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« August 2009 | Main | October 2009 »
Today, September 30, a truly wonderful and uplifting film opens at the IFC Center. Originally called Over the Hills and Far Away, The Horse Boy, directed by Austin-based Michel Orion Scott and released by Zeitgeist Films, is a thrilling piece of cinema, and should definitely be seen on the big screen.
Read my review on the Hammer to Nail site here. Be sure to go see it--it's gorgeous.
The "CIFF Award" for emerging cinematic vision is awarded from a category of filmmakers coming to CIFF with their first or second feature documentary. Competing in this category are Monika Navarro's Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas), Noah Hutton's Crude Independence, Will Hyler's The Fish Belong to the People, Mai Iskander's Garbage Dreams, Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri's October Country, Luciano Blotta's Rise Up, Rivkah Beth Medow and Gregory O'Toole's Sons of a Gun, Patrick Shen's Philosopher Kings, and Gabriel Noble's P-Star Rising. Jury members are program manager of the LEF Foundation, Sara Archambault, filmmaker Ian Cheney, and IFP's community manager, Danielle DiGiacomo. You can read about all the films in competition, as well as the rest of the fine program, by clicking here.
Also, I will be moderating one of two roundtable workshops for Maine filmmakers for the inaugural Points North Documentary Film Forum on Friday afternoon, October 2, at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport. The first section will be led by Maine-based sales agent, Louise Rosen, called A New World: Nonfiction Film Funding, Trends and Players. She will moderate this roundtable featuring HBO's Greg Rhem, Sundance Documentary Institute's Patricia Finneran, PBS' Jalyn Henton, LEF Foundation's Sara Archambault, and Ryan Harrington. Next up, I will be leading a discussion called The Survivor's Guide, Sustainable Filmmaking, with Ian Cheney, Danielle DiGiacomo, David Redmon, Ashley Sabin, AJ Schnack and Dana Rae Warren. This will be the first time many Maine-based emerging filmmakers will have access to industry professionals of this calibre. If you're in the area, please come by and join us. To learn more about Points North details, click here.
Look for my interview with CIFF founding director, Ben Fowlie, on the Hammer to Nail site early this week.
Still a week away but this will give you plenty of time to get your tickets to the first of a series of cocktail events in support of Rooftop Films called 40/40 Vision. These fundraising evenings are hosted by Rooftop and one of their advisory board members, Tad Barnes--at Tad's place in the BK. (Note: this photo is not a pic of Tad's place.)
There will be five parties that will feature the best of Rooftop's programming and will probably prove to be a key networking spot to boot. Each evening will begin with your $40 admission price (all tax deductible, BTW) for a full cookout and all the Radeberger beer you can drink. (Well, maybe half of what you can drink.) There will be a screening and a chance to mingle with Rooftop staff and featured filmmakers in an intimate setting, Tad's terrace in Williamsburg.
The 9:00 p.m. Saturday night parties will be on September 26 (Benh Zeitlin's exquisite Glory at Sea will play); October 10 (Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher will show excerpts from October Country, their award-winning feature doc); October 24 (Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed's highly-entertaining Bronx Princess will play); November 11 (Jesse Epstein's 34 x 25 x 36, the latest short work in her body image series will be featured); and November 21 (Carlin by Brent Green; the screening will include a live musical performance by Green).
Click here to choose a date and buy your tickets in advance.
Lest you think I'm ignoring you, my lovely SIM-ites, I'm letting you know that I will be blogging this week on the FILMMAKER Magazine blog site. I'm covering the Independent Film Week which starts today and goes through Thursday--with a whole day devoted to docs to top it off!
Please stop by and keep up on the latest and greatest from indie film-dom's elite and erudite crowd. Also, if you're going to physically be at the market, come find me and say "hi." I'll be the woman snoring into her laptop.
Sheffield Doc/Fest Marketplace Producer, Charlie Phillips, writes to say that submissions for this year's main market event, The Meet Market, have gone "haywire," with loads of projects coming in. There are, however, five other pitch forums that take place during the festival.
