Opening: August 12
Venue: Film Forum/New York City
Film: Yasukuni
Dir.: Li Ying
Distributor: The Film Library (Hong Kong
http://www.filmforum.org/films/yasukuni.html
When Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi insisted that his visits to the Yasukuni shrine were a purely personal matter, he unleashed an international furor. Established in 1869, the shrine houses 2.5 million Japanese war dead including World War II "class A war criminals," among them General Tojo and others sentenced to death at the Tokyo Trial (Japan's Nuremberg). Visitors to Yasukuni include still-militant Japanese nationalists as well as outraged protesters from China, Taiwan, Korea and Okinawa. Chinese filmmaker Li Ying doesn't pull his punches. He includes archival images of a "100-man beheading contest" between Japanese officers as well as a fascinating contemporary interview with a 90-year-old craftsman who continues to forge Yasukuni swords, used in these and other atrocities.
Opening: August 14
Venue: The Quad Cinema/New York City
Film: Earth Days
Dir./Prod.: Robert Stone
Distributor: Zeigeist Films
http://www.earthdaysmovie.com/
It is now all the rage in the Age of Al Gore and Obama, but can you remember when everyone in America was not "Going Green"? Visually stunning, vastly entertaining and awe-inspiring, Earth Days looks back to the dawn and development of the modern environmental movement--from its post-war rustlings in the 1950s and the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's incendiary bestseller Silent Spring, to the first wildly successful 1970 Earth Day celebration and the subsequent firestorm of political action.
Earth Days' secret weapon is a one-two punch of personal testimony and rare archival media. The extraordinary stories of the era's pioneers--among them former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; biologist/Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich; Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand; Apollo Nine astronaut Rusty Schweickart; and renewable energy pioneer Hunter Lovins--are beautifully illustrated with an incredible array of footage from candy-colored
Eisenhower-era tableaux to classic tear-jerking 1970s anti-litterbug PSAs. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone (Oswald's Ghost, Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst), Earth Days is both a poetic meditation on humanity's complex relationship with nature and an engaging history of the revolutionary achievements--and missed opportunities--of groundbreaking eco-activism.
Opening: August 14
Film: It Might Get Loud
Dir.: Davis Guggenheim
Prod.: Thomas Tull
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
http://www.sonyclassics.com/itmightgetloud/
Rarely can a film penetrate the glamorous surface of rock legends. It Might Get Loud tells the personal stories, in their own words, of three generations of electric guitar virtuosos - The Edge (U2), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), and Jack White (The White Stripes). It reveals how each developed his unique sound and style of playing favorite instruments, guitars both found and invented. Concentrating on the artist's musical rebellion, traveling with him to influential locations, provoking rare discussion as to how and why he writes and plays, this film lets you witness intimate moments and hear new music from each artist. The movie revolves around a day when Jimmy Page, Jack White, and The Edge first met and sat down together to share their stories, teach and play.
Opening: August 14
Film: Art & Copy
Dir.: Doug Pray
Prods.: Jimmy Greenway, Michael Nadeau
http://www.artandcopyfilm.com/
Art & Copy is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (Surfwise, Scratch, Hype!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time--people who've profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising's "creative revolution" of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in Art & Copy were responsible for "Just Do It," "I Love NY," "Where's the Beef?," "Got Milk," "Think Different," and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.
Opening: August 28
Venue: Cinema Village/New York City
Film: At the Edge of the World
Dir.: Dan Stone
Distributor: WealthEffectMedia
What are you willing to risk your life for?
For 46 volunteers on two ships determined to shut down an illegal whaling fleet in Antarctic waters, the consequences are very real.
At The Edge of the World puts you in the middle of the action as the international crew
unleashes an arsenal of bizarre and brilliant tactics in this uniquely beautiful and deadly corner of the world.
With one ship (The Farley Mowat) too slow to chase down the whaling fleet, with their second ship (The Robert Hunter) unsuited for Antarctic ice conditions and with no country supporting their efforts to enforce international law, the situation becomes increasingly desperate in this real-life David-vs.-Goliath adventure.
