Documentary
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“THE CITY DARK” DIRECTOR IAN CHENEY
Documentarians get their ideas from all sorts of places — newspaper stories, family albums, an overheard story on a train — but rarely does inspiration come from as poetic an activity as stargazing — unless, of course, the documentarian in question happens to be filmmaker Ian Cheney. While gazing at the New York City skyline, Cheney realized that he lived in a place where stars don’t really exist. Determined to find out how much he’s missed when he lost the night sky, he started interviewing scientists for a project that would become The City Dark, a meditation that explores how the […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Mar 12, 2011 -
“BETTER THIS WORLD” DIRECTORS KELLY DUANE DE LA VEGA & KATIE GALLOWAY
When two young activists from Midland Texas were arrested with Molotov cocktails at the 2008 Republican convention, their story became a media sensation, but documentarians Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega couldn’t escape the feeling that there was more to this story than the good-kids-turned-domestic-terrorists version the media was reporting. So, they did what any skilled documentarians do: they took a leap of faith, jumped a plane and started talking to people involved with the case. The result is Better This World, a documentary that explores what happens when idealistic, angry young activists stop being polite and start getting mixed up […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Mar 11, 2011 -
THE TRUE/FALSE FILM FESTIVAL 2011
There’s nothing like a parade to celebrate community spirit. When I arrived in Columbia, Missouri (aka CoMo) throngs of revelers in homemade costumes were marching down the main boulevard to kick off the 8th edition of the True/False Film Fest. The aptly named documentary festival ran from March 3-6, and community spirit was evident in the grassroots event dedicated to the audience experience. Columbia, a small city just north of the Ozarks, counts more than one quarter of its 108,000 residents as advanced degree holders. The University of Missouri (aka Mizzou) is the largest among several schools, and its prominent […]
by Rania Richardson on Mar 9, 2011 -
The Economist Film Project’s Gideon Lichfield
“We want to encourage people to make good documentaries because we feel like there’s not enough good explaining in the world.” That’s The Economist Film Project’s editorial director, Gideon Lichfield (pictured right), about the recently announced partnership between the British weekly and the PBS News Hour. Beginning April, that “good explaining” will arrive in the form of segments on the PBS News Hour that will include six-to-eight minute clips from full-length and short documentaries as well as related discussions by the anchors, outside experts and, sometimes, the filmmakers. The Economist Film Project is currently in the midst of a submission […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 28, 2011 -
Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, Restrepo
Originally posted online on June 23, 2010. Restrepo is nominated for Best Documentary. Most documentary filmmakers attempt to see the world through the lens of the subjects they’re shooting, but few put their lives on the line to do so. That perhaps is what most separates first-time directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington from a few of their colleagues who didn’t take home the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Their award-winning Restrepo is the result of a near yearlong embedment with the Second Platoon, Battle Company in eastern Afghanistan’s deadly Korengal Valley, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 21, 2011 -
“SELF MADE” OPENS MOMA’S DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT
Documentary Fortnight, MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, kicked off its 10th season last night with the world premiere of Self Made. The film, a first for British artist (and Turner Prize winner) turned filmmaker Gillian Wearing, takes the audience through the cathartic process of a Method Acting class populated by a small group of hand-picked non-professionals and led by acting teacher, Sam Rumbelow. The movie shows how strong performances can result from emotional excavation. It’s a raw and emotionally powerful film and one that makes clear that Method Acting, first invented by Stanislavski over a hundred years […]
by Webadmin on Feb 17, 2011 -
“POSITION AMONG THE STARS” DIRECTOR LEONARD RETEL HELMRICH
Position Among the Stars Winning both the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) and Sundance for the same film isn’t anything new for director Leonard Retel Helmrich. Both Position Among the Stars (which received a Special Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this past Saturday) and Shape of the Moon — his previous documentary about three generations of the Shamsuddin family of inner city Jakarta — have won top awards at the festivals. These two documentaries, along with 2001’s Eye of the Day, combine as a trilogy to tell a moving story about religion, politics, and economics, all through the lens […]
by James Ponsoldt on Jan 31, 2011 -
THE ENVIRONMENT, THE WHITE HOUSE, GENOCIDE: THREE SUNDANCE DOCS
Remember the Earth Liberation Front? In the 1990s a collection of separate anonymous cells without any central leadership that carried out acts of sabotage and arson — burning lumber companies, torching a parking lot of SUVs, destroying a research laboratory. The clandestine group’s goal was to halt the destruction of our environment. If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front gives us the larger context of the environmental movement and the more radical Earth Liberation Front, and then focuses on one cell in Oregon and on the activist Daniel McGowan. It is an intriguing and important film […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Jan 29, 2011 -
“MAGIC TRIP” | director, Alex Gibney & Alison Ellwood
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 28, 3:00 pm — Temple Theatre] We initially thought that the film would be more conventional — the usual talking heads reflecting on the past. However, there was something so magical about the footage that cutting away from it to interviews of distant memories seemed wrong. Better, we discovered, to create a kind of archival immersion experience in which the footage would either live on its own or be commented upon by audio-tape recordings of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters themselves. Many of these recordings were made closer to the time of the actual bus […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 28, 2011 -
“GRANITO” | co-writer-director, Pamela Yates
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 25, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre] Destiny never fails to astonish me. In this case, a story told long ago comes back and speaks to us in a surprising way in the present. When I went to Guatemala in 1982, the sole genocide of the 20th century in the Americas was unfolding and I was shooting my first feature-length documentary there called When the Mountains Tremble. More than 25 years later that film and all the filmic outtakes are being used as forensic evidence in a genocide case against two of the generals in my original […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2011