Canada's National Film Board (NFB) will have the Crossmedia Pitch. They're looking for innovative, interactive, socially engaging projects with applications for mobile and broadband. The theme is "Migrations," and the prize for the best pitch will be C$5,000. The deadline for submissions is the 9th of October.
The Wellcome Trust Pitch, with a very generous prize of £10,000, is looking for documentary films, games and other online ideas around health, biology or medical themes, also with a deadline of October 9.
The Channel 4 pitch prize comes with a 10 - 12 week commitment to direct a 30-minute film with a £50,000-budget for the channel's critically-acclaimed doc strand, "First Cut." The deadline for applications is September 25.
The Mini MeetMarket is for emerging filmmakers looking for advice on their projects-in-development and executive producers. That deadline is October 14.
Lastly, Current TV will host a pitch forum with a prize of £5,000 for the best ideas on UK-based, investigative current affairs pieces. The deadline is October 16.
So start shuttling all those brilliant ideas over there. Information and other details for all pitches, plus details on the main market, are on the Sheffield site. Click on "Marketplace." Good luck!
Programmer extraordinaire, Karen Cirillo, is bringing her little bag of tricks to the IFC Center tonight at 8:00 p.m. Doxita, Cirillo's traveling shorts program, is in its second season and the films she's showcasing tonight are little-gem discoveries she's culled over the years at festivals and in her other circumambulations around the globe, making her a long-time member of the Poverty Jet Set. (Is that in the dictionary yet, Mark?)
Tonight, she brings to New York audiences a fine program of short documentaries called All In A Day's Work. (Cirillo's criteria for a film to qualify as a short is a running time of under 40 minutes.) The featured films are China's Wild West, Urszula Pontikos, Breadmakers, Yasmin Fedda, Wood (film still, pictured), David Fenster, Shika Shika, Stephen Hyde, and The Tailor, Oscar Perez. They are all high recommends in my book. The show's from 8:00 - 10:00 and tickets are $12.50; $8.50 for seniors.
Hard to believe, but IFP's Independent Film Week conference has rolled around again. Beginning next Saturday, September 19th and going through Thursday the 24th, emerging and seasoned filmmakers, indie producers, programmers, funders and other various and sundry creative folk will come together to take a look-back gander at this past year and a look forward to what the future holds in store for us all in dozens of panels, meetings and networking events. Running concurrently, will be the 31st Annual Project Forum where narrative and nonfiction filmmakers will get to showcase their works-in-progress.
IFP is expanding its strategic relationship with the Sundance Institute, and has formed a new partnership with B-Side. The Good Pitch, produced by Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, will also stage its unique forum, bringing together makers of social-purpose film projects with a group of participants from various charities, foundations, and government and media entities interested in forming alliances for their causes around feature documentary productions.
It's a pretty key spot to be, especially for US filmmakers, since it's the oldest and largest forum in this country, the best opportunity for filmmakers to connect with industry professionals. It's also the only domestic forum where the focus is on connecting projects still in development with financing and sales opportunities. Saturday and Sunday's focus will be on Making Your First Feature; Monday's theme will be Filmmaking 2.0 (we're evolving!); Tuesday's panels and workshops will explore the Global Marketplace; and Wednesday will uncover The Truth About Nonfiction. For a full list of all 116 projects chosen to participate in the Forum--Emerging Narratives, No Borders International Co-production Market, and Spotlight on Documentaries--visit the IFP site.
I also want to give a mention to two free screenings that will happen on opening weekend co-hosted by the IFP and Rooftop Films. Rooftop just finished up their '09 summer series last night with a wonderful program of nonfiction shorts celebrating the borough of Brooklyn--all under clear skies, a minor miracle. Saturday night, the documentary Burning in the Sun will world-premiere on the pier at Solar One, and on Sunday, they will present the IFP Independent Filmmaker Labs Sneak Preview Showcase at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park. For more info on these screenings, visit the Rooftop site.
