In the latest chapter in the Bananas*! Saga, Dole Food Company filed suit against director Fredrik Gertten, producer Margarete Jangard and production company WG Film, alleging defamation. According to Variety, Dole Food will seek permanent injunction against Gertten to prevent him from screening his film again. In the suit, Dole attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. writes "To screen, promote, and profit from this film, despite the fact that its entire premise has been adjudicated a fraud ... is the epitome of reckless and irresponsible conduct."

Firing right back at Dole Food, Gertten's attorney, Richard J. Lee, issued a statement that says, in part: "My clients and I believe that this suit is without merit and represents the latest in a continued line of intimidating harassment by a multinational corporation aimed squarely at a small, independent film and its filmmakers." The letter is posted in its entirety, as is the defamation suit, on the Bananas*! website.

For more about Bananas*! screenings and discussions at the Los Angeles Film Festival, click to the LAFF report in Documentary magazine here and in indieWIRE's "Cinema Daily" column here.

FilmBuff, a new video-on-demand channel curated by New York indie sales outfit Cinetic, launched last  week. The channel will offer 10-15 first run films and classics per month, with the goal of attracting and widening the audience for new titles, those that have fallen through the cracks, and older films that complement a current trend. Amongst the launch titles is Rob Epstein's 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.  (via Variety)


Brian Newman has announced his departure from his position as CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute. In a post on his blog Springboard Media, Newman says that he's extremely proud of leading National Video Resources to becoming Renew Media, and then  shepherding the merger of the latter with Tribeca Film Institute (TFI).
      Newman has not yet announced his future plans. He says on his blog, "As many of you know, I have quite an entrepreneurial spirit and want to now explore other opportunities. I will be launching a consulting business focusing on business development projects in the entertainment and cultural industries as well as helping filmmakers, artists and organizations to distribute content and connect with audiences through innovative uses of new technology."
You can follow Newman on Twitter @bnewman01.

Michael Moore doesn't usually come to mind when thinking about romantic comedies, but perhaps all that is about to change with the release of his upcoming recession-themed doc. Taking its cue from the torrid love stories of cinema past, Capitalism: A Love Story will premiere in the U.S. on Oct. 2.
"It will be the perfect date movie," said the filmmaker in a statement. "It's got it all - lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It's a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let's just say it: it's capitalism."
The film's U.S. release falls a year and a day after the U.S. government announced its Wall Street bailout. Overture Films will release the project domestically, with Paramount Vintage handling international distribution. For more on Moore, go to his website www.michaelmoore.com.

Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) is currently working on a documentary about Lance Armstrong, which is being produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The piece is focused on Armstrong's comeback, and was championed at the studio by Columbia Pictures President Matt Tolmach, an avid cyclist.  The $3.5 million dollar film will most likely be finished later next year. (via the Los Angeles Times).
Gibney just set up a Twitter feed (@BaLueBolivar) where he's posting production updates from the Tour de France.


According to a piece by John Miga, John Kerry wants to become a movie producer. The Massachusetts Senator has put in a request to the Federal Election Commission to use $300,000 from his campaign funds to invest in a documentary about injured Iraq war veterans. The film, tentatively titled Keeping Faith, is to be directed and produced by George Butler (Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, Pumping Iron). (via Google News)

I spent the Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week at NATPE's LATV Fest, which aimed to offer "Real Tools, Real Access, Real Pitches...for Real Producers." Between the panels, lobby chit-chat and lunchtime networking, there was much spirited debate about making money from online content, current trends in reality and scripted programming, and how to avoid falling on your ass in a pitch meeting.

I spent the majority of my time jumping back and forth between the digital and reality TV tracks, as there are a large number of documentarians who work in the latter to pay the bills. I'll be writing a comprehensive piece about the non-fiction perspective on the event for IDA's August e-zine, but I wanted to immediately post a practical nuts-and-bolts piece about a great session I attended on Wednesday called "Google Power Tools: Become a Power Ninja." I thought I was going to a session on search engine optimization (SEO), where I'd learn some tips and tricks about how to make it easier for people to find my work online.  The session turned out to be the exact opposite – it was a tutorial on how to use Google more effectively to find what I might be looking for.

Now, the idea of taking a class on how to use Google seems, well, ridiculous. I've been using Google for years. You type in what you're looking for, get a bunch of links and then click away until you find what you need. But as speaker Dmitry Shapiro, Founder and CEO of Veoh Networks, Inc. pointed out, with the growth of the Internet and the large number of results that queries now return, one can lose hours sifting through to find the most useful, relevant information.

