" will ensure that American soldiers, both newly returned and those whose service ended many years ago, are not forgotten, and that there is a place to share thoughts and memories, as well as a place to find support among a community that began to take shape among senior citizens in Bangor, Maine. This companion site to The Way We Get By continues the mission of the Maine Troop Greeters, taking these gestures internationally.

"This is a very personal story to me," said Aron Gaudet, in a statement. "Witnessing firsthand how my mother's life changed in such positive ways [His mother, Joan Gaudet, is one of the troop greeters in the film.], while at the same time touching the lives of troops from all over the country, convinced me this was a story that could inspire people. I knew it could be a way to show the everyday struggles of senior citizens and an inspirational story of how these three seniors use a simple handshake to change their lives, and the lives of the 900,000-plus troops they've greeted."

For more information about The Way We Get By, click here.

Capitalism: A Love Story ran on just four screens (it's going wide this weekend, starting Oct. 2) and made $240,000. Do a little math and that's an average of $60,000 per screen, which makes it the movie with the highest per-screen average this year.

To put it in perspective, the No. 1 movie at the box office, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (which, don't worry, isn't a doc) made averaged $8,000 per screen.

On top of the weekend dough, add about $9,000 per screen, per day since Capitalism's opening on Wednesday, Sept. 24 (indieWIRE runs those numbers in relation to others, right here) and the total take so far is a little over $300,000.

When Capitalism goes into wide release this week it will run on about 1,000 screens. While you're waiting for that, read all about the film in our Documentary magazine piece: "Love and Luchre: Michael Moore Follows the Money."

It Might Get Loud, Davis Guggenheim's docu-primer on how to be a guitar hero, as conveyed by three certified masters (U2's The Edge, The White Stripes' Jack White and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page), passed the seven-figure mark in box office gross, becoming the seventh doc to do so in 2009. The current U2 blockbuster tour may well have inspired fans to flock to the cinema to watch The Edge trade licks and riffs with his fellow axmen.

The final quarter of 2009 could play itself out as the Battle of the Michaels, with Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story having opened strongly in four theaters this past weekend (it currently has the highest per-screen average of any film this year, about $60,000), the Michael Jackson valediction, This Is It, destined to scorch the box office in its limited run, and the Next Michael Jordan, Lebron James, stoking the press junket circuit with the upcoming More Than A Game, about his national champion high school basketball team.

Here is the latest list of the top-ten grossing docs of 2009:

1) Earth                                               $32,011,576

2) Food, Inc.                                         $ 4,306,466

3) The September Issue                        $ 2,502,000

4) Waltz with Bashir                              $ 2,283,849

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

6) Every Little Step                                $ 1,719,364

7) It Might Get Loud                              $ 1,133,000

8) Tyson                                              $    887,918

9) Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg                    $    790,402

10) The Cove                                       $    770,419

Source: www.boxofficemojo.com

The Documentary Channel® (DOC) announced an exclusive agreement with 7th Art Releasing to televise a collection of 10 flicks from the 7th Art library. The package includes an eclectic assortment of film festival favorites including Word Wars, The Happy Hooker: Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary and What Remains of Us.
In a statement, Udy Epstein, principal of 7th Art Releasing, said, “It's great to bring some of 7th Art's favorite films to The Documentary Channel where good docs are always appreciated and promoted through traditional and new media.  We value greatly the channel's dedication to documentaries.  And our filmmakers love the exposure." The 7th Art Releasing film package will premiere on DOC beginning in November 2009, with specific titles and telecast schedules to be announced at a later date.

Time to Pay Up
The free ride at Variety is coming to an end. As reported on Nikkie Finke and confirmed by PaidContent.org, Variety.com is planning on putting most of its online content behind a paywall next year. The site had done away with its paid-subscription model in early 2007 in order to grow their unique users and go the ad-supported route. Will be interesting to see what that means for those who frequently cite the trades (like us!)...it's no fun to post a link to something readers can't actually access. 

