Less than a month after the conclusion of this year’s edition of Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival, Charlotte Cook, the festival’s Director of Programming for the last four years, has announced that she’ll be stepping down from her position to focus, in her words, on “working closely with filmmakers. Something I hope to have the honour to do for the rest of my life.” Shipra Harbola Gupta reported the news for Indiewire, as did Julianna Cummins for Realscreen. Gracefully ruminating on her time with Hot Docs, Cook wrote a personal statement over at Medium, signing off with, “A huge thank you to everyone who supported a young Brit with a passion for showing films and celebrating those who make them. And I can’t wait to share my next adventure with you all..”

Last week there was much talk about The New York Times’ decision to change their film reviewing policy to no longer guarantee a review if it plays in theaters, some positive, some negative. This past week, a pair of further thoughts came through the wire, one from The New Yorker’s Richard Brody in which he opines that the new policy gives smaller films and online releases a more even playing field while incisively commenting on very nature of criticism in our current culture of mass data itself. The second came from Calum Marsh in The Guardian who discussed what will likely end thanks to the policy change – ‘four-walling’, or how filmmakers pay to see their work on screen.

We here at Stranger Than Fiction show films not for reviews, but because we want audiences to be able to see them in their prime, on the big screen. Our Spring Season is coming to a close tomorrow with Crystal Moselle’s mind-blowing debut, THE WOLFPACK. The director will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. More details on both the film and screening can be found here.

Continue reading…

---

Sending contradictory shocks of nervous awe and critical relief throughout the film industry, the New York Times announced that they can no longer guarantee a film review no matter whether or not a film plays theatrically or not. With the increasing deluge of films being released each year, A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis and the rest of the film critics on staff can no longer handle the crushing load such a release schedule demands of the writers. Brent Lang broke the news at Variety, while Indiewire’s Sam Adams‘ had an exclusive interview with A.O. Scott about the tough decision and its possible implications. Following the news The Wrap ran a pair of articles, one by Steve Pond, the other by Todd Cunningham, focusing on the potentially catastrophic impact for documentary films come Oscar season. Ben Child of The Guardian also reported on the policy change, while FishbowlNY’s Richard Horgan collected social media responses from the likes of Ira Deutchman and Vadim Rizov who noted that “so many freelancers are gonna get their bottom line messed with, but for the greater good, probably”.

Less remarkable was the end of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which ended controversially, as usual. Most dubious to my mind was the fact that in nearly all coverage of the festival’s awards, mention of the new L’Oeil d’Or documentary award was wholly omitted. Separately, Variety’s John Hopewell wrote that Chilean Marcia Tambutti did in fact win the first ever L’Oeil d’Or with her film BEYOND MY GRANDFATHER ALLENDE, which Deborah Young called “a little too long” in her review of the film in The Hollywood Reporter, saying that “at times it slips away into a sort of psychoanalysis of the filmmaker and her close-mouthed family which can be heavy going”. Back at Variety, Peter Debruge continues to disparage, saying that portions of the film are “the documentary equivalent of a YouTube reaction video”. David Hudson was one of few who did manage to keep tabs on L’Oeil d’Or, collecting commentary on the award for Keyframe.

Much more positively, Stig Bjorkman’s INGRID BERGMAN IN HER OWN WORDS, which received a special mention, received a The Hollywood Reporter’s Deborah Young, calling the film “an inspiring celebrity bio with a happy ending”. Likewise, Luc Jacquet’s ecologically minded Cannes closer ICE AND THE SKY received glowing reviews from The Guardian’s Andrew Pulver, The Hollywood Reporter’s Boyd van Hoeij, and RogerEbert.com’s Barbara Scharres. Kent Jones’ much anticipated HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT also was awash in critical praise. Todd McCarthy called the doc “catnip for film buffs” at The Hollywood Reporter, while Peter Bradshaw dubbed it “a brilliant commentary on the discourse of cinema then, and now” at The Guardian. AV Club’s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, LA Times’ Kenneth Turan and Indiewire’s Anne Thompson also reviewed the film positively. Lastly, Asif Kapadia, the director of the lavishly praised bio-doc AMY, spoke with Nigel M. Smith over at Indiewire about making his latest film, while filmmakers Rodney Ascher and Lloyd Kaufman told each other Cannes stories at The Talkhouse.