For independent filmmakers, time is money. Documentarians usually don't have large research staffs, yet there's a ton of work to be done online, including researching topics, locating  subjects and fact-checking the information in projects. Therefore, I wanted to share some of the tips Shapiro passed along about using Google operators, a.k.a. Google commands, to help make this process more efficient, and therefore more economical.

Some of these tips are quite basic, but I'll start at the beginning and build from there. I'll use a few practical examples to help put the tips in context. If these intrigue you and you want to learn more, you can check out the Weekend University class Shapiro teaches on the subject. Google also has an online cheat sheet with a list of some of the commands. If you have other tips to suggest, we'd love to hear them – please add them in the comments section.

Refining your search
Let's say you're doing a documentary on presidential elections, and you want to find material on Barack Obama. You should use quotes around the whole search term.
Enter: "Barack Obama"
Number of search results: 82,800,000

Now let's say you want to focus just on the presidential candidates, regardless of their running mates. So in the case of the recent election, you want to find all the results for Obama that don't mention Joe Biden. The minus sign will omit things from your search.
Enter: "barack obama"-"joe biden"
Number of search results: 80,300,00

There are a ton of sites out there that mention Obama. If you want more vetted information, perhaps you want to just check official government sites. You can specify the kind of site you're looking for with the site command. This operator will give you government sites and mentions of .gov sites that include Barack Obama (but not Joe Biden).
Enter: "barack obama"-"joe biden" site:gov
Number of search results: 70,300

You can make the type of site you're looking for as specific as you'd like. If you want to limit the search to congressional sites:
Enter: "barack obama"-"joe biden" site:congress.gov
Number of search results: 373

You can also narrow your search by the type of file you're looking for. Google indexes all kinds of documents, not just web pages. For example, you might want to find power point presentations about Obama as part of your research.
Enter: "barack obama" filetype:ppt
Number of search results: 2,670

Relevance
In addition to narrowing your search, you'll save time by making sure the results you get are those that are potentially the most relevant.  If someone names a particular URL or document with the search term you're looking for, that's a good indication that it is actually focused on your keyword.

Let's say you're doing a documentary on the Catholic Church's attitude towards homosexuality. If you put "Vatican" in as your keyword, Google returns 70,200,000 results. These range from those more pertinent, such as the official site of the Vatican and the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry for the Vatican, and those that are less so, such as sites selling Vatican souvenirs. To find your keyword in the title:
-Enter: Intitle:Vatican
Number of search results: 943,000
To find your keyword in the URL:
-Enter: inURL:Vatican
Number of search results: 963,000

If you want to search for more than one word contained in a title or URL, you can use the allintitle or allinURL operators. For example:
-Enter: allintitle: Vatican homosexual
Number of search results: 267
-Enter: allinURL: Vatican homosexual
Number of search results: 97

Practical applications
Sometimes when researching, you're not sure what search term will be most effective. If you're doing an environmental film about the state of the oceans, there may be very useful sites out there that reference the sea, marine, atlantic, etc . The tilde ~ operator does a synonym search.
-Enter: ~ocean.
Number of search results: 1,170,000,000

This particular search brought up a variety of helpful sites, along with things like the Atlantic Theater Company and Oceanic Airlines. To narrow your search, you might want to refine your search a bit. The following search will bring up all the sites that contain fish and ocean, or their synonyms.
Enter: ~ocean ~fish
Number of search results: 187,000,000

Quite a few of these are travel services that offer help in arranging fishing trips, information that's not useful for your documentary. By omitting the keyword 'travel', you'll be able to get rid of a number of the sites that are focused on fishing tours.
Enter: ~ocean ~fish -travel
Number of search results: 121,000,000

You might also want to try to eliminate some of the seafood restaurants from the search results.
Enter: ~ocean ~fish -travel -restaurant
Number of search results: 107,000,000

If you're trying to find equipment for sale, you can get quite specific with your search by using a combination of operators. For example, let's say you want to find a Panasonic HVX-200 for sale for between $3000-$4000. You can use [#]…[#] to indicate a range of numbers.
Enter: site:ebay.com Panasonic HVX-200 $3000...$4000
Number of search results: 147

When you get to the marketing stage of your film and need to find all the blogs and sites that have given you fabulous reviews, use the link operator to find the pages that link to your own film site.
Enter: link:www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com
**Additional tip: If you land on a page and the link isn't immediately obvious, as is often the case with blog pages that contain multiple entries, use your browser's "find" function to locate the link.


