Hot Docs opened last night, and I’ll be on my way to Toronto tomorrow to cover the largest documentary event in North America for indieWIRE. If you can’t join me there, my latest curated Hulu documentaries for iW offers a selection of past entries at the festival. View all of these docs for free now!
For more information about the selections, see my iW article.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Indiewire @ Hulu Docs, Recommendations
Now on DVD: STONEWALL UPRISING
SOUTHERN COMFORT’s Kate Davis and her WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON directing partner David Heilbroner premiered their in-depth look at Stonewall at last year’s Frameline in San Francisco. It screened on PBS’ AMERICAN EXPERIENCE series, who has also released the documentary on DVD.
Using archival material, and, most-affectingly, first-person accounts from Stonewall veterans and other participants and observers, including an NYPD officer who was involved in the raid and a Village Voice journalist who was present and covered the event, STONEWALL UPRISING is a comprehensive account of the June 1969 raid on NYC’s Stonewall Bar and the riots that resulted that unexpectedly sparked the beginnings of the LGBT movement in the US and around the world. Given the access that Davis and Heilbroner have, the film offers new perspectives even to those viewers who already feel they know the story, and is must-see for those who are unfamiliar with this pivotal part of modern history.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Now playing at NYC’s IFC Center through next Thursday, May 5: BEAUTIFUL DARLING
James Rasin’s documentary on the Warhol Superstar premiered at last year’s Berlinale before going on to screen at New Directors/New Films and a number of other festivals. The film opened theatrically at the IFC Center last week, where it has been held over, and has a number of additional engagements coming up in May, June, and July, from Los Angeles and Washington DC to San Francisco and Atlanta, among others.
The rare subcultural star to crossover into the mainstream consciousness, trans Warhol Superstar Candy Darling was an inspiration to Lou Reed, Tennessee Williams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon, and Cecil Beaton, appearing in films, plays, and photographs in the late 1960s and early 1970s before leukemia cut her life short in 1974. In the moving BEAUTIFUL DARLING, director Rasin and producer and longtime friend Jeremiah Newton have assembled a treasure trove of archival material and interviews to tell the fascinating story of Darling’s life on the wild side while simultaneously capturing both her humanity and a palpable sense of the long-gone NYC milieu in which she lived.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
The filmmakers behind SMALL TOWN GAY BAR, BEAR NATION and FAT GIRLS turn their attention to the Continental Baths, which catered to NYC’s gay men in the aftermath of Stonewall.
The Continental Baths were a sign of newly won freedom and visibility, while at the same time a respite from continued homophobia and discrimination. They existed in the too-brief moment between Stonewall and AIDS, a time of hedonism but also of the embrace of gayness as a political and personal identity, alongside but not exclusively a sexual one. The Continental was part of this celebration, and is famous as the site of performances by now legendary gay-friendly performers like Bette Midler, known by some as “Bathhouse Betty,” who launched her career there. Director Malcolm Ingram and producer Ash Christian promise to explore the importance of this gay cultural landmark via archival and new material.
Filed under Documentary, Film, In the Works
Out on DVD today, Tuesday April 26: LUCKY
Jeffrey Blitz’s lottery documentary premiered at Sundance last year – his second film there following 2007’s Narrative Director Award winner ROCKET SCIENCE. Of course, his acclaimed first doc, SPELLBOUND, premiered at SXSW in 2002 before its acquisition and successful theatrical run.
In LUCKY, Blitz looks at lottery winners, and on the effect the jackpot has on their lives. Focusing on a number of stories – from a curmudgeon who can’t hold on to this winnings, to an immigrant who joined his co-workers in playing the lucky numbers – look at both the good and bad sides of suddenly coming into wealth. While the subjects may not have the natural charm of Blitz’s spelling bee participants, they are diverse and engaging. More could have been done to explore more extreme personalities such as lottery addicts who are briefly addressed, but the film still offers access to a life-altering situation that statistically very few individuals will ever directly experience – no matter how often they purchase a lottery ticket.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres this Friday, April 29: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
I previously wrote about the incomparable Werner Herzog’s 3-D doc on the Chauvet caves as part of my initial roundup of Toronto docs. Take a look here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
My latest blog post for IFP’s “Ask the Expert” series is up now. This month, I offer my thoughts on how to deal with the film festival circuit after your film’s first screening. Take a look here.
Update: The original post seems to have gone missing from IFP’s site, so I’ve posted the article below.
Dear Filmmakers:
My most recent posts have focused on your film’s festival premiere. This time around, let’s move past your first festival and consider how to deal with the festival circuit beyond.
As mentioned previously, often by being included in that first festival, your film will be noticed by other festivals, leading to invitations to screen (if the other fests’ programmers are in attendance and like the film) or at the very least to submit for consideration (if they couldn’t attend your screenings or the festival itself). This is especially the case if your premiere took place at a high-profile festival like Cannes, Toronto, or Sundance. These events engender a lot of attention from other festivals, and much of their lineups become the wishlist for these other festivals’ own programming. This is also very much the case with niche festivals – part of the challenge of programming an LGBT or Latino/a festival is doing the detective work of finding work that fits the festival’s niche. A niche programmer for a festival in Chicago can look at the lineup for a similar niche festival in NYC or LA that takes place nine months before her own festival and safely assume that the work featured would be appropriate for her festival as well, and invite most of the films to submit. When I ran NewFest: The NY LGBT Film Festival, our sourcelist was regularly requested by other LGBT festivals around the world, and I combed through theirs as well on the hunt for work I wasn’t aware of.
