seafar

While the juicy, spoiler susceptible story has been the focus of first responses to CATFISH, the sensation of Sundance TwentyTen, its the zippy storytelling style itself that caught my eye.

Facebook, Google Maps, Iphones, email, texts, instant messaging, etc. are not only the basis of the film’s content, they are its form. CATFISH may be the first aesthetically successful example of cross-platform cinema, not as a distribution strategy, but as the primary syntactic spine of the work itself.

BUT….that’s all you need to know for the present.  In fact, herein, DO NOT READ ANYTHING ABOUT CATFISH. Do not let any programmer blogger geeks offer a single superlative or even a spoiler free teaser. JUST WALK AWAY. And keep expectations low…I mean, how can it be THAT good? It’s better when you don’t think it’s that good.

Now, forget you read this.

Last week Hot Docs announced a project that will be launching in a modest way at our 2010 Festival. We’re calling it Ripping Reality, and the intent is to generate a kind of cooperative, traveling symposium, from which we hope to stimulate discussions around the notion of a documentary new wave.

While excited by the prospect of creating spaces (at festivals, online, in publications) to discuss and reflect upon the unprecedented surge in the quantity and quality of creative documentary filmmaking over the past decade or so, I did have some doubts once we actually committed to doing it.  Was this a lame idea? Yet, the consistent excellence of the docs at Sundance TwentyTen (and we’re only halfway into it) reassure me that its a worthy endeavour, and perhaps overdue.

Its one of those Park City cliches that the doc selections are much better bets then the dramatic features….at least creatively, and often in terms of pure entertainment (their market potential/interest is an entirely different matter). Like many festival cliches it holds true this year. WAITING FOR SUPERMAN is one of the most effective advocacy documentaries I’ve ever seen, and it also just happens to be an inventive and very moving storytelling experience. THE OATH, SECRETS OF THE TRIBE, THE TILLMAN STORY, GASLAND, RESTREPO, CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY, TEENAGE PAPARAZZO…all so highly accomplished on their own terms that, when consumed in such concentration, one begins to take their achievements for granted (not to mention a few of the other powerhouses presented here, which I’ve seen over the past months: THE RED CHAPEL, LAST TRAIN HOME, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS AND HERS, SPACE TOURISTS….).

And this is not necessarily, overall, an exceptional year….or, exceptional years for documentary have become the norm.

So, can we call what we’ve seen develop over the past decade a documentary new wave? What are its key attributes aesthetically, politically, socially, industrially? What are the key films, filmmakers? What are the conditions, enablers, and factors behind the explosive growth of documentary filmmaking, festivals, audiences? These are a few of the questions behind Ripping Reality.

Participant Media hosted a drinks/discussion thing here last night, featuring the filmmakers of the impressive four Participant productions being presented at Sundance:  CASINO JACK (Alex Gibney); WAITING FOR SUPERMAN (Davis Guggenheim); COUNTDOWN TO ZERO (Lucy Walker) and the 3-D extravaganza, CANE TOADS: THE CONQUEST (Mark Lewis). Following some general discussion of their current films, each filmmaker remarked on the richness of contemporary documentary as an expressive medium, noting their attraction to the fluidity and expansiveness of the form.

As a programmer (and cinephile), this is what motivated me to focus my attention on documentary ten years ago. I fancied myself a formalist, and docs seemed like the most open, poetic cinematic form. That they also fed the political animal and info junkie in me was a bonus (not to underplay the significance of activism and social justice in driving the new documentary…..it remains at the core of documentary practice and relevance).

Compared to a sense that fiction filmmaking has been relatively stagnant, creatively, in recent years, its easy to see why so much new talent has been drawn into the doc fold (even as many of the new generation of filmmakers move between drama and docs much more effortlessly, and often, then their predecessors). Of course, parallel to the creative possibilities inherent in documentary are many other factors behind its growth, the least of not has been the democratization of filmmaking in general.

AMERICAN MOVIE was out the first year I became a doc programmer at TIFF, and was a film that simply had a different energy around it then most of the other nonfiction films we were presenting at the Festival that year. It, AMERICAN MOVIE, was also hugely popular, selling out and generating long rush lines at each screening.

