Documentary
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2010 SPIRIT AWARD NOMINEES ANNOUNCED
Film Independent announced the nominations for their 2010 Spirit Awards today. Winter’s Bone leads with seven nominations, including Best Feature, Director and Female Lead. Joel McHale will host the show Feb. 26 when it returns back to the beach in Santa Monica. Full list of nominees below. BEST FEATURE 127 Hours Black Swan Greenberg The Kids Are All Right Winter’s Bone BEST DIRECTOR Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan Danny Boyle, 127 Hours Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone John Cameron Mitchell, Rabbit Hole BEST FIRST FEATURE Everything Strange and New Get Low The Last Exorcism Night […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Nov 30, 2010 -
“WINTER’S BONE,” “THE OATH,” TAKE HOME TOP PRIZES AT 20th GOTHAM AWARDS
IFP’s 20th Gotham Independent Film Awards took place last night in Lower Manhattan with Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone winning Best Feature as well as Best Ensemble and Laura Poitras‘ The Oath taking Best Documentary. Other winners on the night include Waiting for “Superman” winning the first ever Festival Genius Audience Award and Littlerock took home the Best Film Not Playing At a Theater Near You Award (chosen by the editors of Filmmaker). The show, co-hosted by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, was also filled with memories from Gothams past, including a beautiful montage to start the night. Tributes this year […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Nov 30, 2010 -
Into the Splice: After the Flood
Downtown Waterloo, Ontario. At night. A night unfinished. The previous evening I had spoken at a conference about analog nostalgia in the digital age. I brought a turntable with me from Michigan. And one single to play: “You’re Gonna Die” (1978) by the Ann Arbor/Detroit post-punk art band Destroy All Monsters, featuring Ron Asheton on guitar. At the border crossing entering Canada at Port Huron, I was asked a series of questions about the reasons for my visit to Canada. I answered in ways that made the guard skeptical, and I was told to go directly to Immigration. There, a […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Nov 30, 2010 -
PAIRING FILMS AT IDFA
For a docu-phile, attending the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — with its nearly 300 films to choose from — feels less like being a kid in a candy store and more like being stuck in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for a week and a half. In addition to being Europe’s biggest fest for nonfiction flicks IDFA boasts round the clock events. (Literally — if you were still revved at three in the morning after IDFA Dance Night a program called “Docs Around The Clock” continued until 9AM, breakfast included.) In between screenings at the Pathe de Munt or the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 29, 2010 -
DEBATING CLIMATE CHANGE AT IDFA
Before IDFA’s Green Screen Climate Debate began at the Escape Club in Rembrandtplein Monday afternoon, our host noted that none other than Al Gore was due to arrive at Schiphol airport at any moment (no doubt in one of his private environmentally-damaging jets). Though he was in Holland to receive an award, the Nobel laureate, unfortunately, had declined the festival’s offer to stop by to debate. Too bad because we were left with the star of Cool It, Bjorn Lomborg — the John Cameron Mitchell-resembling “skeptical environmentalist” whose book the film was based on — instead facing down Jan Rotman, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 24, 2010 -
CHARLES BURNETT, “KILLER OF SHEEP”
Originally published in the Spring 2007 issue of Filmmaker. Killer of Sheep plays this week as part of the Milestone Films 20th Anniversary series at the IFC Center. “When I stumbled across a 16mm print of Killer of Sheep at film school in North Carolina, it was like finding gold. I had never seen an American film quite like it…raw, honest simplicity that left me sitting there in an excited silence. It echoed throughout George Washington, the first film that David Gordon Green and I made together.” — Tim Orr, cinematographer (All the Real Girls, Raising Victor Vargas) What sort […]
by James Ponsoldt on Nov 24, 2010 -
THANKS BE TO “MARLENE” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION
As inflatable stars arrive in Manhattan ready for their Macy’s close-up, one of the biggest stars in the history of film won’t be at the parade — she’ll be at the IFC Center. Tonight, Stranger Than Fiction will feature its penultimate screening, Marlene, a revival of the 1984 documentary about the reclusive film star Marlene Dietrich, directed by Maximilian Schell, an actor who appeared with Dietrich in Judgment at Nuremberg. Presented by John Walter, the director of How to Draw A Bunny and Theater of War, Marlene is partly the story of Dietrich and partly the story of Schell’s dogged […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Nov 23, 2010 -
OSCAR DOC FEATURE SHORTLIST: WHICH TITLES SHOULD HAVE MADE THE CUT?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed today the 15 films that have made their shortlist for the Best Feature Documentary category in the 83rd Academy Awards. They include: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Alex Gibney, director (ES Productions LLC) Enemies of the People, Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films) Exit through the Gift Shop, Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures) Gasland, Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures) Inside Job, Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures) The […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Nov 18, 2010 -
A SHORT TRIP TO CPH:DOX
Invited to deliver a master class seminar on doc/fiction hybrid films at the CPH:DOX Labs, I attended the festival for the first time this year. At the Labs, now in its second year, filmmakers from the Nordic countries and around the world were brought together in teams and charged with collaborating on a film. Because I was teaching the day-long seminar, which took place days before the well-attended Forum (a market for docs seeking financing) opened up, I missed the great majority of the festival’s programming as well as business activity. So, I can’t offer a detailed roundup of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 18, 2010 -
“12TH AND DELAWARE” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION
When I was in a high school in Tennessee, a classmate of mine started crying while discussing a short story about Vietnam. Through her tears, she explained that the soldiers battling for their lives reminded her of all the unborn babies who’d been killed that week. What those of us not on the frontlines of the abortion battle often forget is that for those who feel passionately on the subject, abortion is not just an issue, it’s the only issue. In 12th and Delaware, last night’s entry into the Stranger than Fiction canon, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady take […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Nov 17, 2010