Once again, I will be reporting on-site throughout the week on the FILMMAKER Magazine blog and then look for my wrap-up piece on the whole shebang in the magazine's next issue.
The full film program for the 2009 Sheffield Doc/Fest won't post until early October, but the press office has released a teaser roster of films that will be showing there this year. Added to this year's showcases will be a whole category devoted to Comedy docs and one on Cross-platform docs, in addition to the existing Music, Green, Arts and "Bent" doc strands. There will also be a special focus on Russian nonfiction cinema.
Sheffield is fast-becoming one of the top-tier places to go for an authentic market atmosphere, one in which filmmakers, producers, funders, programmers, sales agents and commissioning editors have highly structured time together. The Meet Market component has been lauded by the likes of executive producer, Julie Goldman of Cactus Three, writer and Austin Film Society communications manager, Agnes Varnum and SXSW head of programming, Janet Pierson, for its organization and proficiency in making productive meetings happen between all interested parties. And speaking of parties, they're apparently legendary there and that has a lot to do with its feisty director, Heather Croall, a party girl supreme with good strong brain matter between her ears. The documentary world is lucky to have her. And Marketplace Producer, Charlie Phillips, keeps everyone up-to-date on the latest and greatest by hosting Sheffield's informative blog site.
In its 16th year, Sheffield will screen more than 100 films from November 4 - 8, including 16 world, and 10 EU premieres. Film programmer, Hussain Currimbhoy, acknowledges that, "The appetite for documentary is still voracious and changing viewing habits are proof of this with new online platforms for watching docs. Financial crises or not, it seems like documentary is the one genre in film that is constantly evolving and responding to changes in its environment and adapting to its audience."
The Music doc strand will feature Barbara Kopple's Woodstock: Now and Then (Kopple, pictured), its EU premiere and Gabriel Noble's P-Star Rising, its UK premiere. The Green doc strand will feature Robert Stone's Earth Days, its UK premiere, and Louis Psihoyos' The Cove. And the inaugural Comedy strand will feature Ben Steinbauer's heart-warming Winnebago Man, its EU premiere, and Jenna Rosher's delightful and powerful, Junior, its international premiere after débuting domestically at SILVERDOCS this past June. Some of the slated world premieres are Jawed Taiman and Sharon Ward's Addicted in Afghanistan, Michel Negroponte's I'm Dangerous With Love and Erasing David by David Bond.
Tickets for the public go on sale Monday, October 5. Click here for more info and to keep updated on the fest's offerings. Let's see if Cinderella can pack up her slippers and ballgown and jettison herself over the Atlantic in November. Stay tuned for more news from Sheffield in the coming weeks.
In an attempt to stretch my wings a bit and keep this blog relevant and useful to the community which it serves so intrepidly (ahem), I've decided to start a series called Projects On the Brink (with a grateful wink and a nod to my friend, Jesse, the original OTB boy). Photo by Julie Shiels.
To jumpstart this endeavor, a while ago I blogged a short post called Attention All Micro Budgeters, asking for filmmakers in production or post-production to get in touch with me if they were funding their nonfiction film projects with very small amounts of money from a wide array of sources, artists who were building a constituency (audience) for their work by asking people showing interest in the project to help fund it with as little or as much as they wanted to offer. We have certainly seen success stories out there using this method, but I thought I'd jump into the fray and highlight those projects that have fallen outside the purview of Sundance, ITVS, PBS, HBO, IFP and other organizations that supply labs and mentors to a few projects every year to give them a leg up. For many filmmakers, this leg never appears no matter how many applications they complete, so it's hoist the mainsails and DIY all the way, baby. It gives me pleasure to celebrate this kind of independent filmmaker and showcase the foolhardy bravery on display to keep moving forward, despite odds stacked so high even Sisyphus is intimidated and calls it a day.