Opening: August 28
Film: The September Issue
Dir./Prod.: R.J. Cutler
Prods.: Eliza Hindmarch, Sadia Shepard
Distributor: Roadside Attractions, A&E Indie Films
http://www.arp.tv/production.html?production=septissue
http://www.theseptemberissue.com/#/home
The September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine weighed nearly five pounds, and was the single largest issue of a magazine ever published. With unprecedented access, The September Issue, directed and produced by R.J. Cutler, tells the story of legendary Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour and her larger-than-life team of editors creating the issue and ruling the world of fashion.
Opening: August 28
Film: We Live in Public
Dir./Prod.: Ondi Timoner
Prod.: Keirda Bahruth
http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/
On the 40th anniversary of the Internet, We Live in Public tells the story of the effect the Web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes of "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of," visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director Ondi Timoner (DIG!), documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives.
Josh Harris, often called the "Warhol of the Web," founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network during the infamous dot-com boom of the 1990s. He also created his vision of the future: an underground bunker in New York City where 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days over the turn of the millennium. (The project, named QUIET, also became the subject of Ondi Timoner's first cut of her documentary about Harris. Her film shared the project's name.) With QUIET, Harris proved how, in the not-so-distant future of life online, we will willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire. Through his experiments, including another six-month stint living under 24-hour live surveillance online which led him to mental collapse, he demonstrated the price we will all pay for living in public.
It began in 1997 as DOCtober, and over the next dozen years, the theatrical documentary showcase took on various incarnations and locations. And last Thursday, the three-weeks long, bicoastal DocuWeeks 2009 launched at the ArcLight Hollywood, with a screening of Greg Barker’s Sergio, followed by a classy reception. This sequence, a reversal of previous years, worked much better for those of us who, in previous openers, would have to fast-forward our networking and noshing in order to catch the screening.
HBO Documentary Films generously sponsored both the screening and the reception, and the Doyenne of Docs herself, Sheila Nevins, introduced the film, noting, “I know so many people here, it’s like a wake!” Nancy Abraham, HBO Documentary Films’ senior vice president, handled the Q&A afterwards.
And Sergio itself, based on the book Chasing the Flame by Samantha Power, is a hybrid of a profile of Sergio Viera de Mello, the charismatic High Commissioner of the United Nations, and a minute-by-minute re-creation of his final day, August 19, 2003, when a terrorist bomb struck UN headquarters in Baghdad. A rich layering of recollections from Sergio’s fiancée, the military paramedics who valiantly tried to save him and his colleague who lost both his legs in the attack; artfully rendered re-enactments, as performed by the paramedics themselves; and archival footage of Sergio’s remarkable career make for a profoundly moving elegy to a “man of action and of reflection.”
One of the paramedics, Sergeant Bill Von Zehle, joined Barker, Abraham and producer Julie Goldman on stage for a conversation. The Sergeant praised Sergio’s selflessness, how he wanted to make sure everyone else got out before he was saved. He also talked about why the excavation equipment had taken so long to get to the headquarters—the Army was based near the airport, and had to negotiate their way through “Sniper’s Alley”; in addition, the Iraqis had looted their equipment in the early days of the war. Barker revealed that Sergio’s first wife and two sons “decided to keep the memory of Sergio private” and not appear on camera, and that it had taken Sergio’s fiancée, Carolina Larriera, several months to feel comfortable about telling her story on camera. The interview lasted nine hours.
Discussion of the film continued at the party, where many of the DocuWeeks filmmakers—Gene Rosow from DIRT! The Movie; Lee Storey from Smile ‘Til It Hurts, Zeus Quijano from point of entry; Frank Stiefell from Ingelore; NC Heikin from Kimjongilia; Bristol Baughan from Racing Dreams—sampled the ample selection of crudités with the likes of dynamo blogger/filmmaker AJ Schnack, Geoffrey Smith, whose The English Surgeon was opening in LA that weekend, and Eva Orner from Taxi to the Dark Side. The IDA Board, led by President Eddie Schmidt, was well represented, as were the IDA staff and the documentary community it so ably serves. The nonfiction faithful hung around well past midnight, holding forth in various booths around the room, deeply engaged in discussion about the weeks of riveting docs to come, unaware of and indifferent to the late hour.
