Documentary

FINAL DAYS FOR FILMMAKER STIMULUS PLAN SUBSCRIPTION OFFER

Please forgive this commercial interruption, but we’re in the final three days of our Filmmaker magazine Stimulus Plan, our annual subscription drive, and I hope that if you have not already taken advantage of this offer that you’ll consider doing so. It’s a fantastic deal, offering not only a year of Filmmaker for only $10 but also our digital edition (which contains all back issues through 2005) free. The offer runs until September 24. Below is the note I posted in our newsletter a few weeks ago detailing the offer in a bit more detail. And for those who have […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 21, 2009
“DEAR DIARY” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 6: FLASH POINT CAMERA

In a personal touch, all the filmmakers whose work was showcased in the sixth and final Wavelengths program were present for their screening. German director Ute Aurand presented a reverie on her childhood and family called Snowing Chestnut Blossoms, while American Jim Jennings, apparently a neighbor of mine in Brooklyn, showed a collection of images in Greenpoint that not only documented the quirky, spunky personality of that environ but also reminded me of two pair of boots in that little shoe repair shop with the orange-awning that are just about ready to be picked up.Coleen Fitzgibbon’s FM/TRCS (1974) is an […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 20, 2009
“GHOST STORIES” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 5: UNE CATASTROPHE

Glowing phantoms of days and films past haunted the fifth Wavelengths avant-garde film program at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a series of meditations in which, as film programmer Andréa Picard described, “personal expressions of historical and collective memory confront spectres from the past.” Une Catastrophe (pictured), Jean-Luc Godard’s trailer for the Viennale is a companion piece of sorts to the Alonso BIFICI trailer that screened the night before. At once forward-looking and nostalgic (it excerpts and pays homage to Sergei Eistenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin, among other films) Godard’s piece is happily available online here. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai director […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 19, 2009
Bob Byington, Harmony and Me

JUSTIN RICE IN WRITER-DIRECTOR BOB BYINGTON’S HARMONY AND ME. COURTESY HARMONY AND ME, LLC. From Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez to Bryan Poyser and the Zellner brothers, Austin is a hotbed of gifted directors, and Bob Byington now emerges from there as another talent to be reckoned with. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Byington studied at UC-Santa Cruz before going to graduate school at the University of Texas, where he used his American Studies major to indulge his newfound love for the movies. In 1995, he cut his teeth as a production assistant on the indie hit The Last Supper, […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 18, 2009
“BRICK WORK” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 4: IN COMPARISON

Ironically, a strange, brilliant one-minute trailer for the Buenos Aires Festival International de Cine Independiente (BAFICI) by Argentine director Lisandro Alonso opened the fourth Wavelengths program of avant-garde cinema at the Toronto International Film Festival. In the piece, officially titled S/T (pictured above), an unblinking owl stared in luxuriously saturated color, while pounding drums created a masterful musical score. The work was being asked to function not primarily as advertising but as cinema — and experimental art cinema at that. S/T was followed by In Comparison, a 16mm film by accomplished filmmaker and installation artist Harun Farocki. Born in the […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 16, 2009
“PARTICIPATORY ETHNOGRAPHY” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 3: LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY

A pair of bare feet was wedged though the gap between seats in front of me, ankles casually crossed and toes silhouetted against the screen, for Let Each One Go Where He May, the third experimental Wavelengths program at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. The screening was devoted to the World Premiere of a single 135-minute 16mm work by American filmmaker Ben Russell?. The film has no translated dialogue and no traditional narrative. It is made up of ten 13-minute shots of two men walking and is described by programmer Andréa Picard as an “intervention” into culture and landscape. This […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 15, 2009
“GOING GREEN” – TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 2: PRO AGRI

Plastic bags cost $.05 here in Toronto this year, a determinedly “pro-agri” city if ever there was one. In the second Wavelengths program, five directors explored themes of, in, and around the natural world. A sputtering soundtrack accompanied a tiny, spunky film, Lumphini by Thai director Tomonari Nishikawa, a speedy, black-and-white collection of still photographs documenting trees, plants, and leaves from a 140-acre Bangkok park in on gorgeous 35mm. In Cordão Verde (Green Belt, pictured above), Hiroatsu Suzuki and Rossana Torres document the pastoral Portugal countryside, while in Tamalpais, Canadian filmmaker Chris Kennedy uses a draughtsman’s landscape grid to break […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 15, 2009
“IT’S ALL ABOUT WAVES” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 1: TITANS

The first 2009 Wavelengths Program (or Programme, as the Canadians say) was held at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). It’s a sophisticated building, one that spent years shrouded in mystery and scaffolding, and has only just revealed its new Gehry glory. Organized this year by talented film programmer Andréa Picard, Wavelengths is an annual extensive program of avant-garde cinema that is screened in six parts during the course of the Toronto International Film Festival. The Festival’s first installment, titled Titans, was an artful collection of films that that varied widely in technique, from an architectural piece by Heinz Emigholz […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 12, 2009
WHAT WE’VE HEARD SO FAR…

Even big time festivals goof up sometimes, Steven Soderbergh has finished his documentary on Spalding Gray and buzz builds for Tom Ford’s A Single Man.
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 12, 2009
DISPATCH #2 FROM 66th VENICE: POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES

This has been a festival of surprises, beginning with higher attendance than anticipated in view of the world-wide economic crisis, and the emergence of unexpected stars: how about Michael Moore and President Hugo Chavez as media darlings? Moore, who apparently is better known in Europe than one would imagine, brought Capitalism: A Love Story (right), drawing an overflow crowd to his press conference and enthusiastic audiences to the screenings. Moore’s is one of the six U.S. films competing for the Golden Lion. The real coup, however, was an international stage for Chavez in Oliver Stone’s South of the Border, signing […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 10, 2009

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