Documentary Insider

This evening I attended the International Documentary Association 24th Annual Celebration of Academy Awards Documentary Nominees. It’s always a lovely affair. There were appetizers to start and then we were ushered into the Samuel L. Goldwyn for an evening hosted by Sandra Tsing Loh, self-proclaimed “documentary stalker.”

The last of the attendees head for the theater.

A new IDA logo reel is revealed with little fanfare.

Loh brought up diane estelle Vicari, the 11th president of the IDA. Then Michael Apted got up and stressed the importance of seeing documentaries in theaters, having that group response saying, “laughing, crying, angry or awestruck, you’re doing it together.” He finished his brief introduction by saying, “Thank you filmmakers and whatever happens on Sunday you’ve all won.”

After Sandra Ruch, IDA’s executive director and Michael Zakula from Kodak (the evening’s major sponsor) Sandra Tsing Loh introduced each Oscar nominated film and brought up the filmmakers to say a few words. Here are a few quotes from the night:

“I want to thank my wife for being so patient. As documentary filmmakers I’m sure you know it takes a while.” Craig Tanner editor, God Sleeps in Rwanda

“Cinema becomes the incredible language that speaks more than any words can speak.” Hubert Sauper, Darwin’s Nightmare

“Documentaries are about watching and listening.” Alex Gibney, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

“Emperor penguins have a secret. The secret of peace, of beauty, of serenity and I am proud to share this beauty with you.” March of the Penguins

“You teach us about weird fish and cute penguins…” Dana Adam Shapiro, Murderball

“My wife leaned over and asked me if the IDA would start a support group for spouses.” Marshall Curry, Street Fight

We watched the clips, we heard the speeches and it was time to file back into the Academy lobby for cookies and coffee. “What an f’ing fantastic group of films. I won’t say the real word, but that’s what I mean,” Sandra Tsing Loh said before everyone bolted for dessert. Not to sound like a complete lovefest, but I couldn’t agree more.

Here are a few more photos from the night…

Kat McPhee, Nicole Renna , Colin Gray & Meg Aarons of the Freedom’s Fury crew.

Oscar nominated Marshall Curry (Street Fight) and his wife Elizabeth Martin.

Sandra Tsing Loh with IDA prez diane estelle Vicari, executive director Sandra Ruch, board member Barbara Gregson, IDA magazine editor Tom White and board member Tom Miller.

Here’s a fine article by Jonny Leahan on indieWIRE about the Spirit Award nominated docs.

The IDA has a couple of great events this week. Come out and see a movie on Saturday or hit the Oscar reception on Wednesday.

IDA’s 24th Annual Celebration of Academy Awards® Documentary Nominees

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

6:30 PM Doors open
Light Hors d’oeuvres / drinks
8:00 PM Film Program
9:45 PM Dessert Reception

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
8949 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, California 90211

Click here to purchase tickets to the Reception

DocuDay â„¢ — Los Angeles, CA
International Documentary Association and SUNDANCE CHANNEL present DocuDayâ„¢
All day screenings of the Academy Award® nominated documentaries in the Feature and Short categories.

DocuDay â„¢ — Los Angeles, CA:
Saturday, March 4, 2006

Writers Guild of America Theater
135 Doheny Drive
Beverly Hills, California 90211

10:00am to Midnight
Q and A to follow most screenings

Click Here to download the program

Click here to purchase tickets to DocuDayâ„¢ — Los Angeles

I recently discovered Current.tv as Channel 366 on DirecTV. It’s a cool thing. The station launched August 2005 and is 30% programmed by viewers. Josh Soskin and Yogi Graham were on hand for a presentation about this new channel. Check out their website for how to get your short doc on Current.

T/F also announced a new partnership with Current in this email from fest co-director David Wilson:

We’re pretty excited this morning to be announcing a “partnership” (that’s what the biz folks call these things) between Current.tv and True/False. If you don’t know about Current (and it’s not yet available in mid-Missouri), it’s a brand new cable network dedicated to providing programming made by the people who watch. That’s right, they want to close that feedback loop between you and the TV and offer up a more democratic (small “d”) approach to television production. What this means in practice is that True/False will be helping to scout out exciting short documentary films for airing on Current. And we’ll be working with filmmakers, both local and visiting, to produce specific “content” (another one of those media buzz words) for Current. We’re excited because we think this means more opportunity for audiences to see indie docs, and more opportunity for Missouri filmmakers to find an outlet for their work.

Then I stuck around the Artisan for Beyond the Music: Making Sense of Music or…how to make a music documentary that doesn’t suck (another David Wilson-ism). The panelists raised many important issues including one of my faves, how do you get your music film marketed as a documentary and not ghettoized into the music video section of both video stores and journalists minds. Unfortunately, there’s no real answer, and journalists will continue to say things like, “if you like XX band, you’ll love XX movie.” The least this writer can do it be more aware of doing it myself.

During a brief moment of downtime Paul (far right) took Rick and I on a secret tour. Can you guess where we are?