Other Useful Tools
Shapiro turned us on to a few other useful tools on Google. You can use all of the operators above with these sections of Google as well.  

Scholar.google.com has information that is generally more vetted than Joe Blogger's information, such as papers, theses, abstracts and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Books.google.com searches over 7 million books. You can put in a word or phrase, and it'll return results for the publications that include it. When you click on the link, the word or phrase will actually be highlighted on the page. It's a useful way to find sources for research, as well as quotes about a subject that you might want to use on cards or in press materials. For example, you might search the following for the above-mentioned doc on the oceans:
Enter: "value of our oceans"
Number of search results: 25

Google Blog Search (blogsearch.google.com) finds blogs that are talking about your film, which can be very helpful when trying to build a grassroots campaign. It's a good way to get a sense of the informal chatter occurring online about your subject or your film.  

The Sundance Institute and Cinereach recently announced a $1.5 million, three-year grant to form The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute. The program, underwritten by Cinereach, will support a unique and flexible resource pool for documentary and feature film projects with themes that evoke global cultural exchange and social impact. The partners anticipate that at least 12 films will have been supported through this initiative.

The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute will consist of a discretionary fund that can be used towards projects that are participating in Sundance Institute's existing Feature Film Program and Documentary Film Program, and are in need of emergency support. As a result, Sundance program directors will be more equipped to bridge gaps at critical stages of its Fellows' projects.

Additionally, the project will establish a special Fellowship for emerging directors committed to global cultural exchange and social impact. The Fellowship, for both documentary and fiction filmmakers, will provide the Fellows access to the multitude of Sundance Institute resources, as well as special funding and support from Cinereach. Fellows will be chosen from existing Sundance Institute Lab Projects as well as projects specifically recruited by both organizations.

"For nearly 30 years, Sundance Institute has been discovering and developing emerging independent artists," said Philipp Engelhorn, Cinereach founder and executive director, in a prepared statement. "This long record of nurturing diverse and authentic stories that foster empathy and understanding dovetails directly with the Cinereach mission."

Cinereach, founded in 2006, supports and produces artful films that depict underrepresented perspectives, cross-cultural boundaries and promote dialogue through three focus areas--Grants & Awards, The Reach Film Fellowship and Productions.

"We have long admired the work of Philipp and his team and commend them for their vision and dedication to promoting storytelling and awareness," said Jill Miller, Sundance Institute's managing director. "Their long-term commitment comes at a crucial moment as the current global financial crisis threatens to constrict film artists' possibilities of connecting to audiences."

For an article about Cinereach and Chicken&Egg Pictures that appeared that appeared in the Spring 2009 Documentary, click here.

The Sundance Institute also announced this week the expansion of its Creative Producing Initiative designed to nurture emerging independent producers in both narrative and documentary fields. For 2009-2010, the Initiative will include the re-conceived Creative Producing Summit (formerly the Independent Producers Conference), the Creative Producing Lab supporting six Fellows from the Feature Film Program and, new for this year, four from the Documentary Film Program, as well as Sundance Industry Meetings to connect filmmakers with industry members at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. 

The Creative Producing Initiative is designed to support producers with project-specific support through Labs, grants and long-term advisor relationships and to also reinvigorate dialogue within the independent producing community. 

Fellows and projects attending the Documentary Film Creative Producing Lab and selected for the Documentary Film Creative Producing Fellowship are:

¿Dónde Están? / Kaye Pyle
El General / Daniela Alatorre
Give Up Tomorrow / Marty Syjuco
Match+ / Ann S. Kim

Producers Jennifer Fox (Love & Diane; On the Ropes) and Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water) will serve as creative advisors to the Documentary Creative Producing Lab.

by Peter Knegt

Capitalism: A Love Story has been unveiled as the title of Michael Moore's latest documentary feature. The film examines "the disastrous impact that corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives have on the lives of Americans and citizens of the world."

On why he chose to make a 'love story,' Moore stated that it was time for him to make a 'relationship movie.' "It will be the perfect date movie," said Moore, in a statement. "It's got it all--lust, passion, romance, and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It's a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let's just say it: It's Capitalism."

