Stranger than Fiction

“WAR DON DON” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

While introducing War Don Don at last night’s Stranger Than Fiction, SXSW programmer Janet Pierson said that while many great documentaries were submitted to last year’s festival, there were few with the “clarity” of Rebecca Richman Cohen’s directorial debut. It was a sentiment later echoed by Raphaela Neihausen, the executive director of Stranger than Fiction who praised Richman Cohen for her ability to “break down a complex issue” but still keep the “nuance.” Three years in the making, War Don Don follows the UN Special trial of Issa Sesay, one of the leaders of the RUF, an incredibly violent rebel […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Nov 10, 2010
“WO AI NI MOMMY” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

While introducing Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You Mommy) at last night’s Stranger Than Fiction, programmer Thom Powers thanked the Sadowsky family for allowing director Stephanie Wang-Breal to document their experiences adopting an eight-year-old girl from China, pointing out that “it’s not an easy thing to let a camera into your life.” Startlingly intimate, Wo Ai Ni Mommy follows the Sadowsky family as they struggle to incorporate their new daughter, who speaks no English, into their family. When the girl, Faith, demands to know why her parents would even want a Chinese daughter, her parents are shocked that multiculturalism is a concept […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Nov 3, 2010
“ON COAL RIVER” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

There’s an explosion. Children play on swings, unaware of a darkening cloud on the horizon. A man opens the back of his toilet only to discover it’s filled with black sludge. Just a few scenes from On Coal River, last night’s selection for Stranger Than Fiction, the weekly documentary series hosted by Thom Powers at the IFC Center. Significantly more frightening than your average horror flick, On Coal River follows a group of West Virginia activists in their fight against Massey Energy and its practice of “mountaintop removal mining,” a type of strip mining where they literally blow off the top […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Oct 28, 2010
“TAKING ON THE KENNEDYS” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

Ever since the great documentarian Robert Drew turned his camera on then Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in the 1960 documentary, Primary, the campaign film has been one of the great genres of documentary filmmaking. So, it was no small compliment to director Josh Seftel when Thom Powers introduced Seftel’s 1996 film Taking on the Kennedys as “one of the great campaign documentaries” at Stranger than Fiction last night. Made when Seftel was only twenty-six years old, Taking on the Kennedys follows the Republican doctor Kevin Vigilante as he runs for Congress against Patrick Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s youngest son. Despite […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Oct 27, 2010
“THE CANAL STREET MADAM” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

Last night’s Stranger Than Fiction, the weekly documentary series at the IFC Center, “completed a circle” for programmer Thom Powers. It was while Powers was judging applications for the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant, a grant given by the Full Frame Festival in honor of the talented filmmaker who passed away at the age of thirty-seven, that he first learned about Cameron Yates’ film, The Canal Street Madam. As part of their grant proposal, Cameron Yates and producer Mridu Chandra had submitted a ten-minute reel of highlights from their work-in-progress. The footage impressed Powers, and he selected them as one […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Oct 20, 2010
“AMERICAN SPLENDOR” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

At last night’s Stranger Than Fiction, a weekly documentary series at the IFC, host Thom Powers paid tribute to underground comic icon Harvey Pekar, who died in July of this year, by screening American Splendor, the dramatization of Pekar’s celebrated autobiographical comic series about his life as a file clerk. A comics fanatic who became friends with the writer while working in the underground comic scene, Powers described discovering Pekar’s work as “a truly transformative experience.” Powers almost did not attend a screening of the film at Sundance in 2003, terrified it would do something horrible to something “so precious.” […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Oct 6, 2010
“MARWENCOL” OPENS STRANGER THAN FICTION AT THE IFC CENTER

“Stranger than Fiction,” the annual documentary series at the IFC Center, opens tonight with Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol, winner of the Best Documentary award at SXSW, Comic-Con and SIFF. From tonight’s program notes: On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was attacked outside of a bar in Kingston, NY, by five men who beat him literally to death. Revived by paramedics, Mark had suffered brain damage and physical injuries so severe even his own mother didn’t recognize him. After nine days in a coma and 40 days in the hospital, Mark was discharged with little memory of his previous life. Unable to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 28, 2010
“KEVORKIAN” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

Do not ask for whom Kevorkian tolls, Kevorkian tolls for Stranger Than Fiction. Last night, the spring season of the IFC series came to a close with Kevorkian, Matthew Galkin’s profile of the controversial right-to-die-activist’s recent run for Congress. During the nineties, Kevorkian assisted in the suicides of over one hundred people, becoming the center of a media fire storm, a storm he stoked by sending a tape of himself injecting a terminally-ill man with an overdose of drugs to 60 Minutes and then daring prosecutors to come after him. They took him up on his offer. Determined to provoke […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Jun 9, 2010
“HAYNESVILLE” AT STF

Last night Thom Powers screened two docs, Jessica Edwards‘ short, Seltzer Works and Gregory Kallenberg‘s feature, Haynesville as the penultimate screening in his Spring Stranger Than Fiction series. The series rarely features shorts, but Powers credited the move to the fact that both films focused on gas crises – one very small, one very large, both man-made. Deftly shot, Seltzer Works is a carefully composed bit of nostalgia for a time when deliverymen schlepped heavy glass bottles full of fizzy water all over Brooklyn. A portrait of a third-generation seltzer man struggling to survive in a world that no longer needs him, […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Jun 2, 2010
“MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

Since part of the mission of Stranger Than Fiction is to promote “lost gems,” it should come as no surprise that programmer Thom Powers would choose to screen Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera, a little seen (outside of film schools) Soviet classic that has had a profound influence on everything from Jean-Luc Godard to car commercials. A mish-mash of documentary material and visual effects, Man With a Movie Camera is a rapidly edited documentary experiment — and perhaps the world’s first music video. Last night’s screening featured a modern score arranged by John Walter, an editor and filmmaker […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on May 26, 2010

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