Still in Motion

Nicolas Philibert and Marcel Lozinski at DocPoint

The DocPoint Documentary Film Festival in Helsinki, Finland, has just announced that French filmmaker, Nicolas Philibert and Polish filmmaker, Marcel Lozinski, will be attending the festival as its honored guests and Master Filmmakers.  The 9th edition of the festival will take place on the 26th through the 31st of January 2010. 

The program will include a comprehensive retrospective of Lozinski's work; he's been making films since 1972.  His oeuvre highlights portrayals of people living under a socialist system and his works often question the prevailing conditions of his own society.  He lectures at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing, influencing and inspiring several generations of young Polish filmmakers.  There is a shocking amount of great nonfiction work coming out of this country.

French filmmaker, Nicolas Philibert will also be honored with a small retrospective of his work, which will include his new film about a 40-year-old orangutan raised in captivity named Nénette.  His wonderful cinéma vérité piece, To Be and To Have (Etre et Avoir) (2002) garnered a huge amount of success around the world.

Also, as part of this year's program, carrying on the tradition of visiting a country in a themed way, DocPoint will present a selection of short and feature-length American films called "The Family Chronicles," co-curated by yours truly.  I'm very excited to be bringing these films to Finnish audiences.  More details soon on the program and other special Yankee guests.

In preparation for my work with them this year, I was invited as a guest of the festival last year.  Read my coverage here, here, here, here and here.  More news from Helsinki in the coming weeks.

Mother and Child Reunion

There is a Yiddish proverb that goes:  Little children disturb your sleep; big ones, your life. 

Last week, Jenna Rosher's nonfiction feature directorial début, Junior, took the Audience Award at the Sheffield Doc / Fest, its international premiere.  (It also won Best Feature Doc at this year's Woodstock Film Festival in New York last month, following its world premiere at SILVERDOCS.)

Junior profiles the complex and intertwined relationship of 75-year-old Eddie Belasco and his 98-year-old mother, Josephine.  Despite three failed marriages, and three lovely daughters, the alpha woman in "Junior's" life has always been "Ma," and Rosher deftly stitches together crackling and vibrant direct cinema scenes between the two of them, sweet archival family footage, and luminous glimpses of the larger world of the city of San Francisco where they reside, to create a nuanced and deeply moving look at this most primal of human connections.  (Pictured, Eddie standing proudly by Josephine's side as she receives her high-school diploma.)

If at first Junior appears to be some Grand Guignol-style Punch and Judy show with Junior and Ma barking at one another and sniping and fussing about, it soon turns into a story of two people connected by a decades-long bond helping one another find his or her way through illness, debility, and critical life (and death) decisions.  We watch as Eddie turns from a screaming goomba with a cutting tongue into a vulnerable and frightened man who is losing his sight, and a lost little boy who is about to lose his precious mother.  Josephine, like most people who make it to 98 years of age, is her own woman, taking shit from no one and living life on her own terms.  And she deals with her own mortality in much the same way.  Once Eddie expresses to her that he will be okay without her, she embarks on her own journey to meet her maker with him by her side.  Rosher's camera lingers  patiently and persistently as they gently and lovingly say goodbye after sharing a lifetime together.  Really beautiful stuff.

Belasco was Rosher's mother's first husband and she first met Eddie when she was nine years old.  At that time, he was a sharp-suited showman, promoting the all-girl topless rock band, the Ladybirds,  and raising havoc in Vegas with his polyester-suited, cigar-chomping cronies.  Twenty years later, Rosher finds him in the last couple of seasons of heading up a musical theater for children in San Francisco, aging quickly, going blind from complications caused by a woefully lax healthcare regime for his diabetes (he still drinks like a fish and doesn't eat right), but still full of piss and vinegar, viscerally angry at his own degenerating face and body, and looking into the maw of a potentially very lonely dotage.  Instead of a mother bringing him a piping-hot plate of freshly-cooked pasta and paper-thin veal cutlets, he's got a very pissed-off daughter shoving a candy bar into his mouth when he goes into diabetic shock during a rehearsal after a night of drinking.

