Michael Apted's new film 56 UP performed well at the box office in limited release.
Michael Apted’s UP series has crossed the half-century mark with it’s latest installment, 56 UP, which had its theatrical release in NYC this week. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times handed the film an NYT Critics’ Pick. Writing for Film School Rejects, Christopher Campbell named the UP series “as significant and necessary as any film series,” partly due to longevity of the series. Leah Rozen at The Wrap concurred, calling the films “an amazing achievement.” Early box office reports indicated that the film had done very well, earning $20,500 despite being released in only one theater.
In a piece penned for Hammer to Nail, director Robert Greene bemoaned the dearth of thoughtful criticism regarding “cinematic nonfiction film,” and went on to name his favorite top 25 nonfiction films of 2012. Via Twitter, Greene later pointed to a post he had written back in 2010 that presented some ideas similar to those in his Hammer to Nail piece.
Filmmaker Magazine this week documented a great dialogue between directors Pamela Yates (GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR) and Bernardo Ruiz, whose film REPORTERO, about the threat of violence faced by Mexican journalists, is set to screen on POV tonight.
Continue reading…
Programmers occupy a unique space in the film landscape, serving as a force that both curates and supports films, while often remaining unknown to all but the most impassioned cinephiles. Given that STF Artistic Director Thom Powers has made programming documentary film his life’s work, I thought it would be interesting to get his views on the state of documentary in the year 2012. What follows is a conversation we had on December 30, 2012.
[This Q&A was edited for clarity]
Rahul Chadha: I guess the first question is, if you had to sum up the year in documentary, how would you do it?
Thom Powers: One of the things that impressed me about 2012 was the sizable output of really intellectually meaty films. And a lot of these films had to do with the Middle East—and I’m thinking of THE LAW IN THESE PARTS, or THE GATEKEEPERS. And outside of the Middle East I would point to THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE—films that had a really strong engagement with history and showed a depth of reporting and probing interviews that really added to our understanding of these different issues.
Continue reading…
3D films, such as TO THE ARCTIC, had a great year in 2012, according to box office tracker The Numbers.
It was a super slow week for doc news, with most people seeming to take some time off to enjoy the holidays. Maybe they were all headed to the movies–despite ongoing disruption from digital channels, documentaries had a decent year at the box office, according to Dec. 30 figures from box office data tracking site The Numbers. The doc 2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA by conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan tallied a $33.3 million take at the box office as of Dec. 30, making it the highest grossing doc of the year. 3D films also made their mark at the box office, with four of the top 10 grossing docs of the year relying on the technology. Also, 15 films crossed the $1 million threshold, and The Numbers reported that 14.9 million tickets were sold for documentary films over the course of the year. (h/t to Tom Isler)
The year-end top doc lists continued to trickle out this week, with the POV blog publishing one from Tom Roston, who named SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN as his top pick for the year. Writing for Movies.com, Christopher Campbell took a different approach, eschewing the list format in favor of one that broke his favorite films down by categories (e.g. best observational/verite doc). At the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mike Scott placed the Eugene Jarecki drug war film THE HOUSE I LIVE IN at the top of his best docs list.
This time writing for the Documentary Channel blog, Christopher Campbell interviewed WEST OF MEMPHIS director Amy Berg about how she came to be involved in documenting the story of the West Memphis Three, and the potential complications that came with interviewing director Peter Jackson, one of the film’s producers.
Continue reading…
Alan Berliner's new film FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED is among those docs scheduled for Stranger Than Fiction's Winter Season.
Stranger Than Fiction this week announced the lineup for its Winter Season, which is scheduled to start Jan. 8 with a screening of director Roman Paska’s REHEARSAL FOR A SICILIAN TRAGEDY, a look at the artistic traditions of Sicily as guided by actor John Turturro. Both Paska and Turturro will be on hand for an audience Q&A following the screening; you can find more information about the screening and purchase a ticket here. Other films in the Winter Season include a number of festival darlings, among them Alan Berliner’s FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED; Amy Nicholson’s ZIPPER: CONEY ISLAND’S LAST WILD RIDE; and Terence Nance’s AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY. You can see a nice overview of the Winter Season films here. Consider taking advantage of the STF Season Pass, which gets you a ticket to all eight screenings, along with free popcorn and a free DVD from Docurama.
Writers are taking advantage of the few remaining weeks left in the calendar year to turn out “best of” lists for 2012, along with pieces that take a look back at the year or at what 2013 has in store for us. The POV staff rounded up their choices for the top 12 documentary stories of the year, with an April tax court decision that deemed documentary filmmaker a business practice, and not a hobby, topping the list. At the Documentary Channel blog, writer Christopher Campbell tallied the best music docs of the year, while writers at alt-weekly The Chicago Reader listed the year’s best political docs.
Continue reading…
Anthony Kaufman put the odds that THIS IS NOT A FILM would win the Oscar for best doc at 50 to one.
With the release of the Oscar documentary shortlist last week, attention in the media this week turned to prognosticating who will be holding a little gold man come the awards ceremony in February. For those interested in betting on the outcome of the Oscar race, Anthony Kaufman spent his Docutopia column making the odds for the award, establishing THIS IS NOT A FILM as the long shot at 50 to one. At the Documentary Channel blog, Christopher Campbell identified David France’s HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE as the dark horse candidate for the win, while the writers at the DocGeeks blog made their case for various picks.
Writing for Realscreen, Adam Benzine had a thorough round-up of doc winners of various other awards, including those of the Independent Documentary Association (IDA), the British Independent Film Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics. Writing for the IDA website, Katherine Relth also provided some coverage of the IDA awards. And Benzine was back in a few days to report on the documentary nominees for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.
Continue reading…
