Stranger Than Fiction - "The Cove" - Feb. 8, 2010

“The Cove”

Q&A with Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens

Stranger Than Fiction

February 8, 2010

IFC Center

New York, NY

(L to R: Thom Powers, Louie Psihoyas & Fisher Stevens. Photo by Brian Geldin)

Stranger Than Fiction continued its string of screenings this season of 2010 Academy-Award nominated documentaries Monday night with “The Cove.” (STF recently screened Oscar contender “Which Way Home” and is also scheduled to show “Food, Inc.” on Feb. 17). “The Cove” is a thriller about a small group of environmental activists including director Louie Psihoyas himself and the original “Flipper” dolphin trainer Rick O’Barry, who lead an expedition to expose the atrocious slaughter of dolphins in a Japanese village using hidden surveillance equipment. The film also points out the harmful levels of mercury in the ocean that not only affects sea life, but people who eat it, namely for sushi. Psihoyas successfully weaves a narrative in a highly entertaining and informative manner, while introducing us to unique characters, both heroes (O’Barry for instance) and villains (a man they call “Private Space.”) After the credits rolled, the audience gave Psihoyas a standing ovation and Thom Powers led a discussion with him and producer Fisher Stevens. They even had some exciting news to announce about the film’s distribution in Japan.

Given the fraught circumstances and conditions Psihoyos and his crew endured in Japan, Powers noted that “The Cove” screened at the Tokyo Film Festival this year, but it wasn’t an easy endeavor. Stevens said they submitted the film seven times to the festival. The theme of the festival was “green,” but they kept getting rejected. Rick O’Barry told them they had to get it into the festival. At a screening in Nantucket, they asked if anyone there knew how they could get their film played at Tokyo, and Ben Stiller raised his hand in the audience saying he could help. Through Stiller, they got it into Alejondro Inarritu's hands, since he was the president of the Tokyo jury. He saw the film and persuaded the festival to take it “with incredible caveats of changing and blurring certain scenes,” he said. “That’s what really helped our journey in Japan.” Psihoyos said when he went to Tokyo, there were three arrest warrants for him: trespassing, conspiracy to obstruct commerce, and photographing undercover cops without their permission. He brought his lawyer just in case he’d be arrested, but luckily he didn’t get arrested. “It was the most amazing screening I had ever been to,” Psihoyas said. “In the audience were all the bad guys” including the infamous “Private Space,” the mayor of Taiji, and the fisherman. They were there to watch to the film to see if they could find anything litigious to keep it from going further to the Japanese population.

Psihoyas paused to announce his news that “The Cove” now has a Japanese distributor, Medallion. The audience applaused. The film will open theatrically in Japan this April, then will go onto DVD about three months before the September dolphin slaughter season. He equated this journey and struggle finally coming to fruition in Japan as "gaiatsu" meaning outside pressure that creates inside pressure for change. He said the most social change since World War II has happened through gaiatsu.

Did they recruit locals from Japan in the making of the film, asked someone in the audience? Psihoyas said that they did, but they were way in the background. This film has given permission for other Japanese people to speak out. It’s helped them to break through the glass ceiling. Beforehand, the press was not covering it. They received more coverage during the Tokyo Film Festival than “Avatar.” He beckoned back to the earlier news of the Japanese distribution being extremely important.

As someone who’s produced other films, what was it that stood out for Stevens about “The Cove,” Powers asked. Stevens said he’d met Psihoyas while scuba diving. He loves the ocean and the environment, which he feels has been abused and he saw an opportunity after seeing the footage that this film would wake people up. Besides that, he saw an entertaining thriller. They both also had mercury poisoning from eating a lot of sushi. Stevens recommended that everyone get their levels checked. Powers joked that actors have used that excuse to get out of Broadway plays. Stevens added that when he got to meet and know O’Barry, he saw the passion he has for his work, besides the importance of saving the dolphins.

Powers asked what’s happening with O’Barry nowadays. “He’ll be my date for the Oscars,” Psihoyas said, adding that O’Barry has had a visceral response to everything and has been going back to the cove by himself. “We’re trying to give the ocean a voice with this film,” he said, which is the true value of getting these awards. The important reason to win the Oscar for him is because it’s one of the most watched shows in Japan.

