Category Archives: Sundance

Opening this Wednesday, September 15: GASLAND

Josh Fox’s debut documentary premiered in competition at Sundance this year, where it picked up a special jury prize.

In this intimate personal documentary, Fox functions not only as the filmmaker but as the film’s guide, exploring the natural gas industry after he is offered a large sum of money to lease his property to drill for the reserves far beneath it. Focusing on a recently discovered large expanse of natural gas, the Marcellus Shale, Fox visits numerous land owners in his same position across more than 30 states to witness flammable drinking water, toxic streams, increased incidents of diseases, and animal deaths. The film is a well-made analysis of the risks and benefits associated with exploiting natural resources, and the short-sightedness that’s already created huge problems for families and communities swayed by the promise of immediate payoffs.

Opening next Wednesday, September 15: CATFISH

Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman’s debut film was the talk of Sundance this year, with many immediately questioning whether the film was in fact actually wholly a documentary.

It’s hard to say much about CATFISH (whose title I frankly don’t care for, explained incredibly late in the film, but I suppose it adds to the film’s mystique) without spoiling it, so I’m going to go as far as the festival catalogue description did: The film’s charismatic semi-nerdy protag, Nev, a photographer, becomes involved in a long-distance online relationship with Megan, the attractive sister of an eight-year-old painting prodigy, Abby, who had contacted him via MySpace to ask if she could paint one of his photographs. But when Nev and his friends head out to rural Michigan to visit the family in person for the first time, they discover that not everything they knew about the sisters is exactly as it seems.

While I worry that the film has been overhyped, I definitely enjoyed the experience of watching it, and am very curious to see how larger audiences will respond to Rogue’s release.

Being released on DVD September 14: CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY

Prolific Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney’s at times jaw-dropping exposé on top Washington DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff premiered at Sundance this year before being released theatrically by Magnolia in May. Abramoff’s story has inspired a fictionalized version, titled simply CASINO JACK, directed by George Hickenlooper and starring Kevin Spacey, which premieres in Toronto next week.

The ambitious Abramoff took advantage of his political influence to bribe politicians and bilk Native American tribes out of millions in an outrageous scheme to establish a gambling empire. When he’s tripped up by his own emails, the scandal takes down White House officials, Congressmen, and fellow lobbyists, among others. It’s a tale of greed, corruption, and hubris that reaches almost Shakespearean proportions, made even more shocking and enraging because it’s all true, and Gibney succeeds in making it a thoroughly compelling viewing experience.

Opening this Friday, September 3: LAST TRAIN HOME

Documentary programmers, press, and industryites attending IDFA last Fall were abuzz after viewing Lixin Fan’s film, which went on to have its North American premiere in the World Cinema Competition at Sundance. Capturing in heartbreaking detail the sacrifices many Chinese rural villagers have had to make to provide for their families, the film follows one couple amongst 130 million migrant workers who make an annual holiday visit from the city where they spend virtually the entire year back to their home village to see the children they’ve left behind.

Fan establishes a powerful intimacy with his subjects – so much so that, in a pivotal scene, the audience is usually left gasping at what they’re bearing witness to, powerless to intervene and pained to see the fracturing of a family. In years to come, LAST TRAIN HOME may very well be recognized as a new classic among world documentaries.

Update: indieWIRE has a great interview with Fan for their FUTURES column here.

Opening this Friday, August 20: THE TILLMAN STORY

Premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Amir Bar-Lev’s expose of the US military’s cover-up of the death by friendly fire of professional football player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman was very well received and scored a distribution deal with The Weinstein Company. Recently, as happened with its fellow Sundance alum A FILM UNFINISHED, the Weinsteins unsuccessfully faced off against the MPAA over an R rating, due in large part over the language in the documentary – the film was originally announced with the title I’M PAT ____ TILLMAN, referring to some of the Tillman family’s propensity for swearing.

Director Bar-Lev has consistently crafted engaging, thought-provoking work, and in THE TILLMAN STORY, he asks the audience to consider how and why we choose our heroes. At its core, the documentary questions not only the propaganda-making of a government at war, but the public’s willingness to buy what the government is selling.

Update: indieWIRE has a review of the film here.

Opening this Wednesday, August 18 in NYC and Friday, August 20 in LA before a national roll-out: A FILM UNFINISHED

Yael Hersonski’s acclaimed documentary had its world premiere in competition at Sundance this year, where it also claimed the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award. Oscilloscope picked up the film for theatrical release, and in the past few weeks generated quite a bit of press when the MPAA slapped an unwarranted R rating on the film due to graphic nudity, a ruling upheld even after a very public appeal.

The rating underscores the MPAA’s myopia, “protecting” younger teen viewers from seeing the horror of the Holocaust, which one could strongly argue they should be witnessing in the service of education and good conscience. Hersonski’s film reveals the story behind a Nazi propaganda film about the Warsaw ghetto which became an important source for Holocaust and Jewish history scholars after WWII. But, as Hersonski demonstrates, more recently discovered reels reveal the carefully orchestrated way the Nazis constructed their “documentary,” filming multiple takes in obviously staged scenes.

A FILM UNFINISHED lays bare this footage, reflecting on the power of the image and the question of documentary truth, while at the same time providing insight into the Third Reich’s propaganda machine.

indieWIRE profiles the film’s director here.

Opening in NYC today, and in LA next Friday, August 6: ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

After premiering at IDFA at the end of 2009, Rob Lemkin & Thet Sambath’s documentary went on to screen as part of Sundance‘s World Cinema Documentary Competition this year, winning a Special Jury Prize. It’s gone on to win awards at numerous other festivals, including Full Frame, True/False, One World, Hong Kong, and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival.

Co-Director Sambath is an integral part of this story, a journalist who spent years getting to know a number of individuals who participated in the genocide against Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge regime. He manages to get them to discuss the past on camera, revealing dark secrets that have left an indelible mark on Cambodia and its people, including survivors like Sambath, who lost multiple family members in the Killing Fields.

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE is a powerful personal documentary that transcends Sambath’s own story to speak to to a much larger issue – how does a country deal with the legacy of genocide?

Update: indieWIRE has an interview with Rob Lemkin here.

Coming to POV on July 20: EL GENERAL

Natalia Almada’s film debuted in 2009 at Sundance, where she won the award for Best Documentary Director. The film was later nominated for the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards’ Truer Than Fiction Award.

Focusing on the titular figure, Almada’s great-grandfather, one of the country’s most controversial leaders who served as a general during the Mexican Revolution before serving as President from 1924-1928, EL GENERAL weaves together original and archival material from Mexico and Hollywood films in a stunningly wrought examination of both personal and national history and identity. The film succeeds in bridging together decades of history with Almada’s family memoir, uniting the public with the personal in an artful, poignant manner.

To find out more about the POV screening on PBS, click here.