After last week’s successful screening of Marah Strauch’s BASE jumping debut SUNSHINE SUPERMAN here at Stranger Than Fiction, the film hit theaters to positive reviews from the likes of Glenn Kenny at RogerEbert.com and The Dissolve’s Jen Chaney. I also posted my interview with Strauch and the film’s producer Eric Bruggemann from back at its TIFF premiere over at IONCINEMA. The Stranger Than Fiction Q&A with Strauch and Bruggemann can also be found on the STFdocs YouTube channel. This week marks the return of legendary documentarian Barbara Kopple with her latest feature HOT TYPE: 150 YEARS OF THE NATION. The film screens tomorrow at the IFC Center and will follow with a Q&A with the director herself. More details on the event and ticket information can be found here.

Continue reading…

---

Anyone with an interest in cinema and an internet connection surely is aware that the Cannes Film Festival is currently in full swing with a full week of auteurist-driven cinephelia left to go. Swirling around in that first wave whirlwind of festival news is word that SENNA filmmaker Asif Kapadia’s latest archival driven docu-portrait AMY is apparently quite the masterwork. In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw calls the film “a tragic masterpiece”, meanwhile Variety’s Guy Lodge writes that it is a “reserved yet profoundly felt film”. Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter, The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab, Indiewire’s Kaleem Aftab and The Wrap’s Steve Pond all gushed about Kapadia’s raw portrait of the late singer Amy Winehouse. Only Sophie Monks Kaufman of Little White Lies, who called the film “melodramatic” and “opportunistic”, and the singer’s much blamed father Mitch Winehouse, who spoke with Emine Saner at The Guardian about his disdain for the film, had anything truly negative to report.

Nancy Buirski’s autobiographical BY SIDNEY LUMET, which grew out of a never-before-seen interview shot in 2008 produced by the late filmmaker Daniel Anker, also premiered at Cannes over the weekend, alongside Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna’s STEVE MCQUEEN: THE MAN AND LE MANS, which ruminates on McQueen’s involvement with the troubled Lee H. Katzin picture from 1971. At RogerEbert.com, Ben Kenigsberg concludes that Buirski’s film is a bit loose, but remains insightful. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter also favored the film, dubbing it “illuminating”. On Clarke and McKenna’s film, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter thought their picture “fascinating”, but lacked the punchiness of its decisive star. An in-depth preview of the film was also published at The Independent prior to its premiere.

Most interestingly for the doc community, for the first time in the festival’s history, a new documentary prize dubbed the Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) that comes with a prize of 5,000 euro will be handed out at the festival’s closing ceremony. The prize will be awarded by a jury presided over by Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, whose own THE MISSING PICTURE premiered at the festival two years ago. Richard Mowe detailed the prize over at Eye For Film. At the same time, Daniel Walber speculated on the inaugural prize winner, debating the potential of the 14 features eligible for the award at Nonfics.

While the cinematic deluge abroad continues, here at Stranger Than Fiction we will be forging ahead with our Spring Season tomorrow with director Marah Strauch’s spectacular debut SUNSHINE SUPERMAN. Rich with stunning 16mm archive footage, well-crafted re-enactments and state-of-the-art aerial photography, the TIFF premiered film tells the story of BASE jumping pioneer Carl Boenish. Both Strauch and producer Eric Bruggeman will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A at tomorrow’s showing at the IFC Center.

Continue reading…

---

Generally speaking, all was fairly quiet on the home front as far as documentary news was concerned this past week, though that’s not to say that there wasn’t some exciting moving and shaking to report. This weekend marked the start of Munich’s DOK.fest where films like Pawel Siczek’s HALF THE TOWN and Jens Schanze’s LA BUENA VIDA will screen as part of the DOK.international competition. At What (not) To Doc, Basil Tsiokos wrote an extensive overview of the offerings at this year’s festival, while Giorgia Del Don pointed out the incredible number of Swiss productions included in this year’s program (18!) at Cineuropa.

