Docs Interactive

Radcliff’s Reviews: Countdown to Zero

July 27th, 2010

Fresh from his Silverdocs reporting, Docs In Progress resident critic, Matthew Radcliff is back with a new reflection on a documentary you can seeon the big or small screen. This time it’s Countdown to Zero, which just opened in Washington (as well as New York and Los Angeles) this past week at Landmark’s E Street Theatre.

Non-fiction films, like any work of art, reflect the hopes and fears of the era in which they are created. Thus, Lucy Walker’s recent documentary, Countdown to Zero makes frequent use of what may be the dominant image of the past decade: security camera footage. After a short prologue of atomic bomb test footage (the defining image of the twentieth century), we leave the Cold War behind and situate ourselves in the present-day “War on Terror” epoch. Security-camera footage showing explosions in Madrid set the tone, followed by on-the-scene video of the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Bali, London, Riyadh, Kenya, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Oklahoma City, and New York City. The point of the film, and it is successful, is to terrify audiences and galvanize action to eliminate nuclear weapons. It starts off with a bang and ends with a literal “call to action:” a number to text message for more information.

Nuclear weapons and nuclear material - the highly enriched uranium or plutonium necessary to have an explosive chain reaction - cannot be kept 100% secure. Given how small an amount it takes to level a city (roughly the size of a tennis ball, we are told), and how much exists in the world, it is a wonder there has not been a catastrophe already. Therefore, Countdown argues, it is imperative that we eliminate all potential sources of fissile material before we suffer another nuclear explosion. The danger is unlikely to come from a lone operative, as making a nuclear bomb requires a substantial amount of engineering, but may come from “rogue states,” such as North Korea and Iran, or large terrorist networks, either foreign or domestic. However, an accident or misunderstanding, both of which have occurred shockingly often since the bomb was born, may also result in a nuclear explosion. The final argument of the film is that even if only the “good guys” have nuclear weapons, they are still subject to human error and therefore dangerous and should be eliminated. Of all the countries in the world that have had nuclear weapons, only South Africa has taken the initiative to dismantle their bombs. The atomic test footage at the beginning of the film plays in reverse, as if in attempt to stuff the nuclear genie back into the bottle. The end of the film, after seeing the same footage playing forward, presents us with total nuclear disarmament as the only way to put back the genie. A series of simple steps are laid out at the end of the film to accomplish this goal.

But like the film, I keep returning to the security camera footage (or at least what looks like security camera footage). Running throughout the movie, it is a sobering illustration of our modern sensibilities of ever-present watchfulness. The “war on terror” is not on the top of our minds, perhaps, but every day on the DC Metro we are reminded: “if you see something, say something.” Public transit, large crowds, iconic locations - these are where we have been taught to be watchful, to be wary, to be afraid. Perhaps the use of security camera footage in so many TV crime dramas has conditioned me to expect to see the incident happen on tape, but I kept waiting for some action throughout the security camera footage in Countdown to Zero. With the exception of one explosion early in the film, nothing suspicious happens in the footage we see. The streets and subways of New York, the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, and Washington Square Park are all featured prominently, with a watchful police officer standing guard. There is a creeping sense that a catastrophe is imminent; which it certainly is, if you listen to the numerous experts in the film.

Countdown to Zero very effectively imbues footage of large crowds and iconic public spaces (e.g., Times Square, the Washington Monument, the Coliseum) with a tangible sense of dread. Many of the shots feature police officers, their jackets emblazoned with “Counterterrorism Unit” or “Emergency Service Unit.” The satellite maps of numerous cities all pan to structures readily identifiable from an outline, locations that are often filled with people and are well within the blast zone of an expected attack. Yet when it comes to nuclear explosions, the film makes clear, it does not have to go off in a crowded city square to cause mass destruction. One small nuclear bomb, detonated in an empty square, would destroy a radius of five miles in mere seconds. This unimaginable tragedy is described in a breathtaking sequence in the film, layered with the sounds and images of New Year’s Eve in Times Square and scored with a haunting version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. As the crowd chants the countdown, we see missiles launch. A map shows the spread of the blast as the experts describe its effects. First, the shock wave of the explosion itself would pass, bringing with it a rain of debris flying hundreds of miles per hour. Second, the heat of the explosion would ignite every flammable object as it swept past. The fires would effectively consume all of the oxygen within the five-mile radius. If, somehow, you managed to survive all of that, then you need to worry about the radiation. In this sense, our fear of crowds and public transit are misguided. Really, the film seems to argue, there is no time or place in which we are safe, as long as nuclear weapons exist.

The history of nuclear weapons and nuclear material is full of accidents and mistakes. Our security, so far, has been a result of sheer, dumb luck, as much as vigilant police work. There have been a number of thefts of nuclear material from the stockpiles of the former Soviet republics. All those we have caught were apprehended by accident. One story recounted early in the film concerns a low-level worker at a processing facility in Kazakhstan who managed to steal 1.5 kg of highly enriched uranium, and was only caught because he was travelling with a ring of car-battery thieves who were being watched. Frighteningly easy to smuggle around, using basic methods (several experts in the film liken it to drug smuggling), ocean-going cargo ships seem to be the most logical means of transportation. One scene reinforces the dangers to our borders by showing a fleet of giant cargo ships, all sailing together as an armada of mass destruction. Another beautiful and yet chilling sequence shows time-lapse footage of a port unloading a large cargo ship. With little evidence of human intervention, the giant machines inexorably move the cargo containers from the ship to the dock, and from the dock to waiting tractor-trailers. Meanwhile, the experts tell us how difficult it is to detect the highly enriched uranium that might be hidden inside.

We don’t need to look outside our borders for nuclear trouble, unfortunately. Our own military has had a string of bad luck holding on to nuclear bombs. There is no technology in the world with a 0% chance of failure, and only extreme good luck has kept us safe from an accidental nuclear explosion. On routine flights, nuclear missiles have come loose and fallen from their plane, with only the last of several layers of fail-safe switches not failing. That was over North Carolina. Several of our bombs did fall on Spain in 1966 after a collision during mid-air refueling. While the event luckily did not cause a nuclear explosion, the bombs did scatter radioactive material over 2-square kilometers. A launch of a US rocket from Norway, for atmospheric research, was interpreted by the Russian military to be the beginning of a nuclear attack, despite having been notified beforehand. Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, was given the “nuclear football” and urged to launch a counterattack. “Fortunately,” we are told, “Yeltsin wasn’t drunk, and he didn’t believe what the military was telling him.”

The expert talking heads in the film are believable and knowledgeable. They include physicists, journalists, and national security experts, including Valerie Plame Wilson, the famed CIA operative, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Secretary of State James Baker. We are also treated to a number of former decision makers who all advocate for totally eliminating nuclear weapons: former South African President F. W. de Klerk, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Jimmy Carter, and former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. To hear these individuals, who have each had control of nuclear weapons, renounce them and advocate for their elimination is new. These are not “sour grapes,” but critiques from the very people on whose shoulders the hard decisions have lain. Decisions that demand to be made in about thirty seconds, I might add. One cannot dismiss lightly the lessons learned from experience. It is only a matter of time before our luck, which has sustained us so far, runs out.

Tags: Countdown to Zero, documentary, Lucy Walker, Matthew Radcliff, nuclear weapons
Posted in Film Reviews | No Comments »

Silverdocs 2010: The Conference

July 16th, 2010

Silverdocs may be a sweet memory but it is still very much on the mind of those of us in the documentary community. Our amazing film reviewer Matthew Radcliff from Paignton Pictures is splitting the Docs In Progress Silverdocs coverage with Erica Ginsberg this year and here comes the first of several reports from Matt spotlighting some of the conference sessions he attended.

***************************************************************

After several years of attending the Silverdocs International Documentary Conference, I continue to find the sessions to be extremely useful. Each year, Diana Ingraham, the conference producer, and her staff put together a schedule that covers all aspects of documentary films. From pitching ideas to planning distribution and outreach, the conference has you covered. While retaining information on the usual topics, they also stay at the forefront of changes in the field, particularly regarding new distribution methods. Plus, where else can you find and be able to approach pretty much all the movers and shakers in the business?

The week started off with a very interesting panel on “Documentary Ethics Inside the Family.” Moderated by Pat Aufderheide, professor and director of the Center For Social Media at American University, the panel focused on four of the films screening in this year’s festival. The Center For Social Media’s new report on ethics in documentary film, Honest Truths, does not specifically address how family relationships between filmmaker and subject complicate the ethical questions. This panel was a welcome chance to continue to develop the issues covered in Honest Truths.

