DOC NYC, the largest documentary film festival in the United States, has returned to New York for its 8th edition, having kicked off on Thursday evening with a rousing opening night speech by Thom Powers. Giving insight into the immense spread of films on offer, Jason Bailey writes his is festival recommendations at Village Voice, “the options are unsurprisingly diverse: explorations of global issues, intimate character portraits, science explainers, true-crime investigations, celebrity profiles, snapshots of New York City.” Chris Barsanti of Film Journal International and Joshua Brunsting of Criterion Cast both surveyed the festival program, while at Doc Soup, Tom Roston spoke with Basil Tsiokos, the festival’s Director of Programming, about how the current state of politics influenced this year’s program. The IndieWire crew listed their 13 most anticipated films of the fest, while the folks at Women and Hollywood have been interviewing many of the female filmmakers in the lead up to the festival’s kickoff and Soheil Rezayazdi spoke with Barbara Kopple about her new film A MURDER IN MANSFIELD for Filmmaker Magazine. If you’re hoping to keep with the flood of coverage coming out of DOC NYC, you might do well to follow David Hudson at The Daily via Criterion over the next week.
Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal, better known to most as RIDM, also began Thursday evening, kicking off its 20th edition with a screening of Céline Baril’s 24 DAVIDS. The film was among the handful of hardy recommendations put forth by Ismaël Houdassine in his overview of the fest at Huffington Post (though you may need help from Google Translate – it’s in French). “The festival has a double mandate. It’s about showing the best or most interesting international films of the year; and it’s a great platform for local artists,” said programming director Bruno Dequen, with executive director Mara Gourd-Mercado in T’Cha Dunlevy‘s feature on the fest in Montréal Gazette in which he goes on to list 10 must-sees, including Travis Wilkerson’s DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN? and Ziad Kalthoum’s TASTE OF CEMENT.
And while TIFF and NYFF may have come and gone, Eric Hynes‘s rundown of the festivals’ best celebrity offerings via Film Comment is a must read.
Awards season rolls on this week with the 45th annual British Documentary Awards, where the Grierson Award for Best Single Documentary – International was given to Rahul Jain for MACHINES, Best Historical Documentary went to Ava DuVernay for 13TH, Best Documentary Short to Charlie Lyne for FISH STORY, and Best Cinema Documentary to Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg for WEINER.
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This year’s Halloween memo might not as spooky as one might hope, and surprisingly brief, considering the season. That said, award season marches on: Variety’s Kristopher Tapley reported, “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Friday that 170 films have been submitted for documentary feature Oscar consideration.” Of the many submitted, just 15 will make the shortlist and only 5 will receive official nominations or Best Documentary. Within surprising accuracy, DOC NYC’s Shortlist program has done an incredible job of estimating what films will receive Oscar nods, and the festival’s Director of Programming, Basil Tsiokos, has already begun to preview the festival’s various programs at What (not) To Doc, while he, along with Executive Director Raphaela Neihausen, also appeared on Pure Nonfiction to discuss this year’s edition of the festival.
Tsiokos also gave an overview of the 21st Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, which takes place in the Czech Republic each year, while at IDA’s page, Patricia Aufderheide gave a rundown of the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival, a “newbie DC festival is a project of an investigative nonprofit, 100Reporters, which publishes and offers to other publishers investigative journalism about government corruption.”
Following the unveiling of the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards nominations, on Tuesday the organization announced “Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris will receive the lifetime achievement award,” reported Taryn Nobil of Variety. With perfect timing, Morris turned up in conversation with Nicolas Rapold in Film Comment to discuss WORMWOOD, “a four-hour, six-part series that will stream on Netflix starting December 15 and, in a just-announced “non-episodic” form with an intermission, will screen theatrically in qualification for Academy Award consideration at the same time.”
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With nominations from various organizations being announced this week, we can no longer deny that we are now in the midst of award season. The IDA Documentary Awards revealed their initial nominations for its 33rd edition, including those up for the ABC News VideoSource Award for best use of news footage in a documentary: BLOOD ON THE MOUNTAIN, ICARUS, OBIT., ELIÁN and LA 92. Those wishing to attend the award ceremony on December 9th at the Paramount Theatre in LA can still purchase tickets here through October 27th. IDA also announced this year’s Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantees who received $850,000 in funding across 11 projects.
Last Tuesday, Cinema Eye announced their annual list of Unforgettables, “which annually celebrates the exciting and sometimes tricky collaborations between filmmaker and subjects by noting those indelible individuals who helped define documentary cinema in 2017.” Among the 30 individuals from 15 different films named were Daje Shelton from FOR AHKEEM, Ola Kaczanowska of COMMUNION, Yance Ford from STRONG ISLAND, and Christine’a Rainey, Christopher “Quest” Rainey, PJ Rainey and William Withers from QUEST. Anne Thompson broke the story over at IndieWire.
Following shortly thereafter, the IFP Gotham Awards unveiled their own nominations, including for a quintet of films up for Best Documentary, including EX-LIBRIS – THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, RAT FILM, STRONG ISLAND, WHOSE STREETS?, and THE WORK. Tickets for the award ceremony to take place on November 27th at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City can be purchased here.
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As it happens, I am currently in Stockholm visiting my doc loving co-workers at Influence Film Club, but I would be remiss to share a mini memo that spreads the good word that DOC NYC has announced its complete 2017 lineup! Among the 111 feature length documentaries on offer this year, Guy Fiorita’s MOLE MAN and Julia Bacha’s NAILA AND THE UPRISING will have their world premieres as part of this year’s Viewfinders competition, while David Wexler’s VIGILANTE: THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF CURTIS SLIWA AND THE GUARDIAN ANGELS and Prudence Katze and William Lehman’s THE IRON TRIANGLE will world premiere in the Metropolis competition. Jessica Mach reported on the announcement for Realscreen, noting, “Over 350 filmmakers and special guests are scheduled to participate in panels or present their films.” Festival passes and individual screening tickets are now available for purchase.
Last week also saw the unveiling of IDFA‘s 2017 lineup, containing a mind-boggling “312 titles (from 3,886 submissions), of which 90 documentaries will have their world premieres during the festival.” The 30th edition of the festival will take place in Amsterdam from November 15 to 26. A boat load of brand new doc trailers are available at the festival’s YouTube page.
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Those working in the field of nonfiction filmmaking have much to look forward in this year’s newly announced lineup for the 2017 DOC NYC PRO conference, which announced features “100+ speakers including acclaimed filmmakers and industry leaders across eight days of panels, case studies, master classes and happy hours.” The conference runs November 9-16 at Cinepolis Chelsea concurrent with the festival’s public film screenings. Passes for this must attend industry event can be purchased here.
Last Wednesday, DOK Leipzig revealed that David Spaeth’s BETRAYAL will open the festival, which runs October 30 through November 5. The festival is also honoring the doc filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt with a special program titled “Visual Electrics. The Cinema of Jay Rosenblatt” and a master class in which Jay Rosenblatt will give insights into his working methods. Meanwhile at What (not) To Doc, Basil Tsiokos previewed of new nonfiction offerings at both the Hamptons International Film Festival, which concludes today, and the BFI London Film Festival, noting that “among the more than 200 new feature offerings of the respected UK event are nearly 60 documentaries.”
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