Category Archives: Overviews

The US’s largest documentary event, Silverdocs, has announced the lineup for its ninth edition, running June 20-26 in Silver Spring MD. I’ve never been able to attend the event in the past due to scheduling conflicts, but I’m excited to be going this year as one of several guest curators of a handful of panels at the Conference that runs concurrent with the film screenings.

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I’ve been meaning to post on Sheffield Doc/Fest for about a week or so now, but have kept on being distracted. Sadly, I won’t be attending, so perhaps that’s added to the delay. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go to my first Doc/Fest next year – we’ll see.

In any case, I’ve been jealous of those who have been able to partake in this festival for many years. Until this year, the event has been firmly placed in the Fall’s doc fest cluster, together with CPH:Dox and IDFA, as well as newcomer DOC NYC, making it pretty difficult for me to attend given that it’s prime Sundance screening time. With this edition, Sheffield has made the move to June, holding this year’s festival a remarkable scant seven months since the last edition. Kudos to the festival’s team, especially Festival Director Heather Croall and Programmer Hussain Currimbhoy, on putting together a comprehensive program in such a tight time frame.

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I have been horribly remiss in preparing this post previewing the titles in Hot Docs’ lineup that I’m looking forward to checking out. So remiss, in fact, that this “preview” will actually be posted on the third day of the festival, North America’s largest documentary event. Oops. Still, as of this writing, I haven’t yet arrived in Toronto, so putting this together has helped me figure out my schedule if nothing else.

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The 10th anniversary Tribeca Film Festival begins in less than a month in New York City. The festival, founded in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has served as an effective launching pad for many films, both fiction and non-fiction.

While I was running NewFest, which took place in early June, it was difficult to find time to attend Tribeca, but in the last couple of years, I’ve regularly checked out their programming, largely focusing, unsurprisingly, on their documentary slate. At this point, I plan on watching as many films as I’m able to again this year, and this post runs down some of the docs I’m most anticipating which are part of the more than forty presented in the 2011 edition.

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The 40th edition of New Directors/New Films, a co-presentation of the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, begins this Wednesday, March 23 and runs through Sunday, April 3.

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SXSW begins this Friday. I’ve been fortunate to be able to attend the festival for the past two years – the first as a member of the Documentary Competition Jury, and the second with THE CANAL STREET MADAM premiering in that same category – and am returning for a third year, this time mostly to watch films, though I will be taking meetings with filmmakers as a programming Mentor.

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On Thursday, I’m headed to Columbia, MO for True/False, a very well-programmed and fun documentary festival that runs through the weekend. I didn’t get much of a chance to see many films during the few days I was in Berlin last month, so I’m looking forward to diving into T/F’s lineup of 40 features, largely consisting of new work, Sundance and IDFA standouts, sneak previews, a few retrospectives, and five hush-hush secret screenings that I won’t be writing about – though I will say that a secret screening from last year’s edition was one of the more haunting, thought-provoking films I saw at T/F 2010, so these are good bets, and I will be trying to check out the ones I haven’t already seen.

I’m serving as a festival “ringleader,” helping with intros/Q&As for a number of films – in addition to a handful of titles I’ve seen before, I’ll be having my first look at other docs with the audience and jump into a Q&A with their directors immediately afterward. I’ll also be covering T/F for indieWIRE again, so I’ll be sharing my thoughts on specific films as well as on the eclectic event as a whole – which adds new events like a masquerade-themed opening night reception and a s’mores-filled filmmaker campfire storytelling session alongside its traditional “March March” parade down the college town’s streets.

Among the titles I’m most eager to view are a couple that I’ve missed at previous festivals – LA BOCCA DEL LUPO, EL BULLI: COOKING IN PROGRESS – as well as new titles like AT THE EDGE OF RUSSIA, FAKE IT SO REAL, HABANA MUDA, HULA & NATAN, and SUBWAY PREACHER, and retros like THE BURGER AND THE KING.