The film RAFEA: SOLAR MAMA won the Audience Award at this year’s DOC NYC Festival.
The third annual DOC NYC ended its run on Thursday, with the festival’s award winners named just prior to a screening held that night of the new film THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE by directors Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon. Writing for Movies.com, Christopher Campbell noted three films that screened at the festival made his must-see list for the year. And in his weekly Docutopia blog post, Anthony Kaufman took a look at some of the films at DOC NYC that investigate the notion of innocence lost. Kaufman also reflected on Jamie Meltzer’s film INFORMANT, which won the festival’s Viewfinders Grand Jury Prize. Continue reading…
Liz Garbus’s film Bobby Fischer Against the World was one of the recipients of a Grierson British Documentary Award this year.
We seem to have entered that period of the year known as “Awards Season,” with the accolades starting to fly at an ever-increasing pace. At Realscreen, Adam Benzine tallied up the winners of the Grierson British Documentary Awards, noting that the Liz Garbus film BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD had nabbed the Best Cinema Documentary award. Jennifer Merin of About.com also had a recap of the awards, as did Alexandra Zeevalkink of DocGeeks, who noted that the BBC cleaned up at the awards.
The Cinema Eye Honors are set to take place Jan. 9 in New York City.
The Cinema Eye Honors Nov. 2 announced the nominees for its 6th Annual nonfiction film awards, with 31 features and five shorts earning nods from the organization. Five films were competing for the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking award: Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s 5 BROKEN CAMERAS, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s DETROPIA, Bart Layton’s THE IMPOSTER, Matthew Akers’ MARINA ABRAMOVIC THE ARTIST IS PRESENT, Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims’ ONLY THE YOUNG and Malik Bendjelloul’s SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN. The awards are scheduled to take place Jan. 9 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. Dana Harris at Indiewire put together an easily digestible rundown of all the awards categories and nominees, while Christopher Campbell—writing for Film School Rejects—took a closer look at many of the nominated films.
With New York City still suffering the aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy, a few writers paused to consider films that address the issue of climate change. Writing for SundanceNOW’s Docutopia series, Anthony Kaufman provided a litany of docs that address the climate change issue, with Tom Roston doing the same over at the POV blog.
The DOC NYC festival, which runs Nov. 8-15, hopes to be part of the city’s recovery from the storm. One of the festival’s programmers, Basil Tsiokos, provided an overview of the festival’s offerings at his What Not to Doc blog. In a separate post, he also delved into the “Get the Money” Doc-A-Thon panel discussion he helped to organize, which focuses on finding funding for your documentary film. You can find a list of all of the festival’s films and events here. Continue reading…
Rodney Ascher’s film ROOM 237 relies heavily on fair use doctrine.
The U.S. Copyright Office this week issued a ruling supporting the ripping of DVDs and recording of streaming video by documentary filmmakers seeking to use the content under fair use provisions. In a blog post, production house Kartemquin Films responded to the ruling, describing it as a victory for filmmakers, but noted that the ruling did not extend to Blu-Ray discs, a development they found troubling. The International Documentary Association (IDA) in a post also responded to the ruling, and there’s also a Los Angeles Times piece from December 2011 that provides an overview of some of the issues at play.
The IDA this week also released the list of nominees for its Documentary Awards, with the ceremony scheduled to be held Dec. 7-12 in Los Angeles. Those films nominated for best feature were THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon; THE INVISIBLE WAR by Kirby Dick; THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES by Lauren Greenfield; SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN by Malik Bendjelloul; and WOMEN WITH COWS by Peter Gerdehag. Steve Pond at TheWrap.com provided a nice overview of the nominees, and Alexandra Zeevalkink at DocGeeks rounded up the trailers for all of the feature doc nominees. Continue reading…
It was a bit of a slow week for doc news—although less so for those filmmakers nominated for by the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) on Oct. 18 for its annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. This year the docs earning nominations from the nonprofit were DETROPIA by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady; HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE by David France; MARINA ABRAMOVIC: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT by Matthew Akers; ROOM 237 by Rodney Ascher; and THE WAITING ROOM by Peter Nicks. At the Documentary Channel blog, Christopher Campbell gave the nominees some consideration.
Stanley Kubrick, or at least films dissecting his work, seem to have seized some slice of the collective consciousness. This week author Chuck Klosterman wrote a piece on Ascher’s ROOM 237, which analyzes the film THE SHINING, for Grantland, describing the film’s effect on him as “obliterating my cranium.” And Christopher Campbell this week reported that professor David Spodak was currently working on a documentary tiitled ANATOMY OF A FILM about another Kubrick film, PATHS OF GLORY.
The POV blog kept up a decent output this week, with Adam Schartoff interviewing Flaherty NYC programmer Jon Dieringer. Schartoff also had time to lob a few questions at director Jonathan Goodman Levitt over his new film FOLLOW THE LEADER and the interactive screening of the film that took place at this year’s PaleyDocFest. Also, Tom Roston interviewed STF Artistic Director Thom Powers concerning his role as programmer of the SundanceNOW Doc Club.