For more pictures from DocuWeeks, check out the IDA's Flickr Photostream.
Meet the Filmmakers: NC Heikin--'Kimjongilia'
By Tom White
Editor's Note: Kimjongilia, which screened as part of the 2009 DocuWeeks Theatrical Documentary Showcase, opens Friday, March 19, in New York City through Lorber Films. Here's an interview with director/producer/writer NC Heikin that we published in conjunction with DocuWeeks.
Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work will be represented in the DocuWeeksTM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, July 31-August 20 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.
So, to continue this series of conversations, here is NC Heikin, director/producer/writer of Kimjongilia..
Synopsis: Kimjongilia follows several North Korean defectors as they tell their astonishing stories of starvation, persecution and escape from the world's worst human rights violator, the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The kimjongilia is a flower that was bred to celebrate North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's 46th birthday, and is said to represent love, peace, justice and wisdom. Children sent to prison for alleged crimes of their grandfathers; refugees caught in China and deported back to North Korea for imprisonment and torture; relentless famine: These testimonies give lie to the lofty propaganda of Kim Jong Il's regime.
IDA: What inspired you to make Kimjongilia?
NC Heikin: I was completely driven by this story of human rights in North Korea, children in concentration camps, the total repression in which North Koreans live. When I first heard about this issue, I wanted to do an adaptation of a true story about one of my subjects, Kang Chol Hwan. I optioned his memoir and wrote a very moving screenplay based on it, imagining a sort of Empire of the Sun feature. When it became obvious that I was not going to be able to get any partners on the project, I felt so frustrated, and so compelled to get the story out, that I decided to try making it as a documentary. All I knew was that I had to tell this story. The idea of children being taken to labor camps was so repellent to me that I felt a personal responsibility to do something to stop it.
IDA: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?
NCH: The biggest challenge was the fact that there was no footage of the North Korean camps or the starvation or anything directly related to the testimonies. There is virtually no archival material on it, and no way to go and film something. Another difficulty was how to weave together many different characters, all of whom are important, into a cohesive, expressive whole.
IDA: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?
NCH: At first, I wanted to tell one character's story exclusively, and pin different bits of information and side stories on one arc. But as I met more and more defectors, I realized I wanted to give as many people as possible a voice. It became very important to me to let everyone speak, as one of the devastations of North Korea is the utter clampdown on speech and thought inside the country.
IDA: As you've screened Kimjongilia--whether on the festival circuit, or in screening rooms, or in living rooms--how have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions?
NCH: People are stunned. The most frequent response is, "I had no idea." It is interesting how we think we know about a subject from the bytes we hear on TV when a headline-making event grabs our attention. Kim Jong Il is a master at making headlines. But this film goes behind his oddball hairdo and nuclear swagger to the human beings inside the country, and that's the story we don't really know. I feel privileged to have this opportunity to tell it. I'm always a little surprised when I get political questions from people who want to rehash the Cold War and assign blame. To me, this is just not the point. It's a human rights issue, period.
IDA: What docs or docmakers have served as inspirations for you?
NCH: The biggest influence was definitely Claude Lanzmann and Shoah. I tried to emulate him for the powerful way he used testimony. I also loved The Thin Blue Line for its creativity in visualizing the crime in the absence of footage--not to mention the fact that it exonerates a wrongly accused man. Not a bad use of film! Lately, I loved both Trouble the Water and Man on Wire-- two very different films, but both brilliant.
Kimjongilia will be screening at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinema in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York City.
To download the DocuWeeksTM program in Los Angeles, click here.
To purchase tickets for DocuWeeksTM in Los Angeles, click here.
To download the DocuWeeksTM program in New York, click here.
To purchase tickets for DocuWeeksTM in New York, click here.
With a raft of festival awards and prizes, Louie Psihoyos' The Cove arrives in theaters today, via Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate and Participant Media. For a Documentary article by Sara Vizcarrondo, that includes an interview with Psihoyos and dolphin trainer-turned-activist Richard O'Barry, click here.