Life on Showtime is Dead
Luckily, This American Life still remains free on the radio...though you won't be able to watch it on Showtime anymore. As reported by FishbowlNY, At a Behind the Scenes event hosted at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y, Life host Ira Glass revealed that the Emmy-nominated and IDA award-winning series will not be continuing.

"Most journalism is about things that already happened, as it turns out," Glass said with a laugh. "But with television, you want to capture it while it's happening. Honestly, what the f**k -- you understand reality shows because it's so hard to make things happen."

This is It Trailer
We'll leave you with some eye candy: the trailer for Michael Jackson's This is It, the film compiled from rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's tour. Love him or hate him, you have to admit it: the man was damn talented. The film will be released by Sony on October 28 for just two weeks.    
Trailer trivia: At about 1:45 into the trailer, you'll hear a quick quote from Orianthi Panagaris, the young female guitar player who landed the coveted gig on the tour. Panagaris made an appearance at DocuWeeks when she came out to support the film Rock Prophecies and its subject, legendary rock photographer Robert Knight (read IDA's event coverage here).

Michael Moore is in love. It's an aching, make-you-do-crazy-things kind of love, including borrowing a Brinks truck and wrapping Wall Street in crime scene tape, attempting to make citizen's arrests of bankers, criss-crossing the country to woo his intended and even soliciting the advice of several priests and a bishop. He's got it bad.

This is all in an effort to convince the object of his desire that she's been misled and is shacking up with the wrong guy. Who is this muse who's stirred his soul and compelled him to make his latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, which opens today (September 23) in Los Angeles and New York, followed by a nationwide release October 2? "I love America," Moore declared, following a recent pre-release screening in Los Angeles.

It's clear from the movie that he's optimistic about his chances of courting the country and rescuing it from the clutches of the corporations and their bought-and-paid-for political spokesmodels and pundits. "The American people will do the right thing if given the information," he said.

Moore hopes his film will be a catalyst for the changes he thinks are necessary to get the country back on track. Not only does he want to get people into the theaters to see his film, he wants them to get involved "in this great country," he explained. "Democracy is not a spectator sport."

Some people might assume that this 127-minute motion picture journey is an anti-capitalism screed inspired by Karl Marx, but as usual, Moore draws heavily on that other Marx--Groucho--to drive home his points about the failings of our system. After commandeering a Brinks truck, he rolls into Wall Street to cordon off one of the temples of the moneychangers with yellow crime scene tape. He's there to make citizens' arrests and get the people's billions back from those we "rescued" with an unprecedented, ask-no-questions series of loans after they tanked the world's economies.

Moore talks to former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, who now chairs the Congressional Oversight Committee, which is charged with figuring out where that money went. "The Treasury Department still will not tell her what the banks are doing with our money, or what they've done with it; there's no accountability whatsoever," Moore told the LA audience.

Moore is incensed by the contrast between the way banks treat someone seeking a loan and how they've been protected and been allowed to blithely ignore the public's interest in keeping track of our money. "If you ever try to get a loan, there's all the paperwork you've got to fill out, every personal question they ask you and all this back-up proof of what you're going to do with that loan from the bank," he bemoaned. "The wringer they put the average person through to get a measly ten or 20 thousand dollars...If you're a bank and you want bailout money, it's a two-page form with mostly white space, and three questions."

Making the film, Moore discovered some unexpected glimmers of hope. Approached by a New York City cop while he was stringing the crime scene tape around Wall Street, the filmmaker muttered under his breath, just loud enough for the officer to hear, that he'd be gone in a few minutes and that this was just a stunt for his movie. Hoping this would buy him a few minutes to get the shot and avoid arrest, he was shocked to hear the cop say, "Take all the time you need." Apparently, the police pension fund was decimated by the collapse of the stock market.

Once again, it's clear that Moore's brand of provocation is not about that dreaded "ism" we were schooled to abhor. It's about populism in the vein of such Depression Era luminaries as Will Rogers, Frank Capra and John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath, as opposed to the John Wayne collaborations), with a dose of some Preston Sturges' screwball comedy touches.