I was more than pleased to find out the closing night film, Homemade Hillbilly Jam, a film I rep, was sold out. 1200 seats. Whoa. People started filing in around 5:30 for a delicious Ozarkian feast.

The Missouri Theatre starts to fill up with hungry filmgoers.

The place quickly filled up and the audience was primed to see the film, which is set in the Missouri Ozark Mountains. People laughed and applauded throughout the film. Director/writer Rick Minnich and co-writer/editor Matt Sweetwood participated in a Q&A after the film while HHJ featured band Big Smith set up their gear to play a 90 minute set of toe-tapping hillbilly music for the enthusiastic crowd. The music is infectious and it was a real treat to see the band perform. During the question and answer, Jay, who plays the washboard in Big Smith, interupted to say, “I’ve been watching documentaries all these years and thinking that the people in them were real intertesing, it’s incredible to think that people are thinking the same thing about us.” Then Big Smith proceeded to bring down the house.

A young cowboy enjoys Big Smith at the closing night concert.

David Wilson and Paul Sturtz also operate the Ragtag Cinemacafe year round showing independent and documentary films. The closing night volunteer party that every filmmaker and visiting guest seemed to have crashed (including myself) was held at the future home of the Ragtag. What is now the huge empty space of an ex-historic soda bottling plant will be a 2 theatre complex with video store and Uprise Bakery and rumor has it the arthouse will be showing films by January. It was a great night with a DJ spinning and about 100 pizzas delivered from local hotspot Shakespeare’s Pizza. I think I finally made it back to my hotel around 2:30 and with a 6 am flight outa there, by the time I packed and settled down I had time for an hour of sleep before I had to head for the airport.

It was a great weekend. True/False is a festival to watch. It is not pretentious. It doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is, an excellent showcase of (mostly) documentary films that brings filmmakers from all over the world to share in the experience. Hiding premieres in untitled slots in the program, showing films that mean something, bringing music into the fray, and challenging what audiences find both true and false about documentary films and filmmaking makes for an extraordinarily refreshing festival. And one I hope to be a part of again and again.

From Pete Bland’s blog…

If closing-night film “Homemade Hillbilly Jam” and the Big Smith concert that followed didn’t do enough to fill Columbians and other Missourians with home pride last night, the final attendance figure for True/False 2006 certainly pushed them to the brink of bursting.

In only its third year of existence, the True/False Film Festival’s ticket sales rocketed past the 10,000 mark, reaching 10,600, organizers confirmed. That’s 4,000 more than last year, or, looking at it another way, nearly the total amount of seats sold for the inaugural event two years ago — 4,200.

That 61 percent increase in sales from 2005 tops last year’s 57 percent rise from 2004. The final tally also far surpasses organizers’ hopes of 8,000.

The numbers alone, however, can’t begin to convey what a cultural boon True/False has become for Columbia. I’ll attempt to get some of that across later this morning or early afternoon, as I’ll look back on the action of the final two days.

I started with breakfast at a great little healthful joint, the Main Squeeze, and then it was over to the Artisan to see the start of the panel Me and My Shadow (subject vs. subjectivity) but I had to cut it short to make it to Jeff Feuerzeig’s The Devil and Daniel Johnston. This is the kind of film that really doesn’t need to do much because the material is so rich, but then it goes beyond rich to fully intense with creative sound, use of archival footage and tons of audio. The film is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics and opens theatrically March 31st.

I met Paul Lovelace and Sam Douglas at Sundance in January. Their film, The Holy Modal Rounders… Bound to Lose premiered at Slamdance. So when I saw it fit into my T/F sked I was on it. The film played at the Forrest Theater in the Tiger Hotel. I didn’t have a ticket so I got in the wait list line as #27. But…eventually they let us all go in. And the place was pretty full too! The film tells the story of two musicians who meet in the 60s and form a strong bond playing music together for over 40 years. The music itself plays second fiddle (pardon the pun) to Peter Stampfel and Steve Webber’s intense friendship and working relationship.

You gotta love film festival patrons. They can make a lot of stuff happen by providing the right resources. The Filmmaker Fete honored the T/F filmmakers with a dinner hosted by Sycamore restaurant. The food was delicious and it was a hot ticket with a chance for the enthusiastic patrons to rub elbows with a filmmaker or two.

On the way out the door Festival Co-Director David Wilson stopped to tell me, AJ, Eugene and Rick and Matt from Homemade Hillbilly Jam (at least I think that’s who was there) that his documentary game show, Gimme Truth!, was going really great. So off we all stomped to The Blue Note to see for ourselves. Gimme Truth! put festival filmmakers Grace Lee (Grace Lee Project), Magnus Bejmar (Smiling in a War Zone) and Mark Lewis (Standard of Perfection: Show Cattle) to the test, as they had to guess if locally made short docs were true or false. Doppler Dave Schmidt who provided a real game show feel to the whole thing hosted the eve.