As a rookie programmer, and doc enthusiast, I was disappointed that generally the docs didn’t seem to draw as well as the fiction films at TIFF (of course, there were always exceptions). The media generally weren’t covering them, and the distributors couldn’t be bothered. Over the next five years that would all change dramatically, both at TIFF and elsewhere, fueled by a wave of astonishing, galvanizing work, much of it debuts:  PRIPYAT, FAMILY, THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE, BENJAMIN SMOKE, SPELLBOUND, STARTUP.COM, CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS, THE CORPORATION, TARNATION, THE YES MEN, CZECH DREAM, SUPERSIZE ME, DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE, GUNNER PALACE….a very quick, top of head list (and omitting some of the obvious, and being U.S. centric)

While this has been an international phenomenon, the contemporary American documentary movement has been a singular force in reimagining and reinvigorating the form, even if some of these developments are beginning to harden into conventions of their own. The Sundance Film Festival has been and remains the single most vital platform for launching U.S. documentaries, the hub of this movement. The good news is that Sundance TwentyTen will add several new works to the contemporary canon of great documentaries…..and I haven’t even seen all of them yet!

Just closing Day 3 at IDFA, where U.S doc productions are currently in the majority in IDFA’s current Audience Top Ten (at least as of tonight). Erratic as such polling can be, its still my favourite award at any festival. IDFA posts running updates on the polling each day. Its like eavesdropping on a jury discussion.

Conversations here have been mainly about films in the programme, and those to be ready around the corner. When the conversation isn’t about films and film related stuff it has been about getting sick and trying not to get sick at film festivals. Also, there have been accidentally outer voice observations that doing laundry while in a lovely European city is a small price to pay for an incapacity to adjust to European underwear. Outside of an eye infection in Prague (unrelated to travel) and a close-call on several fractures at Sheffield’s roller-skating party, I’ve remained healthy and within the margins of thirty-seven celsius (which, Fate, i note with all due respect).

Over the past four weeks, I’ve heard of one case of H1N1 among people I know, but not at a festival. The person stayed home. Many fell with fevers following Sheffield, and the first few days in Copenhagen were shakey for some. Meanwhile, more than actual sick people are film festival survivors trying not to be sick.  Everybody is being careful, and the Dutch have cut back from the triple kiss greeting to the double (rimshot). And if distilled into a single capsule our motley preventative regimes would surely hold the miracle of life.

My own approach relies on what I’m beginning to realize is an irrational belief in oil of oregano. Its a belief founded solely on the enthusiasm of the ex-owner of my local natural foods store, and a google search. My oil of oregano base is rounded off with ginseng tea (daily), Emergen-C (brought a 12-pack), Vitamin D (daily), Valerian Root (daily), throat spray (often), vigamox (when required), Melatonin (daily) aspirin/ibuprofren (more than in normal life), and various hand disinfectants.

I predict hand solvents will be the film festival tchotchkes of choice in 2010.

(Harmony Korine’s video acceptance speech at CPH:DOX, via Michael Tully)

Four weeks and four festivals, each blearily backing into the next. Its Day 1 at IDFA, but I’m still chewing on CPH:DOX, like those tough, salty, delicious Danish licorice that linger.

CPH:DOX director Tine Fischer summed up the the goals of her event smartly in remarks at the festival’s closing ceremony. They, CPH:DOX, are striving to “create more space for documentaries.” The Copenhagen festival covered the usual ways of creating such space in their Forum, the focus of which was both traditional and “out of the box” distribution strategies.  But most festivals have such discussions these days, almost to the point of overkill. Where CPH:DOX most boldly opens the spaces for how we conceptualize and categorize documentary is in their curatorial approach. Only here would Harmony Korine’s TRASH HUMPERS win the DOX:AWARD for, well, we assume best “documentary.”

Michael Tully has a great wrap here, as does Allison Willmore here, and there are comments on the awards here and here.

The answer to the question of whether TRASH HUMPERS is or isn’t a documentary is immaterial to me. The point is can the work support the question, does it wedge itself into that shrinking gap between conventional documentary and drama? This is the most interesting space in current cinema and, top-of-head, some of my favourite work of the past year – BIG RIVER MAN, THE SOUND OF INSECTS, ENJOY POVERTY, THE RED CHAPEL – exists here. Why shouldn’t documentary festivals claim it, even if that means offending “the truth of accountants,” as Herzog put it.   Continue reading…

(the trailer for BLOOD IN THE MOBILE…will the feature doc crossover into obsolescence?)

While attending one festival can be exhausting, several in a row has given me something like vigour. Perhaps a tolerance is built up. Like with certain drugs and other things to which one should just say… maybe later.

Though its possible this, sure, ebullience was rooted in the shock of awaking to sunshine, my first natural intake of Vitamin D since arriving in Europe. So it was, given the natural light, a morning for optimism and epiphanies. Unprepared to spoil the mood in the darkness of actual documentaries, I spent the day basking in the radiant opportunities of Sheffield’s Crossover Summit.