Rosher, a long-time producer and cinematographer (Jesus Camp), has a keen eye for the telling detail and is adept at creating an intimacy with her subjects that provides a level of insight and understanding that makes this piece resonant and rich.  Her shooting mixed with Mark Binder's nuanced and layered sound design and Mark Wike's fantastic score, along with deft editing by Johnnie Spence, makes for a delightful, memorable and heartwarming story of a son's undying love for his mother.

Another prize-winner at Sheffield tells a story of yet another mother/son bond that just won't quit, even though from the beginning of the piece, the mother, Jolana Remová (the filmmaker's grandmother) expresses a bit of concern that at the age of 40-something, her son, Lubomír, still shows no signs of joining the real world, let alone considering doing anything remotely normal for a man his age like making a living or looking for a wife.  Miro Remo's 24-minute Arsy-Versy is an exceptionally accomplished (and hilarious) piece of work and walked away with the Wallflower Press Student Doc Award at Sheffield (among a very strong group of films.)  It also recently garnered a Special Jury Prize at Jihlava in Czech Republic this past month.

Remo is a student in the Film and Television program at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia and for this film he profiles a man who has decided to forgo the day-to-day world of meaningless work and robo-people that he finds so full of hypocrisy and banality, and decides to live in nature's world, flying away to a land "where only butterflies live."  What's so brilliant about Remo's style is that he also invites himself and his crew into Lubos' world and, together, they cinematically create this alternate universe with its upside-down point of view for the rest of us.  You can see a bit of it here.

Being the mother of an anarchist, no matter how mild and goofy, can be a trial, but Jolana perseveres in her hope that one day Lubos will normalize somehow and join the rest of us in our robo-world.  But it's not very likely, and she's more or less okay with that. 

I'll have more from Sheffield's great program in later posts.

DOX BOX 2010: The Little Nonfiction Festival That Could

Today, DOX BOX festival co-founder and co-director, Orwa Nyrabia, sends word that the 3rd iteration of the Damascus, Syria-based event is ON.  There is a new website and the call for submissions is open.  The festival will take place in Damascus from 3 - 11 March with select films, including the Audience Award-winner, traveling to the nearby cities of Homs and Tartous. 

DOX BOX is organized by Proaction Film, the only independent documentary production company in Syria, in collaboration with international cultural partners.  The festival is under the patronage of the National Film Organization of Syria with local partners, The Tartous Cine-Club and The Homs Cine-Club.  Arab partners are ArteEast, Cinémathèque de Tanger in Morocco, Metropolis Cinema in Beirut and the NAAS Network.  International partners include the European Documentary Network in Denmark and the International Documentary  Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in the Netherlands.

DOX BOX is looking for creative documentaries that have a "unique and organic point of view from filmmakers about their lives, families and societies."  Click here for rules and regs and to download the entry form.  The deadline for entries is the 20th of December 2009.  If you're a North American filmmaker, contact me for a personal recommendation.  Read my coverage from last year's festival here and here and here and here. 

This is a festival in need of endowment and support; they are working miracles with very small budgets and very little in the way of resources.  I'm sure they would welcome any financial help they can get from the international film community. 

The DOX BOX organizers also offer a small Documentary Campus from the 3rd to the 8th and they are calling for applications--six days, ten international tutors, twenty-five participants.  The deadline is 5 January and regulations and application forms can be downloaded here.  For more info, you can send an email query to [email protected].

FOUR SEASONS LODGE Opens at the IFC Center Today!

For a limited engagement, this beautiful documentary will play at the IFC Center here in New York for one week only starting tonight and going through Tuesday the 17th.  Visit the IFC's site for showtimes and ticket information.  Read Ella Taylor's laudatory review published today in the New York Times.  Also, read the great interview director, Andrew Jacobs, did for the Tribeca Film blog.

