A week after the Tribeca Film Festival decided to pull the discredited physician Andrew Wakefield’s documentary VAXXED: FROM COVER-UP TO CATASTROPHE from their line-up following outcry from the medical and film communities, indieWIRE’s Eric Kohn and The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington published a pair of postmordems outlining why the film was programmed in the first place and how pressure from various groups finally forced Tribeca to pull it. Chris Barsanti praised Tribeca for their decision to cancel its world premiere of VAXXED in Little White Lies, noting that “Tribeca’s decision not to show VAXXED does not constitute censorship, as some critics and commentators have suggested. The idea that one relatively high-profile film festival could stop the world from seeing a film is, in an age of instantly available streaming video, fairly quaint.” Unsurprisingly, despite its unscientific hogwash, the film was instantly scooped up by Cinema Libre for distribution and opened appropriately on April Fool’s Day at New York’s Angelika Film Center.
At Variety, Paul Gaita reflected on the fifth annual American Documentary Film Festival, which has its final screenings this evening, and the growth of interest in non-fiction cinema. Likewise, Chicago’s new DOC10 Film Festival wrapped up yesterday, Michael Phillips gave an overview of the offerings at the inaugural edition in the Chicago Tribune. Featuring approximately 70 documentaries among its nearly 200 film lineup, the 40th anniversary of the Cleveland International Film Festival kicked off last Wednesday. Basil Tsiokos previewed the non-fiction offerings over at What (not) To Doc. And in a surprise announcement, Charlotte Cook, former director of programming of Hot Docs and co-founder of Field of Vision, has joined the CPH:DOX programming team. The announcement comes in the wake of its recent scheduling change, from November to March, with its next edition scheduled to take place in 2017. Also on the topic of festivals, DOC NYC’s regular submissions deadline is this coming Friday, April 8th – filmmakers, get on that!
Co-presented along with the New York Film Academy, our Spring Season kicks off tomorrow with Victoria Campbell’s MONSIEUR LE PRESIDENT, which “traces the ascent and downfall of Gaston Jean Edy, a charming and much-loved voodoo priest in the Christ-roi section of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.” The director, as well as Amy Wilentz, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award winner for Autobiography, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti, will be in attendance for a post screening Q&A session. Tickets for our Spring Season kick off can be purchased here. Additionally, our home, the IFC Center, is gearing up for a major expansion, but they need a show a public support to convince city officials that this expansion is fully supported by the community. Show your support today by going here.
With the daily headlines that terrorist groups like ISIS make, AMONG THE BELIEVERS provides a timely look into the ideological battles shaping modern society in the Greater Middle East. The film mirrors a kind of case study, tracing the links between poverty, education and the radicalization of our future generations, as displayed by Pakistan’s Red Mosque network of Islamic seminaries. With unfettered access, the documentary shines light at the heart of militancy in the heart of Pakistan’s capital.
During Tuesday’s closing night of the Stranger than Fiction series, director Hemal Trivedi and producer Jonathan Goodman Levitt took the stage to explain the genesis of their illuminating film, which charts the mission of the Red Mosque’s chief cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, alongside the stories of two of his young students.
“They’re really malleable at this age,” says Aziz in a particularly arresting scene highlighting the vulnerability of children sucked into the well-financed madrassa system.
“My belief is that prisoners are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.”
–Former warden of Florida State Prison Ron McAndrew
Your father provided intelligence training to you. You’re so crafty you may as well be the love child of the CIA and Green Berets. Your mother may have inflicted Shaken Baby Syndrome on you. You used to frustrate her, and she was known for shaking it out of you. You’re 19. Your father dies. You pick up his tools he bequeathed to you, only, you have no idea what probate law is, and your stepmother calls the police. You’re arrested, because your father’s will has not been legally processed. Probate law is when a court accepts and validates a will. You never understand and register this concept. Local authorities are not concerned with your level of understanding and you’re arrested. All you know is that you don’t like jail and you want to get out. You begin a “war of irritation” to break out, and early on this includes LSD, a coffeepot, and a redhead. A psychologist comes into assess you. He doesn’t really like you because you’re a pain in the ass and people find your personality unpalatable. Several inmates and prison guards provide accounts of how crazy you are, but you’re so clever the psychologist Dr. Berland says you are faking it, and you can stay in jail. And so you plot. You might have brain damage, so you have no idea what is beyond the walls, or what you will do when you’re out.
