Documentary
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SAM GREEN’S LOVE SONG AT SFIFF
One of the highlights of the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival, which boasted a great lineup of films and filmmakers, was the new “live documentary” by Sam Green, The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, featuring Green and Yo La Tengo live on stage. The notion of the live documentary is exciting as a new film movement, a far more powerful one than the overrated reemergence of 3-D. As part of their Buckminster Fuller exhibit, SFMOMA commissioned Green to create a live documentary on Fuller in the spirit of the filmmaker’s previous work Utopia in Four Movements. Fuller is […]
by Mike Plante on May 7, 2012 -
Five Questions with Jessica Oreck About Her New Kickstarter Project
With her debut documentary, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, Jessica Oreck reinvented the nature doc. Oreck, an entomologist who worked as a docent at the American Museum of Natural History, made a film about an insect that was as much about man’s fascination with that creature as it was the creature itself. To top it off, she made her poetic and allusive picture in Japan, exploring the country’s endemic beetle-mania through evocative cinematography and haunting voiceover. When so many documentary filmmakers make their artistic choices based on the desires of their funders, Oreck chooses the harder path. Her latest film, Aatsinki, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2012 -
FOUR TRIBECA DOCS: FROM ZEN TO MADNESS TO SEXY
At 85, Tony Bennett looks and sounds great. In The Zen of Bennett, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and will soon appear on Netflix, Bennett relies on a single word, repeated over and over throughout the documentary, to describe his life philosophy. That word is “quality.” For the clothes he wears, for the songs he sings, for the people who are his friends, for everything, quality is his guiding principle. Conversely, the elderly singer with the smoothest pipes in the business, disparages cheap songs, crude and outlandish behavior, and anger. “Everything you do should be done with love, […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Apr 30, 2012 -
FILMMAKER BEATS IRS, PROVES DOCUMENTARY FILM IS NOT A HOBBY
Independent documentary filmmaker Lee Storey has won her long battle with the Internal Revenue Service over deductions related to her film, Smile ’til it Hurts: The Up with People Story. The IRS’s case against Storey panicked the documentary community as it was poised to declare documentary filmmaking itself “a hobby” and not a professional, profit-seeking endeavor eligible for tax deductions. However, the same judge, Tax Court Judge Diane L. Kroupa, who said during a hearing, “By its very nature, a documentary to me means that it’s not for profit. You’re doing it to educate. You’re doing it to expose,” has […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2012 -
COULD YOU BE LOVED: KEVIN MACDONALD’S “MARLEY”
At first it seems curious that the starting point of this brilliant, definitive documentary about the late Jamaican reggae sensation Bob Marley is archival footage of Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, the facility from which 60 million Africans were crammed through the Door of No Return to commence lives of total servitude in the West. Marley was the offspring of a black Jamaican mother and a white English father (who posed as a captain), whom he met only a handful of times. In the film there is no mention of slavery in the family history. Late in this elegantly elliptical movie, Marley […]
by Howard Feinstein on Apr 18, 2012 -
ENVISION PROGRAM STREAMS LIVE TOMORROW
Envision 2012, a program presented by IFP, the United Nations and the Ford Foundation exploring the subject of “Stories for a Sustainable Future,” will be streamed live tomorrow on the Envision website. Launching this evening and continuing Tuesday, the Envision sessions are filled with talks concerning the role documentary film can have in shaping discussion and action on pressing global issues. Filmmakers Jessica Yu, Rachel Grady, Alexandra Cousteau, and Lixin Fan, among others, will be presenting, and special guests include Don Cheadle and Michael Franti. Tune in tomorrow beginning at 9:30 AM for this thoughtful and engaging event. A complete […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 16, 2012 -
LAURA POITRAS AND OUR POLITICS OF BORDER CROSSINGS
I remember when I first typed documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras as one cool customer. I was interviewing her on the phone about her 2010 documentary, The Oath — for my money the best of the year. The film is about two Yemeni brothers-in-law, one a low-level driver for Osama bin Laden and the other a soldier who became an al-Qaida member and one of bin Laden’s personal bodyguards. But only one was sent to Guantanamo Bay — the driver, not the bodyguard who, at the film’s start, is seen driving a cab through Yemen and discussing jihad with the young […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 9, 2012 -
Jon Shenk and Mohamed Nasheed on The Island President
Originally posted during the Toronto Film Festival, here is a short video with the now former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and filmmaker Jon Shenk on their collaboration making the climate change doc, The Island President. The film opened today at Film Forum in New York. Over at Hammer to Nail, Daniel James Scott interviews Shenk. An excerpt: H2N: So for you, filmmaking starts with story. Yet all of your films coincide with social or political issues that can be affected by the emotional power you described. I’m sure that few filmmakers know more than you the delicate relationship between entertainment […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2012 -
“ALL IN – THE POKER MOVIE” DIRECTOR DOUG TIROLA ON DOCUMENTARY RELEVANCE, HIS MARKETING DILEMMA AND FIGHTING IMDB
Last week, I wrote on the Filmmaker blog about the dilemma faced by director Doug Tirola in the marketing of his new film, All In – The Poker Movie. As promised, Tirola has written an expansive first-person piece describing in more detail the situation he faced. All In – The Poker Movie opened at the Cinema Village on Friday March 23rd 2012 and is now rolling out to over 40 markets including Los Angeles and Chicago. The film was originally shown at a festival in 2009, but over the past three years has undergone some distinct and important changes. However, included in the marketing […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 30, 2012 -
Music, Parallax Sounds and the City
This past week I had the pleasure of working again with my long time friends and collaborators Damon Locks and Wayne Montana on a play that I am developing. Damon is a Chicago-based musician who is featured in a documentary currently in development, Parallax Sounds, which “explores the intimate connection between music and urban landscape in Chicago.” Directed by Augusto Contento, the film also features Steve Albini, Ken Vandermark, and Ian Williams, among others. Locks and Montana created original music for the soundtrack of my own film The Mark of Cain. Their ability to think cinematically and incorporate the sounds […]
by Alix Lambert on Mar 27, 2012