Will sales of the film go toward any of their causes, asked another person in the audience? Psihoyas said they have about $2.4 million in loans, which they’ll put into making another ocean movie. He’s also been using some of his own money to pay Japanese organizations to do websites and financing other people’s operations for community outreach. Stevens added that the box office receipts here in the U.S. was “really bad” considering all the press the film got, because people were afraid to see “the dolphin slaughter movie” no matter how much they tried to sell it as a thriller. It became depressing to them. There was a stigma about it that they hope will be lifted by marketing and selling it differently. It’s not just about the slaughter of the dolphins, it’s about much more. There’s only about 90 seconds of it in the whole film. Psihoyas said they considered every frame. “They say most documentaries are abandoned, not finished,” he said. “We finished it.”

Stranger Than Fiction - A Night with Ross McElwee - Feb. 2, 2010

A Night with Ross McElwee

“Charleen” and “Backyard”

Stranger Than Fiction

February 2, 2010

IFC Center

New York, NY

Ross McElwee, perhaps most noted for his films “Sherman’s March,” “Time Indefinite,” and “Bright Leaves” presented two lesser-seen gems Tuesday night during Stranger Than Fiction – “Charleen” (starring the outspoken Southern poetry teacher Charleen who later appears again in “Sherman’s March”) and “Backyard” (McElwee’s first attempt at an autobiographical documentary focusing on his family’s home in the South). Thom Powers led a Q&A with McElwee after each film screened, and beforehand noted that the evening’s presentation was dedicated in the memory of award-winning documentary editor Karen Schmeer, who had been killed in a hit-and-run car accident last week in New York’s Upper West Side.

“Charleen” Q&A

Powers noted that “Charleen” was a student project of McElwee’s when he was attending graduate school at MIT in the 1970s. Among McElwee’s teacher were documentary veterans Richard Leacock (“Primary”) and Ed Pincus (“Diaries”). With all that inspiration, what gave him the courage to make films about people who aren’t well known, Powers asked? McElwee said that Leacock believed in the first part of his career that one should make films about people who achieved a lot in their lives such as John F. Kennedy. McElwee and other of his contemporaries thought that one can find the same sort of heroicism in everyday life and those people have to have some sort of “star” quality, “which Charleen clearly has, even in a crudely shot piece that I did for my senior thesis at MIT. You can still see that she somehow takes over the film in a way.” Regarding the MIT program, it was highly unstructured and was just in its infancy when he went there. They were given sync sound cameras. “Charleen” in particular was shot in 16mm, and he also used a Nagra tape recorder. He recalls it being terrifying and liberating, giving him the freedom to do very unstructured film.

Having finished “Charleen,” what was his takeaway from the experience and what did he do between making this film and “Backyard,” Powers asked? McElwee said the two films were shot very close together within a year, but he didn’t have the money to process the print. The sync sound camera rig was the most expensive thing. In between “Charleen” and “Backyard,” he and Michel Negroponte shot a film called “Space Coast.” He was very pleased that he made “Charleen,” which was a learning film for him, but on a more profound level, this kind of filmmaking where he was always behind the camera asking other people to tell their stories, made him a little uncomfortable, so he decided largely through Ed Pincus’s example, doing autobiographies was a positive direction to go in, even though he was a little reticent to do it then. More to the point, there were possibilities that he hadn’t seen before with subjective writing an almost fictional shape to nonfiction. Journalistic writing to could possibly be applied to cinema vérité footage. Also, he cut his crew down from two to one, because it allowed a kind of intimacy. “Charleen” was a film he loved making, but he was still working out ideas of how he should shape his films. “Backyard” was a sketch for what would become a style he was more comfortable with and which he invested his artistic inclinations in his filmmaking, which is exemplified in “Sherman’s March.”

Lastly, Powers asked if Charleen is still alive today. McElwee said she’s “very much alive and if you ask her that question, she’d hit you over the head.”

“Backyard” Q&A

Powers asked if McElwee’s father (a surgeon) ever accepted him as being a filmmaker? McElwee said he’s very grateful that his father came to the premiere of “Sherman’s March.” His father didn’t really understand what he was doing in the film, but when he heard people in the audience laughing, he started laughing and turned to him and whispered, “I never knew you were so funny.” After a while, his father realized he found a way to make films that suited him and also could find an audience at least on a small scale.

