Beginning today, Friday, August 29, and running through Monday, September 1, the 41st edition of the Telluride Film Festival offering attendees their first look at what are typically among the upcoming Awards season contenders, many of them heading to Toronto next week, and to the New York Film Festival at the end of next month. Continuing the festival’s tradition of surprise and anticipation, the line-up for this year’s edition was not announced until yesterday, with a full list and descriptions available through their program guide. Below, I present a brief rundown of some of the nonfiction selections this year, by my count numbering 19 feature documentaries.
Seven of these appear in the main program, Show, including Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE LOOK OF SILENCE (pictured), a follow-up to his controversial THE ACT OF KILLING; Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s THE 50 YEAR ARGUMENT, on the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS; Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro’s THE SALT OF THE EARTH, a portrait of Ribiero’s acclaimed photographer father; Robert Kenner’s MERCHANTS OF DOUBT, a look at industry-bankrolled anti-science “experts;” Gabe Polsky’s RED ARMY, on the national importance of the Soviet Union’s hockey team; Vanessa Lapa’s THE DECENT ONE, a portrait of SS head Heinrich Himmler; and Nick Broomfield’s TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER, an investigation into the case of a Los Angeles serial killer.
Nine additional doc features appear in Backlot, dedicated to films about filmmakers and artists. Among these are: Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht’s HOW TO SMELL A ROSE (pictured), a posthumous profile of both Blank and Ricky Leacock; Ethan Hawke’s SEYMOUR, a portrait of a New York piano teacher; Gunilla Bresky’s I STOP TIME, about a largely unknown WWII-era Soviet DP; Chuck Workman’s MAGICIAN, a portrait of Orson Welles; and Peter von Bagh’s SOCIALISM, a movie clip-based history of socialism in the 20th century.
Finally, the festival offers two retrospective works of nonfiction this year – George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr’s 1991 HEARTS OF DARKNESS, on the making of APOCALYPSE NOW, and Volker Sclöndorff’s BILLY, HOW DID YOU DO IT? (pictured), a series of interviews with Billy Wilder for German television.
what (not) to doc 