Category Archives: Film Festivals

October 11, 2010 · 4:14 PM

On DVD: SMASH HIS CAMERA

Coming to DVD next Tuesday, October 19: SMASH HIS CAMERA

Oscar Award-winning documentary director Leon Gast (WHEN WE WERE KINGS) scored the US Directing Award for his latest film, which premiered at Sundance at the beginning of the year. Magnolia gave the film a limited theatrical release this summer.

SMASH HIS CAMERA is a portrait of Ron Galella, the master paparazzo made infamous when he was sued for harassment by Jackie Kennedy Onassis. While showcasing and celebrating Galella’s decades of celebrity photography, Gast also tackles the criticism the 79-year-old still-working photographer has amassed due to his notorious invasion of privacy. Despite the ethical quandaries that come with his profession, Galella, and the film, ultimately emerge as likeable and entertaining.

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October 8, 2010 · 3:49 PM

Full Frame Submissions Reminder

Filmmakers: The regular deadline for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is coming up next week! The postmark deadline is Friday, October 15, and the 2011 fest will take place April 14-17, so mark your calendars now.

I had the honor of serving on Full Frame’s jury in 2009 and had a wonderful time. The event, set in Durham, NC, is uniquely programmed and draws a diverse and non-fiction savvy crowd from the area’s Research Triangle, made up of NC State University, Duke, and UNC-Chapel Hill. It’s one of the premiere documentary specific festivals in the world, and well-worth submitting your work for consideration. My thoughts on the festival can be found here.

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October 7, 2010 · 12:37 PM

Dear Documentary Filmmakers: First Impressions

Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Submit artwork-free DVDs – don’t pre-dispose programmers to form opinions- it could hurt you.

Although I’m immediately thinking of film festival submissions, this DDF could easily apply to sending your film in for consideration by sales agents and distributors, at least to some extent. At the core, this advice is about the first impression your film (and you) make to those individuals who potentially may select your film to gain wider exposure.

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October 5, 2010 · 1:00 PM

On DVD: KIMJONGILIA

Coming to DVD next Tuesday, October 12: KIMJONGILIA

NC Heikin’s debut documentary had its world premiere in competition at last year’s Sundance – the project was also supported by the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program and participated in the Sundance Story & Edit Labs in 2008. After the festival, Lorber Films gave the film a limited theatrical release.

KIMJONGILIA takes an in-depth look at North Korea through the testimony of survivors of the dictatorship’s legendary prison camps who managed to escape, as well as through a stunning amount of propaganda films and other rarely-seen official footage extolling the magnificence and beneficence of Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il. The former prisoners’ stories of injustice, abuse, and famine serve as a powerful counterpoint to the lush images of a happy, prosperous country.

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October 1, 2010 · 3:02 PM

On Cable: SINS OF MY FATHER

Coming to HBO this Monday, October 4: SINS OF MY FATHER

Nicolas Entel’s portrait of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and his son has been on the festival circuit for the past year, making stops at Mar del Plata and IDFA before coming stateside at this year’s Sundance and winning both the Audience and Jury Award at the Miami Film Festival.

After the death of his father in 1993, Juan Escobar and his mother, Pablo’s widow, went into exile in Argentina, changing their names to avoid being connected to his notoriety. Entel convinces Juan, now known as Sebastián Marroquín, to discuss his father and his legacy for the first time publicly, having experienced a surprisingly different side to the man Colombia viewed as its most wanted criminal. The film effectively shows the personal conflict that the younger Escobar has gone through, paying for his father’s crimes, but seeking reconciliation with his past and expiation of his inherited guilt, culminating in a poignant meeting arranged between the sons of two of his father’s most prominent victims and himself.

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September 30, 2010 · 12:05 PM

DOC NYC: Initial Line-Up

The newest documentary festival on the block, Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen’s DOC NYC, has announced the first half of its line-up. The pair, who are also behind the Stranger Than Fiction series, have expanded their initial plans for the inaugural event by a couple of days, giving New Yorkers more of a chance to check out their offerings.

Of the 18 titles released today, half just screened earlier this month at Toronto – fittingly, of course, since Powers is that festival’s doc programmer. These include the event’s two Galas, Werner Herzog’s CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS and Errol Morris’ TABLOID – I’ve seen and enjoyed CAVE and am very much looking forward to TABLOID.

The two competitions – Viewfinders, focused on established and emerging filmmakers, and Metropolis, focused on NYC based films – sound like a diverse group of films. I’ve already written about my admiration for ARMADILLO and SOUND OF MUMBAI, and the other TIFF titles (here and here), but can also highly recommend both KATI WITH AN I and THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MCKINLEY NOLAN.

The first DOC NYC runs November 3-9.

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September 28, 2010 · 1:31 PM

Special Screening: AMERICAN SPLENDOR

Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction next Tuesday, October 5: AMERICAN SPLENDOR

STF pays tribute to underground comic book artist Harvey Pekar, who died this summer, with a special screening of this narrative/documentary hybrid by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, an adaptation of his long-running comic series. Premiering at Sundance in 2003, the film claimed the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and went on to screen at scores of additional festivals, winning prizes at Cannes, and numerous guild and critics’ nods after its theatrical release.

Drama/doc hybrids are often awkward creatures – neither fish nor fowl, they at times miss the mark when considered as examples of either form, or emerge as interesting experiments but ultimately unsatisfying. Luckily, however, AMERICAN SPLENDOR just works. It might be because of the nature of the already explicitly autobiographical source material – it’s not a far stretch to accept the real-life Pekar breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience as a narrator or Greek chorus commenting on the sequences enacted by Paul Giamatti. I wouldn’t want to see a lot of imitators attempting to copy this formula though – it does seem very specific to this project, and it does frankly lean more towards narrative than documentary in the end. Still, despite being an unusual choice for STF, it’s definitely an appropriate one, and I’ll be curious to hear how a documentary-specific audience responds to the film in this context.

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September 24, 2010 · 3:29 PM

On Cable: TEENAGE PAPARAZZO

Coming to HBO this Monday, September 27: TEENAGE PAPARAZZO

Adrian Grenier’s film (his second doc following SHOT IN THE DARK) premiered at this year’s Sundance before being acquired by HBO, whose ENTOURAGE helped turned Grenier into a household name.

Focused on the young star’s unusual relationship with Austin, a 14-year-old celebrity photographer who he turns the tables on to document instead, TEENAGE PAPARAZZO becomes a surprisingly intimate and intricate exploration of celebrity, media, and the symbiotic/parastic connection which exists between them. Initially intrigued by Austin’s youth to explore the role of the paparazzi, Grenier expands his project further to question the nature of fame and his own influence on his young subject, leading to thought-provoking role-reversals, revealing as much about himself as it does about his young friend.

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September 22, 2010 · 3:02 PM

On DVD: THE OATH

Coming to DVD next Friday, September 28: THE OATH

My thoughts on Laura Poitras’ powerful Sundance alum are here.

For information on the DVD release, visit the film’s distributor, Zeitgeist FIlms.

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September 21, 2010 · 3:38 PM

Toronto 2010: Docs in Brief, Part 2

Here’s the second of two posts with my brief considerations of the documentaries I watched at TIFF last week (for part one, covering ANPO, COOL IT, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, and ARMADILLO, click here): Continue reading →

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