In “Sherman’s March,” McElwee appears on screen fumbling in the weeds, almost like a Buster Keaton-type character. How much of that was he consciously cultivating an on-screen persona, Powers asked? McElwee said he was cultivating an on-screen persona of a doofus fellow who’s trying to execute one task, but constantly being distracted, which in a way is him.

Powers said when “Sherman’s March” came out, the idea of being a one-man band was more uncommon than it is today. People have talked about McElwee’s films as an observer walking through life and he actually cares a lot about formal qualities of filmmaking, such as the role that light and shadow plays. McElwee said while those things are important to him, he’s not always on top of those technical aspects. In “Backyard,” he was carrying a huge Nagra recorder and a heavy 16mm camera and dealing with a microphone. While he wasn’t the only person to do this at the time, this approach to making films really placed demands on a filmmaker. He hoped that he could continue to be conscious about composition. For instance, in the scene in “Backyard” where his father hands him a measuring tape in the backyard to put up the volleyball net, he has to deal with multiple elements from making sure the sound is recording to having the correct exposure on the camera while also composing the shot. He said he finally found the right composition towards the end of the shot with the lawnmower in the background and the microphone in the foreground. While this is important to him, it’s a compromise when you elect to do a film on your own.

Powers said there seemed to be a novelty to the moment during the scene in “Backyard” where the busboys are working in the kitchen at the country club and they speak to the fact the camera is there. How much has changes since then? McElwee said the world has changed tremendously. You have to get permissions and be more conscious of whatever’s being shot, as it can end up on YouTube. There was none of that back then. People were so relaxed. He said he thinks it’s going to continue to be hard for people to go into public spaces to make documentaries now compared to the freedom he enjoyed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

While he lives in the North, the South seems to be the place McElwee always continues to go to in his films. When he goes back to the South, does he feel like a Southerner or Northerner, Powers asked? McElwee said while he’s made his home in the North where he’s supported by his teaching gig and has also raised money from various sources such as WGBH in Boston, there’s part of him that has a strong connection to the South. He loves going back there and being with his family. In “Backyard,” he said you could especially see some of the ambivalence he had toward the way things were down there. That bothered him for a while, and had a lot to do with his decisions to make his life in the North, but things aren’t like that anymore, as things have loosened up for racial relationships. “I think you gain some perspective on where you came from when you go to a different place,” he said.

Stranger Than Fiction - "Running Fence" - January 19, 2010

“Running Fence”

Stranger Than Fiction

January 19, 2010

IFC Center

New York, NY

Stranger Than Fiction's Thom Powers and "Running Fence" co-director Albert Maysles. Photo by Brian Geldin.

Fresh off last week’s Cinema Eye Honors, Thom Powers presented this week at Stranger Than Fiction David and Albert Maysles’ and Charlotte Zwerin’s 1978 documentary “Running Fence.” Albert Maysles, who was also at last week’s Cinema Eye Honors presenting an award, appeared at Stranger Than Fiction Tuesday night to speak after the screening of “Running Fence,” which was a beautiful portrait of artists Christo’s and the late Jeanne-Claude's white 
nylon fabric that stretched along 24 ½ miles of the California Pacific coastline that, like their last project The Gates in New York City, was originally met with opposition and skepticism by residents and local government, but their persistence paid off, and their art was displayed and gorgeously filmed by the legendary Maysles brothers.

Before asking questions, Powers noted how he saw in the credits the names of people who are doing such great work such as Robert Kenner (Food, Inc.) and Bruce Sinofsky (Brother’s Keeper). Maysles said he could understand why they’re making such good movies and while just watching again “Running Fence” on the screen there at Stranger Than Fiction, it reminded him why it is that he keeps doing it. “I’m 82 years old and I got 10 or 12 projects that I’d like to get going,” Maysles said. He recognizes the importance that so much is missing in mass media – “good people, doing good things…documentary has the power to capture that very directly, very deeply, and very truthfully.”

