Documentary

DOCUMENTARY HEAVYWEIGHTS TAKE TO THE STAGE

Tuesday was a day dedicated to documentaries at the Independent Filmmaker Conference, starting off with a conversation with Sheila Nevins from HBO, fielded by Toronto Film Festival documentary programmer Thom Powers (also well known in NYC for his Stranger Than Fiction doc series at the IFC Center). Nevins brought the biggest crowd yet to the conference, despite speaking first thing in the morning. She talked cheerfully about how difficult it is to get people to care about tough issues and how documentaries are always a struggle. “We’re very lucky because we’re the Off Off Broadway of HBO. People don’t subscribe […]
by Ingrid Kopp on Sep 22, 2010
Rob Epstein And Jeffrey Friedman, Howl

How do you make a narrative film about a long, difficult poem? Jean Cocteau’s legendary Blood of the Poet gives it a go I suppose, but its style departs from the conventions of narrative very early on for something more willfully avant-garde. Poetry just doesn’t lend itself to shot reverse shot and one hundred and eighty degree director’s lines. This clearly difficult task didn’t daunt veteran documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, however; they took up the challenge as they made the jump to narrative in Howl, a thoughtful meditation on the early life and seminal work of Allen Ginsberg. […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 22, 2010
“TWELVE WAYS TO SUNDAY” COMES TO ROOFTOP FILMS

In this time of economic peril, many Americans have begun to shed frivolous spending for small but rich pleasures. With less nights of take-out or cineplex movies, they’ve learned that it’s the homemade things that count in this world. Filmmaker Anna Farrell portrays a tight-knit community in her documentary Twelve Ways to Sunday, one that always knew about the basic and organic things in life. Fixing up motorcycles, dishing up meals at the local diner, and canning fruit preserves, the people of Allegany County, New York, have always sustained through the good and bad times. Playing this Wednesday at Rooftop […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Sep 22, 2010
TORONTO: TRAVELING WITHOUT MOVING AT ‘WAVELENGTHS’

Wavelengths, the Toronto International Film Festival program that ferries viewers deep into the world of contemporary experimental film, celebrated its tenth birthday in 2010 and received a sweet birthday gift: A completely sold out first show. Even enthusiasts who had lined up more than thirty minutes early were turned away from the 200-seat theatre at the Art Gallery of Ontario (along with your loyal scribe and similarly surprised colleagues from The Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Pacific Film Archive and the Walker Art Center). It was an auspicious start to curator Andréa Picard’s extensive program of more than thirty individual […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 19, 2010
IFC TAKES “HARVEY WEINSTEIN PROJECT”

In a release today, IFC Films has announced they have acquired the worldwide rights (excluding Canada) to Barry Avrich‘s documentary, Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project. The release touts the film as a “powerful, uncensored, no-holds-barred account that traces Weinstein’s path from concert promoter on the cold streets of Buffalo to his first trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where he arrived with one pair of pants and closed his first movie deal, to winning an Oscar, and breaking the bank with his first $100 million film. It examines his complex relationships with his brother, his staff, and the Hollywood community […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 16, 2010
TORONTO: NATIONAL INQUIRER: ERROL MORRIS AND “TABLOID”

I admit a certain obsession with cell phone Scrabble, the band Beach House, and of course, Errol Morris. While the first two are relatively recent acquisitions, that last one has been around for a while (since Cannes 2003 to be exact, and an interview on his film The Fog of War). Morris’ goofy sense of humor remains as addictive as his philosophical and cinematic wanderings. With his latest documentary, Tabloid, my obsession with Morris and his obsessions—in this case, an obsessive beauty queen and the reporters obsessed with her—has reached new heights. While you’re waiting with bated breath for Tabloid to […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 16, 2010
D.A. PENNEBAKER & CHRIS HEGEDUS, “KINGS OF PASTRY”

D.A. Pennebaker is a legend in the world of documentary filmmaking. A pioneer in the art of cinema verite, he first made his mark with the 1967 classic Don’t Look Back, chronicling Bob Dylan’s final acoustic tour in the U.K. He met his partner (in directing and matrimony) Chris Hegedus in the 1970s, and they have co-directed nearly 30 films together since 1977, including the Oscar-nominated The War Room and the Sundance entry Startup.com. Their latest collaboration is Kings of Pastry, a whirlwind peek into the M.O.F. competition, a French pastry chef contest in which 16 of the world’s best […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Sep 15, 2010
PRODUCING ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS, PART ONE

I was one of the judges for this year’s Wookbook Project Discovery and Distribution Award, which grants one lucky film a week-long theatrical run in L.A. with social media, street team and PR support. That run begins this week, September 16, at the Downtown Independent Theater, and the film is Connor Horgan’s character-based post-apocalyptic drama, One Hundred Mornings. All this week we’ll have blog posts from producer Katie Holly and Horgan here at Filmmakermagazine.com. Below is Holly’s first post on the producing of the film. — Scott Macaulay One Hundred Mornings was made for a tenth of the budget that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 15, 2010
HERZOG AND MORRIS TALK IN TORONTO

“It’s so strange we remain friends,” said Errol Morris at one point in his dialogue with fellow director Werner Herzog at the Toronto International Film Festival Monday. During their hour-long conversation at the new Bell Lightbox, the two men spoke of many things — filmmaking, of course, but also reading, music, the Warren Commission report, and actors vs. non-actors (Morris: “In my more spurious moments I’ve said that the main difference between SAG actors and real people is that real people can act”). But mostly they engaged in a kind of digressive contemplation inflected by occasional bouts of one-upmanship — […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 15, 2010
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: WINDFALL

After reading a few small articles on wind energy in the Delaware County Times, the New York City-based video and commercials editor Laura Israel, who retreats to a 16’ by 16’ cabin outside the town of Meredith in said county, thought she might do something for the green movement and get a wind turbine—and not have to pay for electricity in the bargain. “I went on the internet and realized, ‘Wind energy is not what I thought.’ I was editing at a place where a guy was doing a tv segment on it as part of green. I told him […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 10, 2010

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