Using fragments of animation to manifest the frenetic energy of what director Gabriel London calls a “comic book style size of life,” THE MIND OF MARK DEFRIEST surpasses every possible threshold of pain that has a conceivable expression within the human condition. The film is the culmination of a 14-year process that began when director Gabriel London started researching the nationwide issue of prison rape. After connecting with the organization “Stop Prison Rape,” London poured through 15 years of letters from escape artist Mark DeFriest. Known as Houdini for his escape attempts and jailbreaks, DeFriest was thrown into solitary confinement for 26 out of his 30 years (and counting) in prison. DeFriest has been tortured, brutally gang-raped, and denied sunlight for years at a time. To survive in prison, heterosexual DeFriest created an alterego, “Wendy,” and dressed the part for protection. He witnessed the brutal murder by correctional officers of Frank Valdez and was transferred to a new prison for protection. Time and time again, the Florida Commissioners reviewing his parole of near perfect behavior after decades of escapes hemmed and hawed because his punishment wasn’t enough. Former Florida State Prison Warden Ron McAndrew says in the film, “We turned a low level non-violent offender into what Mark has become. We failed Mark DeFriest.”
“If we as a society are interested in protection, than we should be trying to get it right in justice.”
–Laura Ricciardi
Unless you have sworn off all forms of media, chances are you’re aware of the recent popularity of the true crime genre. After The Jinx and Serial, the latest series that’s taken true crime by storm is Netflix’s Making A Murderer.
On February 25, The Stranger Than Fiction documentary series presented The Making of MAKING A MURDERER, a one-of-a-kind event hosted by DOC NYC Artistic Director Thom Powers. Powers conducted a live 90-minute interview with Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, directors of the 10-episode Netflix documentary series MAKING A MURDERER, released in December 2015. The interview unpacked the production and editing of the ten year documentary process, and concluded with key takeaways of the series. Cinephiles had the opportunity to view selected clips from the series, and hear from the special guests of the evening: production advisor Maureen Ryan, editor Mary Manhardt, and Civil Rights lawyer Stephen Glynn.
Steven Avery of Manitowoc, Wisconsin was exonerated in 2003 for wrongful conviction after serving 18 years in prison. In an unprecedented boomerang turn of events, Avery was arrested in 2005, and in 2007, sentenced to life in prison for murder. MAKING A MURDERER documents the most controversial investigation Wisconsin has ever seen. On a grander scale, it shines a light on the cracks triggered by the rigidity of the United States justice system, reinforced by “an unwarranted certitude on the part of police officers and prosecutors and defense lawyers and judges and jurors that they’re getting it right, that they simply are right.” This comment was made by Avery’s lawyer Dean Strang in the series, and he emphasized the “tragic lack of humility of everyone who participates in our criminal justice system.” Consequently, STF’s The Making of MAKING A MURDERER unveiled a deeper examination of the United States justice system.
You probably already saw, but the biggest news on our radar this week is Stranger Than Fiction’s own Spring Season schedule announcement (if you missed it, I urge you to read the announcement here). To celebrate 11 years of Stranger Than Fiction, hosted by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen and presented by IFC Center, we’ve squeezed in extra films and special events to take our 8 week program up to 11 screenings. Tickets for Stranger Than Fiction screenings are $16 for the general public and $13 for IFC Center members. A Spring Season Pass, good for admission to all 11 events from April 5-May 31, is also now available for $99 ($80 for IFC members).
Elsewhere in there doc world, the Tribeca Film Festival came under fire after it announced that it would be showing a single screening of VAXXED: FROM COVER-UP TO CONTROVERSY, a film co-written and directed by Andrew Wakefield, a discredited British physician whose high profile 1998 report claiming that he’d discovered “a correlation between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disorders” was subsequently fully retracted. First, Laura June asked, “Why Is an Anti-Vaccine Documentary by a Proven Quack Being Taken Seriously?” in NY Magazine’s The Cut. Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams followed that by calling out the festival, reasoning that a “discredited doctor’s documentary about ‘the long-debated link between autism and vaccines’ doesn’t belong in respected festival.” Then filmmaker Penny Lane, director of the new film NUTS! which highlights “just how easy it is to fall for a quack, especially one cloaked in the authority of a documentary film,” wrote an open letter to the festival via Filmmaker Magazine asking them to reconsider for the sake of filmmakers everywhere. Kate Erbland of indieWIRE and Michael Hiltzik of The Los Angeles Times joined the chorus of outrage, each outlining the various through lines of dialogue between the press and the festival.
As it turns out, Robert De Niro himself, co-founder of the festival, selected the film for very personal reasons. In his public initial response to the backlash he was quoted by Pam Belluck and Melena Ryzik in The New York Times, “Grace and I have a child with autism, and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined. In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening VAXXED.” Finally, after nearly a week of outcry, Stephanie Goodman of The New York Times reported that the film had been pulled from the festival. Following the announcement, Tom Roston wrote a poignant piece at Doc Soup titled, “Why We Hold Film Festivals to High Ethical Standards,” summarizing that he’s “greatly relieved that De Niro and Tribeca chose to reverse their decision. It’s the right call.”