Overture Films will release the film domestically on October 2, 2009, and Paramount Vantage will handle international distribution.

Related:

See the trailer for Capitalism: A Love Story here.

See filmmaker Michael Moore talk about a plan to get more documentaries into movie theaters at the IDA's DocuDay 2008 event.

See filmmaker Michael Moore and producer Meghan O'Hara talk about their Oscar-nominated film Sicko at the IDA's DocuDay 2008 event.

This news item is brought to you by a special partnership between the IDA and indieWIRE and SnagFilms.

When I was a little girl, I used to watch my parent's videotape of Whoopi Goldberg's solo Broadway show over and over. In one her routines, she plays a six-year-old girl who puts her t-shirt over her head so she can pretend to have long, luscious locks. I could relate. My own Jersey Girl hair was of the curly, frizzy variety, and I used to spend hours in front of the mirror, wishing for smooth, straight tresses. I truly believed that if I just had Barbie hair, life would be much, much better.

Apparently, Chris Rock's daughter was having hair issues of her own. His response was to make the HBO Films documentary Good Hair. Hilarious, informative and at times alarming, the Sundance Special Jury Prize winner provides audiences with an entertaining education about the contemporary world of Black hair.

The seed for the film was planted about 15 years ago when Rock was doing a stand-up gig in Atlanta and stumbled across some interesting characters staying in his hotel who were attending a hair convention. The project came up again when he was shooting The Chris Rock Show for HBO, which ran from 1997 to 2000. Rock and his creative team talked about the possibility of doing a movie together, but when the show ended, everyone dispersed to work on other projects and the idea fell into the void. It was only in 2006 when his little girl Lola asked, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" that he decided it was finally time to commit to making the film.

Luckily, Rock was able to assemble much of the team from The Chris Rock Show to work on Good Hair. Alums include executive producer Nelson George, director Jeff Stilson and writers Chuck Sklar and Lance Crouthier. Reuniting with previous collaborators was a key reason George decided to sign onto the film. Says Rock, "It was cool. We'd done these remotes [on the show] and Stilson had directed most of those. So we kind of had a shorthand already."

To prep for the film, the Good Hair team went back to Atlanta to the scene of Rock's original inspiration for the film: the Bronner Bros. International Hair Show and Battle, the largest African-American hair show in the United States. Part trade show, part live competition, the event was instrumental in educating the filmmakers about the business and culture of African-American hair. 

The "battle" itself becomes the spine of the film, as the audience follows an array of eclectic stylists while they ready themselves for competition. The larger-than-life characters range from a stylist who cuts hair underwater in a fish tank, to Tanya Crumel, who attempts to cut hair while hanging upside down, to the flamboyant, portly Derek, for whom custom-made boots are a key part of his cutting strategy.

Surprisingly, the champion stylist everyone wants to beat is not the one the viewer might expect. His name is Jason Griggers, and he's a laid-back white guy from Atlanta who sports floppy blonde hair and polo shirts. By including Griggers, the film is able to subtly explore racial issues organically through a story rather than a lecture or history lesson. The mostly white audience for the film at Sundance was intrigued by Griggers' background. At the post-screening Q&A, an audience member asked him how he built his business. He responded that it had been a struggle in the beginning, but ultimately he succeeded by simply being really good at what he does.

Between the hair show segments, Rock and his team explore the multi-million dollar business of Black hair. Their journey begins at the local beauty shop and takes them all the way to India, which is the source for the hair used in many of the weaves worn by African-American women. Each year, more than 10 million people in India sacrifice their hair in a religious ceremony called "tonsuring." The hair is then processed and sold to hair dealers, and eventually makes its way to salons and stores from Beverly Hills to Atlanta.

"The business of hair was shocking to me-how it ran like Apple or General Motors," Rock says. "It's like sugarcane or something; it's really no different."

George was also surprised by the extent of the "international hair economy," a phrase he coined during shooting. "Hair goes all over the world," he notes. "If we had had more money, we would have actually gone to China to the big processing plants. We went to London and there are huge streets with scores of hair places. This is a vast business with many, many tentacles."

Another big surprise for the filmmakers was how hair issues can translate into intimacy issues between men and women. Due to the high price and time commitment of hair maintenance, women protect their hair at all costs, which often means that they won't let men touch it.
"I'd never really thought about what a hair weave meant to a woman, and that, in fact, it would stop her," Nelson admits. "I knew they wouldn't get into the water, that it was water sensitive. But this whole thing about not touching-what does that really say about how intimate you can be with someone when you can't touch her hair?"