For three of the filmmakers, the film was an outgrowth of their own desire to “work through” their family issues. But Kaleo LaBelle, the director of Beyond This Place, maintained a distinction between showing the “personal” and the “private.” The personal is the part of the story that the audience can relate to in some way, a detail that brings out an element of universal truth. The private are the specific details, about actions or thoughts, which are self-indulgent for the filmmaker to include. Doug Block, director of The Kids Grow Up, agreed, adding that the film should not be used as a form of therapy, even if it may end up being therapeutic. It was suggested that researching, filming, and/or viewing the film might be therapeutic for other members of the family, not just the filmmaker. Chico Colvard, the director of Family Affair, emphasized the need for the filmmaker in a truly personal film to reveal themselves as honestly and deeply as the film’s subjects do.

For Doug, the ethical decisions are made during the editing stage, and not really during filming. He shoots lots of footage, not knowing what might happen, and then crafts the story in the editing room. At that point he begins to wrestle with the ethics of representing his subjects, whether or not they are family members. Ali Codina, director of Monica and David, proposed instead that ethics are always an ongoing discussion during the entire process of making a film. The central issue is what is shown on screen, and that decision is made at several points during the filmmaking process. Whether something is left off the screen because it was out of the frame during filming, cut during editing, or never shot to begin with, it is still an ethical issue.

Wednesday was a big day for me at the conference. In the morning, I attended a very good session on how to pitch to network executives. Presented by Peter Hamilton, the brains behind DocumentaryTelevision.com, and Stephen Harris, an executive at A&E Television, the session was titled, “Understand the Audience! Then Develop the Programs.” One audience that producers need to understand is network executives, and Peter and Stephen did a great job of explaining how an executive looks at prospective program ideas. Stephen is always looking for good ideas, spending about an hour every day reading newspapers, the industry trades, and pop culture magazines gathering data on “the next big thing.” He has four filters that he uses to sift through the tons of possible ideas to reveal the good ideas. A successful show from his perspective must incorporate: big characters, high stakes, unique access, and a resolution at the end of each episode.

Another great panel was “Science Media: Finding the Language of Engagement” and was moderated by Jody Sheff, a consultant formerly at WNET/Channel 13 in NYC. The panel featured Melanie Wallace, a senior producer at NOVA, Allan Butler, an Executive Producer at the National Geographic Channel, Debbie Myers, the General Manager of the Science Channel, and Larry O’Reilly, who is retired from the Smithsonian, where he was in charge of exhibits and public spaces. Larry is now a board member of Wildscreen USA, and starting a program for film students to develop projects about the US National Labs.

Allan Butler described the ideal show for Nat Geo, which had pretty similar elements to what Stephen Harris was looking for at A&E: passionate characters with a big challenge to overcome, a topic with universal appeal and big questions, fresh insights and new discoveries, and an active, in-the-moment storytelling style. Debbie Myers presented the new mission statement of the Science Channel: “Imagine the impossible and then make it happen.” The focus for them is not the quest for knowledge, but the quest for the unknown; this is a fascinating and highly philosophical distinction, and I am excited to see where it leads them with their programming. Melanie Wallace focused her time on NOVA’s reach into the online distribution world, through the NOVA ScienceNow spin-off, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. This magazine type show has attracted families and younger audiences and lately they have included a large online component. Dr. Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, is an extremely engaging speaker. She played a fun clip of him explaining how the ubiquitous AutoTune software works to adjust a singer’s pitch. The clip included a before-and-after of Neil singing an astronomical blues song. It’s worth a watch.

The best quote of the week comes from Ed Hersh, Senior Vice Presiednt of Strategic Planning for Investigation Discovery, The Military Channel, and HD Theater. Speaking at the “Inside Discovery” panel, Ed said that network executives are looking for how the show will be executed. “You don’t buy topics, you buy shows.” The network needs to “see” what the show will be like. Andy Weissberg, Vice President of Programming for Animal Planet concurred, emphasizing the importance of a good demo tape. Short of that, you need to have something that conveys the visuals of the show. Stephen Reverand, Senior Vice President of Production and Development for Discovery Channel, said that a pitch reel is vital, because along with demonstrating the style and substance of the pitch, it shows commitment on the part of the pitcher. The panel also included Dexter Cole, Vice President of Programming for the Science Channel, and was moderated very efficiently by Wendy Thompson, President and CEO of EVS Communications (and a Docs In Progress alum).

Thursday started with “Anatomy of a Trailer,” covering both pitch trailers and fundraising trailers, moderated by Kevin Schaff CEO and founder of stock footage company Thought Equity Motion. Featuring pearls of wisdom from the Documentary Doctor, Fernanda Rossi, as well as media consultant John Ford, and Mark Berridge, the US Manager for Zealot, a film and TV marketing agency. At Zealot, Mark has developed trailers for several successful documentaries, including Man on Wire, Food Inc., and Silverdocs Closing Night film, The Tillman Story.

Fernanda alone gave out more information than can fit into this entire post. Suffice it to say, if you missed this session, you missed an education. She started with terminology, as pitch trailers go by many names, including tasters, sample, work in progress, sizzle real, demo, and teaser. End the teaser with emotion, and don’t break the spell to list credits or contact info. Also, don’t make it too complete. It’s not a short film, and the more it feels like a short film, the more viewers will pat you on the back and say “thank you for sharing.” Instead, you want them to want to see the rest of the story. And then give you money for the opportunity.

John Ford said that making a successful trailer is a combination of artistic and business skills. They need to be focused, and focused on the viewer. Network execs are all looking for a show that will be successful, but each network has a different interpretation of what is successful. You need to known your audience. Mark Berridge suggested using stock footage to enhance a trailer. His before and after example showed a significant improvement after including stock footage to provide context around the main topic. When used appropriately, stock footage can increase the perceived production budget and also demonstrate the environment in which the characters are working. Also, if not overused, watermarked footage is acceptable; meaning, you might not have to pay upfront to use the stock footage. Of course, check with a lawyer before doing anything involving copyrighted material….

At lunchtime on Thursday, the conference provided a unique opportunity to hear Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski in an informal conversation with Michael Winship, a veteran producer and writer and the current president of the WGA, East. Much of the conversation focused on Internet technology and how the FCC is beginning to grapple with the incredible changes afoot in the communications world. Genachowski discussed his belief that we are undergoing a massive shift in broadcasting, comparable to the development of cable or the switch from black-and-white TV to color TV.

The educational distribution market was the focus of a session on Friday morning (called “No Film Left Behind”) that can be summarized in one famous line: “the times, they are a-changing.” Featuring Melissa Regan, a filmmaker working with the distribution co-op New Day Films, John Hoskyns-Abrahall of Bullfrog Films, Kathy Tan from Films Media Group (formerly Filmmakers for the Humanities), and Martha Girard from Consumer Products at PBS. Melissa presented a short description of New Day Films and her experiences working with them. All agreed that working with teachers during production often means a film will be more readily useful to teachers after it is released, resulting in more sales. All encouraged making a “teacher’s guide” that listed specific sections of the film and offered suggestions for class activities around each section. Naturally, producing a teacher’s guide is the job of the filmmaker, although it is possible to include the preparation costs for a guide into a grant proposal. Closed captions are a must, for accessibility reasons. All of the distributors discussed the need to move to online distribution, and indicated that their companies were working on solving that problem.

I ended my time at the conference with a session that I am still digesting. Featuring Richard Saiz, senior manager for programming at ITVS, the workshop was an in-depth look at how to write a compelling treatment and create a dynamite work-in-progress tape. Richard provided a sample written treatment, which we dissected, and then showed us the accompanying work-in-progress tape. The treatment is the concrete version of the abstract idea that inspired the film. It is the road map to follow when translating your idea into a documentary. He spent some time drilling the crowd on the three important ingredients: first, the Premise, or the hook that distinguishes your film from the countless others on the same topic; second, the Theme, which elevates a program from a specific local story to one that is relevant to a wide-spread and broad audience; and third, the Story, which is a description of what will happen on-screen. The last element to be included in the treatment is an indication of how you will establish your “directorial authority.” For instance, you might describe how you intend to use color or lighting to convey your theme.

By the end of the week, I had only been able to attend a small subset of the Conference sessions. At each one, I learned several things, and was able to meet and network with my peers. And the panels were a good opportunity to chat with the bigwigs who came as speakers. You’re almost as likely to see a filmmaker here, as at the film festival, and avoid the scrum that forms around a filmmaker immediately after a screening. This year, all the conference sessions were in one cluster of buildings, creating a “hothouse” environment for meeting and greeting. The main location included a number of couches and chairs for informal conversations. The conference also provided a breakfast each morning, which was a nice incentive to get there early and chat with the other attendees. All in all, it was well worth the price of admission.

Full Disclosure: Matthew Radcliff served on the screening committee for Silverdocs, but was not involved with organizing the conference.