Meet the Filmmakers: Kristian Fraga--'Severe Clear'
By Tom White
Editor's Note: Severe Clear, which screened as part of the 2009 DocuWeeks Theatrical Documentary Showcase, opens Friday, March 12, in New York City and San Diego. Here's an interview with director Kristian Fraga that we published in conjunction with DocuWeeks.
Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work will be represented in the DocuWeeksTM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, July 31-August 20 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.
So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Kristian Fraga, director/producer/writer of Severe Clear..
Synopsis: Armed with the world's most lethal ordnance and his home video camera, First Lieutenant Michael T. Scotti takes us on an epic first-person journey with the Marine Corps as they fight their way 300 miles from Kuwait to Baghdad. No Reporters...No Politics...No Censors...This is what he saw.
IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?
Kristian Fraga: I'm a total product of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg; I grew up on a steady diet of classic Hollywood films, so I never thought I'd ever make a documentary. Then everything kind of changed my first year at NYU. Pulp Fiction came out and there was a seismic shift in terms of how everybody started thinking about film. Overnight it seemed like everything was about snappy dialogue, fractured narrative and pop culture references, and I remember thinking, If that's where the industry is going, I'm screwed. I was a fan of that film, for sure, but it wasn't the kind of movie I was interested in making-or, to be honest, the kind of film I thought I could make. I remember thinking, "I'm not Quentin Tarantino," nor do I want to be. He's doing his own thing and I gotta do my own thing. Then it hit me: "I'm not George Lucas or Steven Spielberg either." I'm not gonna make Star Wars, I'm not going to make ET; they've done that, that's their thing. And then it got me to thinking a pretty obvious question: What the hell is my thing?
Now, for a 19-year-old who eats, breaths and sleeps cinema, that was a pretty heady moment to go through. I was scared for about .5 seconds, and then it felt as if a big weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I remember thinking, I may not win an Oscar by the time I'm 24 like Orson Welles (for the record, I didn't); I may not be hand-selected by Lucas to direct Episode I of Star Wars prequels (for the record, I wasn't); and Steven Spielberg may not executive-produce a feature-length version of my award-winning final student film (again, for the record, he didn't). And you know what? That was okay. Not only was it okay, but now my future was wide open. I didn't have to worry about hitting these cinematic markers that always seemed so important; instead I could focus on what stories I wanted to tell. In the end I realized it all comes down to the story. As a filmmaker I'm not concerned with anything other than what is the best way to tell the particular story I'm passionate about. My last two feature films have been documentaries. These were stories I needed to tell, and they were best told as documentaries.
IDA: What inspired you to make Severe Clear?
KF: I was developing a completely different project when Severe Clear literally fell on my lap. Mike Scotti, the Marine our film is about, walked into NYU with a bag full of mini-DV tapes figuring some young filmmaker might find the footage interesting. He ended up bumping into a student who happened to be interning at our production company at the time and a couple of days later we were all sitting down with Scotti watching his footage and talking about his experience. Right away I knew his was a story I wanted to tell.
IDA: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?
KF: Right off the bat, the biggest issue we had was figuring out how to take this random footage, which was never intended to be used as a film, and put it together in some sort of coherent manner. I thought the trick to making it all work was to focus on the narrative structure of the film and not get too caught up with the style of the footage. I knew it was going to be a challenge to take this jagged footage and cut it in a more classic kind of Hollywood way, but the fusion of these two opposing styles is what I think gives the movie its energy. Beyond actually pulling the film off in the editing room, getting the money to make it all happen was a whole other saga...
IDA: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?
KF: Very early on in the project, we came up against an artistic choice that would fundamentally shift my vision for the overall film. We originally shot two days worth of sit-down interviews with Scotti and shot about one night's worth of footage following him around New York City. It just didn't "feel" right. The picture was designed to cut between Scotti's raw footage in Iraq, sit-down interviews with him, and shot footage about what his life was like back in the States. The structure was sound, and visually the film was pretty dynamic in terms of cutting between different styles and looks. The problem was, by cutting to interviews of Mike and showing his life in New York, we were totally robbing the impact and immediacy of the video footage Mike and the other Marines shot in Iraq. That was the story. Every time we cut away from Iraq, the picture lost itself.