I think “crossover” is the new “convergence,” and certainly means that “new media” is permanently retired to jargon’s shady lanes. Based on my observations at Sheffield it, crossing over, refers to a given content vessel’s ability to be malleable and deliverable and participatory across many platforms. But based on the expressions of some docster vets looking on (and their complete absence as speakers), crossing over also means, “Fuck, I thought I’d be retired before I had to deal with this shit.”  Continue reading…

(Is the heart of documentary still beating? Ummm, maybe. The market at DOK Leipzig)

The tag line for DOK Leipzig this year was “The Heart of Documentary,” and while the competition and survey programmes showed plenty of life, the chatter indicated that broadcast television was pulling the plug on creative documentary.

A fellow festival colleague expressed concern about where the films for her rigorously programmed event were going to come from without broadcaster support. The title of an all day summit was “Farewell To Television,” with speakers looking for alternatives to traditional funding sources for documentary. And in his opening address DOK Leipzig Director Claas Danielsen appealed to broadcasters to raise the bar, aesthetically:

While artistic authors’ documentaries are frequently successful in the cinema, I have been observing a marginalisation of the genre in television for years. I see more and more clearly that this is the result of a dangerous attitude of television programmers towards their audience. They often regard them as slightly retarded people of dim perceptions and ultimately as children rather than responsible citizens. Complex, unusual and challenging subjects and narrative styles are way beyond their intellectual capacity – or so it is said. Continue reading…

(Jihlava’s Silver Eye award winner, DISCO & ATOMIC WAR. Pay attention to this film…revelatory,  funny and seamlessly cinematic historical filmmaking)

Here we go again. I departed Jihlava this afternoon, which followed four days in Leipzig. It was an intense two festival week. Now a day of recovery in Prague (literally, I’m sick, yuck) then Sheffield, Copenhagen and, finally, a grand finale in Amsterdam. Five documentary film festivals in five weeks. I did this trip last year. I even remember parts of it.

Is there anything comparable to the phenomenon which is the contemporary film festival circuit? Obviously there are cultural festivals, conferences and trade fairs of every kind, but film fests are their truly own breed of cat. Filmmakers, producers, programmers, funders, critics, journalists, papparazzi, buyers, sellers, wannabes, sponsors, partiers, politicians, publicists, radicals, academics, the public. So many interests and agendas in play, sometimes beautifully intersecting, but also often colliding. And like hundreds (thousands?) of times a year, given the glut of international film festivals.

While this particular trip brings all of the fest circuit’s unique qualities to the fore, being in the trenches makes achieving perspective elusive. What am I doing here, exactly?    Continue reading…

(“Hi there, internet.” Sundance’s John Cooper, Berlin’s Weiland Speck, tiff’s Piers Handling, Tribeca’s Geoff Gilmour and I, the not so attentive moderator, discuss “The Changing Role of Film Festivals” at tiff. Photo courtesy of Peter Belsito via Sydney’s Buzz)

A side effect of being tossed from my summer media diet into Fall’s fulsome trough of film festival fodder (tiff, followed by ifp’s Independent Film Week, then Nordisk Panorama) has been that things seem different than before, even the before of just last Spring. And by “different” I mean apocalyptic.

Old news now, but you can read about the apocalypse here, and here, and also here, and here too…and there’s much more. I’ve moderated six panels in the past few weeks, and regardless if the panel topics have been orientated around film festivals, or distribution, or technology, or even specific case studies, they’ve all been essentially about the same thing…..its the end of something, and something else will be taking its place.

And everybody seems to be writing manifestos or becoming distribution consultants.

Closer to my discomfort zone, pinko provocateur Ian F. Svenonius proclaims a “documentary crisis”:

“these films are usually bad-looking, un-nuanced, propagandistic tellings of events. The camera work is almost always execrable, the narration simplistic, the method of storytelling is usually a parade of talking heads; they feel like audiovisual presentations in grade school. While utilizing this powerful medium and trying to express a particular ideological argument could be admirable, the aesthetic decisions of the video auteurs often reveal an infantilized weltanshcauung, a stunted artistic vision, and a linear and impoverished mindset.”

Continue reading…

September is the coolest month. I still get the back to class clarity and creased new denim crispness of my school daze….focused energies which this morning I’m channeling into my first blog entry in months.

At last post we were on the cusp of the film festival known as Hot Docs, the subject of the lion’s share of my previous posts here. Let’s just say it was a whirl whence followed an extended documentary blackout . Nada, ixnay re audio-visual nonfiction for the past four months…nary even a feature news profile. But having watched several documentaries just this past week, my first taste in months, I profess myself recovered, or relapsed, depending. My summer detox: child rearing; book reading; ridiculous fitness attempting; cottage staying….. and as little screen watching as possible. And learning the names of clouds.