Tags: Distribution, Docs In Progress, documentary, Funding, personal film, science media, Silverdocs
Posted in Distribution, Festivals, Funding, Story Development | No Comments »

The Good Pitch at Silverdocs

June 30th, 2010

Erica here for the next installment in Docs In Progress coverage of the Silverdocs Film Festival. Matthew already provided his perspective on the Documentary Conference and I have few thoughts to add since my work schedule made it difficult for me to attend much of the Conference. The one piece of the Conference I did attend was The Good Pitch which was its second year at Silverdocs. Having seen Docs In Progress alums Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer’s project Out in the Silence flourish partially as a result of participating in last year’s Good Pitch, I wanted to see how a new batch of documentary works in progress are likely to make a difference.

Though I could only attend the morning session (and did not attempt to compete with the live reporting from the quick fingers of the folks at Working Films and the Center for Social Media), the Good Pitch was highly instructive for anyone interested in approaches to outreach campaigns and how to work with philanthropic and grassroots partners.

My personal favorite of the pitched films I saw was The House That Herman Built, a nuanced approach to the prison documentary genre, this time about an Angola prisoner in solitary confinement who is collaborating with an artist to create an art installation of his dream home. That said, the biggest wow moment of the morning probably came after Macky Alston’s pitch for The Truth Will Set You Free. The film about the first openly gay partnered (and resultingly controversial) Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson not only had a pitch perfect pitch and trailer you’d expect from a seasoned filmmaker like Alston, but was capped off by a pitch from Robinson himself.

Robinson was hardly the only celebrity putting in an appearance at Silverdocs this year. Although the festival has seemingly given in to the same cutbacks that have affected film festivals and arts organizations more broadly, they did manage to nab Oliver Stone to participate in a panel after the oddly timed (4:00 pm on a weekday) local premiere of South of the Border. And I’ll share some thoughts on Stone’s latest opus and other Silverdocs festival fare in these pages soon.

Tags: documentary, film festival, Good Pitch, Silverdocs, The House That Herman Built, The Truth Will Set You Free
Posted in Festivals, Funding, Outreach and Marketing | No Comments »

A view from the Silverdocs Conference

June 29th, 2010

Silverdocs may be a sweet memory but it is still very much on the mind of those of us in the documentary community. Our amazing film reviewer Matthew Radcliff from Paignton Pictures is splitting the Docs In Progress Silverdocs coverage with Erica Ginsberg this year. Here comes the first report from Matt spotlighting some of the conference sessions he attended.

The week started off with a very interesting panel on “Documentary Ethics Inside the Family.” Moderated by Pat Aufderheide, professor and director of the Center For Social Media at American University, the panel focused on four of the films screening in this year’s festival. The Center For Social Media’s new report on ethics in documentary film, Honest Truths, does not specifically address how family relationships between filmmaker and subject complicate the ethical questions. This panel was a welcome chance to continue to develop the issues covered in Honest Truths.

For three of the filmmakers, the film was an outgrowth of their own desire to “work through” their family issues. But Kaleo LaBelle, the director of Beyond This Place, maintained a distinction between showing the “personal” and the “private.” The personal is the part of the story that the audience can relate to in some way, a detail that brings out an element of universal truth. The private are the specific details, about actions or thoughts, which are self-indulgent for the filmmaker to include. Doug Block, director of The Kids Grow Up, agreed, adding that the film should not be used as a form of therapy, even if it may end up being therapeutic. It was suggested that researching, filming, and/or viewing the film might be therapeutic for other members of the family, not just the filmmaker. Chico Colvard, the director of Family Affair, emphasized the need for the filmmaker in a truly personal film to reveal themselves as honestly and deeply as the film’s subjects do.

For Doug, the ethical decisions are made during the editing stage, and not really during filming. He shoots lots of footage, not knowing what might happen, and then crafts the story in the editing room. At that point he begins to wrestle with the ethics of representing his subjects, whether or not they are family members. Ali Codina, director of Monica and David, proposed instead that ethics are always an ongoing discussion during the entire process of making a film. The central issue is what is shown on screen, and that decision is made at several points during the filmmaking process. Whether something is left off the screen because it was out of the frame during filming, cut during editing, or never shot to begin with, it is still an ethical issue.

Wednesday was a big day for me at the conference. In the morning, I attended a very good session on how to pitch to network executives. Presented by Peter Hamilton, the brains behind DocumentaryTelevision.com, and Stephen Harris, an executive at A&E Television, the session was titled, “Understand the Audience! Then Develop the Programs.” One audience that producers need to understand is network executives, and Peter and Stephen did a great job of explaining how an executive looks at prospective program ideas. Stephen is always looking for good ideas, spending about an hour every day reading newspapers, the industry trades, and pop culture magazines gathering data on “the next big thing.” He has four filters that he uses to sift through the tons of possible ideas to reveal the good ideas. A successful show from his perspective must incorporate: big characters, high stakes, unique access, and a resolution at the end of each episode.

Another great panel was “Science Media: Finding the Language of Engagement” and was moderated by Jody Sheff, a consultant formerly at WNET/Channel 13 in New York City. The panel featured Melanie Wallace, a senior producer at NOVA; Allan Butler, an Executive Producer at the National Geographic Channel; Debbie Myers, the General Manager of the Science Channel; and Larry O’Reilly, who is retired from the Smithsonian, where he was in charge of exhibits and public spaces. Larry is now a board member of Wildscreen USA, and starting a program for film students to develop projects about the US National Labs.

The best quote of the week came from Ed Hersh, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Investigation Discovery, The Military Channel, and HD Theater. Speaking at the “Inside Discovery” panel, Ed said that network executives are looking for how the show will be executed. “You don’t buy topics, you buy shows.” The network needs to “see” what the show will be like. Andy Weissberg, Vice President of Programming for Animal Planet concurred, emphasizing the importance of a good demo tape. Short of that, you need to have something that conveys the visuals of the show. Stephen Reverand, Senior Vice President of Production and Development for Discovery Channel, said that a pitch reel is vital, because along with demonstrating the style and substance of the pitch, it shows commitment on the part of the pitcher. The panel also included Dexter Cole, Vice President of Programming for the Science Channel, and was moderated very efficiently by Wendy Thompson, President and CEO of EVS Communications (and a Docs In Progress alum).

Thursday started with “Anatomy of a Trailer,” covering both pitch trailers and fundraising trailers, moderated by Kevin Schaff, CEO and founder of stock footage company Thought Equity Motion. Featuring pearls of wisdom from the Documentary Doctor, Fernanda Rossi, as well as media consultant John Ford, and Mark Berridge, the US Manager for Zealot, a film and TV marketing agency. At Zealot, Mark has developed trailers for several successful documentaries, including Man on Wire, Food Inc., and Silverdocs Closing Night film, The Tillman Story.

Fernanda Rossi alone gave out more information than can fit into this entire post. Suffice it to say, if you missed this session, you missed an education. She started with terminology, as pitch trailers go by many names, including tasters, sample, work in progress, sizzle real, demo, and teaser. End the teaser with emotion, and don’t break the spell to list credits or contact info. Also, don’t make it too complete. It’s not a short film, and the more it feels like a short film, the more viewers will pat you on the back and say “thank you for sharing.” Instead, you want them to want to see the rest of the story. And then give you money for the opportunity.

John Ford said that making a successful trailer is a combination of artistic and business skills. They need to be focused, and focused on the viewer. Network execs are all looking for a show that will be successful, but each network has a different interpretation of what is successful. You need to know your audience. Mark Berridge suggested using stock footage to enhance a trailer. His before and after example showed a significant improvement after including stock footage to provide context around the main topic. When used appropriately, stock footage can increase the perceived production budget and also demonstrate the environment in which the characters are working. Also, if not overused, watermarked footage is acceptable; meaning, you might not have to pay upfront to use the stock footage. Of course, check with a lawyer before doing anything involving copyrighted material….

The educational distribution market was the focus of a session on Friday morning (called “No Film Left Behind”) that can be summarized in one famous line: “the times, they are a-changing.” Featuring Melissa Regan, a filmmaker working with the distribution co-op New Day Films, John Hoskyns-Abrahall of Bullfrog Films, Kathy Tan from Films Media Group (formerly Filmmakers for the Humanities), and Martha Girard from Consumer Products at PBS. Melissa presented a short description of New Day Films and her experiences working with them. All agreed that working with teachers during production often means a film will be more readily useful to teachers after it is released, resulting in more sales. All encouraged making a “teacher’s guide” that listed specific sections of the film and offered suggestions for class activities around each section. Naturally, producing a teacher’s guide is the job of the filmmaker, although it is possible to include the preparation costs for a guide into a grant proposal. Closed captions are a must, for accessibility reasons. All of the distributors discussed the need to move to online distribution, and indicated that their companies were working on solving that problem.