I sat down with my producing partner, Marc Perez, and told him I thought the film should only be about Mike in Iraq and we should only use the footage that was shot in Iraq. We had no idea if there was enough there to make a feature film and if we could pull off a narrative without the support of interviews and new footage we were going to shoot. We also knew that making this decision would cost us all the money we had already spent on the three days of filming, and we were about to add a couple of years to this project by going in this new direction. To Marc's credit, he agreed and basically said, If that's the movie you want to make, you figure out how to pull that off and I'll figure out how to get the money to make it happen. Four years later the film is done, and once we made that major decision and figured out the right way to tell this story, my vision never wavered.
IDA: As you've screened Severe Clear--whether on the festival circuit, or in screening rooms, or in living rooms--how have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions?
KF: I've often said that Severe Clear doesn't answer questions, but hopefully it'll raise a few. Our goal with this film was not to make the "definitive" film on this subject or use it as a platform to push any political agenda. In fact, if I've done my job correctly, you shouldn't know if I was for or against this war because ultimately that's irrelevant, and audiences seem to be getting that. The reaction so far has been fantastic, and the post-screening Q&A's have been really interesting. The goal was for our film to encourage conversation, and it certainly seems to be sticking with people well after they leave the theater. We've had Marines who were there coming up to us and saying that we got it right, which is certainly gratifying. Family members of Marines or Army soldiers who are currently over there or who have just gotten back have thanked us for allowing them to see what their husband or child's experience was, and then we've also had some pretty open debates about whether or not we should have gone into Iraq in the first place. The Q&A's have been lively, and that's the point. The movie has been designed to be a cinematic experience and not a particularly comfortable one. At the end of the day, it's really a blue-collar film about these men getting up for work everyday and doing their job. It's about what that job represents and everything that goes with a Marine being good at what he does--which is a part of the inherent depth and complexity of Mike Scotti's story.
IDA: What docs or docmakers have served as inspirations for you?
KF: In terms of Severe Clear, I could go on and on. Interestingly, Persona Non Grata, a doc Oliver Stone directed for HBO, was a huge influence, and it's a shame that film hasn't gotten more attention. Certainly the usual suspects: Harlan County USA, The Fog of War, Hearts and Minds, The Anderson Platoon, In the Year of the Pig, Salesman, Crisis, Primary, Night and Fog, and a whole bunch of others.
Severe Clear will be screening at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinema in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York City.
To download the DocuWeeksTM program in Los Angeles, click here.
To purchase tickets for DocuWeeksTM in Los Angeles, click here.
To download the DocuWeeksTM program in New York, click here.
To purchase tickets for DocuWeeksTM in New York, click here.
The Toronto International Film Festival, running September 10 through 20, announced its slate of documentaries this week. The festival will screen a total of 17 docs, the bulk of which are programmed in the Real to Reel strand, but you can also find nonfiction fare in Vanguard, Special Presentations and Sprockets Family Zone.
"This year's documentaries have a sense of immediacy like never before," said Thom Powers, the festival's documentary programmer, in a statement. "Current events are getting a fresh perspective in films about the post-crash economy, Iran, Berlusconi, surrogate mothers, US Army veterans and more. These films are sure to generate a lot of debate."
Powers also over sees the Doc Blog, a running feature of the festival, in which both programmers and filmmakers will offer their insights.
And here's the lineup:
Vanguard
The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights (Dir.: Emmett Malloy; USA)
World Premiere
An intimate look inside The White Stripes' cross-Canada tour, as Jack and Meg White touch down in remote northern communities and surprising city venues.
Real to Reel
The Art of the Steal
(Dir.: Don Argott; USA )
World Premiere
This art-world whodunit investigates what happened to the Barnes collection of Post-Impressionist paintings--valued in the billions--that fell prey to a power struggle after the death of owner Albert Barnes.
Bassidji (Dir.: Mehran Tamadon, Iran/France/Switzerland)
International Premiere
For three years, Mehran Tamadon immersed himself into the very heart of the most extremist supporters of the Islamic republic of Iran (the Bassidjis) to understand their ideas.
Cleanflix (Dirs.: Andrew James, Joshua Ligairi; USA )
World Premiere
The Mormon religion preaches against the content of R-rated films, so several Utah-based entrepreneurs started offering "clean" versions of Hollywood movies at specialty DVD stores. But the thriving industry runs into legal problems and its own sex scandal.
