Category Archives: Recommendations

I’m not generally swept away by Awards season fever (Globes, Oscars, Guild and Critics nods), but I do appreciate the yearly efforts of the Cinema Eye Honors to put the focus exclusively on the best non-fiction filmmaking of the year. The fact that most awards bodies typically only have a single award for documentary vs scores for fiction underscores the need to advocate for recognition of the form.

But, wait, did I say the CEH were “exclusively” focused on non-fiction? Not quite, at least starting with this year’s awards. Yesterday, Co-Chairs AJ Schnack (of noted doc blog All These Wonderful Things and documentarian) and Esther B Robinson (documentarian and my fellow co-producer on THE CANAL STREET MADAM – full disclosure/gratuitous plug) announced their new Heterodox Award, honoring a narrative film that intentionally blurs the line between fiction/non-fiction. The first nominees, selected by the award’s sponsor, Filmmaker Magazine, are an eclectic, inspired choice of films: Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio’s ALAMAR, Matt Porterfield’s PUTTY HILL, Michelangelo Frammartino’s LE QUATTRO VOLTE, Lena Dunham’s TINY FURNITURE, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES.

I love this idea, which of course continues the ongoing dialogue around documentary/narrative hybrids and films engaging in slippage between the forms – ie fictional documentaries or narratives using documentary techniques (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, THE LAST EXORCISM, I’M STILL HERE) and recent documentaries that may or may not be wholly “real,” whatever that means (CATFISH, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP). A notable harbinger of the Heterodox Award was witnessed at the 2009 CPH:DOX, when the fictional non-film TRASH HUMPERS was surprisingly awarded the documentary festival’s Grand Jury Prize, speaking to this boundary breaking between fiction/nonfiction.

The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking will be held on January 18 at New York’s newly-renovated Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. For information regarding tickets, clink on the link in the first paragraph.

Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction next Monday, January 10: CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER

Prolific documentarian Alex Gibney first screened his profile of the disgraced New York Governor as an untitled work-in-progress at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, making it one of the hottest tickets of the event. The completed film had its official world premiere at Toronto, and was brought to VOD and theatres by Magnolia in October and November, respectively.

Gibney, working with his collaborator from ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, author Peter Elkind, takes on the challenge of finding the story that stretches beyond the highly public call girl scandal which saw the powerful and feared politician resign from office in 2008. While the film provides insight into the bust of the Emperors Club escort agency, where Spitzer was identified as “Client #9,” securing critical interviews with club employees, the truly juicy material comes less from the salacious aspects of the scandal and more from the detailed history of Spitzer’s earlier political career as New York State Attorney General and the enemies he made along the way. Interviews with Spitzer himself and even with some of those adversaries provide a rich context in which to understand what might have significantly contributed to his fall from grace.

Director Alex Gibney will be in attendance at STF for a Q&A following the film.

Just a quick pointer to indieWIRE‘s annual list of editorial and industry Top Ten Lists, which includes my own selections at the top of the second page. These kinds of lists are fairly arbitrary, I realize – in the ever-changing landscape of distribution, what counts as a film that’s been release, for example? The constraints here were feature-length films that received a theatrical release in the 2010 calendar year, so this doesn’t take into account films that premiered online without going the theatrical route, or films that have only screened at festivals. As a programmer who sees a huge volume of films each year, the problem is compounded – some of the titles on my 2010 list were films I saw in 2009 during programming or at festivals, while films that I absolutely loved that I saw this year will have to wait to potentially make the 2011 list – if they get a theatrical, that is.

In any case, despite these issues, I wholly recommend checking out any and all of the films that made my Top Ten(s). Check out the article and lists here.