Documentary

PICK OF THE WEEK

Many filmmakers lately have been interested in blending documentary with drama, mixing real people and places into classically structured stories. Perhaps the best of these recent attempts is also the most timely and vital; Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’s The Road to Guantanamo, which tells the true story of three British Muslims who, traveling to Pakistan for a wedding, haplessly wind up captured by U.S. military and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Winterbottom and Whitecross shoot on DV and blend talking-head interviews with the real “Tipton Three” — who have since been released — with incredibly dramatic scenes with actors that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 23, 2006
Agent Provocateur

With The Outsider, cinematic badboy James Toback gets in front of the camera for first-time filmmaker Nicholas Jarecki. “Who is James Toback?” That’s the question documentary filmmaker Nicholas Jarecki poses in The Outsider, a freewheeling and highly watchable portrait of the director of idiosyncratic films like Fingers and Black and White. Jarecki introduces his subject, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Bugsy, on the set of a 2004 film for which Toback had high hopes. When Will I Be Loved, which starred Neve Campbell as a young woman on the make, would, like many of Toback’s films, be a minor presence […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jun 16, 2006
Sound Jam

The director of Head-On investigates the rich musical culture of his homeland. DIRECTOR FATIH AKIN. The soundtrack and score of the critically acclaimed, adrenaline fueled doomed romance Head-On was a fusion of punk, European electronica, hip-hop, British new wave and traditional Turkish laments, so it’s no great surprise that the Turkish-German director Fatih Akin’s new movie is a documentary about the vibrant and diverse music community in Istanbul. It’s the city where Head-On music composer Alexander Hacke, better known as a member of the avant-garde band Einstuezende Neubauten, recorded a few songs for Head-On — and became fascinated by the […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jun 16, 2006
MIND LIKE WATER

Over at his blog Self Reliant Filmmaking, filmmaker Paul Harrill is beginning a two-part series discussing books on productivity and their effectiveness for artists. He starts with David Allen’s Getting Things Done, which is the bible-of-the-moment for productivity seekers. It has even spawned a website, 43 Folders, which applies its principles to computer organizational systems and various lifehacks. Harrill starts by summarizing some of the key points of Allen’s simple system: Something comes across your desk. What now? First, you process it: If you can’t act on it, you trash it, file it away for later, or you save it […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2006
THE FIVE STAGES OF GLOBAL WARMING

Taking a cue from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Al Gore discusses the five stages of coming to terms with global warming in this long interview with Ray Pride (pictured with Gore) about the excellent documentary An Inconvenient Truth. From the interview: GORE: First of all, David Guggenheim, in my opinion, has done a spectacular job of making a really entertaining movie out of a slide show! [laughs] It was his idea to use the short biographical pieces, not mine. He convinced me that on film it’s important to provide a basis for the audience to connect personally to a character or characters…. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 5, 2006
CINEMATIC CASE STUDIES

Bill Condon may have turned sex researcher Alfred Kinsey into a mainstream movie figure, but underground filmmaker Bret Woods has turned to a slightly more esoteric source for his latest film. According to its new website, Psychopathia Sexualis “dramatizes case histories of turn-of-the-century sexual deviance, drawn from the pages of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s notorious medical text. Among the cases are a sexually repressed man who discovers an unhealthy appetite for blood; a homosexual man who submits himself to a doctor who promises to ‘cure’ his condition; and a masochist who hires a pair of corseted prostitutes to enact a most […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 24, 2006
GIULIANI REVISITED

Newsweek has a good interview up with director Kevin Keating, whose documentary Giuliani Time opens in theaters this week. I saw the doc in Rotterdam a couple of years ago, and it’s a straightforward and worthwhile pic that tries to throw some balance on the public’s reckoning of Rudy Giuliani. Before 9/11, Giuliani was suffering a severe case of second-term lethargy, forgoing any sense of mayoral ambition and instead initiating regressive policies targeting welfare recipients and the homeless, among others. (For those who wonder how Giuliani cleaned up N.Y.’s “homeless problem,” this film tells you how, and it’s not pretty.) […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 13, 2006
SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES JUNE LAB PROJECTS

Indiewire has posted the writers and directors participating in the Sundance June Labs. Here’s the list and the descriptions of the projects: “A Breath Away”/Kit Hui (writer/director), U.S.A./ChinaAs a typhoon approaches Hong Kong, the residents of a high-rise apartment explore their need for human connection, family, and cultural identity in their increasingly isolated worlds.Born and raised in Hong Kong, Kit Hui immigrated to the United States at age 16. She received her MFA from Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program. Her short film “Missing” screened at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, and she was recently […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2006
PRIVATIZE THIS!

Pat Aufderheide, Professor and Director for Center for Social Media at American University’s School of Communication, forwarded an email about potentially alarming news coming from the Smithsonian. She writes, “The Smithsonian recently announced an exclusive partnership with Showtime Networks to create ‘Smithsonian Networks’ as a joint venture with the Institution’s Smithsonian Business Ventures Unit. This arrangement could stifle the range of independent work on American history and culture that consistently brings new ideas, voices and perspectives to public attention.” Why? Because, she continues, “The Smithsonian Networks policy would preclude independent filmmakers from creating projects for other media outlets. According to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 16, 2006
SCOTT WALKER RETURNS

An issue or so ago I put Scott Walker in our “Super 8” column, anticipating his new album, his first in ten years. Now it’s got a title — The Drift — and the musician Momus has an early review on his blog: Fuck me, this is terrifying! I’ve come by The Drift, the new Scott Walker album. Don’t ask me how. It’s on 4AD. I used to be on 4AD, but that’s by the by the by the by. But the thing is, this isn’t a pop record, it’s a nightmare. It’s a horror film, part Cocteau, part Jodorowsky. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2006

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