Collapse (Dir.: Chris Smith; USA )
World Premiere
From the acclaimed director of American Movie, this portrait of radical thinker Michael Ruppert explores his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more.
Colony (Dirs.: Carter Gunn, Ross McDonnell; Ireland)
World Premiere
Several beekeepers around the US cope with colony collapse disorder--the phenomenon that has caused millions of bees to mysteriously disappear--in this beautifully shot debut from a gifted directing duo.
Google Baby (Dir.: Zippi Brand Frank; Israel)
International Premiere
In India, the latest form of outsourcing is surrogate mothers who carry embryos for couples who can't have a child. Director Zippi Brand Frank follows an entrepreneur who proposes a new service--baby production for western customers.
How to Fold a Flag (Dirs.: Michael Tucker, Petra Epperlein; USA)
World Premiere
The makers of Gunner Palace follow US soldiers as they create new lives post-Iraq--from a Congressional candidate in Buffalo to a cage fighter in Louisiana--set against the backdrop of the 2008 election.
L'Enfer de Henri-Georges Clouzot (Dirs.: Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra
Medrea; France)
North American Premiere
Film archivist Serge Bromberg uncovers a treasure trove of imagery from an unfinished film called L'Enfer starring Romy Schneider and directed by the French master Henri-Georges Clouzot, known for Wages of Fear and Diabolique.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
(Dirs.: Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith; USA)
World Premiere
Daniel Ellsberg was a valued strategist inside the American government until he leaked the Pentagon Papers and exposed the lies of the Vietnam War. This thrilling documentary chronicles this momentous chapter in history and how Richard Nixon's obsession over the case brought down his own government.
Presumed Guilty (Dirs.: Roberto Hernández, Geoffrey Smith; Mexico)
World Premiere
Two young Mexican attorneys attempt to exonerate a wrongly convicted man by making a documentary. In the process, they expose the contradictions of a judicial system that presumes suspects guilty until proven innocent.
Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags (Dir.: Marc Levin; USA)
World Premiere
Veteran filmmaker Mark Levin (Slam) looks at the past and present of New York's garment district, from its heyday as a base for immigrant labor and unions to its recent decline.
Snowblind (Dir.: Vikram Jayanti; USA/United Kingdom)
International Premiere
Rachael Scdoris, a blind 23-year-old, doesn't let her disability stop her from competing in one of the most gruelling endurance contests in the world: the Iditarod dogsled race traversing 1,100 miles of Alaska's most rugged terrain. But being blind is only the start of her challenges.
The Topp Twins (Dir.: Leanne Pooley; New Zealand)
North American Premiere
Fun, disarming and musically provocative, the Topp Twins are New Zealand's finest lesbian country-and-western singers and the country's greatest export since rack of lamb and the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.
Videocracy (Dir.: Erik Gandini; Sweden)
North American Premiere
This penetrating look at the media empire of Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi reveals how his reality TV shows full of bikini-clad women enriched his friends and beguiled a nation.
Special Presentation
Good Hair (Dir.: Jeff Stilson; USA)
Canadian Premiere
Rendered speechless by his daughter's question,"Daddy, how come I don't have good hair?" comedian Chris Rock embarks on a quest to understand African-American hair culture.
Sprockets Family Zone
Turtle: The Incredible Journey (Dir.: Nick Stringer; United
Kingdom/Austria/Germany)
Canadian Premiere
Join a logger-heard turtle on an extraordinary journey through the fascinating underwater world and witness how changes in the oceans are affecting marine life in this beautiful and spectacular ocean adventure.
Leeman joked that she would serve as Cutler's Ed McMahon for the evening. And she did, interjecting Cutler's tips and stories about scoring films by bringing the "every-filmmaker" point of view to the conversation. (The two are currently working on an upcoming feature documentary, One Lucky Elephant, the epic story of one man's determined quest to find a permanent home for Flora, the 26 year-old African elephant he adopted after she was orphaned in a culling.)