I'm also getting opportunities to see film projects in their infancy and have chosen to track a few as case studies in how all of this is supposed to be working without any viable funding support. To a person, it involves sheer perseverance and determination to keep moving forward, of course. But in Diana Whitten's case, it has encompassed a marketing and outreach strategy as one of the core pillars of her creative endeavor at her project's inception. In this first installment of POTB, we'll talk about her feature-length documentary project called Vessel, currently entering its post-production phase.
I want to highlight this project for a number of reasons, but mostly because I think Whitten's struggle to make her film adequately mirrors many other nonfiction projects out there: a filmmaker sitting with hours and hours of compelling footage, somewhere in that amassed footage a great story waiting to be told. At this moment in time, Whitten is in the midst of editing, something she's not really had a chance in which to devote too much time since she also works as a freelance videographer and other temp work to support herself. And also because she has devoted most of her time on the outreach, marketing and audience-building for Vessel. At this point, she needs a substantive "teaser" piece to deliver to her executive producer, Mitchell Block, so he can shop it around for finishing funds and look for investors who need to see more of a polished piece before offering funding.
Almost from its inception, when she read about Dr. Rebecca Gomperts (pictured) and her team of doctors and volunteers sailing a ship through loopholes in international law, providing abortions at sea for women with no other safe option, Whitten has concentrated on getting the story, certainly. But more than that, what she's done is to use this project to build a community--not after the film is made, but well before that happens. Dutch doctor, Rebecca Gomperts and her organization, Women On Waves, sail a ship around the world to countries where abortion is illegal. Using a hotline for communication, the activists pick up women at various ports and take them twelve miles offshore (outside the jurisdiction of domestic waters). On board, doctors administer safe medical abortions. Of course, they cause havoc, mayhem and immense outbursts of opposition and rage from local churches, governments, and the media wherever they sail, provoking much controversy and debate among the population.
Whitten realized the advantages of building a worldwide community right away and got busy getting fiscal sponsors in place (Arts Engine and Off the Leesh) so that she and her outreach coordinator, Danielle Bernstein, could utilize the money coming in to build a website which houses a hub of activity well beyond just reports on the production progress of the film. It was also an opportunity to start Sovereignty Productions, "a forum to use video and new media to explore how sovereign spaces, those offshore and of exile, can be isolated and charged by activist agendas that challenge accepted frameworks in the name of social change." Right away, Whitten figured out how to utilize the power of the Internet to keep that community growing, to continue to constituency-build and gather a good-sized population of people hooked into the project at production stage. Part of that outreach work is consolidating and organizing the contacts she gathers, constantly organizing and winnowing them down. With the help of a program like Constant Contact, her plan is to start sending out regular posts and other info via personal emails for a much more targeted approach, assuring people that their investment in the project means there is some modicum of "ownership" in its success, the foundation of a strong PR and marketing machine.
In the midst of an editing session, Whitten took some time to chat with me about the project and her journey, thus far. She was also getting ready for another quick shooting trip to Amsterdam (where there have been grave setbacks in abortion policy) to capture the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Women On Waves' mission. The majority of present and future fundraising efforts is geared towards post-production needs. One of the main things for which she needs money is to hire an editor, but right now she is taking pleasure in the creative work of delving into the footage, something she hasn't really had an opportunity to do with everything else needing almost full-time attention. But eventually, she hopes to bring editor Madeleine Gavin onto the project.
Whitten admits that the long, uphill process to keep things moving, which has included lots of unexpected things along the way, has been beneficial and advantageous. In odd ways, the length of time it takes to create and finish a project like this, can also be a distinct benefit. She acknowledges that this is the case with Vessel, because in that time it has allowed a fuller, more substantive story to emerge. "The nature of making a documentary does consist largely of not knowing what's going to happen to your subjects or your story. In the beginning, I thought the movie would be confined to what was happening in Ecuador, but that course was suddenly changed before the ship ever got there when it had a wreck on its way to Quito from Costa Rica. There was the question of whether the Women On Waves campaign could continue." This event, among others, encouraged her to pull down her "documentarian's wall," and she quickly became a participant in the proceedings, as well as the one following the story. In this spirit, she started a really excellent blog from the very beginning of the project. Many blog entries have also appeared on other highly-trafficked sites, such as The Huffington Post.