Because the 8:00 p.m. screening tonight is reserved for the Lodgers and their families and friends, it is sold out; however, there are many other screenings today and throughout the week and weekend.  Director, Andrew Jacobs and other special guests will be on hand all week for post-screening Q&As and discussion.  Throughout the week, we will have special co-hosts for the 8:00 p.m. screenings--Thursday, Reboot, Friday, Shooting People, Saturday afternoon at the 1:00 p.m. show will bring in the folks from UnionDocs and Saturday evening, composer Eric Lewis will be in the house, Sunday afternoon The Catskills Institute will host two screenings along with special panel discussions at a local eatery, and Sunday evening will be hosted by Felix Endara of DocuClub.  On Tuesday night, from 5:30 to 8:30, there will be a party and fundraiser thrown by Jackie Leitzes, granddaughter of Lodger, Genya Boyman, at The Dove Parlor on Thompson Street.

For those in Los Angeles and Boston, FSL opens on the 11th of December at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (there is an advance members-only free screening, Sunday, December 6 at 11:00 a.m.), and at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills and the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino.  More cities might be added soon.  The film is being distributed by First Run Features; visit the FRF website for more information, to request a screening of Four Seasons Lodge in your town, and to order an advance copy of the DVD.

Sheffield Awards

This morning at 10:30, fueled by sweet rolls and pastries, an audience gathered in one of the Showroom cinemas here in Sheffield to attend the awards ceremony that officially closes this edition of the Sheffield Doc/Fest. 

Once again, it was said, as it has been many times, that since taking over the running of this market, festival director Heather Croall has done an incredible job of putting Sheffield on the map as a highly important destination for media makers and media professionals.  Croall, in turn, celebrated the programming work of Hussain Currimbhoy, by saying that she heard from many jury members how appreciative they were to be able to judge such across-the-board inspiring and important work. 

Roger Graef hosted the ceremonies, assisted by the lovely AJ Schnack, where members of the juries presented the nominated films and the award-winners.  Halfway through, at 11:00 a.m., there was a two-minute silence to honor soldiers everywhere in observance of Remembrance Day.

The Sheffield Green Award honors the documentary from the program that best addresses major environmental challenges on our planet.  Nominees were The Blood of the Rose, The Cove, Earth Days, Haynesville, Petropolis, Shelter in Place, and A Time Comes.  The Blood of the Rose received the award.

The Wallflower Press Student Doc Award was given to the best student documentary made as part of course work from UK and other international universities.  I took the time to see most of these films (I make it a point to check out student work at any festival or film event) and everything I saw was exciting, exceedingly well-crafted, original storytelling.  Arsy-Versy, a 24 minute film from Slovakia directed by Miro Remo won the prize.  I absolutely adore this film.  It is imaginative, funny, and artfully told.  I was astounded at the proficiency and sophistication of the shooting.  The rest of the selections, particularly, Presidio Modelo, Time Within Time and Tsirk, were impressive.

The Sheffield Innovation Award, given to a film that exhibits originality in approach to form and radical manifestations in story delivery presented pieces ranging from art installations to solely web-residential work, running the gamut from video mapping in Palestine to the stunning and singular cinematic passion plays of Finnish filmmaker Jukka Kärkkäinen's The Living Room of the Nation.  An honorable mention was given to The Big Issue from France, and the award was given to LoopLoop from Canada.

The Sheffield Youth Jury Award is given to a film that engages a young audience judged by a jury consisting of young adults from 16 - 21.  In extremely eloquent fashion, they gave the award to Andrew Lang's gorgeous Sons of Cuba.  I did do a really wonderful interview with Andrew several months ago for the Shooting People site and it's gone missing, somehow, which we're both a bit puzzled by.  I hope it gets published somewhere soon.  Lang just won another well-deserved prize at the Rome International Fest in October, as well.  A theatrical distributor should grab this straight away.