Rock, too, had been in the situation where he hadn't been allowed to touch. "I'm so used to not touching!" he jokes. "But the flip side is, if you've been with a girl and you couldn't touch her hair, the day you're with a girl and you can touch her hair, you don't take your hands out of her fuckin' hair! You're just like ‘Oooohhhh.'"

To help audiences get up-close-and-personal with Black hair, Rock recruited a number of successful actresses to appear in the documentary and share their experiences about straightening hair, weaves and product. Political and cultural figures such as Maya Angelou and the Reverend Al Sharpton also offer commentary.

The actresses are honest and funny, and their candor adds depth to the film. "A lot of them I'd known awhile," Rock explains. "I tried to pick people I thought had diarrhea of the mouth."

Tracie Thoms (Cold Case, Rent) talks about the pressure she faces in keeping her hair natural, and questions why her decision to do so is considered revolutionary. For Nia Long (Big Shots, Big Momma's House), hair is something she likes to have fun with. She says, "It's like a character for me; it's different in every movie."

While the actresses' opinions about hair are as diverse as their hairstyles, almost all agreed upon the importance of hair to one's self esteem. So it doesn't matter if you're Whoopi Goldberg portraying a six-year-old, or if you're a famous TV actress; almost all of us at some point have stood in front of the mirror and wished for hair different from our own.

During the Q&A, Thoms said that she was grateful to Rock for doing the movie because it finally gave her a chance to talk about her hair. She eloquently summed up the paradox surrounding African-American hair: "The mystery of our hair is almost perpetuated by the reluctance to talk about it. People don't see it, so they're curious about it. They want to touch it, and we get offended. But they so rarely see real Black hair."

Good Hair goes a long way in quenching that curiosity, doing so with a light touch. Rock dons wigs at stores, jumps into an assembly line at a relaxer processing plant, and gently calls out the absurdity of putting a product on one's hair that causes soda cans to disintegrate. Rock says that these moments occurred spontaneously during shooting, but they feed into his general philosophy about coupling knowledge with comedy.

"There's a lot of great information in the movie, but you will digest none of it unless there is laughter," Rock maintains. "So if the movie's not funny, we're not even here right now. People are just like ‘OK, that was interesting about black hair; what's next?'"

What's next for Rock may be another documentary. He had such a good experience with Good Hair that he'd love to find another idea for a nonfiction film. "In a weird way, I think this is the best movie I've done," he admits. "I think I'm more natural, and I'm getting laughs in a weird, unforced way. I would love to do this again. I do a stand-up special every three or four years. I would love to get one of these into the rotation."

Good Hair will be released to theaters this fall through Roadside Attractions.

Tamara Krinsky is associate editor of Documentary. She is still searching for the perfect hair product.

DOC SHOT is an exclusive online feature by Documentary magazine associate editor Tamara Krinsky. Through this mix of questions (some serious, some sassy), each DOC SHOT provides a glimpse into the work and lives of those creating and supporting nonfiction film.

Editor's note: This DOC SHOT originally appeared in the July 2009 e-zine, prior to the screening of Prodigal Sons at OutFest. The film opens February 26 in New York City, through First Run Features. Filmmaker Kimberly Reed appeared on Oprah today, February 11, to promote the film.

Kimberly Reed
Director/Producer, Prodigal Sons
Playing at Outfest 2009

In Prodigal Sons, filmmaker Kimberly Reed returns home for her high school reunion, ready to reintroduce herself to the small town as a transgender woman and hoping for reconciliation with her long-estranged adopted brother Marc. Things are complicated by the shocking revelation that Marc may be the grandson of Orson Wells and Rita Hayworth, forcing Kim and her family to explore questions of sexual orientation, identity, severe trauma and love.

YOUR FILM

Your role/credit on the film?
Director/Producer

This is a personal documentary. What was the impetus for you to begin the project?
I started this film when I got up the nerve to return to my high school reunion, after much had, um, changed. The project really began when it became clear that there was a remarkable story about identity — with both my brother’s and mine having changed — and I had no choice but to follow that story wherever it led.

If you had had an extra $10,000 to spend on your film, what would you have used it for?  
I would repay the tremendous support many others have shown our film. So many people worked for much less than they’re worth that it stuns me.

What excites you about playing your film at Outfest?
I didn’t want to make the transgender version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?. I’m excited that at Outfest our film will find an audience that wants to see trans film take steps beyond that.

YOUR WORK

What's the first film you remember seeing as a child?
I remember seeing The Great Waldo Pepper, starring Robert Redford, with my dad. It was the first PG-rated film I’d seen. Someone said “shit.” It was scandalous.

Tell me about a film that affected your profoundly or changed/inspired the way you do your own work. The gravity of Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, combined with its so-beautiful-it-hurts cinematography, has been a driving force for me ever since I saw the film. His audacity to create film worlds that exist unto themselves inspires me.

What would surprise people the most about your job or the way you execute it?
I’m an editor, but the first thing I did was hire an editor.

When you are feeling creatively stumped or burnt out, what do you do to get the creativity flowing again?
Nothing like watching a film that almost nails it to get me going.


YOUR LIFE

What do you want more of in your life?
I think there’s plenty of love in the world for all of us. I wish we knew that.

What do you want less of in your life?
Hate is the easy way out. Less of that would be a great start.

What do you want for your birthday?
A pony, of course! (Still!)

Editor's Note: The Beaches of Agnes airs June 29 on PBS' POV series. This article ran in the July 2009 Documentary Online in conjunction with the film's theatrical release through The Cinema Guild.

Agnès Varda earned the moniker "The Grand Dame of the Nouvelle Vague," in part because she was the only female in the highly influential French New Wave. Her marriage to fellow Left Bank filmmaker Jacques Demy and their inevitable distinction as French cinema's power couple certainly contributed to the reputation. But Varda's import to film is unrelated to either her gender or the import of her colleagues.

Varda's work has spanned decades and genres and is a favorite of film classes. Like most of the New Wave filmmakers, her films challenge formal assumptions. Her particular interest is the assumption of truth that tints the documentary aesthetic.

The Beaches of Agnès is her most recent film, and a cinematic self-portrait. She carries us from beach to beach, introducing us to the people who made her, both literally (her family) and metaphorically (her colleagues and the art that inspired her). Poetic logic and daydreams are all over the film, as they are in every one of her films; it's just that this film is about her. So here, as the protagonist/filmmaker, she is, as she's said before, "the other than me" and via a travelogue through beaches, clips from her films, photographs she took and whimsical dialogues with those people who have influenced her, we can piece together the puzzle of her life and career.

Documentary: Your documentaries tend to involve you as a character and tend towards a travelogue format. What do these two tendencies have in common?

Agnès Varda: It's not a tendency. It's a choice. It's an auto-portrait--self-portrait, but mostly, I would say, it's "the other than me." It's not really me...Me or me. Just to give an example, the first few seconds of the film are on the Belgian beach. I use mirrors because the mirror is the tool of the self-portrait. You don't have to be so self-conscious to make a portrait of yourself; it's an artistic act. If I were very coquette, I would have done it earlier and would not have waited until I was 80 years old and almost broken to make it. So, the travelogue is more [about] going through my life. I like to take your hand and take you with me, meeting again or visiting some pieces of my life. Like bubbles, what came out came out. I missed parts and certainly forgot very important meetings and stories. I made it very simple: I divided my life in beaches. It was obvious. I'd been in Belgium near beaches, in the South of France during the war, in beaches in Los Angeles and in that island at Normandy. Now for Paris there is no beach, so I had to make it. It became a gag to throw sand in the sidewalk in the middle of the road. My production team was nice enough to wear swimming suits to type and make phone calls. You need the complicity of people around you to do that.

D: It seems to me that you earn their complicity with your respect. The people in your films are always subjects. You, however, are often an "other."

AV: Well, a little. With Beaches, you can say it's about me, but it's about me and the others and the others and me. I think it was important to show the people who made me-- not only my mother and father who construct my spirit and my mind, but people I met and paintings I loved. I made a puzzle with my friends.

D: You allow people to critique your films while you're in editing--

AV: Yes! Not neighbors--different people, including professionals. During editing I take advice because I want to see how much I share, how much is understandable and pleasant. But I'm not obliged to follow [the advice]. "Okay, that's their point, that's mine." It gives you a key of how this film can be accepted or loved or what. But then, after the editing, I don't [touch it]. This is it and the critics can say what they want. People write me a lot of letters.