I ended my time at the conference with a session that I am still digesting. Featuring Richard Saiz, senior manager for programming at ITVS, the workshop was an in-depth look at how to write a compelling treatment and create a dynamite work-in-progress tape. Richard provided a sample written treatment, which we dissected, and then showed us the accompanying work-in-progress tape. The treatment is the concrete version of the abstract idea that inspired the film. It is the road map to follow when translating your idea into a documentary. He spent some time drilling the crowd on the three important ingredients: first, the Premise, or the hook that distinguishes your film from the countless others on the same topic; second, the Theme, which elevates a program from a specific local story to one that is relevant to a wide-spread and broad audience; and third, the Story, which is a description of what will happen on-screen. The last element to be included in the treatment is an indication of how you will establish your “directorial authority.” For instance, you might describe how you intend to use color or lighting to convey your theme.

Full Disclosure: Matthew Radcliff served on the screening committee for Silverdocs, but was not involved with organizing the conference.

Tags: Discovery, Distribution, Docs In Progress, documentary, Funding, personal film, science media, Silverdocs, Story Development
Posted in Distribution, Festivals, Funding, Outreach and Marketing, Story Development | No Comments »

Silverdocs is Upon Us but Where is Erica?

June 24th, 2010

Yes Silverdocs is here and so am I, but the Docs Insider blog has remained relatively silent. I was stunned last night at the festival’s industry lounge to have a fairly influential person from the documentary broadcast world asking me where my blog was. Aside from being stunned that said person even read this blog — as infrequent as it has become — I also felt stunned that I am able to cobble together any words at all tonight to meet this surprising demand.

As an aside, I have been going non-stop for the past 3 weeks, accompanying a group of international documentary filmmakers around the U.S. on a professional exchange program; administering a pre-Silverdocs Peer Pitch workshop co-sponsored with The D-Word and Silverdocs; planning an Open House here at Docs In Progress this Friday; and trying to catch as many films and some of the conference programming as possible. I still haven’t unpacked from the trip.

That would be excuse enough, but my true excuse is that I need time for reflection. Maybe it’s the introvert in me, but I simply cannot deeply my thoughts about experiences in real time in any great depth. After my adventure trying to do daily blogging from Full Frame, I realize that I am better cut out to do a post-screening blog where I have time to reflect on the films, the conversations, and the knowledge and inspiration gained from the festival. Yeah, I could tell you I liked this film or found another disappointing. And yes, I have done that to some extent on @docsinprogress Twitter account. But it’s still only a little piece of the puzzle.

Perhaps appropriately enough, tonight I went to the Guggenheim Honors which went to Frederick Wiseman. Wiseman spoke at length about his approach to post-production and I was very intrigued by him saying that he edits in segments before he decides how he wants to structure the whole film together. And maybe that’s a little bit how I feel about festival blogging. I will leave the daily blow-by-blow accounts and film reviews to others. And then in a few weeks, just in time for the Docs In Progress summer newsletter, I will piece together all the different thoughts I have into something coherent to say about the festival.

And I won’t be alone either. My colleague, Matthew Radcliff who has contributed documentary film reviews here throughout the year and also updates the Documentary Roundup Calendar, has said he’ll also provide some post-festival reviews.

So dear broadcaster and everyone else, you will get something from us soon enough. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Tags: D-Word, Docs In Progress, Frederick Wiseman, Peer Pitch, Silverdocs
Posted in Docs In Progress Events and Activities, Festivals | No Comments »

Silverdocs is just around the corner…

May 25th, 2010

We are less than a month away from Silverdocs (or more properly AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival) when the documentary world converges on downtown Silver Spring. It’s still one of our favorite documentary festivals and it’s not just because it is only a stone’s throw away from Docs In Progress.

Every year the festival seems to top itself in the quality of its festival and conference programs. What am I most looking forward to this year when the festival takes place from June 21-27? Where to begin?

* A tribute to seminal observational documentarian Frederick Wiseman (including a retrospective of his films and a special presentation to him of the annual Guggenheim honor).

* A chance to see works in progress pitched to potential funders and outreach partners through The Good Pitch.

* Amazing shorts programs which Silverdocs always manages to deliver (and we are very excited that this year our local heroes and Docs In Progress alums Ian Cook and Andre Dahlman will have their film Corner Plot included among the shorts in competition).

* Joy at seeing films I’ve seen at other festivals (Doug Block’s The Kids Grow Up and Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika reach an appreciate DC audience).

* The chance to see some of the best documentary filmmakers out there take a crack at Freakonomics (which is the Opening Night Film).

* And the promise of some interesting world premieres on such topical themes as religious extremism (Holy Wars), the impact of the coal industry on the health of West Virginia region (On Coal River), and a new generation of refugees (The Arrivals).

And, of course, Docs In Progress will be busy that week too. On Monday, just before the festival kicks off, we will be partnering with The D-Word and Silverdocs to host Peer Pitch at the Documentary House. This is an opportunity for up to 10 documentary filmmakers to present their works-in-progress to each other whether to find potential partners or simply get comfortable with an elevator pitch before trying it out at the festival with industry. While that program requires advance registration, we will also be opening up our doors on Friday, June 25 between 6:00-10:00 pm to all documentary filmmakers and film fans to celebrate the documentary filmmaking community. If you plan to come, please RSVP.

But in the meantime, you can salivate at some of the films which will be at the festival. Silverdocs just announced the competition films today and the full slate should be out soon.

STERLING US FEATURE COMPETITION

BEYOND THIS PLACE / USA/Switzerland, 2010, 92 minutes (Director: Kaleo La Belle)-Cloud Rock La Belle is the quintessential hippie, still living a perpetually stoned and carefree lifestyle 40 years after the ’60s ended. His son attempts to re-connect with his absentee father by taking a 500-mile bike trip together around the Pacific Northwest.

US Premiere.

CAMERA, CAMERA / USA/Laos, 2009, 60 minutes (Director: Malcolm Murray)-In Laos, the digital camera is the universal sign of the tourist, but when westerners take photos in seemingly exotic locals, what are they really capturing? A snapshot of reality, or a highly-distorted caricature that reveals more about the photographer than the landscape? This poetic film invites you to reconsider what it means to be a stranger in a strange land. East Coast Premiere.

CIRCO / Mexico/USA, 2010, 75 minutes (Director: Aaron Schock)-CIRCO is an intimate look at a family’s struggle to preserve the institution of their small traveling circus in rural Mexico. At once producers, performers, and roadies, the Ponce family-the driven owner-father, his questioning wife, and their dedicated children-forms the heart of CIRCO, which explores the inner workings of the circus business as well as family sacrifice, loss of childhood, and the preservation of a fading art form. East Coast Premiere.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MCKINLEY NOLAN / USA/Cambodia/Vietnam, 2010, 85 minutes (Director: Henry Corra)-Forty years after Pvt. McKinley Nolan vanished in Vietnam, his family learns there is hope the beloved brother, husband and father is alive and the decades-long mystery of his disappearance may be solved. World Premiere.

HOLYWARS / USA/UK/Spain, 2009, 72 minutes (Director: Stephen Marshall)-The film follows two deeply committed men of faith-a Muslim and a Christian-as they travel the world spreading messages they both feel represent “the truth.” What happens when the men are put in the same room? This thought-provoking film is sure to push buttons and instigate discussions about the nature of religion, extremism and tolerance. World Premiere.

THE KIDS GROW UP / USA, 2009, 91 minutes (Director Doug Block)-In his previous film, 51 BIRCH STREET, director Doug Block examined the marriage between his parents and, in particular, his relationship with his father. In this film, Block turns the camera on his daughter Lucy, meticulously documenting her life from birth, with the hopes that this will be a gift she one day enjoys, and that it might somehow help stave off the looming separation he hopes to avoid as she grows older and more independent.

MONICA AND DAVID / USA, 2009, 67 minutes (Director: Alexandra Codina)-Like many couples blissfully in love, Monica and David are getting married. Yet unlike most married couples, Monica and David have Down syndrome.The film offers an intimate glimpse into the first year of marriage for this charismatic young couple and reveals the joys and struggles that are much the same as that of any newlyweds.

MY PERESTROIKA / USA/UK/Russia, 2010, 87 minutes (Director: Robin Hessman)-The film’s intimate and heartfelt portrait of the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain presents a complex picture of the challenges, dreams and disillusionments of this cross-over generation.

ON COAL RIVER / USA, 2010, 81 minutes (Directors: Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood)-When residents of the Coal River Valley begin noticing that a host of medical problems are linked to a Massey-owned coal-waste dumping ground that sits above the local elementary school, they demand action. World Premiere.

SONS OF PERDITION / USA, 2010, 85 minutes (Directors: Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten)-The film offers an eye-opening look into the world of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a branch of Mormonism that has continued the practice of polygamy since its emergence in the early 20th century. Far too often they exile young men, who are forced to find their way in a world previously unknown.

