Canadian documentary film festival Hot Docs kicked off this week.
This year’s Hot Docs festival began on Thursday, April 26 in Toronto, Canada. Realscreen’s Adam Benzine had a chance to speak with some of those responsible for the festival, North America’s largest dedicated to documentary films. Benzine also interviewed filmmaker Shawney Cohen about his Hot Docs premiere THE MANOR. At the POV blog, Tom Roston provided a preview of the festival. Ezra Winton of Art Threat provided a nice history of the festival, and offered its organizers five pieces of constructive criticism for the future. Writing for Canada’s POV Magazine, Marc Glassman posted a roundup of reviews of films screening at the festival. Laura Zizek of the Toronto Review of Books also provided an overview of Hot Docs, while Christopher Campbell shared some reviews at Film School Rejects. At the Globe and Mail, Steve Ladurantaye and Simon Haupt noted the drop in domestic doc production faced by filmmakers in the Great White North.
Closer to STF’s home, the Tribeca Film Festival came to a close yesterday in New York City. THE KILL TEAM from director Dan Krauss took home the award for best doc feature, while COACH from director Bess Kargman won the best doc short award. There’s a full list of award winners at festival’s website, while Adam Benzine of Realscreen had additional reporting on the doc awards. Writing for NPR’s Monkey See blog, Joel Arnold shared a roundup of films he saw, while Anthony Kaufman’s weekly Docutopia post also centered on the festival. Kaufman also considered how race, class and warfare played out as film subjects in a separate post at Indiewire.
At the New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog, Mekado Murphy posted an interview with Whoopi Goldberg, director of the Tribeca-screened Moms Mabley doc I GOT SOMETHIN’ TO TELL YOU. John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter penned a review of the Bill Siegel doc THE TRIALS OF MUHAMMAD ALI, while Brandon Harris of Filmmaker Magazine named Jason Oder’s LET THE FIRE BURN the best film he had seen at Tribeca. Indiewire critic Eric Kohn made the case that Tribeca should have created a separate category for documentary profiles. And Kelly Anderson of Realscreen reported that work-in-progress (T)ERROR from filmmaker Lyric Cabral had nabbed the Tribeca All Access (TAA) Creative Promise documentary award.
The Tribeca Film Institute last week also hosted its second interactive day, with Liz Nord providing a recap for the POV blog, and Alex Campolo of the Harmony Institute doing the same. Patricia Aufderheide did the same for the blog at American University’s Center for Social Media.
This week Stranger Than Fiction plays host to Sarah Polley’s well-regarded film STORIES WE TELL on Tuesday, April 30 at 8pm at the IFC Center in Manhattan. Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo of the Toronto Film Festival described the film as “ a lively and richly textured documentary that seamlessly blends past and present, the real and the imagined.” Following the screening, filmmaker and D-Word founder Doug Block will be in attendance for a Q&A and discussion. For more information or to purchase tickets please click here.
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The doc Mistaken for Strangers opened this year's Tribeca Film Festival.
The 2013 edition of the Tribeca Film Festival began April 17 with a screening of the film MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS about the rock band the National, directed by Tom Berninger. Critic Eric Kohn reviewed the film for Indiewire, giving it a letter grade of “B.” At Reuters, Chris Michaud took a look at some of the docs screening at this year’s festival. Writing for the POV blog, Tom Roston also previewed the festival’s docs, and in a separate post highlighted the films BIG FLEX and FLEX IS KINGS. Also writing for the POV blog, Liz Nord described the transmedia Storyscapes section of the festival as a “must-see.” Alex Reben’s BlabDroids project, which uses robots to make a documentary, got write-ups from both Angela Wattercutter of Wired and Samantha Murphy of Mashable.
The doc WHICH WAY IS THE FRONT LINE FROM HERE? THE LIFE AND TIME OF TIM HETHERINGTON got a fair bit of press over the last week, cadging no fewer than four interviews with director Sebastian Junger. R. Kurt Osenlund interviewed Junger for the pages of Filmmaker Magazine, while Adam Benzine spoke with him for Realscreen. Alison Willmore of Indiewire also chatted up Junger, as did Christopher Campbell at the Documentary Channel blog.
For those interested in checking out Junger’s film, Stranger Than Fiction is hosting a screening on Tuesday, April 23 at 8pm at the IFC Center in Manhattan. Following the screening, James Barbazon, a colleague of Hetherington’s, and Alan Huffman, the author of Hetherington’s biography, will be in attendance for a Q&A. You can find out more information and purchase tickets here.
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The International Documentary Association has revamped its DocuWeeks screening program.
The International Documentary Association (IDA) this week announced that it was scrapping its DocuWeeks program in favor of a new Screening Series in response to recent changes in the rules regarding how doc films could qualify for an Oscar nomination. As Steve Pond of The Wrap reported, the new series will take place between September and January. The organization was still working out the details of how it would select films for the new series.
The Silverdocs Documentary Festival is also no more, having been rechristened the AFI Docs Film Festival, and will expand its screening locations from Silver Spring, Maryland, to Washington, D.C. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post had the details.
Mike Thomas of the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the Illinois Department of Revenue had denied storied doc film production organization Kartemquin Films exemption from sales tax, based on the rationale that the organization was guilty of “making and selling propaganda DVDs.” The ruling led to some understandable head scratching by Dana Harris of Indiewire, as well as a writer at The Documentary Site.
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The film AMERICAN PROMISE took home top honors at this year's Full Frame festival.
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, concluded this weekend, with Glenn McDonald of the Raleigh News and Observer reporting that the grand jury award for best doc feature going to AMERICAN PROMISE by Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster. Prior to the festival’s start, Basil Tsiokos wrote up an overview for his What (Not) to Doc bog, as did McDonald for the News and Observer. Writing for Film School Rejects, Christopher Campbell reviewed A.K.A. DOC POMUS, as well as MEDORA. And the Tribeca Film Institute published a list of five influences on Marco Williams, the director behind the film THE UNDOCUMENTED, which premiered in Durham.
This week the film community lost two valued members in film critic Roger Ebert and director Les Blank. Writing for the New York Times, Bruce Weber had an obituary for Blank, who had bladder cancer. Phil Gallo of Billboard also had an obit for Blank. You can find an interview with Blank from 2007 conducted by David Tamés for The Independent magazine.
At Realscreen, Adam Benzine penned an obit for Roger Ebert, as did Douglas Martin of the New York Times. Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Steve James planned to finish his in-progress doc biopic on the highly regarded Ebert, as did Nick Venable of CinemaBlend.
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Short docs, such as Oscar-winning film INOCENTE, face changes in awards rules from AMPAS.
Writing for The Wrap, Steve Pond this week reported that the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) had turned their attention to an overhaul of rules governing the short documentary award. Similarly to the changes visited by the Academy last year on the feature documentary award, the new changes were intended to open voting up to more Academy members. Guy Lodge of HitFix also had coverage of the new changes.
Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Magazine profiled Tugg, the online platform that allowed viewers to organize theatrical screenings of films. Writing for Indiewire, Erin Whitney reported that Tugg and Codeblack Films were working to make the film FREE ANGELA & ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS available at theaters across the country. In a post for the Reel Politik column at Indiewire, Anthony Kaufman highlighted a viral video being used to promote the film.
If you can’t wait for Tugg to do its work, you’re in luck. This week Stranger Than Fiction is hosting a screening of FREE ANGELA on Tuesday, April 2 at 8 p.m. at the IFC Center. Director Shola Lynch will be in attendance and will hold and audience Q&A following the screening. For more information or to buy tickets, go here.
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