STF spring season closing night: TIBET IN SONG

image STF’s spring season ended with Ngawang Choephel’s incredible film TIBET IN SONG.  For the second time in STF history, the film inspired a thundering standing-ovation (the first time being at the Spring 08 screening of THE AGRONOMIST when Jean Dominique’s widow Michele Montas came to the stage).  To learn more about the film and future screenings, you can visit: http://www.tibetinsong.com.

Thanks everyone for another great season of STF! A special thanks to the 50 STF passholders who broke our previous record for number of season passholders.  And thank you to 99 Below for all your yummy STF drink specials.  See you in the fall!




THE GLASS HOUSE at STF

image Director Hamid Rahmanian and producer Melissa Hibbard presented their film THE GLASS HOUSE to a sold-out crowd at STF last Tuesday.  The film had its North American debut at Sundance earlier this year and explores the lives of marginalized young women in modern Tehran who cohabitate in a day center.  Battling numerous obstacles including abuse, drug addiction, and general oppression, these women face the challenges with dignity and grace.  One of my favorite quotes of the night was during the Q&A when Hamid was asked how the women felt upon seeing the finished film.  Hamid said they didn’t think it was “dramatic enough”.  Life in Tehran!




Cannes: “Documentary: The New Journalism” Panel

image A week ago in Cannes, the American Pavilion hosted a panel called “Documentary: The New Journalism”.  In a world where print journalism is collapsing and long-lead stories are becoming a luxury of the past, what role can documentaries play in providing an alternative to traditional journalism? The panel was moderated by Thom Powers and included distributor Richard Lorber (Alive Mind), filmmaker Anne Aghion (MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER – playing at Cannes) and David Fenkel (Oscilloscope Laboratories). 

The panel started off on a lighter note with Thom Powers reassuring the audience that there would be “no genital mutilation on our panel this morning” (a reference to Lars Von Trier’s ANTI-CHRIST that premiered the prior night) “and if it were to happen – true to documentary, it would be real”.  On a more serious note, Powers then went on to trace recent developments in journalism.  He observed that as one media form truncates, we see a different form of media move-in and expand: namely that of documentary filmmakers.  He posited that documentarians can follow a story longer than deadline-driven journalists to get at a more nuanced truth.




Postscript to the STF Peter Davis Tribute

Written by Hugo Perez
(Photo of Hugo Perez and Peter Davis)

image Last night, STF hosted a tribute to Peter Davis, a filmmaker and a gentleman, a scholar and writer best known in documentary circles for his classic HEARTS AND MINDS that earned him the 1975 Oscar for Best Documentary.  Much less known today is his landmark television series MIDDLETOWN, a series of six verité documentaries which aspired to create a portrait of life in America by telling stories that reflected 6 different aspects of American life: Getting a Living; Making a Home; Training the Young; Using Leisure; Engaging in Religious Practice; and Engaging in Community Activities.  The series was shot entirely in Muncie, Indiana from 1979 to 1982 with a team that included Peter Davis as Executive Producer and Director, Ricky Leacock as a Director, now A-List Hollywood DP John Lindley, editor Tom Haneke and others.  Originally aired in 1982, the MIDDLETOWN series has become increasingly hard to see.** Doc geeks like myself have only had the chance to see the films from the series on blurry VHS copies passed around from doc enthusiast to doc enthusiast like Russian Samizdat literature.  (One hopes that a company like Criterion might someday step in to make the films available as a DVD box-set.)




Cannes: Documentary Powerhouse Brunch

image For a second year, the Marche Du Film hosted a Documentary Brunch to bring together the documentary community attending the Cannes Film Festival.  The brunch was presented along with the National Film Board of Canada and attended by over 125 filmmakers and industry professionals from around the world.  In honor of the 70th anniversary of the National Film Board of Canada, the NFB shared a clip of their latest film CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY.  (Photo: Tom Perlmutter - Government Film Commissioner and Chairperson of the National Film Board of Canada, with Louise Blais - Director of Canadian Cultural Center.)




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