Throughout the night the two talked about what to expect when budgeting for a composer (and even provided a deal points memo template as a handout), tricks to make the music in your film sounder bigger with fewer musicians, when it's most effective to not use any music, and more.
However, the key point the two often returned to throughout the night is that a working relationship between a filmmaker and composer needs to click both professionally and personally, and that comfortable collaboration is necessary. Do your research, and make sure the composer is right for your project and you.
"It's like a marriage in that you are talking about all of these feelings and emotions in your film," said Cutler.
"You've got to enable your composer to soar," added Leeman. "Make sure it's a good brief marriage."
Doc U is taking August off (because we'll be busy with DocuWeeks 2009). Check back for the September event.
Related Stories:
Composers Confab: Creating The Best Score For Your Film, by Lisa Leeman
Book Review: Hey, That’s My Music! Music Supervision, Licensing, and Content Acquisition, by Michael Galinsky
Morgan Spurlock is getting even more animated.
A week after revealing that he was on board to produce and direct The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D on Ice documentary, the filmmaker announced that his production team Warrior Poets are partnering with Dark Horse for an original graphic novel that will serve as companion to his 2004 doc Super-Size Me where the filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald's food for one month.
The book, called Supersized: Strange Tales From a Fast Food Culture, will feature, well, strange stories about the U.S.'s obsession with fast food that didn't make it into the film. (In 2005 Spurlock penned the more bookish book Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America.)
He plans to still make the point that health and nutrition are the way to go. The project will include a mix of established and up-and-coming artists and writers, and the clown character MC Super-Size Me from the film will serve as a storytelling guide throughout the book.
Jonathan Bricklin's The Entrepreneur (produced and presented by Morgan Spurlock) is going to "air" for one week exclusively on SnagFilms.com, starting July 24. This is prior to it ever being distributed through theaters or television.
SnagFilms will continue its SummerFest series over the next several weeks with with exclusive, one-week showings of documentaries that have not yet been distributed theatrically or on television.
Sounds like a good time to us.
Some other achievements of the one-year-old site include:
SnagFilms film widgets have been placed on pages that have generated more than 1 billion page views.
To date, SnagFilms has distribution deals with Hulu, AOL, YouTube, and just announced a partnership with Comcast's Fancast.com site.
This is on top of the more than 25,000 individual websites, blogs, or social network pages that have loaded widgets--from individual Facebook pages to big sites like NYTimes, HuffPo, WaPo, and Politico.
In the past year, SnagFilms has pried open some traditional distribution windows, jointly streaming films like Haze and The Least of These as they’ve had their film festival debuts; the SnagFilms SummerFest takes this a step further and offers a sneak peak of films for a limited time before any other distribution window opens.
SnagFilms and its indieWIRE site have also partnered with the IDA. Read about our relationship here.
Walter Cronkite, whose 19 years at the helm of CBS News made him a fixture in Americas's living rooms, died Friday at age 92.
While he was best known as an exemplary news anchor, Cronkite also made 60 documentaries--many of which he produced after stepping down from CBS News in 1981. During his long tenure at CBS, which began in 1950, thanks to Edward R. Murrow's successful recruiting efforts, he played a vital role in such television series as You Are There (1953-57), Twentieth Century (1957-67), Eyewitness to History (1961-62), CBS Reports (1961-79) and 21st Century (1967-70). Following his retirement as managing editor at CBS News, Cronkite, to paraphrase his final sign-off, kept coming back for more. With his production companies The Cronkite Ward Company and Cronkite Productions, he made 36 documentaries for Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel, and his series Cronkite Remembers won a CableAce Award in 1997.
He earned numerous honors throughout his career, including a Peabody Award, a Polk Award, an Emmy Award-and, in 1992, the IDA Career Achievement Award.
He was the conduit through which contemporary American history flowed, and when he reported on the Vietnam War, and called it unwinnable, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously muttered to then-aide Bill Moyers, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Here's an excerpt from an interview with Cronkite as he reflects on the Vietnam War:
And here's Cronkite on the occasion of CBS' 50th anniversary, in which he reads a commemorative poem by famed radio producer/writer Norman Corwin:
Sources:
Wikipedia
cbsnews.com
The
New York Times
Museum of
Broadcast Communications