Thom’s first question to Maysles was, what his and his brother David’s origins were with Christo and Jeanne-Claude (as “Running Fence” was just one of many collaborations together). Maysles said around 1962 or '63 when he and his brother were making documentaries in France, they were doing something different by filming with cameras that didn’t need a tripod. It was a whole new thing called “direct cinema.” The French government invited them to Lyon where they met a guy who was designing a new camera, who they brought to Paris with them to show their first film, “Showman.” The guy brought two people along, Christo and Jeanne-Claude. “They were not just people working with a canvas, but they were out in the real world where art was made up of what’s actually going on,” Maysles said. It was perfect subject matter for the Maysles’ films. It did take a while for a film project to come along. Their first project together would be “Valley Curtain.”

Powers asked Maysles while watching the film again that night; did he have any memories of that period? Maysles said he thinks back to the words of Spinoza who said "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare," which describes the nature of this project. He also was thinking about David (who passed away in 1987) and Jeanne-Claude (who passed away last November). “They’re gone, but there they are on the screen,” he said.

While watching Albert’s (and Antonio Ferrera’s) more recent film, “The Gates,” which is the only Christo and Jeanne-Claude project he’s seen in person, it had almost more meaning to him watching it on film than seeing The Gates in person. Maysles said, “That’s the strength of documentary,” Maysles said. “If the camerawork is good, it sees more than you would as a normal person. The viewer is given a better position to know what took place than having been there.” (For my 2007 film review and notes from the Antonio Ferrera Q&A at Silverdocs, go here.)

In visualizing “Running Fence,” how were they thinking through how to film it, Powers asked. Were they being conscious about their approach or more instinctive? Maysles said that each moment was instinctive. There was always something to be filmed, and a lot that shouldn’t be either, but they wanted to make sure they got the essentials.

A question from the audience to Maysles was where did they get the money to fund their film projects? “I don’t remember,” Maysles answered, generating a laugh from the audience. He remembered that some of his films like “Salesman” and “Grey Gardens” they paid for all by themselves. Powers interjected, asking if in the 1970s, they supplemented their films by making television commercials. “Thank g-d we don’t do that anymore,” Maysles replied. But it would have been tough without going with that income. He said he’d love to do another commercial someday if they allowed him to do them the way he likes to do them. He said he has an idea for a commercial for Kleenex where he’d go to a hospital where a woman is about to give birth. He’d start filming the moment the infant is being handed over to the mother. “It’s got to be a moment where there’s tears on her cheeks and she reaches for a Kleenex,” he said. Powers joked, “We may be able to arrange that.” (Referring to his expecting wife Raphaela sitting nearby).

Another member of the audience asked Maysles if he could clarify what he meant earlier as to which moments shouldn’t be filmed. Maysles said that he’s been making a film ("In Transit") about people that he meets on trains where there’s a story about to happen when they get off the train. (Maysles previously discussed this same scenario in some notes I took in 2007 when he spoke at BAM). He was about to film this woman who had a difficult story of a child that she couldn’t come to tell and be identified. He had to get it without offending her, so he filmed her hands. On the other hand, he said it’s so important not to go in the other direction and be so careful that you don’t get much value. It’s a matter of good taste and respect. He’s found over the years he’s filmed people with their vulnerabilities just as well as things that are positive traits done with love and understanding.

On being asked how he’s able to seem so invisible behind the camera while shooting his films, Maysles said that he’s been asked many times how he gets so close to the hearts and minds of the people he’s filming. “It’s because I have my heart and mind with them,” he said. His mother used to tell him that there’s good in everybody. With documentaries, that bridge can be gapped with good material that goes directly to the experience that people are having.

Lastly, Maysles talked about his Maysles Film Institute in Harlem. He said his original purpose to have it in Harlem was so that his four children would have enough space to have their own apartments and all be in the same neighborhood. One of the three buildings they were in houses the film company and a 60-seat movie theater. Unlike anywhere else in New York, they exclusively show documentaries. They also teach kids in the neighborhood how to make their own films. He added that only a few weeks earlier the most exciting moment in his life occurred when the kids showed their films to an audience and during the Q&A, one of the questions to them was if any of them are planning to make a career out of filmmaking, and everyone of them raised their hand.

Stranger Than Fiction - "Snowblind" - January 12, 2010

“Snowblind”

Stranger Than Fiction

January 12, 2010

IFC Center

New York, NY

Stranger Than Fiction's Thom Powers and "Snowblind" Director Vikram Jayanti. Photo by Brian Geldin.