I was pleased to find in the T/F catalog, Untitled Camp Film by Bradley Beesley and Sarah Price. It wasn’t until the film was introduced that Fest Co-Director Paul Sturtz could tell the audience of the name of the film, Summercamp!. Oh, Summercamp!. What a joy of a movie. It’s almost pocketable… The film follows campers through their 3 weeks away from home. I get irritated when filmmakers bank off the fact that kids say the darndest things. Summercamp! doesn’t wait for kids to be just plain cute, but instead shows them as real little people experiencing life through the freedom of childhood, but being pretty adult at the same time.

True/False couldn’t be happy with just movies and parties, no no no! So it was back to The Blue Note for a full on concert. T/F film participants The Refugee All Stars were supposed to open for Of Montreal. But after the INS lost their paperwork they were unable to get out of Sierra Leone to play the fest. So Curtis Eller and Strawfoot filled in. The crowd was mostly college kids dancing and blowing off steam on a Saturday night. It surprised me how open they were to all the different types of music. Curtis Eller’s song about Buster Keaton seemed to be stumping nearly every twenty something girl standing around me.

It was really time for bed, but I headed over to the super secret after party anyway. Turns out it wasn’t so secret. The place was full of folks diggin’ Kim Chi (the 2 girl DJ duo who sing in Korean) and hittin’ the open bar until late into the night. I left about 2 am, but I heard the cops showed up around 3. I miss all the fun.

Day 3 is going up shortly. I’m actually already home writing this. The festival was such a vigorous workout I barely had time to blog. But, as it was a veritable docu-blogger symposium you can check out more news with Pete Bland at the Columbia Tribune, AJ Schnack at All These Wonderful Things, and Eugene Hernandez on indieWIRE.

Okay, well technically it started yesterday, but I got here today and tonight was the opening night film – so it’s Day 1 in my book. Ah…the travel day. Wake up at 4 in the morning so you can drive yourself to the airport, park your car in a parking lot, but it’s SO foggy that you don’t remember seeing what lot you parked in. Get on a shuttle that takes you to another shuttle that takes you to the terminal so you can hopefully make your plane…and so on. I could go on, I’m in that kind of mood. But I’ll get to the meat of the matter, it is the mid-west after all (sorry, bad meat joke).

I love regional film festivals.

After the madness that is Sundance and the bitterness that lives in LA screenings, going to the mid-west for a film festival is a breath of fresh air. (Oh, maybe it’s actual fresh air going to my head?) In a way it almost doesn’t matter what the opening night film is. The audience is there because they want to be there. Sure there’s a few press people and some industry and of course, filmmakers, but for the most part, following the kickoff concert with bands Ellie Come Home, the Dandelion Junk Queens, Jerusalem & the Starbaskets and Baby Dee plus a party with appetizers from four local restaurants dubbed “Reality Bites,” the 1200 seat Missouri Theatre filled with real filmgoing members of Columbia, MO and its surrounding areas. The place was packed and the audience could not have been more excited or more into the film, cheering and applauding all through the doc. Ward Serrill’s The Heart of the Game is a love letter to women’s high school basketball. Distilled down from 7 years and 200 hours of footage the 100-minute film explores a Seattle high school women’s basketball team through both the players and their unorthodox but completely endearing coach Bill Resler. Wanna see it? Miramax is doing a theatrical starting in June in Seattle, New York and Los Angeles.

Tomorrow there are screenings, panels and parties starting at 10:00 in the morning. T/F is only a weekend festival running February 23 – February 26 it is packed with plenty to see and do. Plus, everyone’s staying in the same hotel. I should have brought a dry erase board for my dorm room door…I mean room door.

The marquee at the classic Missouri Theatre.

I’m so looking forward to my trip to Columbia, MO for the 3rd annual True/False Film Festival at the end of February. They announced their lineup today and it’s quite impressive, including several films right off Sundance (American Blackout, Black Gold, Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That! and The Trials of Darryl Hunt), a couple of sneaky peaks and works in progress, stuff from Columbia natives (The Grace Lee Project) and a distinctive array of panels and festivities.

This festival is proving to be one to watch, most of the filmmakers will be in attendance plus the festival has enough stuff going on to appeal to both locals and industry folks.

When I saw Through the Fire at AFI Fest last November it made my heart race!

It’s opening Friday in NY, LA, Boston and Portland.

Through the Fire, Jonathan Hock’s riveting film, follows basketball star Sebastian Telfair through his senior year in high school where he has to decide whether to attend college or go pro, secure an endorsement deal and get his family out of the projects.

For more information visit: www.throughthefiremovie.com

Just found out about this interesting thing, The International Documentary Challenge.

The International Documentary Challenge (IDC) is a timed filmmaking competition where filmmaking teams from around the world have just over 5 days to make a short documentary film!

The 1st Annual IDC will take place March 22 through March 27, 2006. The early registration fee is $110 and the deadline is February 28. After February 28, the registration fee will be $125. Only 250 teams will be accepted, so be sure to register early.

The winning films will screen this summer at a theatrical event presented in association with SILVERDOCS, hosted by AFI Silver Theatre. After the premiere there will be additional theatrical screenings in major cities, possible television exposure and a DVD release.

Learn more about the competition here.