The Invisible War
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The Act of Killing Takes BRITDOC’s Puma Impact Award
Last night at the Times Centre in New York, BRITDOC’s Puma Impact Award was bestowed upon the visibly shell-shocked filmmakers behind the year’s most innovative film, The Act of Killing. Director Joshua Oppenheimer, co-director Christine Cynn, and producer Signe Byrge Sørensen assumed the stage to collect their iridescent trophy – and its accompanying 50,000 Euro prize, to be split between the team and their activist efforts – from jurors Susan Sarandon, Zadie Smith, and Ricken Patel. Absent were two members of the jury, Gael García Bernal and Eric Schlosser, but, perhaps more notably, The Act of Killing’s anonymous co-director and 60 crew […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 14, 2013 -
American Doc: Five Tips for Nonfiction Filmmakers
Recently, I was on a panel at the Little Rock Film Festival titled “Cinematic Nonfiction: Not Your Parents’ Documentary Film.” As our moderator Robert Greene, the director of Fake It So Real, and I waxed rhapsodic over the state of nonfiction filmmaking in Denmark, I realized that my own doc philosophy has evolved over the years – as I’ve noticed more and more that Americans lag behind much of the world when it comes to quality doc-making. While a lot of nonfiction aficionados like to chalk up this disparity to generous government subsidies in Europe, the problem actually lies much […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 11, 2013 -
LAFF 2012: CREATIVE NONFICTION
In a very real way, Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives presents the other side of the Pincus coin: where that film teeters near death, Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore’s documentary focuses on birth. Gaskin, regarded as the “mother of authentic midwifery,” has been present for over 1,200 births, written four books, and lectured across the U.S. and abroad since founding the Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee in the early ’70s—no slim resumé. Lamm and Wigmore have compiled a great deal of footage from the period – bearded men wielding guitars, fuzzy camerawork, and hippie gatherings are […]
by Michael Nordine on Jun 23, 2012 -
The Invisible War — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Invisible War world premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Documentary Audience Award. It is being distributed by Cinedigm and Docurama Films and opens theatrically on Friday, June 22, 2012. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) There are “important” movies, and then there is The Invisible War. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s investigative documentary about sexual abuse in the American military exposes a heretofore under-reported systematic horror show of unfathomable proportions. To watch it as an innocent civilian is to admit compliance in a crime that you didn’t even know had been committed […]
by Michael Tully on Jun 21, 2012 -
SEATTLE FILM FEST CLOSES ANOTHER SPRAWLING, MONTH-LONG AFFAIR WITH AWARDS
When you go to the Seattle International Film Festival, you hear often that it is the largest, most highly attended film festival in the United States. 460 Films! 25 Days! 70 Countries! 160,000 attendance! Bigger is better! However, as I learned during the dying days of this year’s event, what makes SIFF one of the country’s more interesting festivals isn’t its size per se. Sure, other than pre-Rutger Wolfson Rotterdam, I can’t think of a festival that has approached this level of sprawl. So one can with relative fleetness dispense with the “this is my grand theory of modern cinema in […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 12, 2012 -
THE 2012 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL
The strength of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is also its weakness. This year’s 23rd edition boasts 16 doc and fiction flicks from 12 countries – yet most fall firmly in the category of solid ITVS fare (in fact, only three are narrative features). Like with the agribusiness detailed in Micha X. Peled’s Bitter Seeds, about the epidemic of farmer suicides in India, variety is often an illusion – especially when U.S. or U.S. co-productions are in the majority. This is another way of saying that, yes, the chances of seeing a stinker at HRWFF are slim, but there’s […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 7, 2012 -
“THE INVISIBLE WAR” | director, Kirby Dick
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 3:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] The Invisible War is a film about the epidemic of rape within the U.S. military and the institutions that perpetuate and cover up its existence. When I first came upon the story several years ago, I was very surprised that a documentary hadn’t been made on the subject. As I investigated further, I realized this was one of the most underreported stories of the last 50 years, with well over half a million soldiers sexually assaulted since World War II. Why wasn’t a film made about this issue ten, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2012
