William and the Windmill from director Ben Nabors won the grand jury prize for feature documentary film at SXSW this year.
The South by Southwest Film Festival handed out awards on Tuesday, with the grand jury prize for feature documentary going to WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL from director Ben Nabors. The film WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS from directors AJ Schnack and David Wilson took home the special jury prize for directing. Later in the week THE SHORT GAME from Joshua Greenbaum nabbed the doc audience award. Adam Benzine of Realscreen had the news, while Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Magazine listed all of the festival’s winners. At Indiewire, Eric Kohn reviewed WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL, while Mary Anderson Casavant of Filmmaker Magazine spoke with Schnack and Wilson about STRANGERS.
In other SXSW news, Basil Tsiokos shared part one of his recap of docs screening at the festival. Brian Anthony Hernandez of Mashable recapped the Alex Winter-helmed doc on Napster, DOWNLOADED. The AP’s Michael Brick recapped the premiere of the Snoop Lion (nee Dogg) biopic REINCARNATED from director Andy Capper. Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times reported on the Kathleen Hanna doc from Sini Anderson, THE PUNK SINGER. At The Daily Beast, Marlow Stern took a look at Michal Marczak’s FUCK FOR FOREST.
Alison Willmore of Indiewire reported that video hosting site Vimeo would debut a VOD service for filmmakers, splitting the revenues 90/10 in favor of the filmmakers. Sean Holmquest of the POV blog spoke with Vimeo’s Blake Whitman about the new initiative.
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The film WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS premiered at this year's SXSW festival.
It’s far too easy for jaded cynics from the coasts to think of the U.S.’s “heartland” (a conception that itself is a complicated one) as a monolithic culture of guns, jingoism and intolerance. A studied rebuke to the dismissive idea of the flyover state, WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS from directors AJ Schnack and David Wilson challenges any number of these presumptions in its investigation of Branson, Missouri–a town with a population of about 10,000 that channels some 7.5 million tourists through it on an annual basis.
Branson, situated in the highland region of the Ozarks, appropriates the neon flash of Broadway and Vegas, but promises an ideal of wholesome entertainment bereft of uncouth language or nudity–essentially anything that could easily be considered offensive by social conservatives. In the tradition of much escapist entertainment, performances in Branson’s theaters seem infused with a Stepford-esque aesthetic that belies complicated realities: a saccharine ode to the American flag and the U.S. armed forces is presented without consideration for the terrible costs of war.
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First-time director Lotfy Nathan's 12 O' CLOCK BOYS is screening at SXSW this year.
For someone mired in New York City’s dark winter for far too long, South by Southwest holds the promise of warmer climes, reasonably priced barbeque and cold beer. This year–like any other–the festival’s programmers have put together a selection of non-fiction work designed to entice any self-proclaimed fan of documentary out of the sunshine and into a darkened theater. Here are five films I think are worth waiting in line for.
THESE BIRDS WALK (Visions) Last summer Filmmaker magazine anointed the duo of Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq as among the 25 new faces of indie film, and for good reason. The pair earned a mountain of press for their 30 Mosques in 30 Days documentary project and its user-generated offshoot, 30 Days of Ramadan. Mullick and Tariq banned both voiceover and talking heads in the making of THESE BIRDS WALK, a portrait of a young runaway living in Karachi, over which hovers the story of Pakistani humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi. The film comes to Austin fresh from a screening at the True/False Film Fest, where it built both buzz and a solid base of support among viewers. Watch the trailer; if there’s a heart beating in your body I promise you will have goosebumps.
12 O’CLOCK BOYS (Feature Competition) Lotfy Nathan’s directorial debut ostensibly follows the not-quite-yet teenager Pug as he seeks to align himself with an outlaw dirt bike gang that runs roughshod over the streets of Baltimore. But the clear subtext of 12 O’CLOCK BOYS is the dire economic and class divisions that drive Charm City’s young bikers to define themselves oppositionally to the Baltimore police, along with pretty much any other established social institution. Nathan’s film ends with a major catharsis for his subject, but probably not in the way you’d expect.
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Terence Nance discusses the complex origins of AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY. Photo by Simon Luethi.
In 2006, filmmaker Terence Nance made a short film called How Would You Feel? Though it was billed as a fictional narrative, How Would You Feel? stars Nance and his close friend, Namik Minter, as versions of themselves. The film also dramatizes actual events and emotions experienced by Nance and Minter, as told through Nance’s perspective. Years later, Nance decided to put How Would You Feel? in context, using interviews, animations, letters, and home movies to tell a more complete, if still personal and subjective, story. The resulting film is his feature documentary, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Oversimplification demonstrates the ways in which fiction can be used as a tool to convey truth and explores the challenges that arise when such truth is one-sided.
Oversimplification was the final film screened as part of STF’s Winter 2013 season. After the screening, Nance spoke with STF’s Thom Powers about the origins of his film and the success it has had over the past year.
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Filmmaker John Walter shares his admiration for Shohei Imamura and A MAN VANISHES
It is appropriate that Shohei Imamura’s A Man Vanishes, a documentary about a missing person and the often blurry distinctions between fiction and truth, was nearly impossible for U.S. audiences to see for nearly 40 years. In late 2012, the film’s belated U.S. release was met with praise from critics; Manohla Dargis wrote that, had A Man Vanishes premiered at Cannes that year, “it would have been hailed as a thrilling discovery.” In the film, the man who has disappeared is Tadashi Oshima, an unassuming middle-aged businessman, and Imamura attempts to aid in the search for him by interviewing those closest to him. The deeper the search goes, however, the more complicated it becomes, and more questions are raised about the true motives of those involved. A Man Vanishes is a fascinating exploration of the boundaries of reality, and its reflexivity makes it a film as much about the documentary medium as it is about the search for Oshima.
After the screening, STF’s Thom Powers invited filmmaker John Walter (How to Draw a Bunny, Theater of War), a longtime Imamura enthusiast, to join him in discussing the film and Imamura’s work as a whole.
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