The Special Jury Award, Sheffield's very first, honors a film that displays excellence in style, substance and approach.  The jury consisted of US filmmaker,  AJ Schnack, ITVS's Claire Aguilar (US), UK filmmaker, Kim Longinotto, UK filmmaker, Nick Broomfield, and US filmmaker, RJ Cutler.  The nominees were Horses, I'm Dangerous With Love, Junior, Men of the City, October Country, Petition, Until the Next Resurrection, and the prize-winner, Erik Gandini's Videocracy.

The Sheffield Doc/Fest Inspiration Award, again an inaugural honor here, celebrated the work of journalist, Adam Curtis, a man who has championed documentary (although he never really considered himself a documentary filmmaker until recently) and his decades-long contribution to groundbreaking television work.  A filmmaker who is embracing the digital future utilizing a multi-platform approach to projects, his latest is a collaboration with Punchdrunk called "It Felt Like A Kiss."  He gave a very short, but eloquent, speech on the muddy terrain between journalism and documentary filmmaking, and how the ascendancy of nonfiction storytellers is usurping a once robust, but now dangerously ineffectual, news media.

The Audience Award will be announced tomorrow, Monday the 9th.  I will, unfortunately, be in that disorienting twilight zone of all-day travel getting myself back to the States for an onslaught of work.  I'm looking forward to posting more about Sheffield--look for more impressions, film reviews and articles over the coming months. 

Finally, I'd like to express personal (big!) thanks to Charlie Phillips and Rachel Smith.

Missive from UK

Hello from Sheffield, where I'm knee-deep in the hoopla of a very bustling festival and market.  Last night at the big party at the local roller skating rink (fast becoming a Sheffield tradition), the 2010 Cinema Eye Honors announced their nominees for the ceremony that will take place at the Times Center in NYC in January.  Visit the site to read about all the nominees, and the latest and greatest on the best of nonfiction. 

Umbilically connected to New York wherever I happen to go, I wanted to say "hey," and mention a few things coming up: 

I've been part of the "getting butts in seats" brigade, aka Outreach Producer, for Four Seasons Lodge, a beautiful documentary film opening at the IFC Center this coming Wednesday, November 11.  The director, New York Times' journalist, Andrew Jacobs, some of the subjects of the film, and other crew and special guests, will be there for Q&As throughout the week, and some of our best indie film orgs will be on hand to co-host and join in the festivities for after-screening drinks shindigs.  Shooting People will host Friday night, Arts Engine / DocuClub will be with us on Sunday night, and UnionDocs will host on Monday evening.  Visit the website to get all the info you need, watch the trailer, and meet the extraordinary subjects, the last living generation of Holocaust survivors (two of them, pictured above).  Don't let the "H" word keep you away--it's an exceedingly heart-warming, uplifting and life-affirming film.  You can also visit the First Run Features site to keep abreast of where else the film will be opening across the nation.  Next up on December 11, Four Seasons Lodge will run in Los Angeles and Boston.  If you live in those cities, contact me to learn how you can help us get the word out and plan some special events around the screenings there.  The IFC Center puts up showtimes very close to the opening, so keep checking there and buy your tickets in advance.  There are discounts for groups of 10 or more.

Also on the 11th, which is Veteran's Day, The Way We Get By will have its national broadcast début on P.O.V.  The film is now also available for purchase on DVD--probably will become one of the top 10 stocking stuffers of all time, I would wager.

Rooftop Films sends news that their 2010 submissions have opened and they are welcoming entries for their summer series next year.  You can find downloadable information here or submit through Without A Box.  The superb series runs from May to September and will feature more than 200 films in various outdoor screenings throughout New York City.  All genres, formats and lengths are welcome.

On Monday, November 9, The Flaherty has a hot animation program on tap at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village.  "Experiments With Animation" will feature short works by such talents as Phil Solomon, Martha Colburn, Signe Baumane and Jeff Scher.  Go here for more info.