 Tuesday saw the official opening of the new season of Stranger Than Fiction with an appropriately snowy-titled screening of Vikram Jayanti’s ("Game Over - Kasparov and the Machine") “Snowblind,” which Thom Powers noted during the post-screening Q&A was their most controversial film yet. Reason being, he received protests via email from animal rights advocates about the content of the film, that being the racing of dogs in Alaska’s famous 1,000-mile-plus dog sledding race, the Iditarod. But the protests didn’t stop Powers from showing the film on Tuesday. In fact, he told me when the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, he received no protests at all. In “Snowblind,” Jayanti takes us on the incredible journey of 23-year-old Rachel Scdoris of Oregon, who is legally blind, and is preparing to go on her third Itidarod. When she finally embarks on her sled with her dogs across the bleak Alaskan wilderness, what ensues is a remarkable and dramatic narrative. We see Rachel as a perky young woman with spirit and determination, despite her disability, which never seems to hinder her. She does get help along the way with another “musher” named Joe, who according to the race’s rules, must go with her just to lead her, but can never physically help her, and she doesn’t ever really seem to need it, except perhaps when her dogs get stuck. With not only patience, but also love, Rachel gets through any obstacle, but it gets harder and harder along the way, and the film successfully ensnares us in its suspense. There are so many twists and turns and highs and lows in the film, none of which I will reveal here, because you will just have to discover them on your own when and if you get a chance to see it yourself. Therefore, any discussion of these particular plateaus in the film that were discussed during the Q&A have been purposely left out of my notes below, which highlight more of the inner workings of the production and psychology behind the characters and director’s choices.

Powers began by asking Jayanti what got him involved with wanting to make this film, and what was it like working in these extreme conditions? Jokingly, Jayanti replied that he’d seen "March of the Penguins" and "Grizzly Man" and “if crazy Werner could do it, I could add to my muster if I do it in mid-winter.” He said the amazing thing about shooting in the cold weather, the camera’s batteries would drain in about three minutes, so they all had to carry spare batteries inside their clothing. They had enough money to do a rehearsal trip the year before the actual shoot. He wanted to find out what it would be like. Walking around in the snow in  minus 45-degree weather, they would get really tired, really quickly, and thought to lie down for a minute…“and that’s how you die.”  They worked out really quickly that they should always stand at the side of each other, never being out of site. The whole experience to him seemed sort of spiritual, and they always felt the claw of death coming up from underneath the snow.

Powers then explained that “Snowblind” turned out to be the most controversial film that Stranger Than Fiction has ever shown, because he’d been receiving emails everyday from people who are against the Iditarod. Had Jayanti and Rachel also experienced some of this? Jayanti said he remembered that someone in Oregon came over to check all 105 of Rachel’s dogs and told him that it’s amazing that these dogs could live to be about 19 and 20 years old, where most people’s pet dogs only till about eight. Jayanti said he doesn’t have a particular opinion about the rights and wrongs of mushing, but he said the dogs do seem to live longer and love running. “I don’t know whether to judge it or not,” he said.

Jayanti said Rachel is a very private person and he had less luck getting inside of her than the other people who work with her. He began thinking the reason she did the Iditarod was so she can get as far away from people as she possibly can.

Powers asked Jayanti about his thoughts on Rachel’s relationship in the film with her father. “I get sued a lot when I make a film,” Jayanti replied, so he confined himself to saying that in a universal position, all adolescents at the cusp in believing that their father is a “g-d and a dick,” he thinks it was very difficult for her to become fully independent. He said she’s 23 and he really shouldn’t call her an adolescent, but in many ways because of her disability, has kept her adolescent, therefore it was a difficult relationship. He does know for a fact that the minute she made enough money from endorsements after her first Iditarod, she built a house on the huge lot that they live on in a trailer and put her father in the house and she stayed in the trailer.

A question from the audience was if Rachel has any relationships outside of her own family, to which Jayanti said that she has a bunch of friends in Oregon, but he doesn’t know if she has a romantic relationship. He doesn’t really go too deeply into people’s personal lives. He’s more interested in their public lives. She attracts a lot of attention, so she meets a lot of people and is really charming and lovely, and you also get to see her at her worst during certain moments [which I won’t reveal] during the race.