No need then to rehash the triumphs and traumas of fests yore (they’re so ephemeral, aren’t they, these events we spend months concocting)…and, anyway, by all accounts it was a smashing success, Hot Docs 2009. So, leaving it at that, here’s what’s on the work bench for September:

tiff-a-riffic
My former employer, the Toronto International Film Festival (so happy they’ve finally embraced the whole lowercase tiff thing as their official brand) has invited me to be on the Canadian Feature Jury. This entails watching something like 26 Canadian feature films in 7 days…or more Canadian fiction films than I’ve watched (as a confession) in the previous 5 years. The best thing about being on juries is that your screening schedule is done for you, and all meetings can be deferred with the tacit understanding that the important and time sucking tasks of jury duty trumps all other festival business. Drafting a festival schedule, as we all know, is a herculean task often requiring at least five software programmes running simultaneously, and a supreme knowledge of sync functions. I’m happy to be rid of the responsibility, while getting flush re my native country’s current cinema.

The Great One
Also, at tiff (so unassuming, their lower case branding) I’ll be hosting the Maverick session Peter Berg Presents Kings Ransom. Kings Ransom is a doc the actor/director Peter Berg made for the ESPN (also formerly a lower case brand) “30 for 30″ series. Its about The Trade. Of course, if you instantly acknowledged that The Trade, in a Canadian context, could only refer to Wayne Gretzky being sold (he wasn’t really “traded”) to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988 then you pass muster hockey wise. Two things you need to know about me: 1) I vividly recall where I was when I found out about The Trade and 2) right now, as I type these words, I can glance to my right at an almost distastefully large, signed and handsomely framed portrait of Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One” embossed on cheap gold trophy plating at the portraits footer. I’m overqualified for the panel, a first.

And then…
On the heels of tiff I’ll be attending IFP’s Independent Film Week, where I’ll do some screening, take some meetings and capably moderate the panel Film Festivals And Emerging Technology, for which I’m most underqualified, given I still haven’t figured out the Hot Docs database.

And on the heels of IFW I’ll be at Nordisk Panorama, a traveling Scandinavian event which this year is held, yippee, in Reykjavik. There I’ll be doing many of the same things as at IFW, but against a more imposing natural landscape, less optimism, and more hard liquor drinking. My duties there will include moderating several panels in the Outlook Programme.

Beyond September its all still very first draft, though there will be several stops in Europe and maybe one in South America. Also, I’m committed to thinking about and discussing the increasingly complicated strategies by which filmmakers are representing reality. I intend, on occasion, to use this blog as a kind of white board for this stream of inquiry. Most of the other times it’ll be fluffy updates like above.

(from SHADOW BILLIONAIRE, “perhaps the festival selection best primed for a Man On Wire-like breakthrough,” according to the Star’s Jason Anderson.)

The world premiere of OUTRAGE at Tribeca this week generated attention that I assume will gather momentum into its commercial opening on May 8th. This film has some work to do in the world, and I think it will do it quite effectively. Director Kirby Dick will be at Hot Docs for the International Premiere of OUTRAGE on Thursday, May 7. Check out Indiewire’s preview, AJ’s first look, and, via Movie City News, pieces in Variety and Movieline.  And, one more, from L.A Times.

DEFAMATION had its North American premiere last night at Tribeca, and I except to see similiar editorial appearing in the new future. In a side-bar to his Hot Docs preview in today’s Toronto Star, Jason Anderson anticipated that DEFAMATION would be “one of the festival’s most provocative docs.” Though perhaps not as provocative as GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR, which Anderson describes as “exactly as advertised and therefore very, very difficult viewing.” Now that we’re seeing coverage of the programme, its interesting how things play out. GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR was a very late selection, and prior to its inclusion we assumed that our other trangressive sex film, AKA ANA (which probably features even more difficult sexual imagery than GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR), would be our sole shock doc. Now we have two! And, guess which are the top two most viewed films on our website?

From his NOW piece, it seems that Norm Wilner also apparently had to cover his eyes during GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR (in perhaps a Freudian slip, he replaces the “Horror” in the title with “Violence”). I really like the way this piece captures the eclectic spirit of the programme, and like Anderson, Wilner points to our desire to mix the global and the local (and everything between).

Often there are characteristics of the programme which are deliberately conceived, but never get noticed. These first two preview pieces are quite satisfying in that they’re both perceptive about some of the curatorial nuances and goals that we discussed in programming Hot Docs.