Okay, gotta pull myself back into the fray here.  I will be having lunch shortly with filmmaker Geoffrey Smith, director of the glorious The English Surgeon and co-director of Presumed Guilty which débuted at Toronto in September and is playing the fest here before moving on to CPH:DOX in Copenhagen next week.  It's a tremendous film and it will be fascinating to see the furor it will cause in Mexico where the story is told.  I'll have a full review soon, but watch for this one.  It will be one of the most important films of 2010.

I will have much more from Sheffield in the next couple of weeks, but back to just taking it all in--seeing great nonfiction films and getting to visit and converse with new filmmakers bringing groundbreaking talent and expertise to the field.  It's so awesome to be in the company of thousands of others who are as equally rabid about nonfiction cinema as I am.  Right now, off to Digital Bootcamp with Ingrid Kopp--woo hoo!

The 33rd Annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival

I'm off to the Sheffield Doc/Fest tomorrow for the rest of the week, but wanted to mention that on the other side of that, here in New York at the American Museum of Natural History, the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival will host its 33rd iteration.  This is the longest-running documentary festival in the US, and their line-up is particularly stellar this year.  The fest starts on the 12th of November and goes through the 15th and the box office is now open! 

The festival presents a selection of documentaries and other non-narrative work, as well as animation, experimental films, and indigenous media.  This year, the festival will highlight a series of films in conjunction with the AMNH's exhibition, Traveling the Silk Road, opening November 14.  Look for a presentation of an exploration of the science and history behind Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, a new multimedia performance by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, which incorporates the sounds of melting ice recorded by him in Antarctica.  Coooool. 

The Museum is located at Central Park West at 79th Street and tickets can be purchased by phone at 212 769 5200, online here, or at any of the Museum's admission desks.  The film schedule can be downloaded here.

LOOT Has a Sneak-Peek at IFC Tomorrow

Darius Marder's award-winning début nonfiction feature has a one week run planned at the IFC Center starting November 20, but if you're fast on your feet, you can grab a ticket for tomorrow's sneak peek at 8:00 p.m. courtesy of Stranger Than Fiction.  Marder will be in the house for a Q&A and post-screening fest at MacDougall Street's own 99 Below, home to many a drunken doc lover.

Loot won the grand jury prize for best documentary feature at last year's Los Angeles Film Festival, a fine validation for a new artist on the scene--one this writer hopes will make many more films.  Marder's past incarnation as a chef served him well in making his first film, for Loot serves up a really complex and memorable (narrative) dish, resonant with ingredients and flavors that one recognizes, certainly--the eccentric characters, the quixotic quests, haunted pasts, and the serendipitous meeting of souls from different generations that resonate so strongly with one another that viewers intuit that an emotional crescendo of some import is likely.  But what Marder is really adept at capturing (along with his cinematographer, Anson Call) are the nuanced ways in which his subjects deal with shaky memory, denial of epic proportion and unbearable emotional pain, each helpless in the face of their guilt and remorse for what transpired in a time when they were young and brash WWII soldiers trying to do anything they could not to get killed.  And in finding themselves all in one piece at the end of a long and brutal time of it, they rewarded themselves with war booty. 

Darrel stole 20 pounds of jewels, hid them in the attic of an Austrian farmhouse and returned home to Utah. Andy looted Samurai swords and jewels, burying them in the Philippines before returning to Arizona. Sixty years later, infirm and facing the end of their lives, Lance Larson comes into the picture.  Larson is a Utah-based, Mormon used-car salesman, inventor, entrepreneur and second-generation treasure hunter; in two separate storylines, he offers to help them recover their long-ago buried treasures, despite the apparent apathy and ambivalence both men feel about going back to uncover, or re-cover, that part of their lives.  In the interim, the ferociously violent, inhuman memories of war rise to the surface and we slowly realize the toll that all of that inherent, irrevocable and life-altering damage has had on these men and what finding this elusive treasure will bring to the surface--a recapitulation of their lives, a true reckoning with their mortality and, above all, the confrontation of the wounded love they have for their lost sons, both victims of mortal drug addictions. 

It is a compelling, poignant and universally relevant moral fable that will surprise you and move you deeply.