If you are directly contacted by other festivals to submit to their event based on your inclusion in the lineup of your premiere festival, they should, at the very least, offer to waive their submission fee. If they don’t, I would recommend you respond to their inquiry and ask to have the fee waived. This is fairly standard practice, and, as you should know by now, every dollar saved helps.
Before deciding to submit, make sure you take a look at the festival’s website, and, ideally, their past lineups if an archive is available. While I’d venture that most festivals would, at minimum, read the description of your film that your premiere festival used, some may not – instead, they may just blanket invite all films from that premiere festival to submit to their own event, and not all the films will necessarily be appropriate. If it strikes you as odd that you’re being asked to submit your ultra-realist kitchen sink drama to a sci-fi genre festival, you should feel free to respond to their inquiry, briefly clarify what your film is, and question why they think it’s appropriate for their own event. Even if they’ve waived the fee, you would still be spending money on postage, and if there’s virtually no chance that your film would be selected, why bother putting another DVD out there?
Also, as I wrote about in my first post for IFP back in August, before you submit to any festivals, you should consult the database of film festivals you and/or your team have put together. This database should reflect festivals with specialized audiences/interests (ie, niche constituencies that are central to your film, such as African-Americans, women, Christians, Southerners, shorts fests, comedy fests, etc), festivals in target cities that you would especially like to have a presence, and major and minor festivals that could generate significant industry or press interest, etc. Add the festivals inviting you to submit or to screen into your database, and see how they do or don’t fit in with other plans. For example, if you are being wooed by a grassroots LA-based women’s film festival that takes place in March, but you have aspirations to play LA’s Outfest in July, you probably want to think hard about whether screening at the former will preclude you from screening at the latter due to local premiere issues.
Some festivals care about premieres, and others don’t. Much could be written about the fight for film premieres at various levels (world, international, national, regional, and local), and how in some cases, it can force a filmmaker into having to make really difficult decisions. Often, but not always, smaller and niche fests don’t really care about premieres, or aren’t really in a position to be able to enforce premiere restrictions. They are happy to screen the films that they like, that fit their niche-based mission, even if another festival in their same city screened some of the same films a few months ago. Sure, they would love to have the local premieres, but as long as they think they can get an audience for your film, they will generally be flexible. On the other hand, many larger festivals, or mid-sized festivals with grander ambitions, will insist on at least having local premieres (usually the bigger the festival is, the higher level of premiere they will insist upon). One factor here is managing the films that festival can consider – if a larger festival has 40 slots, stipulating that they must have world premieres for those slots might mean receiving 1200 submissions instead of 2400.
All this talk about premieres boils down to you being strategic about where to submit and where to screen your film. If you really want to screen in NYC, there are scores of festivals or film series to consider. You can submit to all of them if you have those funds, but be careful when it comes to where you agree to show. If you are accepted to a smaller festival in February but really want to screen in April in Tribeca, you’re going to have to weigh the likelihood of getting into the larger festival or not. You should notify Tribeca about your selection, but they are not necessarily going to tell you early that you’ll be accepted or rejected. If they feel strongly about your film, they may, but they may also not be ready to extend you a definite slot.
I’ll continue my thoughts about how you should navigate the festival circuit after your premiere in my post next month.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and co-produced the feature documentary “The Canal Street Madam.” Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and read his “Dear Documentary Filmmakers” advice at WhatNotToDoc.com.
Filed under Film, Film Festivals
Opening in NYC for an exclusive two-week run at the Film Forum next Wednesday, April 27: THE ARBOR
Clio Barnard picked up the Best New Documentary Filmmaker award at last year’s Tribeca and additional awards at the BFI London Film Festival and Sheffield for her unique hybrid doc about the British playwright Andrea Dunbar and her daughter. I wrote about the film in my coverage of True/False for indieWIRE last month, saying:
The artifice is immediately apparent in the deeply affecting THE ARBOR – the film’s opening explains that actors lipsynch actual documentary recordings throughout the film. During the Q&A, Barnard explained that this innovative technique was inspired by a play that incorporated the verbatim interviews of residents of the titular housing project where her subjects, playwright Andrea Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine, lived. This practice, together with staged re-enactments from Dunbar’s writing, serves to distance the viewer and highlight rather than elide the manipulations that go into non-fiction filmmaking.
Note: Barnard will be present for a Q&A after the Friday, May 6 8PM screening. The 1987 comedy written by Andrea Dunbar, RITA, SUE AND BOB TOO!, will screen at 6PM on April 30-May 1 and May 7-8.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
First-time feature directors Heidi Burkey and Tim Larson go behind the scenes of a musical stage version of one of the most influential stories in 20th Century popular culture, enacted by 6th and 7th graders.
That story, of course, is STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, as realized by Anaheim CA’s Arts & Learning Children’s Conservatory. Their version is a musical parody, and the cast is populated by a diverse cross-section of tweens and early teens. As noted in one of the teaser trailers for the film, these early teenage years are a particularly challenging time, as the former little boys and girls deal with growing up and forming more distinct identities, developing more serious interests, and dating. Examining these kids’ stories against the backdrop of George Lucas’ space opera, Burkey and Larson promise to provide a unique way of looking at the challenges of adolescence.
Filed under Documentary, Film, In the Works
Coming to theatres this Friday, April 22: POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD
Merry prankster/provocateur with a movie camera Morgan Spurlock self-reflexively sells out his newest film. Read my preview post from Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