As with most documentary projects, Whitten first learned of Gomperts and her work through a friend and she set about researching the doctor, her work and the organization. About two and a half years ago, she impulsively bought a ticket to Amsterdam to meet Gomperts, even before really speaking with her or asking permission to film her story. In fact, a couple of weeks before she was supposed to leave, she still hadn't called or corresponded with Dr. Gomperts, apprehensive that she wouldn't meet with Whitten or be interested in the project. "She turned out to be very nice and, also, very media-savvy," says Whitten. "She was immediately interested in being followed with a camera."
I asked her to explain why, as a filmmaker, she had to tell this story and follow this impulse without any backing or real forethought about what she might be getting herself into. "Obviously, the subject matter spoke very forcefully to me: this issue has touched most everyone, or at least someone they know and it's still hard to discuss considering how many legal, moral, ethical, religious and philosophical challenges surround it. Also, and in many ways more importantly, there was this highly romantic notion of this team of women sailing the high seas and using modern technology, modern media, to disseminate messages across the globe, using networks to connect people.
"I found myself having conversations about abortion and abortion rights, what it means to not have any rights, with people from every demographic you can think of. It's been wildly eye-opening in that sense, the stories people will share with you, the conclusions and realizations they share. They've never shared these stories with anyone before, mostly because no one has ever asked. These conversations were with people who would otherwise think the subject impolite, unapproachable, forbidden. There's still a good amount of fear and ignorance around the issue and people relate to it in various ways on a very personal level. The making of this film, concentrating on the work that Rebecca is doing, is a great vehicle to get those conversations going. As we've gone along, the number of people who know about the project and have been educated by the contents of the film, has grown. I've also taken every opportunity I can to speak at schools and other organizations."
She also feels like her experience, in a way, has mirrored that of her subject. A lot of people are drawn to the story at first blush by the subject matter, the controversy, etc. But because the story hits most everyone on such a personal and visceral level, that connection is key to making and disseminating a meaningful piece of work. The metaphor of being "offshore," and having that offshore entity connected to the world via technology and media, is quite profound and really might be what the film speaks to over and above the abortion issue and its legalities and human rights quandaries. Gomperts and crew are what amount to modern-day pirates, garnering lots of press and attention through their work in a very deliberate and dramatic way. Both subjects and filmmakers are at a table with very high stakes, indeed.
"I'm not really interested in making a movie about the ethical debates of abortion. My goals for making this film are in line with what resonates the most with people when they learn about this project, the story of one woman and her dedicated team doing something extraordinary--beyond the ken of what most of us are willing to take on. The biggest lesson I've learned, thus far, is that any artist creating something like this needs to be very clear on why you're making what you're making. Yes, there's the issue; but there's the story that's compelling and exciting and life-changing. Rebecca is the kind of subject that, despite your personal feelings about her, changes the way you see the world a bit. She's dedicated to making it better for the women that still live in countries where it's against the law to have an abortion. She discovered a really classical way to get the conversation going and that's what I want to highlight in my film."
Going back to funding and finding the money to start this endeavor, I asked about any problems or roadblocks in raising funding directly because of the subject matter. After throwing themselves into a grass-roots fundraising mode, Whitten and her small team reached out to people they knew first to get the ball rolling and enlisted those friends to help start a massive letter-writing campaign, get the website up and running, start a blog and designate a spot for donations directly on the site. "We received a couple of hundred checks, some as low as $15, but money did start to come in. Some of those checks, however, were pretty generous and just from that effort, we raised about $27K. So for such a modest effort, we did pretty well. I also, at that time, started applying for grants, a really long process--some take close to a year to get back to you and the amounts, when they do come through, are pretty low. I do think people were, and are, a bit scared of the topic; it takes an open mind and a dedication to female causes, in particular. I think what we make clear, however, in all of our communications, is that this film is about so much more than the abortion issue. I think it deals with a lot of the UN Millenium goals, for instance."
