My rundown of the 2011 Sundance US Documentary Competition continues with Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion’s THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED, a portrait of a born again evangelist who was formerly the greatest mass murderer during Liberia’s brutal civil war.
Category Archives: Film
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: HOW TO DIE IN OREGON
Another alumnus, Peter D Richardson, returns to Sundance with his sophomore film, screening in the US Documentary Competition, HOW TO DIE IN OREGON, a poignant and affecting look at individuals facing terminal illnesses and their desire to choose the terms of their own deaths.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: THE LAST MOUNTAIN
Bill Haney’s look at the controversial issue of Appalachian mountaintop coal removal, THE LAST MOUNTAIN, is the next US Documentary Competition title in my film-by-film look at the upcoming Sundance doc slate.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Technical Considerations
Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Fascinating characters can let you get away w a lot, but pay attn to your doc’s tech aspects.
I can think of few things more frustrating for a programmer than sitting down to a documentary and being simultaneously enraptured by a topic or interview subject but repulsed by the shoddiness of the filmmaking. It pains me to have to pass on some otherwise promising projects because they just don’t measure up professionally or aesthetically.
Filed under Dear Documentary Filmmakers, Documentary, Film
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: WE WERE HERE
My look at Sundance 2011’s US Documentary Competition title continues with returning filmmakers, Director David Weissman and Co-Director Bill Weber, and their new project, WE WERE HERE, which looks at the early impact of AIDS on San Francisco through the stories of some of the men, and one woman, who lived through the epidemic.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: CRIME AFTER CRIME
Continuing my film-by-film look at the documentaries of Sundance 2011 is US Documentary Competition title CRIME AFTER CRIME by Yoav Potash, an emotional five-year chronicle of justice long delayed for a battered woman pushed to murder.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES
Next up in my 2011 Sundance doc line-up overview is Jon Foy’s US Documentary Competition title RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES, an investigation into a literally street-level unsolved mystery going back more than twenty years.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus: BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY
My look at the more than forty feature-length documentaries in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival begins with the US Documentary Competition and Constance Marks’ BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY, a portrait of the man behind SESAME STREET’s wildly popular furry, red, and perpetually three-and-a-half-year-old Muppet.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
2011 Sundance Docs in Focus
With the 2011 Sundance Film Festival less than a month away, I’m going to begin offering brief looks at the feature-length documentaries in the line-up, a couple or more a day, until I’ve hopefully gone through them all before the festival begins, time permitting. These aren’t reviews – as a Documentary Programming Associate for the festival, of course I encourage you to see all of these films! The purpose of this series of posts is to present each of the docs in focus, provide some additional information and thoughts about why you should see them, and put them on your radar if you’re heading to Park City or to other festivals at which they will go on to screen. I’ll begin later today with BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
In the Works: HOW TO ACT BAD
As mentioned earlier this week, I’m going to try to write more often about documentaries currently in progress. Like MANHATTAN LULLABY, Dima Dubson’s HOW TO ACT BAD also has a Kickstarter campaign page – take a look. He’s aimed relatively high, trying to reach $20,000, and has about three weeks left to hit his target, so if you’re inclined to support the project, act soon.
I recently met with Dima to discuss his plans for his documentary, which follows bad boy musician Adam Green around his native New York, Los Angeles, and Europe. The film isn’t intended to be a musician-on-tour doc, however – instead, HOW TO ACT BAD seeks to provide a window into an artist’s creative process. Ideally, this will make the film work for viewers who have no idea who Green is (though more of a cult presence stateside, his star is on the rise in Europe, and particularly in Germany), mitigating the problem of many musician-focused docs that assume the audience will have the same knowledge of and fascination with the subject that the filmmaker has. With Green’s full participation, Dima has enviable, unfiltered access to his subject, which, judging from the trailer alone, is giving him a lot to work with in crafting this portrait. I’m very curious to see how the project ultimately takes shape.
Filed under Documentary, Film, In the Works