Just prior to the start of DOK.fest, another major European doc mainstay in the Sheffield Doc/Fest announced their 2015 line-up. Stacked with 150 films and scheduled to kick off on June 5th with Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE LOOK OF SILENCE, the festival will also pay tribute to Albert Maysles, as well as feature the world premiere of director Benedikt Erlingsson’s THE GREATEST SHOWS ON EARTH: A CENTURY OF FUNFAIRS, CIRCUSES AND CARNIVALS, with a score by Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós, reports Elle Leonsis of Indiewire and The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee. At the BFI, Georgia Korossi posted a preview of the festival’s offerings, as well as a trailer for the fest itself.

Tomorrow at 8pm, we here at Stranger Than Fiction will welcome directors Alan and Susan Raymond to the IFC Center for a screening of THE POLICE TAPES, their groundbreaking, experimental video documentary that revealed the life of a South Bronx police precinct in 1977, one of the most tumultuous years in the history of New York City. This past week in The L Magazine, Mark Asch called the film “a more emotionally involved heir to Wiseman’s Direct Cinema masterwork LAW AND ORDER”, while in The New Yorker, Richard Brody celebrates the filmmakers’ participation in the intense situations on screen and an especially impassioned monologue by borough commander Anthony Bouza “regarding the inherent resentment of the presence of the police and the trauma and rage of poverty—that should be engraved on the halls of justice. “should be engraved on the halls of justice”. What tickets still available for the screening can be found here.

Continue reading…

---

Over the last 11 days, North America’s largest documentary film festival and doc conference, Toronto’s beloved Hot Docs, hosted 452 public screenings of 210 films on 17 screens throughout the city. Today they announced that directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker were awarded the 2015 Filmmaker-to-Filmmaker Award for their Sundance preemed white supremacist portrait WELCOME TO LEITH, while the Phillip Baribeau’s UNBRANDED took home this year’s Audience Award. Reflecting on the offerings of this year’s Hot Docs, Indiewire’s Anthony Kaufman wrote a piece explaining exactly what makes Hot Docs such a spotlight for under-appreciated films, as well as an outline of his favorite eight discoveries from the festival. At Doc Soup, Tom Roston also wrote up his discoveries of the past week – both writers making note of Kristof Bilsen’s THE ELEPHANT’S DREAM and Andreas Koefoed’s THE ARMS DROP.

While the public and much of the press take in as many films as is humanly possible in the 11 day stretch (I think the most I’ve manage to see is 45?!), hundreds of people in the industry descend upon the famed Hot Docs Forum to watch filmmakers pitch their projects in hopes of securing funds for production. Extending his coverage of Hot Docs, Anthony Kaufman wrote up a feature on his top eight pitches from the forum as well as tips for first time filmmakers at Indiewire, while Realscreen’s Manori Ravindran covered the forum over the course of three days – the highlight possibly being doc legend Frederick Wiseman’s first ever pitch for his new film IN JACKSON HEIGHTS, which, from the sounds of it was more like public performance than pleading pitch. While Wiseman was there in hopes of funding, he was also on hand to take part in a live discussion along with his long-time producer and distributor Karen Konicek and CBC journalist Piya Chattopadhyay. Kevin Ritchie recounted the various lessons learned from the live chat over at Realscreen.

Back in 2012, we here at Stranger Than Fiction showed Andrew Berend’s DELTA BOYS. So, we are extremely pleased to welcome back Berend with his latest film MADINA’S DREAM, which tells the story of rebels and refugees fighting to survive in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains and will screen tomorrow at 8pm at the IFC Center as part of our Spring Season of Stranger Than Fiction. Berends will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A. Ticketing information and more details on the screening can be found at the link.

Continue reading…

---