Of all the panels I attended at Doc NYC, the one called Protecting Yourself, on November 16, gave me the most hope for the future. The filmmakers were an impressive line-up of first-timers and veteran filmmakers, linked by their willingness to put themselves in dangerous situations in order to shine a light on stories otherwise cloaked in secrecy, denial and misinformation. The panel was moderated by Caty Borum Chattoo, Co-Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University. At several points, the audience was asked not to tweet or do social media on certain statements. Some details […]
by Audrey Ewell on Nov 18, 2016Every cinephile knows the curatorial bliss of a great double feature. A flexing of film nerd muscles while sitting on your ass for three to five hours, a double bill brings two films into dialogue with one another based on style, subject, theme, or whatever connective tissue you can find. Double features, like well-sequenced mixtapes, require the instincts of a programmer. Thanks to streaming, digital rentals, and the perennial ease of sneaking into a second film at your local AMC, the work of making a double bill happen has never been easier. Below, I rally through 10 great double features from […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 5, 2016A shocking exposé on the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts, David Felix Sutcliffe and Lyric R. Cabral’s (T)ERROR is in danger of not seeing an official release due exorbitant legal and insurance fees. In profiling a longtime informant, Saeed “Shariff” Torres, Sutcliffe and Cabral demonstrate enough evidence to suggest that the FBI might invent terrorists just as much as it prevents them. The film is an essential conversation piece, and one that deserve to reach the widest audience as possible, so please consider donating to the Kickstarter to fund the theatrical release.
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 4, 2015Sundance SCOTT MACAULAY Check it out: the two top prize winners at Sundance this year, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack, both feature as central elements teenagers who stage and film their own versions of classic movies. There’s even overlap between the two films, although Moselle’s Manhattan shut-ins incline more towards Tarantino and Freddy Krueger, while Gomez-Rejon’s teen Pittsburgh auteurs shirk the Romero roots of their hometown for deep dives into the Criterion Collection. For film lovers of a certain age, both Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Wolfpack […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 28, 2015[Below, co-directors Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe share their experiences at the Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Labs. For more background on the team, read our 25 New Faces profile from last year.] Lyric: I have closely known the main character of our film for 12 years, and have witnessed, firsthand, many of the salient moments of his lengthy career as an FBI counterterrorism informant. We met while he was active in two separate international and domestic sting operations, and our trusting relationship has always been complicated by both government surveillance and the turbulence of his past. Because of his […]
by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe on Jul 21, 2014On March 8th, 1971, an anonymous group of individuals calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole thousands of secret government documents. Within those documents was considerable proof of what many in the activist community had long suspected but been unable to prove: that the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was spying on law-abiding citizens and participating in a broad range of illegal activities designed to neutralize any and all critics of American policy. The group made photocopies of the most damning documents and sent them to various […]
by David Felix Sutcliffe on Apr 24, 2014