Executive producer, Mitchell Block, came onto the project rather early and helped secure some substantial investors in that first grass-roots push. After seeing an early trailer, shown to him by Diana's sister, he committed to the project and offered whatever support he could. However, even with an exec producer, Whitten is still doing the majority of the legwork for fundraising, the onus still on her, the one person with the biggest vested interest in realizing completion, thus her commitment right now to getting a more comprehensive piece done. Since Block is also well-versed in distribution and distribution strategies, he needs that fuller piece to use in his efforts to secure monies for exhibiting and disseminating the film, a major advantage of working with someone with those kinds of connections and know-how.
Even though many filmmakers are still trying to skirt the inevitability of having to put all this in place, just as much as any production component, and even though this work is overwhelming in its intensity of labor and time, Whitten feels confident that Vessel will be well-positioned to make much more of an impact than if she hadn't bothered to do all the preliminary outreach work involved in setting up this scenario and keeping it in motion as she's gone about making and crafting the film. It will stand her in good stead when all is said and done, for both her exhibition plan and the film's domestic and international distribution.
Acknowledging that her site will be set up to also work as a public forum and repository for issue-oriented information and a meeting spot for sharing stories from around the world, it should prove to be an impressive archive for many different organizations and communities. Diana finds the potential for all this very exciting and energizing; she herself has admitted that it has helped her become more politicized, more willing to put her own voice out there regularly. The honing of this skill, becoming a public advocate through your creative work, cannot be overestimated in the way this helps to court audiences. It's equally as fundamental as courting a funder or an executive producer to drive a project forward.
The example of Vessel's story shows us that to harness the way we create modes of communication and outreach for our film projects can be just as much of an adventure as making the film, for in this effort lies the potential for people to want to go out to the movies again. That is to say that the "community" will not ultimately live just on the Internet, but will physically gather and come together to experience a collective event, one in which they have been personally invested all along.
Exactly one month from yesterday, the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) will host its fifth iteration by showcasing a small selection of some of the best nonfiction cinema being made today. From October 1 - 4 (unfortunately, coinciding with the excellent Woodstock Film Festival, celebrating its 10th anniversary in upstate New York), Maine audiences throughout Camden, Rockport and Rockland will be shown 55 films from both the domestic and international markets. CIFF will present "a snapshot of the cultural landscape through the year's best nonfiction storytelling, connecting filmmakers and industry folk with audiences to discuss documentary film as an art form [yes!], a catalyst for change and an outlet for the independent voice." Those voices will consist of some of the most recognized artists working in the medium today, as well as new and emerging talent.
New this year for CIFF will be the roll-out of its inaugural Points North Documentary Film Forum, enabling local and visiting artists to connect with industry leaders and major funders in the documentary community.
The opening night film will be AJ Schnack's new documentary Convention, its New England premiere. Schnack assembled an all-star crew of filmmakers to tell the story behind the 2008 Democratic Presidential Convention in Denver, Colorado. Read Karina Longworth's laudatory review here. The closing night film will be Robert Stone's Earth Days, where Stone [Oswald's Ghost] crafts a look back at the genesis and resultant burgeoning of the modern-day Save-the-Planet! environmental social and political movements.
The program includes three world premieres, three east coast premieres and seven New England premieres, including Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri's wondrous October Country (Sterling US Feature award-winner at SILVERDOCS), Gabriel Noble's P-Star Rising (Brooklyn-ites, there will be a free outdoor screening of this film with Ms. Priscilla Star Diaz performing live in Fort Greene Park this Thursday the 3rd), Marshall Curry's Racing Dreams, and Luciano Blotto's Rise Up, winner of the Music Documentary award at SILVERDOCS. To see the rest of the line-up and more info on the Points North program, keep checking the CIFF site throughout the month.
I will be
participating in this year's fest for the first time and I'm really
looking forward to attending. I will be chatting with CIFF founder and
director, Ben Fowlie, this week. Look for our conversation on the Hammer to Nail site soon.
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