WO AI NI MOMMY (I LOVE YOU MOMMY) / China/USA, 2009, 76 minutes (Director: Stephanie Wang-Breal)-Eight-year-old Chinese Fang Sui Yong is adopted by a Jewish couple from Long Island who name her ”Faith.” The filmfollows Faith and her parents’ twist-and-turn journey over a year and a half. East Coast Premiere.

STERLING WORLD FEATURE COMPETITON

THE ARRIVALS / France/French Embassy, (2009), 111 minutes (Directors: Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard)-Arriving on the shores of France is merely the beginning of a labyrinthian journey for more than 50,000 refugees seeking asylum through the municipal reception center in Paris each year. North American Premiere.

AS LILITH / Israel, 2009, 78 minutes (Director: Eytan Harris)-After a 14-year-old Israeli girl commits suicide, her mother, Lilith, wants the body cremated. Before she can proceed, she must fight ZAKA, one of Israel’s most powerful religious organizations, which is fundamentally against cremation. East Coast Premiere.

BUDRUS / Israel/Palestinian Territories/USA, 2009, 81 minutes (Director: Julia Bacha)-This rousing film about one Palestinian village and its unlikely hero-humble family man turned activist Ayed Morrar-reveals the power of ordinary people to peaceably fight for extraordinary change.

FAMILIA / Sweden/Peru/Spain, 2010, 82 minutes (Directors: Mikael Wiström and Alberto Herskovits)-Swedish filmmaker Mikael Wiström captures the emotional ups and downs of an impoverished Peruvian family struggling to create a better life and stay together in the midst of great difficulty. US Premiere.

A FILM UNFINISHED / Germany/Israel, 2009, 87 minutes (Director: Yael Hersonski)-In never before seen footage from a lost reel of an incomplete Nazi-produced propaganda film about Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto in 1942, the film captures images of manipulated and staged ghetto life mixed with stunning photographic evidence and testimony-all making for a riveting experience.

INTO ETERNITY / Finland, (2010), 73 minutes (Director: Michael Madsen)-This film ponders how to caution explorers from future civilizations who may be driven by curiosity, or a desire to understand their distant past, to stay clear of buried nuclear waste.

PRESUMED GUILTY / Mexico, 2009, 92 minutes (Directors: Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith)-In its stunning indictment of Mexican jurisprudence, the film invites unsettling suspicion that legions of hapless prisoners face groundless decades behind bars. East Coast Premiere.

REGRETTERS / Sweden, 2010, 59 minutes (Director: Marcus Lindeen)-Mikael and Orlando are two aging Swedes with something unusual in common: They are both biological males who have undergone sex reassignment surgery but now wish to ‘change back.’ The pair’s startling testimony forms a complex philosophical interrogation of gender performance and selfhood.

SPACE TOURISTS / Switzerland, 2009, 98 minutes (Director: Christian Frei)-Amid the crumbling infrastructure of the former Soviet military space program, Russians allow civilians to travel into space for the low, low price of $20 million. Meanwhile, poor herders in Central Asia wait expectantly for the discarded remains of the rocket to sell on the black market. East Coast Premiere.

STEAM OF LIFE / Finland, 2010, 82 minutes (Director: Joonas Berghāll and Mika Hotakainen)-It’s neither a therapist’s office nor a lover’s bed where Finnish men’s deepest feelings about life, love and family are brought to the surface: It’s the sauna. The film allows the viewer to become a fly on the wall as it listens in on men-naked men-talking to other men (or occasionally a grizzly bear) in the sanctuary of the country’s ubiquitous saunas. US Premiere.

THE WOMAN WITH THE FIVE ELEPHANTS / Germany/Switzerland/Ukraine, 2009, 92 minutes (Director: Vadim Jeydrenko)-Witness to unspeakable horrors, eighty-five-year-oldSvetlana Geier has dedicated her life to language. Considered the greatest translator of Russian literature into German, Svetlana has just concluded her magnum opus, completing new translations of Dostoyevsky’s five great novels-known as the five elephants. US Premiere.

STERLING SHORT COMPETITION

ALBERT’S WINTER / Denmark, 2009, 30 minutes (Director: Andreas Koefad)-A young boy in Germany struggles to deal with his mother’s devastating terminal cancer. As the illness lingers unspoken in the background, Albert goes through the motions of his day-to-day life but knows that something is terribly wrong.

ARIRANG - LETTER TO BARACK / Germany/North Korea, 2010, 8 minutes (Director: Gerd Konrad)-The world appears very different from inside the hermit kingdom of North Korea. Huge mosaics created by one hundred thousand schoolchildren holding aloft colored cards in unison are a source of national pride, but so is the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. Pageantry and atomic blasts are juxtaposed in this chilling thought piece.

ARSY-VERSY / Slovakia, 2009, 24 minutes (Director Miro Remo)-Lubos is a happy-go-lucky 50-something who lives with his aging mother in what some would call a codependent relationship. The film takes a unique look at a mother-son relationship and the way in which Lubos lives his free-spirited life, like the title says, upside down.

BETWEEN DREAMS / Finland/France/Russian Federation, 2009, 11 minutes (Director: Iris Olsson)-A hundred souls lost in dreams in the dead of night cross a Siberian moonscape aboard a battered Russian train. A fortunate few dream happily and carefree, but most toss uneasily,gripped by fears for the future or guilt about the past.

BIG BIRDING DAY / USA, 2010, 13 minutes (Director: David Wilson)-Competitive bird watching comes alive in this delightful short. As three friends attempt to catch a glimpse of as many species as possible within the course of 24 hours, the special camaraderie that emerges between friends who enjoy the rituals of a unique hobby together is highlighted.

BORN SWEET / USA/Cambodia, 2010, 28 minutes (Director: Cynthia Wade)-Vinh, a rural Cambodian teen, dreams of falling in love, moving to the city and becoming a karaoke star. Alas, for Vinh and the millions of other children worldwide suffering from chronic arsenic poisoning, even reaching adulthood is a dream in doubt.

BYE BYE NOW / Ireland, 2009, 15 minutes (Director: Aideen O’Sullivan)-The film offers a charming look at the gradual disappearance of phone booths in Ireland. With the advent of modern technology, the phone booth has all but vanished all over the world. In a loving tribute to this soon-to-be relic of the past, the film is a nostalgic reminder of yesteryear.

CORNER PLOT / USA, 2010, 11 minutes (Director: Ian Cook)-In this heart-warming short, 89-year-old Charlie Koiner cares for a one-acre piece of farmland that rests just inside urban Washington, D.C. With help from his daughter, Charlie works the land and shares his crops at the local farmer’s market. In a rapidly changing modern world, this unique farmer remains dedicated to the life he has always known.

THE DARKNESS OF DAY / USA, 2009, 25 minutes (Director:Jay Rosenblatt)-This moving and thought-provoking meditation on depression and suicide stretches the boundaries of “documentary.” Built from found footage, and using both biographical details from Rosenblatt’s life and readings from a journal of someone who committed suicide, the film gently spurs you to ask exactly what it aims to document.

THE FAUX REAL / USA, 2010, 21 minutes (Director: Suzanne Hillinger)-This engaging short documentary introduces three biologically born females who identify as drag queens. Challenging traditional ideas of gender and drag, these unconventional women don wigs, false eyelashes, heavy makeup and chokers to perform burlesque as women trying to pass as men in drag.

FLAWED / Canada, 2010, 12 minutes Director: (Andrea Dorfman)-Unfolding like a graphic novel, director and artist Andrea Dorfman illustrates her way through her unlikely pairing with a cosmetic surgeon. This animated short is a lovely meditation on falling in love, when the most trying battle is the one fought between the heart’s desires and the mind’s insecurities.

FOUND / Canada, 2009, 6 minutes (Director: Paramita Nath)-For Laotian-Canadian poet Souvankham Thammavongsa, a discarded scrapbook sheds light on a harsh infancy in Southeast Asia emphasizing how family memory is often an aggregation of disparate pieces.

THE HERD / Ireland, 2008, 4 minutes (Director: Ken Wardrop)-One of these things is not like the other. But don’t tell that to the newest addition to the cow herd on the filmmaker’s family farm. When a little fawn finds herself out of place amid the sole company of cows, she attempts to fit in unnoticed. Can she succeed?

HOLDING STILL / Germany/USA, 2010, 26 minutes (Director:Florian Riegel)-Imagine if the last 20 years of your life were lived entirely in one room, yet you have the ability to see and photograph the world outside. This is the story of Janis, a woman whose artistic voice is remarkably unconstrained by physical obstacles or tragedies in her past.

THE HOUSEKEEPER / Scotland, 2009, 13 minutes (Director: Tali Yankelevich)-The care bestowed on a venerable priest by his elderly Greek housekeeper may at first blush appear to be all in a day’s work, but beneath the surface flow strong currents of platonic love and mutual need.

IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK / Ireland, 2009, 12 minutes (Director: Anna Rodgers)-This haunting and visually stunning short film explores several desolate and abandoned psychiatric hospitals throughout Ireland. The voices of former long-term patients permeate the corridors, still struggling to understand the circumstances that brought them there.

I’M JUST ANNEKE / USA, 2010, 11 minutes (Director: Jonathan Skurnik)-Anneke is a 12-year-old girl who has begun taking a hormone blocker so that she can delay puberty to ultimately decide for herself whether or not she wants to grow up as a woman or a man. This thought-provoking film brings to light the choices of a new generation facing gender identity issues with remarkable sensitivity and respect.

KEEP DANCING / USA, 2010, 21 minutes (Director: Greg Vander Veer)-Well into their ninth decade of life, dance icon Marge Champion and Tony-winning choreographer Donald Saddler became fast friends while performing in the 2001 Broadway revival of Follies. Now 90, the two continue to rehearse and choreograph original work, revealing a passion for dance undimmed by the passage of time.

LAST ADDRESS /USA, 2009, 9 minutes (Director: Ira Sachs)-A series of exterior shots of buildings that all have one thing in common: they were the last residential addresses of some of New York’s most prominent artists who lost their lives to AIDS-related illnesses. This simple yet poignant short film is an elegant tribute to those remarkable people whose voices were silenced much too soon.

LIES / Sweden, 2009, 13 minutes (Director: Jonas Odell)-With playful animation and lively narration, three people share their individual stories of lying, and the surprising consequences of their deception.

LISTENING TO THE SILENCES / UK, 2009, 11 minutes (Director: Pedro Flores)-What does it feel like to hear voices inside your head? Roy Vincent attempts to explain. Living alone in the isolated countryside, Vincent’s battle with mental illness is a daily struggle. This quiet, penetrating film presents a sympathetic portrait of a man accepting his inner demons.

MARIA’S WAY / Scotland/Spain, 2009, 15 minutes (Director: Anne Milne)-A feisty elderly woman’s sole purpose in life appears to be setting up an isolated roadside stand along the historic Camino de Santiago pilgrim route. A seemingly mundane daily task soon evolves into a humorous and charming observation on the importance of purpose, commitment and tradition.

MISSED CONNECTIONS / USA, 2010, 9 minutes (Director: Mary Robertson)-This delightful film is an amuse-bouche for anyone who has ever perused the ‘Missed Connections’ section of the classifieds in the hope they will recognize themselves as the ‘missed connection’ in question.

A MOTH IN SPRING / USA/Canada, 2010, 26 minutes (Director: Yu Gu)-While attempting to produce a film in China inspired by her parents’ involvement with the Student Democracy Movement of the 1980s, a young filmmaker’s life and work quickly begin to parallel her parents’ trials and alienation when the film is shut down and she is ordered to leave the country.

MRS. BIRK’S SUNDAY ROAST / UK, 2009, 6 minutes (Director: Kyoko Miyake)-This beautifully shot slice-of-life short introduces Mrs. Fukio Birks, a Japanese woman living in England with her British husband. Embracing the new life she has created, Mrs. Birks dedicates herself to embracing English culture-beginning with its cuisine. As she prepares a delectable English Sunday dinner, Mrs. Birks shares her thoughts on cooking, home, culture and family.

NOTES ON THE OTHER / Spain, 2009, 13 minutes (Director: Sergio Oksman)-Ostensibly about Ernest Hemingway, this intriguing short is more a meditation on reality and simulation-like a Baudrillard lecture, except more fun. Contrasting Hemingway with his impersonators in Key West, the film questions the writer’s account of the running of the bulls, moving quickly to challenging the concept of the Real.

ON THE RUN WITH ABDUL / UK/France, 2009, 24 Minutes (Directors: James Newton, Kristian Hove Sorensen and David Lalé)-When sixteen year old Abdul’s life is suddenly in jeopardy because of his involvement with a film on refugees, the filmmakers take it upon themselves to protect the boy. Exploring the delicate balance of how involved documentarians should become with their subjects, the film is a remarkable reassessment on the craft of non-fiction filmmaking.

OVERNIGHT STAY / USA, 2009, 9 minutes (Director: Daniela Sherer)-Using hand-drawn animation, the film illustrates an 83-year-old woman’s vivid memory of an event during World War II that likely saved her life when she was a young girl. On a cold night in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941, she was taken in by strangers and given a place to sleep.

PARA FUERA: PORTRAIT OF DR. RICHARD J. BING / USA, 2010, 9 minutes (Director: Nicholas Jasenovec)-How could a centenarian who is an accomplished doctor and musician sum up the totality of experiences in his life in one word? Dr. Richard Bing is able to do so-and along the way you will learn what motivated and assisted him in living his challenging yet charmed life.

PLASTIC AND GLASS / France, 2009, 9 minutes (Director: Tessa Joosse)-In a recycling factory in the north of France, workers settle into the daily grind of reprocessing plastic and glass. In an effort to transcend the routine, the workers playfully adapt the steady rhythm of the machines into a melody for a song and dance.

THE POODLE TRAINER / USA/Russia, 2009, 8 minutes (Director: Vance Malone)-Irina Markova is a Russian poodle trainer who has dedicated her life to training her 20 colorfully costumed poodles to perform clever acrobatic tricks. Fueled by a childhood tragedy that sparked a fierce desire to avoid people, Markova welcomes the solace of her animals and the isolation she finds behind the red velvet curtain of the circus.

PRAYERS FOR PEACE / USA, 2009, 8 minutes (Director: Dustin Grella)-Through the use of stop-motion animation, a man reflects on the memory of his younger brother, recently killed in Iraq. This deeply personal film offers an elegant introspection about a brother and soldier whose loss is deeply felt by those who loved him.

QUADRANGLE/ USA, 2010, 20 minutes (Director: Amy Grappell)-In the ’70s, two “conventional” couples embark on a most unconventional arrangement when they attempt to ward off marital ennui by swapping partners. Moving into the same home, merging families, sharing in a group marriage, can this four-way affair ever work?

SELTZER WORKS / USA, 2010, 7 minutes (Director: Jessica Edwards)-New York’s last seltzer bottler makes for a refreshing subject in this effervescent look at a tradesman who refuses to compromise on taste while facing the inevitable decline of a dying commercial tradition.

THE SPACE YOU LEAVE / UK, 2009,10 minutes (Director: James Newton)-Thoughts of their long-vanished children are never far off for several British parents whose lives seem all but consumed by overarching loss. The daunting impact of an estimated 200,000 annual disappearances in the UK is brought to scale in three gripping portraits of lives now defined by the presence of absence.

THEY ARE GIANTS / Netherlands, 2009, 13 minutes (Director: Koert Davidse)-The Bibliotheca Thurkowiana Minor is a breathtakingly beautiful old world library filled with hand-crafted leather tomes nestled in exquisite mahogany bookcases. No human has ever walked its halls, climbed its stairs, or sat at its tables because this library is no more than eight feet long and four feet high; its books no taller than your little finger.

THIS CHAIR IS NOT ME /UK, 2010, 10 minutes (Director: Andy Taylor Smith)-While cerebral palsy confines Alan Martin to a wheelchair and inhibits his speech, he refuses to limit himself. When he gains access to technology that enables him to find a voice, his life is transformed. Utilizing stunning visual vocabulary and subtle re-enactment, the film presents a cinematic experience as unique as the subject himself.

TRASH-OUT / USA, 6 minutes (Director: Maria Fortiz-Morse)-This deeply affecting and simple short shows workers cleaning out a house that has been foreclosed. What do the things left behind say about a family? What does an empty house that was once a home say? In a mere six minutes, TRASH-OUT makes a poignant statement on a timely subject.

UNEARTHING THE PEN / UK/Uganda, 2009, 12 minutes (Director: Carol Salter)- Beautifully photographed, this film poignantly tells the story of a young Ugandan boy’s desperate desire for an education in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds: most daunting is the possibility that the symbolic burying of a pen decades earlier by tribal elders has resulted in a curse on formal education.

THE VEIL / Italy, 2009, 18 minutes (Director: Mattia Colombo)-A young postulant prepares to enter the convent. Older nuns go about their quotidian routines. This intimate portrait of Franciscan sisters in a small Venetian convent reveals the vibrant lives played out beneath the subdued cloth of their vocation.

WORLD CHAMPION / Estonia, 2009, 35 minutes (Director: Moonika Siimets)-Eighty-two-year-old Herbert Sepp is a man’s man. He works out, he speaks his mind, and he knows what he wants in life: a world masters title in pole vaulting.

