Category Archives: In Brief

Last week, I was happy to travel back to Texas for the second time in two months to serve on the Target Documentary Feature Competition Jury for the 5th annual Dallas International Film Festival. Rare for most festivals, it was a two-person jury, with Rhino Films head Stephen Nemeth (producer of DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, FLOW, FUEL, CLIMATE REFUGEES) as my co-juror. Luckily, our opinions largely lined up, making jury deliberation a painless affair, and resulting in a special jury prize for Joseph Mantegna’s NORMAN MAILER: THE AMERICAN and the grand jury prize for Anne Buford’s ELEVATE (pictured).

As I’ve done recently for other festivals I’ve attended, what follows are my brief thoughts about the seven films in the competition. I should note that these are my personal views and are not meant to represent my fellow juror’s opinions.

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In this second of two post-SXSW entries, I’m offering some thoughts on docs that screened outside of the main competition, including the Spotlight Premieres, Emerging Visions, 24 Beats Per Second, and SX Global sections. Take a look at part one, on the eight competition titles, here.

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I’m back from Austin TX and another year of SXSW film, which actually continues through this Saturday night. Awards were announced on Tuesday evening, with DRAGONSLAYER (pictured) being the big doc winner with two nods. Other non-fiction features recognized included KUMARÉ, WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, THE CITY DARK, BECOMING SANTA, and INCENDIARY: THE WILLINGHAM CASE. For a full list of winners, check out indieWIRE‘s coverage here.

As I’ve done in the past after attending other festivals, I’ll offer some brief reactions to docs which screened at SXSW – I managed to view many of the titles I was most anticipating which I wrote about in my pre-fest overview. This post will cover all eight of the world premieres in the Documentary Competition, while tomorrow’s will focus on a selection of offerings from other sections.

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