As you might have noticed, there was no memo last week due to the fact that I was away attending this year’s edition of Missouri’s hybrid focused True/False Film Festival. As Richard Brody summed it up so deftly in The New Yorker, it’s a festival “governed by an idea, the essence of which is documentary filmmakers thinking about what they’re doing and making that thinking integral to their films.” Maybe more than any year prior, there was a lengthy list of press folk in town to cover the fest, including Vikram Murthi for RogerEbert.com, Steven Zeitchik of the LA Times, Alissa Wilkinson writing for Vox, Jim Brunzell at Hammer To Nail, Vadim Rizov of Filmmaker Magazine and Glenn Heath Jr. for MUBI’s Notebook. I, myself, let my impressions loose over at Nonfics.
While I was away, Chicago’s DOC10 revealed their 2017 lineup. Programmed by Anthony Kaufman, the schedule includes DOC NYC Grand Jury Prize winner THE ISLAND AND THE WHALES, one of my favorites from True/False, RAT FILM and other gems like the Sundance highlights CASTING JONBENET and STEP, which will serve as the opening night picture.
Here at Stranger Than Fiction, our winter season continues tomorrow night at IFC Center with Sara Taksler’s TICKLING GIANTS, which sees “Bassem Youssef make a decision that’s every mother’s worst nightmare… He leaves his job as a heart surgeon to become a full-time comedian.” The screening will be followed by a live Q&A with director Taksler. Tickets are still available here.
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Before last night’s best picture debacle cemented the 2017 Oscars as one of the wildest on record, Ezra Edelman’s eight hour American epic O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA made history as the longest film to ever win an Oscar, regardless of category, just after taking Best Documentary Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards the night before.. Shortly thereafter, Orlando von Einsiedel took home the award for Best Doc Short Subject for THE WHITE HELMETS. The full list of Oscar winners can be found here. Leading up to the ceremony, Joel Bocko made a video essay for Fandor on the many merits of Edelman’s film, titled NOT JUST O.J., Mandalit Del Barco looked at the trio of docs up for Oscars that dealt directly with Syria’s civil war at NPR, while at ABC News, Taylor Maple outlined in detail how the Student Academy Awards may open doors to the film industry for its young honorees. And over at IDA’s blog, Caty Borum Chattoo shared a telling study of race and gender in Oscar-shortlisted documentaries from 2008-2017.
Tomorrow night at the IFC Center, we will be hosting a very special 25th anniversary screening of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s landmark documentary BROTHER’S KEEPER. To help mark the occasion, Berlinger will be on hand for a live Q&A moderated by Morgan Spurlock! This show is now sold out.
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Writing by Megan Scanlon. Megan works at the American University of Beirut. She is a frequent contributor to the DOC NYC and Stranger Than Fiction blogs; program coordinator at the Bronx Documentary Center; and teacher at Yoga to the People. She has written for the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @meganscanlon5
People are weird. How weird, is a subjective question inextricably linked with social and cultural norms, personal preference, and whether one has questioned if some of those norms happen to be a razor thin veneer masking the charade of civilization. (The jury is still out). It is reasonable to claim though, and will likely remain uncontested, that TICKLED, STF’s third film of its winter season, is phenomenally weird in scope. Directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, the inception of the film motors on innocuously enough as New Zealand journalist Farrier, the film’s narrator, explains, “I’ve made a career out of covering the strange and bizarre side of life.” Left turn here, right turn there, Farrier comes across an advertisement for a tickling competition, and in the name of career and curiosity, opens the door to a house of mirrors that curves beyond a mere tickling fetish and into a distorted maze of power, harassment, and money.
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Writing by Megan Scanlon. Megan works at the American University of Beirut. She is a frequent contributor to the DOC NYC and Stranger Than Fiction blogs; program coordinator at the Bronx Documentary Center; and teacher at Yoga to the People. She has written for the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @meganscanlon5
“I’m not demonstrating to be suffocated I’m doing it to breathe.”
-Young girl during a 2011 demonstration in Syria
Suppress. Oppress. Restrict. Obstruct. Deprive. Block. Shackle. Lie.Torture. Murder. Devastate.
These verbs are the chains and the choices of the Assad regime that sank Syria.
Stranger Than Fiction unleashed its winter season with the THE WAR SHOW, a sobering, up close encounter that chronicles the beginning of the end of Syria. Directed and narrated by Syrian radio host Obaidah Zytoon, the film is framed through the eyes of young filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, revolutionaries, and most of all, friends who were inspired to action during the Arab Spring in 2011. THE WAR SHOW provides a desperately needed narrative, a throbbing pulse of personal truth that brings the audience to the front lines of the conflict, reminding us that war, grief, and destruction cannot be sanitized. Produced by Alaa Hassan and co-written by Spencer Osberg, the two spoke with STF host Thom Powers and the STF audience for a riveting and relevant post-screening conversation.
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Still from MACHINES, directed by Rahul Jain. Courtesy of Autlook Films.
“In these times of fake news and alternative facts, we need the voices of documentarians more than ever to hold the powerful to account and explore the nuance of the world that cable news squawkers deny. And, just perhaps, to help us make our world a little more compassionate.” On a day like today, in times likes these, it is heartening to read such words of fervent inspiration. Writing an impassioned, must-read guest column last week in The Hollywood Reporter, Simon Kilmurry, executive director of the International Documentary Association, wrote a spirited call to arms for the documentary filmmaking community in which he, and all of us, seek hope, inspiration and truth in non-fiction cinematic storytelling.
Tomorrow at the IFC Center, our winter season continues with a special screening of the truly stranger than fiction tale of TICKLED, co-presented by HBO Documentary Films. The film’s co-director David Farrier and film lawyer Cam Stracher will both be on hand for a live Q&A following the film. Tickets are still available here.
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