Tags: Andre Dahlman, Corner Plot, Docs In Progress, documentary, Doug Block, film festival, Freakonomics, Frederick Wiseman, Good Pitch, Holy Wars, Ian Cook, My Perestroika, On Coal River, Peer Pitch, Robin Hessman, Silverdocs, The Arrivals, The D-Word, The Kids Grow Up
Posted in Docs In Progress Events and Activities, Festivals | 1 Comment »

Another dispatch from Full Frame

April 11th, 2010

With a little more time to reflect, I can now write about some of the films I saw at Full Frame:

I would have enjoyed The Invention of Dr. Nakamats and Life Extended more if they had not been paired together. Though they share some thematic elements and both hail from Scandinavia’s treasure trove of documentary filmmaking, each one is an hour long. The former follows one of Japan’s most prolific inventors (with more than three times the patents of Thomas Edison). Like Edison, Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu is also an amazing self-promoter, always on to the next untapped need of society for product, and has even perfected his own diet and sleep pattern which he insists will make him live to be a healthy 144. While the film could perhaps be viewed as being a bit condescending towards Japanese culture and in particular its penchant for odd products, I found that it humanized the inventor’s personality in a way which transcended place. Plus it was one of the few laugh-out-loud films I saw at the whole festival. Life Extended, on the other hand, was a much more serious film about the human desire to live forever. The style reminded me very much of last year’s Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies — mixing very stylized visuals with what is basically a talkumentary. An interesting film but could not be as well appreciated because of its length following another hour-long film. The irony was I found a little voice in my head hoping the film would not live forever but would soon die a quick death — if only to spare me from chair fatigue (or Dr. Nakamatsu needs to invent some way we can float in a theater while watching the film).

My Perestroika was probably one of my favorite films of the festival simply because it took me into a world I did not realize I had always wanted to know about (if that even makes sense). The film follows a group of Russians who came of age against the backdrop of the fall of the Soviet Union. With amazing archival images gathered from subjects and Russian archives, the film is really a story of a generation lost between the false dreams of Soviet communism and the post-communist era. And yet, even as the film explores their stories against the larger turns of history, it also explores the mundanities of their lives. So it manages to both capture universal themes of growing up and what it was like to live during a certain era. As someone of approximately the same generation as the subjects, the film also held a special meaning. I recall being in junior high school and already questioning why we considered the Russians our enemies, wanting to know as much as I could about their daily lives. I even wanted to transfer into the one county high school which taught Russian (though ended up studying the then-more common Spanish and German). Now, nearly three decades later, I feel I have finally learned something about the daily lives of Russians of that time. And wondering about the children of these kindred children and where their personal and national history will take them. Anyway, a long digression but one which made me realize the power of this film.

I must admit that I am maxed out on films on more contemporary international events, especially on Iraq or Afghanistan. There were several at the festival and I made an exception to see The Oath which I had heard good buzz about from Sundance. The film looks at two brothers-in-law who have loose (or perhaps not so loose) connections to Osama Bin Laden. One ends up in Guantanamo Bay and is a character expressed through his letters and the words of his U.S. military defense team. The other returns to Yemen where he makes a living as a taxi driver. The one in Yemen is by far the more interesting character, full of contradictions which are well-developed by the filmmaker, Laura Poitras. As with her previous film My Country, My Country, The Oath is an example of a filmmaker trying to explore large and complex issues of our post-9/11 world by focusing her lens narrowly on one or two characters who help reveal those complexities. Not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. And amazing that an American filmmaker could get this kind of access and create a film which provides a degree of humanity to both those sympathetic to Bin Laden’s cause and to current U.S. military operations. Whatever we may think of either, the film lets them both be expressed, warts and all and leaves the audience to draw its own conclusions.

12th and Delaware was aimed at doing the same thing, around the abortion debate in the United States. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady applied a similar approach of filmmaking as they did with their previous film Jesus Camp. They chose a microcosm of a movement to explore deeper political rifts in American society. In this case, it was the corner of a street in coastal Florida where an abortion clinic meets not only with street protesters but a pro-life women’s health clinic on the opposite corner. The filmmakers succeed in taking us inside both clinics and to the street and gain unique access not only to the clinic owners and the protesters, but also to some of the women and girls who come through the doors of these clinics and are facing unwanted pregnancies. While this access makes the film incredible, what was more lacking in the film compared with Jesus Camp was a deeper sense of those on either side of the divide. It was hard to humanize either side when we went no further with them than their clinics or the street to see who they are in their daily lives. Still I expect this film will be a big hit at festivals and theatrical this year and only hope that those on both sides of this issue take the time to see it and use it for a point of discussion and debate rather than making assumptions about it. Wishful thinking, I suppose, but time will tell.
Well, with all these heavy issue docs, it was definitely time for something a bit more personal. Usually I can only take one personal documentary at a time because they take longer to reflect on. I managed three in one day: The Kids Grow Up, In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee, and The Edge of Dreaming. Personal films take a bit more time for me to reflect on, so I will save my final blog entry for those.

I also saw as many shorts as I could, all of which I enjoyed - particularly Photograph of Jesus, Notes on the Other, and Book of Miri. Probably the one which inspired the most debate was Born Sweet, Cynthia Wade’s latest film about villages in Cambodia which were victims of arsenic poisoning caused by international organizations’ digging wells for clean drinking water, not realizing that the wells would contain the poison. The debate mostly surrounded the film’s treatment of one of the organizations which has dug new wells and is engaged in a campaign (via popular karaoke) to educate villagers about the correct wells to drink from, and whether the film was truly a documentary or an advocacy piece for that organization.

If I have any criticism, it is that Full Frame should provide at least one (if not two) traveling audience microphones for the Q&As. In none of the venues was it possible to hear the questions and, although most of the filmmakers were adept at repeating the questions for the rest of the audience, sometimes there would be an audience member who wanted to present more of a comment or long drawn-out question and these were difficult to sit through without hearing.

And of course one can always bemoan the fact that Full Frame shows almost all of its films only once. While understandably in a four day event, this allows the festival to program more films, it also made it difficult to build buzz for a film from those who had already seen it. There were a number of films I regrettably missed either because they were programmed against something else I wanted to see or I only discovered them through word of mouth. Indeed Full Frame does show the award winners again, but I am unbelievably all docced out…at least until Silverdocs.

Tags: 12th & Delaware, documentary, Full Frame Film Festival, Invention of Dr. Nakamats, Life Extended, My Perestroika, The Oath
Posted in Festivals, Film Reviews | No Comments »

Full Frame: Day Two (or at least Day 1 1/2)

April 10th, 2010

OK, not sure why I committed myself to trying to blog every day at the festival. It is near imposible when sleep is short and time is focused on films and filmmakers. And for me at least, film reviews need some distance of time to digest and reflect. But I will at least write a few paragraphs even if they don’t fully encapsulate the day quite yet.

Day Two of Full Frame started off with breakfast with D-Word Community members. Founded by Doug Block back near the turn of the century as an online community for documentary filmmakers, D-Word now has thousands of members from around the world who converse in a virtual forum about numerous topics related (and indeed often unrelated) to documentary film. Block continues to co-host the community while at the same time making his own films. He actually has two in the festival — one he directed called The Kids Grow Up and one he produced (and directed by Amy Hardie) called The Edge of Dreaming will be screening on Saturday. But it’s still Friday and only 8:30 am - not primetime for most documentary filmmakers. Still about ten D-Worders show up for the breakfast and a chance to expand the virtual community into a real one, a mainstay of most documentary festivals. There would be other D-Worder sightings during the festival, including the occasional realization that there are as many lurkers as there are active posters to the online forum…a reminder that one’s reputation often precedes oneself.

Following the enthusiastic morning conversation, I decided to continue hearing some talk for a while, so went to one of Full Frame’s panel discussions, this one called State of the Doc Part I. The panel was moderated by Michelle Byrd, the former Executive Director of IFP and featured a mix of filmmakers (Rick Goldsmith, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers and Gita Pullapilly, The Way We Get By) and industry (Christopher Horton from Cinetic Rights Management, Dylan Marchetti from Variance Films, and Molly Thompson from A&E IndieFilms). So what is the state of the doc exactly? Well, as is common on these panels, it’s anybody’s guess. Goldsmith represented an older (but not necessarily deader) model of distribution but still noted that there is “no normal” for documentary with every film having its own path to success. Pullapilly represented a newer model for distribution and felt that the reality was that films had to be seen as products as well as films, making a business plan essential.

In the case of Goldsmith’s film, he split up the rights with different entities handling U.S. theatrical, U.S. broadcast, international sales, and the educational market. He also saw the importance of knowing one’s audience — in his case, the theatrical and broadcast run would probably be watched primarily by Baby Boomers who have living memories of the Vietnam eria. But he also noted that a film like his would have a healthy educational audience and noted that New Day Films, a distribution cooperative to which he belongs, is one of the few educational distributors which has not seen the same downward trend in educational pricing as other more traditional educational distributors.