Given her privacy, what has been Rachel’s reaction to the film, Powers asked. Jayanti said he thinks she is too professional to tell him what she really thinks. He suspects that she may think that he was unfair about the dogs. It was her father’s idea that maybe she should mix English Pointers with Huskies, which she kind of sticks with, but almost no one else in mushing does that anymore. He thinks she feels he was unfair about the role that the dog breeding played.

Powers said it was an interesting dynamic in the film the interviews Jayanti ask Rachel along the race. Was that something he imagined from the beginning would be a component or did it just come out that way? Jayanti said he went into doing this film with the fantasy that she had this tremendous darkness inside of her that she could only exorcize in the great wilds of Alaska, and when you bring in any pre-conceived fantasy in the making of a film, you’re always going to be wrong. For a long time, he was always sort of trying to crack her open to admit that it was hell being blindish and being caught between her father and hell by being hated by so many people in the mushing community because they feel she’s a danger to other mushers. He thought she would give it up. He thought this would be a very interesting dog film to make. She resisted that for a long time, so he kept pushing. He realized that she was not going to give it up, and he was chasing the wrong story. He’d completely forgotten that she was doing the most incredible things. A lot of the stuff he pushed, he regrets. He cut a first version of the film, which was much darker and realized that the film didn’t like her at all, so he took a couple of months off and he came back to re-cut it to get back in some sense of admiration and affection for her. He did want her to step outside the zone of denial and admit that this fantasy she had of winning the race was not a real fantasy and unrealistic.

From the audience, someone asked Jayanti if he’s given much thought to using the film as a teaching tool and to raise awareness of disabilities. He said that Rachel herself does a lot of work and speaks to high schools, and he hopes his film can become a part of that. He said this is the first time in a long time that he doesn’t own the film, Discovery owns it. He suspects that they will be far more reticent about distributing it, because he imagines they’ll be far more pressured then Powers was from the animal rights community.

Stranger Than Fiction - "Which Way Home" - January 5, 2010

Stranger Than Fiction

“Which Way Home”

IFC Center

New York, NY

January 5, 2010

Stranger Than Fiction's Thom Powers and "Which Way Home Director" Rebecca Cammisa. Photo by Brian Geldin.

***FEBRUARY 2, 2010 UPDATE: As of this morning, "Which Way Home" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Congratulations, Rebecca!

For its Winter 2010 pre-season, Stranger Than Fiction presented the Academy Award ® shortlisted documentary feature “Which Way Home.” Director Rebecca Cammisa (“Sister Helen”) spoke after the screening for a Q&A, led by Stranger Than Fiction’s Thom Powers.  “Which Way Home” shows the harrowing stories of migrant children taking treacherous journeys on top of freight trains through Mexico in hopes of entering the United States for a better life. Cammisa’s fly-on-the-wall approach is both captivating and heartbreaking, and brings to light a most serious issue. The Q&A after the screening was very captivating as well, because it brought out answers as to how she and her crew were able to capture these images under dangerous circumstances, and also raised ethical issues as documentary filmmakers, such as where do you draw the line when it comes to helping these children?

Powers began by asking Cammisa what made her choose the subject matter for the film, to which she replied that a friend of hers from acting school called her to tell her about an article about the issue of children trying to find their parents in the U.S. She had no idea this even existed, so she started researching it, because she thought it would make for an incredible film.

Powers pointed out that much of the film take place on the edge of the law, where these kids are already at risk, and now she was putting both herself and her crew at crew at risk…were they doing this as an official capacity or were they flying under the radar, and did they ever run into problems with the authorities? She said because the story is about kids jumping onto trains to get into the U.S., it was hers and her crew’s job to show that.  They would get permission, and it would fall through, but they had to proceed anyway. They had support, but when support was withdrawn, the job was to continue anyway.

To be a 14-year-old kid going on these trains is one thing, but to be an adult carrying a camera and gear must have made them feel even more vulnerable…what did that feel like, Powers asked. She said it wasn’t fun. It’s wasn’t as if they had a ticket and a seat or that someone would watch their stuff when they got off. For example, if the two boys Kevin and Fito had decided to get off the train to get something to eat, it meant they had to jump off with them and take their gear and film the action, and as soon as they wanted to get back on a train, they had to get back on with them. They didn’t have much time to eat or drink themselves, so once they got back onto the trains, so sometime the kids would share their food.

