MoMA’s Doc Fortnight “has played host to an annual collection of non-fiction films that push boundaries both aesthetically and narratively. Be it groundbreaking works from groundbreaking filmmakers, or like much of the list we are about to dive into, profoundly moving efforts from names many may not be familiar with,” writes Joshua Brunsting in his Criterion Cast preview of the festival’s 17th edition which kicked off on Thursday evening. Singling out highlights in Jeffrey Perkins’s GEORGE, Jackie Ochs and Susanna Styron’s OUT OF MY HEAD, Stephen Organ’s HABANEROS and a restrospective on the documentary films of the late Jonathan Demme, Daniel Eagan notes in Film Journal, “For many years, Doc Fortnight was curated by MoMA’s Film Department. Recently, guest curator Kathy Brew has programmed the series, this year with Gianna Collier-Pitts.” Basil Tsiokos also gave an overview of the new non-fiction offerings at Doc Fortnight, as well as at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival at What (not) To Doc.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX has announced the full 200+ film program of its 15th edition. Of the 12 features in competition for the DOX:Award, Nasib Farah and Søren Steen Jespersen’s LOST WARRIOR, Christian Krönes and Florian Weigensamer’s WELCOME TO SODOM, Marcus Lindeen’s THE RAFT, Salomé Lamas and Stanislav Danylyshyn’s EXTINCTION, Andreas Dalsgaard’s THE GREAT GAME, and Alexander Rynéus, Malla Grapengiesser and Per Bifrost’s GIANTS AND THE MORNING AFTER are all world premieres.
Meanwhile back stateside, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival revealed “that renowned filmmaker Joe Berlinger will curate the 2018 Thematic Program, and the festival will honor Jehane Noujaim’s illustrious body of work with the 2018 Tribute.” And at IndieWire, Eric Kohn reports that while “few major festivals are run by women, or by people of color; several key positions held by white men have now been vacated, creating tremendous prospects for injecting a more complex identity into the festival ecosystem.” He continues, “For many, the answer comes down to one easy solution: Hire a woman. Four major international festivals — Sundance, Berlin, Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and the Toronto International Film Festival — are currently hiring top programming roles. The people who fill those slots could have a radical impact on the kinds of movies resonating on the festival circuit, and eventually, those with the potential to reach wider audiences.”
Stranger Than Fiction’s 2018 Winter Season continues this week at the IFC Center with Daniel McCabe’s THIS IS CONGO, a a highly-immersive, unfiltered look into the conflicts at the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tickets for tomorrow’s screening are still available here.