In the case of Pullapilly’s film, grassroots outreach was essential and the film relied greatly on word of mouth through social networking as well as the buzz from festival screenings. As is common with many first time documentary filmmakers, Pullapilly and director Aron Gaudet had difficulty raising much in the way of funds until they got to post-production. Getting P.O.V. on board was an important step but what really made a difference was relying on the film’s location of Maine as a place for some unexpected additional support. Most crucially were funds from a Maine-based bank to pay for the cost of negatives and film prints so the film could be shown at theaters around Maine — and eventually at theaters nationwide. While the film benefitted by some great press from the New York Times and Washington Post, Pulapilly admitted it was important to know your audiences and how best to reach them. She gave the example that, in trying to reach military family communities who would be a natural audience for the film, they arranged for screenings at theaters on or close to military bases. Yet they discovered that these theaters did not sell as well because families with children rarely went to the movie theater for anything other than children’s films. That said, these audiences were among the first to be requesting the film through Netflix.

I also saw three films but will write about them more in my next blog entry. Need some more time to digest…

Posted in Distribution, Festivals | 1 Comment »

Erica’s Dispatch from Full Frame: Day One

April 9th, 2010

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Full Frame in Durham, North Carolina. America’s first all-documentary festival, Full Frame is now entering its 13th year. As in the past, it draws documentary industry from across the United States, as well as a healthy number of locals from the Research Triangle area who appreciate documentary film. This is my fourth time at the festival in the past 10 years and I must say that Full Frame continues to be one of my favorite film festivals for the fact that, as it grows larger, it remains true to its small-town spirit.

Which is not to say that it has not experienced some growing pains. Pass and ticket sales this year were brisk. With passholders this year having the option of reserving all their tickets at one time instead of the day-of, lines were long at the registration room upon my arrival at the festival. So long that I decided to opt for the last-minute line for a film I wanted to see within 30 minutes of arriving at the festival. This decision allowed me to get in to that film, but also meant that when I went back 2 hours later to the registration room where the crowds had died down, I also discovered that tickets to the Opening Night film had all been allocated (in spite of the fact that passholders were supposed to be guaranteed a seat at the film). This meant a long and uncertain wait in the last-minute line for Opening Night. Thankfully I got in. Still the slight logistical issues paled by comparison to Sundance where earlier this year I noticed that many people who had purchased tickets in advance (tickets, mind you - not passes) were shut out of screenings even though they arrived in line long before the recommended time.

In spite of this little kerfuffle, Full Frame still remains a destination festival which I would recommend to all the emerging filmmakers who come through the doors of Docs in Progress (especially since it is an easy 1 hour flight or 5 hour drive south of Washington DC). It is a relaxing environment - one in which you can schmooze with some industry, but have time with other filmmakers and get to see other films. The weather is relatively pleasant (though sometimes prone to humidity, rain, or — this year, high pollen counts, not that much different from unpredictable springtime Washington where we have already had a taste of swampy summer). Plus the venues are all within a walkable zone. There are plenty of places to mix and mingle with other filmmakers and industry since the festival has its own cafe and an outdoor area for lunch. But most of all, people seem relaxed. First time filmmakers can easily mix with funders, distributors, and some of the top names in American documentary.

Speaking of which, the Opening Night film happened to be Kings of Pastry by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker. While it was not their strongest film ever (if you were to compare it to documentary classics like Startup.com or The War Room), this film about French pastry chefs competing for master honors was certainly a crowd-pleaser and therefore appropriate to kick off the first night of the festival. In fact though, there were a number of other screenings during the day on Thursday and I managed to catch two.

Last Train Home

, which has been wowing festival audiences since it premiered at IDFA in 2009, is an excellent example of a documentary which manages to capture a macrocosm and microcosm in one. Lixin Fan’s film explores one of the unexpected consequences of our global economy - the fact that more than 130 million Chinese workers leave their rural towns and villages for industrialized cities to work in factories producing goods for the international market. Every New Year’s, these workers become part of the world’s largest mass migration when they return to their homes. The film captures incredible images of the throngs at the train station, attempting to make it on to one of the few trains which may carry them on a 2-3 day journey back home to spend it with the families they left behind — very often elders who are raising the workers’ children. This could easily have become a film with incredible images which speak to the size of the world’s most populous countries, the images becoming so overwhelming that they could become dehumanizing, the filmmaker chose to focus on one family who makes this migration over the course of three years. With intimate access, Fan is able to capture how the decision to work far from home has a direct impact on family relationships and particularly that between two migrant parents and their teenage daughter whose normal teen angst is exacerbated by the separation and her own experiences leaving school to work in the same town as her parents.

I also saw Generation Exile which also looks at the hidden consequences of adult choices on children. Directed by Rodrigo Dorfman (son of the noted Chilean author and exile Ariel Dorfman), the film examines the experience of the younger Dorfman’s exile identity from childhood until his own parenthood. With this story as the skeleton of the film, Generation Exile also weaves in the stories of other exiled children — not all of them political exiles. While the film goes a bit too much into Sufi mysticism for my tastes, this was also an important part of Dorfman’s journey. While there were lots of interesting visual and aural elements in the film –archival materials, typewriter sounds, a piano piece from one of the film’s subjects, mystical quotations, and a repeated image of nails being driven into the picture of Chilean dictator Pinochet — they felt at times like they brought too much attention to themselves and detracted from the story of the film. Dorfman admitted himself at the screening that he would probably continue to explore this theme of exile in future films — whether fiction or nonfiction — so time will tell whether this film is more of a promise of what is to come than a fully realized standalone piece.

And that was just Day One. More reports from Full Frame to come…

Tags: documentary. film festival, Full Frame, Generation Exile, Kings of Pastry, Last Train Home
Posted in Festivals | No Comments »

Radcliff’s Reviews: Sweetgrass

March 17th, 2010

Our resident critic, Matthew Radcliff is back with a new review. Radcliff from Paignton Pictures, who updates the Documentary Round-Up list of docs screening around the DC area, provides occasional reviews of documentaries you should know about. This time around it’s Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaign-Taylor’s Sweetgrass. The film will be playing at the AFI Silver on March 20 at 3pm as part of the Environmental Film Festival. It opens for a limited theatrical run at Landmark’s E Street theater on May 21.

The opening shots of wind-blown snow and rusted-out cars, accompanied by the sound of clanging bells, gives way to close-ups of sheep chewing and pushing each other to get to the food pellets. Then one sheep looks into the camera and as if she can sense the audience staring at her, she stiffens with fright. The rest of this amazing documentary will feature these sheep as a backdrop on which the filmmakers paint a portrait of a fading tradition, where ranching families drive their sheep herds into the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains to graze on the federally owned lands that they have rented for generations. The Allested family is one of the last to continue the tradition, driving their sheep around 150 miles each summer after shearing and lambing season.

We are privileged to enter the shearing sheds and experience the speed at which the shearers work, and see in close up how they remove the wool in one piece without harming the animal. The lambing process is never perfect, and the filmmakers show us the efforts made to get ewe’s to adopt lambs that are not their own. At one moment of rest, we are treated to a shepherd’s cowboy joke.

As the Allesteds and their hired hands drive the sheep through town, and up into the mountains, we see some really spectacular vistas. [Author's Note: I lived in Montana for a spell, and have been to the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, which are as spectacular as this film paints them.] Along the way, we also feel the beautiful and terrifying kind of claustrophobia induced by trees and fog obscuring your visibility. The entire family, with children, too, comes along for a portion of the drive. Each has their own sheepdog as they try to keep the herd together through the forested hillsides.

While the scenery is breathtaking, with white specks of sheep dotting the hillsides, the real focus of the film is on the humans behind the sheep. Two shepherds spend the summer out on the grazing lands, keeping the flock together and keeping them moving to new pastures. A young buck as well as a grizzled veteran, who is prone to catching catnaps with his hat pulled low over his eyes. Together they keep an eye out for beers and wolves, spend their time chasing after the sheep, and rarely seem to even notice the spectacular landscapes. After one particular ear-bending, profanity-laden plea (seriously, be forewarned about the language) for the sheep to stay together, the younger shepherd calls his mother from the mountain top and breaks down into tears. Even his dog, he says, doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

At the end of the summer, they drive the sheep down the mountain, through the town, and back to the ranch. The old hired hand, when asked what he will do now that his job is finished, just shakes his head and chuckles. One wonders how long he can continue to make the trek, but at the same time, it is all too clear that the job will disappear before he does. The filmmakers, both highly-regarded visual anthropologists, have produced a lasting document of this dying tradition.

Tags: AFI Silver, documentary review, Environmental Film Festival, Landmark's E Street, Matthew Radcliff, Sweetgrass
Posted in Film Reviews | No Comments »

Pages

Archives

Categories

Blogroll