If You've Got the Content, We've Got the Airtime (and the Audience)

As Wild West-ish as the independent film community can be about our methods of production, most New York-based media makers, particularly first-timers, will really only register a small amount of distribution and exhibition advice from the guru-of-the-moment, take it as gospel, and try a recipe that might be mildly successful for some, but is far from a panacea for how to find appropriate outlets for original content.  It's not necessary to fork over hundreds of dollars so "an expert" can tell you how to DIY yourself through a mountain of work with, oftentimes, very little in return.  We need only look a bit further and broaden our horizons just a tad to find viable distribution and marketing partnerships that reside, literally, in our backyard. 

In a quiet, but intellectually vibrant, corner of our public television world, exists a potential repository for fresh independently produced fare, especially for short-form fiction and nonfiction.  Last week, I was asked by the New York Film / Video Council (founded in 1946, so they've been around a while) to moderate a panel discussion for its program entitled "Low Cost / No Cost and The City," where we saw some creative work being made by local artists, and discussed ideas about the ever-shifting landscape of exhibition and distribution for said creative work.

The main focus of the evening, hosted at DCTV (and what a generous crew they have there), was how our public broadcasting channels, a long-standing launching place for independents, can present themselves more effectively to artists looking for a place to showcase bold and original media.  Challenged, as are we all, by miniscule budgets, small staffs and limited resources, Rich Siegmeister, WNET Channel 13's Director of Business Development and Institutional Strategy for WNET.org, and one of the creators of Thirteen's independent film series, Reel 13, and WNET Channel 13 Senior Producer, Bob Morris, spoke about new initiatives being implemented to develop several new projects for both local and national distribution of public media.

Keith Boynton and Mike Lavoie, of 12films12weeks, a multi-talented duo that managed a troupe of young actors and crew, to produce twelve narrative films in twelve weeks this past summer, joined the conversation.  Their content resides solely on the Internet, which turned out to be a good place to find a small, but loyal, audience for their short pieces, but admittedly not knowing anything about the current independent distribution landscape or how to market themselves to a wider audience, it remained a fairly circumscribed phenomenon.  How can they advance their agenda in the future (if they so desire) by expounding upon the grassroots audience building they've accomplished thus far?  Or put another way, where can they go from here?

The third party to join the conversation was UnionDocs, a very small collaborative of documentary artists living and working together in a residency program in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, partially funded by the state of New York.  Its founder and director, Christopher Allen, and head of programming, Steve Holmgren, along with current resident artists, Robbie Wilkins and Josh Solondz, presented a taste of what they do and their general ethos in how interdisciplinary nonfiction media can express new ideas and methods of making work.

In bringing together these disparate parties, NYFVC board member and event producer, Ginger Brown, enabled us to have a really productive and exciting conversation where media makers, often without viable major distribution alternatives representing one side of a coin, and smart and experienced broadcasters wanting great content to fill generous slots of airtime and able to provide an audience in the tens of thousands representing the other, could engage in a useful and pertinent discourse about how these two sides could collectively mint some valuable currency so that artists, programmers, broadcasters and audiences can all benefit and keep the flame of independent film alive and well and, somewhat, profitable.

This idea of creative mentorship resides quite strongly in the structure these artists have created, but the consensus seemed to be that there was a desire to broaden their community base and, again, there's Reel 13, there's WNET.org, and the creative producers and programmers there scouring the planet for interesting work.  There is a very small contingent able to find funds to get to festivals far and wide.  Siegmeister says he, distinctly, does not fall into that category of being one of those able to shuttle himself around to festivals.  But by getting out directly into the community the channel serves and engaging in more discussions like this within that community, all parties can only be better served in reaching a common ultimate goal:  bringing hard-to-find strong film and video work to a large audience hungry for discovery and innovative media.

Rich Siegmeister welcomes inquiries from independent artists about submitting content to the channel.  They are looking for short films, 30-minute programs and independent feature films.  You can reach him at [email protected].