ONLY THE YOUNG by Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims follows two young skateboarders in California.
Directors Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims on Saturday June 23 were named the winners of the Silverdocs Documentary Festival’s Sterling Award for best U.S. feature for their film ONLY THE YOUNG, about a pair of young Christian skateboarders navigating the complications of life. The award for best world feature went to Seungiun Yi’s PLANET OF SNAIL, a portrait of a the deaf and blind poet Young-Chan, and his relationship with his wife, Soon-Ho. Silverdocs this year also played host to its own hack event, aptly titled Silverhacks, intended to pair filmmakers with coders in order to envision a new way to tell stories.
Some news related to the Sheffield Doc/Fest, which concluded on June 17, continued to trickle in over the past week. On Monday, June 18 came the announcement that Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s film 5 BROKEN CAMERAS, about a Palestinian farm laborer’s opposition to Jewish settlements, had won the festival’s audience award. Sophie Brown, writing for Dazed Digital, had a slew of capsule reviews of some of the festival’s offerings. And at the Shooting People blog, Helen Jack provided a more diaristic take on her Doc/Fest experience. Nigel Smith at Indiewire kindly underscored the highlights of a panel discussion on how to become a better documentary editor.
Also, the Los Angeles Film Festival June 24 named its award winners, with DROUGHT by Everardo González taking home the honors for best documentary. The audience award for best documentary feature went to BIRTH STORY: INA MAY GASKIN AND THE FARM MIDWIVES, directed by Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore. SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN by Malik Bendjelloul was also named the best international feature at the festival.
From left, STF Artistic Director Thom Powers, subject Don Baker and director David Van Taylor. Photo by Simon Luethi.
“This film started out as a joke,” claims A PERFECT CANDIDATE director David Van Taylor. The joke being that after Oliver North served a slap on the wrist stint in prison for selling arms to the Iranians and lying to Congress about it, he’d be out and soon running for office. When that joke—cracked during North’s trial—became reality, the directors felt obligated to cover the race. The 1994 Virginia Senate race pitted an embattled Democratic incumbent against two independents with niche constituencies and North, a dark horse conservative with a far-right friendly past as a felon.
Incumbent Chuck Robb is a caricature of a late-20th century Democrat on the national stage: a well-meaning geek with vague positions and a handful of sex scandals who we first see onscreen wandering alone in the empty aisles of a supermarket looking for someone to shake hands with. He is gaffe-prone and easy prey in the sound-bite era of politics. At one point, he somehow thinks its a good idea to start his answer to a debate question with “I’d take food from the mouths of widows and orphans…”
Ollie North comes across as something else altogether: a god-and-country golden boy for whom his arms smuggling past isn’t a liability but a mark of his patriotism. As Van Taylor put it in the Q&A following the screening, “Ollie is the Godzilla ranging across the countryside in this film and Robb is the scientist you wish understood what the problem is a little better.”
Matthew Akers left the Sheffield Doc/Fest with top honors for his film MARINA ABRAMOVIC: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT.
The Sheffield Doc/Fest’s jury on Sunday, June 17 named Matthew Akers’ MARINA ABRAMOVIC: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT the winner of its special jury award. But the festival earlier in the week was drew more attention after a Chinese delegation of commissioning editors pulled out after their demands that the films AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY by Alison Klayman and Steve Maing’s HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE be pulled from the festival were rejected. The Chinese delegation had ostensibly taken offense to the political content of the films (AI WEIWEI follows the dissident Chinese artist of the same name, while HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE examines citizen journalists in China sometimes operating without the blessing of the state. film programmer Hussein Currimbhoy told Realscreen, “Allowing any delegation of any kind to have influence on the film program is an idea that we could never contemplate.” Indiewire reported that news of the delegation’s pullout was reported by BBC Storyville editor Nick Fraser on Wednesday afternoon.
Before the news of the Chinese pullout broke, the folks at DocGeeks spoke to Currimbhoy about his programming approach. Indiewire also culled some crowdfunding tips taken from a Sheffield Doc/Fest panel that filmmakers might find useful.
The Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund on Monday, June 11 announced its 2012 grant recipients. Those films making the cut were E-TEAM by Katy Chevigny & Ross Kauffman; GOD LOVES UGANDA by Roger Ross Williams; FIRST TO FALL by Rachel Anderson; MERCY MERCY by Katrine W Kjær; TWO CHILDREN OF THE RED MOSQUE by Hemal Trivedi; ALIAS RUBY BLADE by Alexander Meillier; STARGAZING by Berit Madsen; and THE SUPREME PRICE by Joanna Lipper. The fund focuses on giving feature length films finishing funds. Christopher Campbell at the Documentary Channel blog took a closer look at the grants recipients.
Director Sharon Shattuck’s film PROJECT DAD is among a few documentary projects exploring the issue of transgender from different approaches.
This week Brainchild Films announced that musician Janet Jackson was set to serve as an executive producer on a documentary about transgendered people titled TRUTH, to be directed by Robert Jason. TRUTH will join a few other recent projects following transgendered subjects. Filmmaker Dan Hunt is currently in post-production on his film MR. ANGEL, an examination of trans porn star and lecturer Buck Angel. And the New York Times Op-Docs recently featured an excerpt from Sharon Shattuck’s film PROJECT DAD, about her transgendered parent. (Shattuck recently launched a Kickstarter campaign, which you can check out here.) Add that to the Sundance Channel’s show Transgeneration, and you might have the makings of a small trend.
Silverdocs released its conference agenda, which is stacked with a number of great panels and events. The festival, which runs June 18-24, will feature a keynote address from Jigar Mehta, one of the brains behind the interactive documentary/journalism project 18 DAYS IN EGYPT. Erica Ginsberg of Docs in Progress provided her own preview of the festival, which takes place in Silver Spring, MD, just outside of Washington, D.C.
The Sundance Institute and Cinereach this week announced the 15 projects to be recipients of a total of $200,000 in grant money. The doc projects selected were THE COMMISSIONER by Jarreth Merz about Ghana’s presidential elections; THE KILL TEAM by Dan Krauss about a U.S. soldier on trial for war crimes; and THE SHADOW WORLD by Johan Grimonprez about the arms industry.
From left, STF Artistic Director Thom Powers and director Andrew Berends. Photo by Tequila Minsky.
It’s doubtful that Andrew Berends settled on the name of his latest film, DELTA BOYS, lightly. An examination of the Niger Delta Vigilante, an anti-government militia in the oil-rich Niger Delta region populated by self-described freedom fighters, the film is largely a portrait of children in the Nigerian wilderness playing at soldier. Absent from all of the militants’ gunplay and posturing is any attempt by to elucidate a considered political ideology—instead they seem content to define themselves in terms of their opposition to the Nigerian government. Stuck between these two parties are the poverty-stricken fisherman of the Delta region who are ignored by the government and subject to the whims of militants, whose actions leave at least some of them in a state of perpetual terror. What emerges from Berends film is an examination of a conflict with many sides, but none that could objectively be considered good. Following the screening, Berends spoke with Stranger Than Fiction Artistic Director Thom Powers. Click “Read more” below for the Q&A.
