Slamdance Announced the 2006 Awards today. The documentary winners are as follows: Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature Empire in Africa World Premiere – (2005, 87 min., USA) directed by Philippe Diaz. The story of the unjust war the international community waged against civilwar stricken Sierra Leone. Winner to receive a Sony HD camera […]

People keep asking me why I went home today. I mean, if I stayed I could have gone to to the Award Ceremony. Well, I assumed I would be able to watch it on TV as I have in past years. But after extensive searching it seems the show is not being televised this year. […]

This is the ninth in a series of Sundance Film Festival entries. I go home Friday, and it’s a good thing too since I’m running out of sweaters, socks and patience. Thursday was a crazy shuttle fiasco. We were on the shuttle, we were off the shuttle, we were on the shuttle, we were off […]

This is the eighth in a series of Sundance Film Festival entries. When I read in the program that there was a documentary about global warming starring and produced by former future president of the United States Al Gore I figured The Inconvenient Truth was the movie for me. And really if you have to […]

From indieWIRE: In the documentary competition, Zach Niles and Banker White won the Aquafina Pure Vision Award for their film “The Refugee All Stars.” The film is the story of a group of six Sierra Leonean musicians who come together to form a band while living as refugees in the Republic of Guinea. Kelly Duda’s […]

Day 10 I attended the TIMESTALKS 2 – The War Documentary: A Panel Discussion with Eugene Jarecki, Stephen Marshall, Jehane Noujaim, Michael Tucker, Garrett Scott and moderated by New York Times Magazine editor Gerald Marzonati. Admittedly I walked in 30 minutes late, but it seemed to me the panel was really more about why these […]

Day 8 of the festival and I’m not terribly worse for wear. But…as I have been dozing off a bit (during movies) I could probably use just a little caffeine…maybe. I’ve stopped reading the festival catalog and I’m just walking blindly into documentaries. So…I stumbled into Desire. The film follows a group of young girls […]

There’s just something funny about people saying, “Have you seen FUCK?” “Last night I saw FUCK and I liked it!” “I really…uh…wanted to see…excuse my language…uhhh…FUCK yesterday…sorry again, but I couldn’t make it.” And really, that’s the point of the movie. What is so bad about a word? Who says it’s bad? What makes a […]

Day 6 is the halfway point of the festival and I’ve seen 10 films so far. Tuesday I squeezed in 3 docs. I started with Buckle Brothers. It’s the story of African American Southland cowboys who bullride. It was okay. (Not exactly a review you can put on a poster.) I wanted a little more […]

Well…I missed Pablo – the Poet’s Lives. That means it will win something. It happens every festival I cover for IDA magazine, whatever film I miss that is IN competition is the one that will win making in nearly (but not totally) impossible to write about. Day 6, tomorrow the halfway point, I’ll get up […]