Documentary
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“I Prefer Not to Hear ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ with a Bad Drumbeat Behind It”: Keith Richards at TIFF
Keith Richards swept into Toronto late this week to inject fresh excitement into TIFF just as the parties were waning, filmgoers were yawning and industry heavvies were flying back to the States. Sporting a snakeskin jacket, a Jamaican-coloured headband and impenetrable mirrored glasses, the 71-year-old rhythm guitarist for The Rolling Stones was here to promote Morgan Neville’s documentary, Keith Richards: Under The Influence. It enjoyed its world premiere here last night before playing today on Netflix. The consensus in Toronto holds that Under The Influence is really a commercial for Richards’ latest album, Crosseyed Heart, also released today. No surprise that […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 19, 2015 -
Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook Launch Field of Vision, The Intercept’s Documentary Unit
Today it was announced that Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook will collaborate to launch Field of Vision, the visual journalism arm of The Intercept, of which Poitras serves as a co-editor. The trio will work together to commission between 40 and 50 short-form nonfiction films each year, with the first season debuting on The Intercept on September 29, following the world premiere of Poitras’ Asylum as part of “Field of Vision: New Episodic Nonfiction” at the NYFF on September 27. You can expect new work from 25 New Faces Iva Radivojevic and Dustin Guy Defa, along with Poitras d.p. Kirsten Johnson, […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 9, 2015 -
“When You Have a Message or Issue-Driven Film, It’s Already an Act of Patriarchy”: Hubert Sauper on We Come as Friends
Hubert Sauper’s new film We Come As Friends is more non-fiction poetry than traditional documentary. Following his Oscar-nominated Darwin’s Nightmare, We Come As Friends is set in South Sudan as it becomes its own country. A new (or, rather, the same old) colonialism is represented by rapacious outside interests pressing in on Sudan from all sides, desiring the country’s oil and natural resources. Amidst it all, Sauper and his collaborators build their own tiny aircraft, complete with a wind-up music box on the dashboard, and fly it into a nexus of cultural communication gaps, deception, corruption, violence and a rhapsodic […]
by Alix Lambert on Aug 14, 2015 -
Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Numbers, Part Two
Tuesday’s post looked at Neil Berkeley and Judy Chaikin as two filmmakers who wanted to create a theatrical release for their films to boost visibility, increase ancillary value and learn for themselves how to operate in the new hybrid model of distribution and marketing. Today we will look at Paco de Onís from Skylight, the company he runs with creative director Pamela Yates and editorial director Peter Kinoy, and their film/media project Granito Paco de Onís, Skylight and Granito According to de Onís, Skylight is “as much a filmmaking organization as a human rights organization.” Hence their goals are not about monetary gain […]
by Jon Reiss on May 8, 2015 -
Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Distribution Numbers, Part One
Alternative distribution models are no longer the experiment, but are now the norm for the vast majority of filmmakers. However because of a variety of reasons, including not least contract obligations and a fear that exposing numbers may not show the filmmaker in the best light, many filmmakers have been reticent to give out the real numbers from their film’s releases. As a result, for last October’s Getting Real Documentary Conference, held by the International Documentary Association, I wanted to create a panel where the participants were required to reveal the data about the releases of their films. I wanted […]
by Jon Reiss on May 5, 2015 -
Living With Lincoln: An Interview with the Filmmakers
In the late 1890s, Frederick Hill Meserve, the son of a Union solider, started collecting photographs from the Civil War. Collecting images — particularly those of President Lincoln — became something of an obsession, and he eventually acquired the largest single collection of Lincoln images. Meserve’s collection was used as the basis for the penny, the portrait on the $5 bill, the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore. The collection is vast — over 70,000 items — and became a family project for five generations. As if this didn’t sound more amazing than the plot of National Treasure, it gets better: Dorothy Meserve […]
by Michael Murie on Apr 13, 2015 -
Why the Art of Observing Life is Enough
The following guest essay by filmmaker Amy Benson, about how sad, unexpected developments changed the course of her documentary, Drawing the Tiger, coincides with a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the film’s completion. Please visit its Kickstarter page to learn more and consider donating. — Editor My husband, Scott Squire, and I started filming what is now Drawing the Tiger seven years ago. It began as a ‘social justice’ documentary; we imagined the tagline would be, “The best thing we can do in the world is educate the girls.” We knew the story we were going to tell… you know it too. […]
by Amy Benson on Apr 1, 2015 -
Getting Close: Remembering Albert Maysles
I woke up in a strange bed in Harlem on a cold and rainy Saturday morning. I was in the second floor guest bedroom of a beautiful old brownstone. The bookshelves were lined with revolutionary material from all cultures, resources for creating manned insurrections, overthrowing governments and surviving months in the wild with only a backpack. Stacks of old records littered the room, mostly ’70s funk, Afro-Cuban jazz and Fela. I grabbed my iPhone, which had slept by my head next to the pillow and considered tweeting or instagramming the moment but quickly dismissed the idea. I stumbled down a […]
by Adam Bhala Lough on Mar 9, 2015 -
“There’s No Space for that Old Style of the Big Barking Orders Coming from the Big Man”: Debra Granik Talks Documentary Filmmaking on the She Does Podcast
We’re so excited and honored to feature Debra Granik in our fourth episode of She Does. Granik is the Academy Award-nominated director and writer of Winter’s Bone, which features a young Jennifer Lawrence in a gripping story set in the Ozarks. Winter’s Bone won several awards including the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It also received four 2011 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Previously, she wrote and directed Down to the Bone, starring Vera Farmiga. Her narrative work is heavily influenced by real life […]
by Elaine Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg on Feb 25, 2015 -
The Cooler Bandits Screening and Discussion at Columbia University on February 26
Followed by what promises to be an amazing discussion between filmmakers and subjects alike, John Lucas’s documentary The Cooler Bandits will be screened Thursday, February 26 in New York at Columbia University. The event is free and open to the public. For Filmmaker, Alix Lambert wrote about the film and talked to Lucas while The Cooler Bandits was in post-production. An excerpt: The Cooler Bandits is the film’s title as well as the crew consisting of Charlie, Donovan, Frankie, and Poochie, who were all teenagers in 1991 when they spent the better part of the year robbing restaurants. Collectively they […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2015
