Documentary
-
“… A Running Dialogue Between Past and Present Notions of Screen Culture”: Jeff Reichert, Damon Smith and Eric Hynes on Room H.264
In 1982, in the Hotel Martinez at the Cannes Film Festival, where Steven Spielberg’s E.T. was the closing night film, German auteur Wim Wenders set up a stationary 16mm camera in a room on the sixth floor and asked a succession of directors to film themselves answering a single question: “Is cinema becoming a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?” Respondents ranged from yes, Spielberg, to Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michelangelo Antonioni, and topics covered included film vs. television, the rise of blockbuster “sensation-oriented” cinema, and the evolving theatrical experience. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 7, 2018 -
The Art of Being Alone: Brian Bolster’s Elegant Short Doc, Winter’s Watch
A hotel left empty during wintertime, a stormy island and a lone caretaker are the poetic elements of Brian Bolster’s elegant Winter’s Watch, a short documentary screening on the Atlantic Selects. For 19 winters photographer Alexandra de Steiguer has worked as a caretaker of the Oceanic Hotel, an imposing structure located on Star Island, 10 miles off the New England Coast. The island’s lone inhabitant, she sinks into her solitude and makes images, although, it is clear that, in this instance, her artistic practice is a byproduct of her need to escape the noise of the mainland and exist, one-on-one, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2018 -
“To Dominate out of Fear is Our Worst Characteristic as Humans”: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Their Oscar-Shortlisted One of Us
Directing partners Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady — selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces in 2005 — first came on to the filmmaking scene with heartfelt documentaries The Boys of Baraka and Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp. In their latest documentary One of Us, currently available on Netflix and just shortlisted for the Best Documentary Academy Award, their signature cinema verite style of filmmaking unveiled a level of suspense and drama they were not expecting. Centered around three people who are attempting to leave the tight reigns of their New York-based Hasidic Jewish communities, the film goes deep inside an overly controlling, […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Dec 12, 2017 -
“Speaking to a New World”: Addison O’Dea on the Virtual Reality Series Discovery TRVLR
Last month Discovery Communications, Google, and Here Be Dragons released one of the most ambitious virtual reality documentary series yet produced, Discovery TRVLR. Writer-director Addison O’Dea and his team created 38 episodes on all seven continents, going to as remote locations as possible and focusing on the universality of the people who live there. Available on DiscoveryVR.com, the Discovery VR app, and YouTube, the series marks the next step, after works like Felix & Paul Studios’ Nomads series, to push VR into the field of ethnographic nonfiction. But as O’Dea emphasizes in our conversation below, TRVLR is first and foremost a travel show, not an anthropological […]
by Randy Astle on Dec 4, 2017 -
What Makes A Great Interview? Filmmakers Share Tips on Securing Great On-Screen Dialogues
At “What Makes a Great Interview,” a November 12 panel at DOC NYC, moderator Sandi DuBowski (Trembling Before G-D) offered his reflections on interviews: “People want to have a cathartic experience, a soul journey… to take a breath out of the everyday rush and really sink into their life. I think interviews are very holy and they are gorgeous and there is something about life in them that is special.” Three filmmakers joined DuBowski on the stage to reflect on their process for conducting great interviews, from their personal theories to little tricks in the tool bag (like dropping a […]
by Lauretta Prevost on Nov 29, 2017 -
DOC NYC: Barbara Kopple on Her True Crime Tale, A Murder in Mansfield
“A friend of mine has this absolutely fantastic story that we should all do together.” Barbara Kopple heard these words, she tells me, on a phone call last year with producer John Morrissey (American History X). She’s likely heard such preambles before. Kopple has directed documentaries for more than 40 years, from her landmark labor-strike feature Harlan County U.S.A. to her profiles of Woody Allen (Wild Man Blues), the Dixie Chicks (Shut Up & Sing) and the late, eternally great Sharon Jones (Miss Sharon Jones!). Morrissey wanted to pitch Kopple a film on Collier Landry, an L.A.-based filmmaker whose mother […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Nov 12, 2017 -
“A Horror Film in Slow Motion”: Greg Barker on His DOC NYC Opener The Final Year
Opening this edition’s DOC NYC on November 9th is Greg Barker’s The Final Year, a truly up-close-and-personal, behind-the-scenes look at the Obama administration and its foreign policy team during its last 12 months. To say that Barker gained unprecedented access to the president’s men (and one woman) during that period is an understatement. The veteran documentarian (Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma, Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden, etc.) managed to shadow three heavyweight insiders — Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, and “Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 8, 2017 -
Grappling with Qualms over A Gray State Before Moderating a Festival Q&A
As a film critic who also serves as a festival programmer I sometimes find myself in awkward positions. Such was the case recently at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in October, where A Gray State screened, along with the film’s director Erik Nelson and its executive producer Werner Herzog in attendance. Though I’d seen the film on screener, I didn’t have a strong opinion about it one way or another (and as I was only helping out with the international features this year my indifference didn’t much matter). Of course, asked to moderate the post-screening Q&A I jumped at the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 26, 2017 -
Inequality and Systemic Racism in St. Louis: Landon Von Soest and Jeremy Levine on For Akheem
The St. Louis-set For Ahkeem’s central character, Daje Shelton, is on a path to avoid a life of poverty and disappointment. Having been suspended from her local high school for a number of petty offenses, Daje’s opportunities are narrowing by the season. Enlisting in a school for troubled youth as a last resort, her future is up in the air. While the documentary is centered around Daja, African-American teenage men are always present. Daja speaks of her many male friends who have been lost to gun violence, and her boyfriend Antonio (and their eventual son, the title character Ahkeem) will have […]
by Erik Luers on Oct 13, 2017 -
“As Humans, We Will Never Settle”: Five Questions for Human Flow Director Ai Weiwei
World-renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei makes his feature-length filmmaking debut with Human Flow, an expansive documentary that shines a light on the global refugee crisis. Ai circles the globe to showcase the personal stories behind the sweeping headlines of fallout from war, famine and climate change in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, Serbia, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand and Turkey. Today 65 million people have been forcibly displaced, more people than in the time period following World War II. Ai manages to show both the massive scale of the […]
by Ariston Anderson on Oct 13, 2017