This was the era of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is credited with rescuing capitalism by restoring the people's confidence and creating a bulwark of regulations that would keep the system from self-destructing. He also worked to create the safety net of programs that would offer citizens some assurance of a better life. But what most have forgotten is that FDR wanted to take this even further with a second Bill of Rights--an "economic bill of rights" that would guarantee:

"The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment;

The right to a good education."

Moore's archive researchers dug up a long lost piece of film showing an aging Roosevelt introducing this proclamation to the American people, which was tacked on to his final State of the Union address, which he delivered January 11, 1945. Roosevelt was ailing and too weak to make the trek to Capitol Hill, so he spoke to the people by radio, but had a film crew standing by to record the ending. The President was preparing the country for the opportunities of a post-war world, and he believed, "All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being. America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens."

Moore contrasts this noble, sweeping vision with the onslaught of the Reagan Revolution, which was hellbent on dismantling the hard-won strictures of the Roosevelt era. While many are unwilling to speak ill of the dead, especially an icon like Reagan, Moore traces his transformation from B-movie hero and spokesman for General Electric into a semi-mythic figure whose public persona of decent, middle-American values was in marked contrast to his policies, which systematically undermined the protections wrought by Roosevelt and put us on the collision course that led to the recent economic collapse.

Defined benefit pension plans became 401Ks with no guarantees. Students had to borrow from banks to go to college. Unions were denigrated and broken, and jobs went overseas.  Real wages stagnated, and we became addicted to credit in order to keep up.

Being an equal opportunity skewerer, Moore gives Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush a drubbing for their roles in continuing to unravel the economic system. He doesn't spare the current occupant of the White House, who has appointed people Moore believes are the architects of the debacle to positions where they are responsible for cleaning up the mess.

"It's so bothersome that Geithner, Summers and Rubin are in charge," said Moore.  "Obama probably didn't understand what a derivative was, either, and was told that, ‘Well, these are smart guys; let's bring them in. They know what to do.' It's disheartening to see these three men in charge of our economy now."

To show us the human cost of these policies, Moore takes us inside the lives of people whose homes are being foreclosed. We see one family burning their furniture to earn a clean-up fee of $1,000 from the bank. It's heartbreaking, and you wonder where the mainstream media have been for the last couple of years. Instead of covering protests against health care reform, why aren't they embedded with those who are losing their homes because they've been crushed by a mountain of medical bills?

"Actually, the number one reason for people being foreclosed upon is because they don't have health insurance, and they've been paying medical bills and now they can't pay their mortgages," Moore maintained, citing a study authored by Elizabeth Warren when she was at Harvard. "Instead we hear, ‘This whole mess was caused by people who were living beyond their means and taking out these loans they shouldn't have been taking out and blah, blah, blah."

Moore is encouraged by the response he's received at screenings at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals and at venues across the country. He's also buoyed by the enthusiastic backing of Overture Films and Paramount Vantage, which are releasing Capitalism: A Love Story. "I'm going to have a larger opening than I've had for any film," said Moore.

Chris McGurk, CEO of Overture, has been a fan of Moore's ever since he saw Roger and Me 20 years ago. Several years later, while at MGM, he had the chance to buy Bowling for Columbine after seeing it at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. McGurk isn't afraid of the fact that Moore has a social agenda. "He's an incredibly bold filmmaker who asks the right questions, no matter what side of the issue you are on," McGurk said in a telephone conversation. Winning Academy Awards, garnering great reviews and selling a mountain of tickets and DVDs doesn't hurt either. 

According to McGurk, the secret to Moore's success is, "He tackles these documentaries in the way the best filmmakers tackle their non-documentaries--he's all about story and character. He latches on to people and ideas and weaves a story around them that is riveting." 

For Moore, success will be people getting involved in the political process after watching his film. "In these times now, we can't just be sitting back," Moore declared at the Los Angeles screening. But he's not starting a new organization. "There are already organizations that are fighting back, but they're small and they need mass support. Let's act like the majority. We have the power, right?"

If you do, you'll help Moore win back the love of his life--America. ;

Michael Rose is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker.