Authors — Daniel James Scott
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“Lack of Access Made Us More Artful:” Alex Gibney on We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
As a documentary subject, WikiLeaks couldn’t be in better hands than those of Alex Gibney. The Oscar-winning director of Taxi to the Dark Side, whose other films include Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Mea Maxima Culpa, has displayed an ongoing interest in exposing corruptions of power. WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website responsible for the largest leaks of classified documents in history, was founded on the same principle. Yet it is surprising that We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks explores the decline of the organization as it became a victim of its own beliefs. The documentary explores the […]
by Daniel James Scott on May 21, 2013 -
Nara Garber & Betsy Nagler’s Flat Daddy
Nara Garber & Betsy Nagler’s Flat Daddy is released on VOD on November 6. The following was originally published on the eve of its Doc NYC premiere in 2011. In the corpus of documentaries that have come out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve seen a gradual progression from the outward to the inward — immersive forays into the battlefield giving way to subtler studies of the wartime psyche. Yet the majority of them have focused on the soldier’s experience of war. Flat Daddy sets itself apart by focusing on the people who feel war perhaps the deepest: military families put on […]
by Daniel James Scott on Nov 5, 2012 -
“PARAíSO”: AN INTERVIEW WITH NADAV KURTZ
On still mornings in the “Windy City,” a select few people can be seen careening down the high rises that mark Chicago’s skyline. While the buildings they descend contain people waking up for their daily routines—or the destinations of such routines—these men are living out their routines. In the short documentary Paraíso (Paradise), newcomer Nadav Kurtz delves into the lives of three Mexican immigrants working as window washers in Chicago. The film, which won Best Documentary Short awards at this year’s Tribeca International Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival, portrays a segment of the workforce for Chicago’s largest […]
by Daniel James Scott on Jun 18, 2012 -
Director Marshall Curry on Racing Dreams
Ask a filmmaker how to go about making your first film, and 99% of them will impart the easier-said-than-done advice, “Just go and make it.” The technology is there, filming and editing equipment have never been more affordable, and the internet has broken down the barriers between filmmakers and distributors. Few of those filmmakers, however, can give that advice as genuinely as Marshall Curry, who did just that with remarkable results. While working at a New York multimedia design firm, Curry decided to pursue a latent desire to make documentary films. With no prior experience in filmmaking, he bought a […]
by Daniel James Scott on Feb 22, 2012 -
Director Marius Van Neikerk on My Heart of Darkness
The journey of an international documentary to the United States is an uncertain one. Make its subject a lesser-known foreign war and the post-traumatic effects thereof, and you’ve got what an American agent calls a “hard sell.” My Heart of Darkness, a brooding foray into four veterans’ pasts, has been traveling the international festival circuit since premiering at IDFA in 2010. The years between then and now, where it’s having its U.S. premiere at L.A.’s Pan African Film Festival (PAFF), has been marked by all manner of revelations and misunderstandings—appropriate for a film about the reconciliation of four former enemies […]
by Daniel James Scott on Feb 11, 2012 -
Director Micha X. Peled on Bitter Seeds
Monsanto, the agriculture biotech company maligned in such docs as Food, Inc. and King Corn, found renewed opposition this month with the launch of an online petition gone viral called “Tell Obama to Cease FDA Ties to Monsanto.” The petition protests the president’s 2009 appointment of the company’s former VP, Michael Taylor, to the position of senior advisor to the FDA. That this years-late call to action has inspired more than 380,000 signatures attests to the toxicity of this particular marriage between government and a multinational corporation. If you’ll remember, Monsanto is the company that brought us DDT and Agent Orange, both of […]
by Daniel James Scott on Feb 9, 2012 -
RECAPPING THE 2012 CINEMA EYE HONORS
The backlash against the Academy’s recent changes to its nomination policies for documentary films contrasted with the casual atmosphere of last night’s Cinema Eye Honors. In an intimate theater at the Museum of the Moving Image, the pillars of the documentary community gathered to celebrate the breadth and diversity of their craft. In attendance were Frederick Wiseman, Al Maysles, Steve James, Alex Gibney, Michael Moore, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky and many more. Founder and co-host AJ Schnack spoke of the Cinema Eyes evolution prior to the awards: “Some things about Cinema Eye are the same as they were that first time that we gathered […]
by Daniel James Scott on Jan 12, 2012 -
An Interview With Frederick Wiseman
The New Year can be as much a time to reflect as it can be to project into the future. Some see the act of looking back as an integral part of moving forward. But on a brisk afternoon in Cambridge the day before New Year’s Eve, Frederick Wiseman resists this notion. The legendary documentary filmmaker has been making roughly one film a year since 1967, only taking breaks when funding difficulties, or in this case critical recognition, require him to do so. Tomorrow night Wiseman is receiving the Legacy Award at the annual Cinema Eye Honors for his debut […]
by Daniel James Scott on Jan 10, 2012 -
Director Bram Van Paesschen on Empire of Dust
The vast wilderness of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a world away from the urban centers of China. Yet it is there that greater numbers of Chinese engineers are doing business. In the documentary Empire of Dust, featured in the “Panorama” section of this year’s International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), director Bram Van Paesschen explores the fraught relationship between the Congolese and the Chinese, as shown through their efforts to build a road between two major cities in the DRC. In 2007, China and Congo signed a massive resources-for-infrastructure deal with projected revenues of $40-$120 billion. China endeavors […]
by Daniel James Scott on Dec 4, 2011 -
Director Marc Simon on Unraveled
Putting a human face on the criminality of the financial crisis, Unraveled explores the downfall of Marc Dreier, a prominent Manhattan attorney who was arrested in 2009 for embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from hedge funds. The documentary places us in the “guilded prison” of Dreier’s upper East Side apartment during his 60-day house arrest. In that time, he is interviewed by none other than one of his victims, Marc Simon, who, in addition to being an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, formerly worked as a lawyer at Dreier’s law firm, Dreier L.L.P. You wouldn’t know that from the film, however, as […]
by Daniel James Scott on Nov 25, 2011