D: Getting input from your friends and colleagues must be challenging, and finishing this film, this movie about your life, must have felt pretty heavy.

AV: I didn't think it was more important than another film; it just came on time in my life. Maybe it was my last film, maybe not.

D: The film dances between family photos and reenactments. You say that you don't know what to make of the reenactments. Playing with these reenactments and photographs and old footage foregrounds the subject of representation, yes?

AV: Representation is the main subject. My life is how it is, but how to represent it, how to make it a film, how to find cinematic set-ups.

I'll give you an example: I did some shots in 16mm for my first film, La pointe courte--tests. Then I made the film in 35 and, by the way, I imitated my test. But these tests had been made with a couple, my friends, and the man died of cancer, so I dedicated the film to him. He had a wife with two kids, three and five [years old].

Ages pass, and when I find the 16mm film, I say, "Oh, I should put this in the film [Beaches] as my test." [Then] I realized that the family had not seen the test. So, at that point I can just be normal and say, "Come in my editing room and see your father," but I decided to make a real cinematic set-up. I took the carriage that was in the final film, La pointe-courte, and organized a screening on it and projected it on it and I had the kids push that carriage and screened the film in 16mm. Their father, whom they had never seen in motion, is pushing that carriage in the 16mm footage. And it's like a second burial. It's like a very nice way of pushing the memory of something they didn't have, because they had not seen him like this. You see, it's sophisticated in a way to try to find that cinematic thing, but it is touching, much more than if I just say, "Look at your father here."

I felt it very true, very good, you know? It's a way of presenting what I felt and what I wanted to show them instead of just showing it. So, it's a cinematic act. And in many places in the film I wanted to make it pleasant. Not because I want to please everybody, but because I think they deserve to get something for their money when they pay for the theater. So, I could tell very true things and moving [things] sometimes, but also pass from one thing to another, like we all do, zap all the time.

D: That's such an artful way to live. How intertwined are life and art in your view?

AV: My whole life as a filmmaker was [dedicated] to finding representations. I changed my way of filming according to the subject, according to the evolution of equipment, of material, of stock. And, you know, when I made The Gleaners and I and had to approach people who were very poor, I was so glad that I had these little cameras and not a big crew. Now I use this very small HD camera so I can do things that can be integrated into films. The technique is very important because it opens you to new worlds of filming and representation. You have to find [a different means of] representation for every film, every scene, every opinion you want to express. You can't just say, "I will write a line," and that will just illustrate it. Representation is the main string of what we do.

I was in Sete, in the South of France, and I didn't like the idea of living outdoors in the canals, so we had to go to Paris. But in my mind, I was not leaving Sete--I was still there. So I decided to write that scene where I sail that little boat from Sete down the River Seine near the Tour Eiffel. La Tour Eiffel means Paris. But this is a choice of representation, because this is not true. I didn't come in the boat; you cannot even sail on the River Seine. This was a dreamy approach to what I felt. In the film I represent my life and reality, but I [also] represent daydreams, impressions, desires, showing something that is not part of my exact life, shot after shot.

D: The real world includes the imaginary world.

AV: We have to love that. Like the way I love the surrealists; I make some images and put myself in the belly of a whale to create the feeling that I was really inside that.

D: It was a darling office in the belly of that whale. Very well decorated.

AV: The belly of the whale was made from paper, so we had to decide if we would represent the whale with glossy black paper--this is not redoing a real whale. Again, there is a décalage: It is not exactly on the side of the representation, it's not reality all the time; it's playing with reality.

D: So art is playing with reality?

AV: Sure. Playing with truth, too. Even if you are true, you play with it. You know, the way you decide to say one thing, not another thing? You decide what not to say and then you say it. The film is also about losing memory. In the film I appear all the time with these old ladies--which also says that I am losing my own memory. I am glad I made the film. This saves me from forgetting everything. I think that is my freedom. I can decide if the film can be true or vaguely away from the truth. Imagination has the power to show this and that. At the same time, I will film my family that I see as a dreamy concept. I think it is like a surrounding group protecting me.

D: Protecting you from what?

AV: I don't know. I love my film; it protects me. I feel loved by my audience, even though I don't know their names, I feel their protection is there.

The Beaches of Agnes, currently screening in New York and Los Angeles, will roll out to theaters across the country through October. For more information, click here.

Sara Scheiron is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.