Powers then opened the questions up to the audience. The first question was, who amongst the crew would conduct the interviews? She said there were four people in the crew including a driver, herself, a cameraman, and sound person. She also shot. They would discuss what she wanted to know and what the interviews would be. Her Spanish wasn’t as intricate as some of the others. Sometimes the cameraman would function as a field producer. They had to keep it to such a small crew, because of the budget.

Recalling a scene in the film where two small children, a boy and a girl named Freddy and Olga are introduced, Cammisa’s photojournalist friend Alan in the audience asked if it ever crossed her mind if she would or could help them? She said that the first thing that kept them safe while making this film was understanding their role and not stepping beyond it, because the situation of smuggling children down there is a criminal network. Everyone’s part of making money off of it. She and crew wanted to spend more time with Olga and Freddy, but they were in the company of smugglers, therefore they had to be extremely careful about how they behaved. If Olga and Freddy had said to them, “Please help us,” that would be one thing. But they weren’t. But if you start stepping in, you them become a smuggler, and if something happens to these children on the road, you are at fault. On the issue of giving the children money, Cammisa said that if people had seen them giving out money, they could have taken the kids for hostage. You really have to know your place and be extremely careful, especially because these were children, not adults. They did their best to be ethical.

The next question from the audience was if by them having cameras, did it alter their relationship with the children at all, making them show off to the camera or alter their behavior? Cammisa said they constantly made the children aware how dangerous this was. When you show up with your camera, it could be an added incentive, but these children started on their trips days before they arrived and in different countries than in Mexico where they met them. The children’s need to come really had nothing to do them being there. They were going to go anyway, and asked then to stop scaring them, because they were going to go, and were not going back from where they came from. She doesn’t think that the camera propelled them forward. They were very clear to the children, telling them they were there to observe them, not to feed them, pay for them, or transport them. They understood that they were there just to go for the ride.

The final question was, how many days did she and crew spend with the children? She said they ended up with 240 hours of footage. The film took six and a half years to make, of which they only filmed for five and a half months, within which there were never two months in a row. There was a lot of starting and stopping. And her three-month editing window once the film was shot was very problematic, but she said her editors did an amazing job.

Cammisa concluded by saying that people can go onto the film’s website to make donations to shelters that comfort and aid immigrants at http://www.whichwayhome.net/takeaction.

Stranger Than Fiction - "The Axe in the Attic" - Feb. 10, 2009

Stranger Than Fiction
The Axe in the Attic
Q&A with directors Lucia Small and Ed Pincus
IFC Center
New York, NY
February 10, 2009

(A sold-out crowd enjoys the Q&A with Lucia Small & Ed Pincus moderated by Thom Powers. Photo by A.M. Peters.)

Last winter, I conducted a One-on-One Q&A with filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small before their documentary, The Axe in the Attic, screened at the Museum of the Moving Image. Flash forward to Tuesday night when The Axe in the Attic was given the royal treatment by Thom Powers at Stranger Than Fiction during a sold out screening, where by the way, the first 100 patrons received The Katrina Experience box-set DVDs from Indiepix, which is also distributing The Axe in the Attic. The Axe in the Attic follows Ed and Lucia on their journey through several states down to New Orleans as they meet up with and interview those who were displaced and affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Thom started the discussion by asking Ed and Lucia what their experience was like going back to New Orleans recently to show the film there. Ed said it’s hard to describe visually, but there seemed to be a general bareness, despite there being some new housing projects that have been built. “There was a whole culture and life destroyed there and that’s coming back in very small ways,” he said. Lucia added that the Lower 9th Ward has been cleaned up, but it’s all empty lots with grass. Some neighborhoods have been revitalized, while others have been completely neglected. What was most compelling for her was that the stories on the screen continue to live on. “Some people have gotten better and they’ve been able to heal, but a lot of people are still telling these stories and reliving them over and over again,” she said adding that “one of the biggest problems they’re experiencing now is long-term mental health care.”

In my One-on-One Q&A, I asked Ed and Lucia if they felt they were taking a risk turning the cameras on themselves to become a part of the story. Lucia said while it was both a challenge and a risk to make a film on such a grandiose topic that’s politically layered and insert them into it; it did feel more honest for them because they wanted to tackle the notion of who is behind the camera. A similar question was asked on Tuesday by Thom, to which Lucia responded that the reason they teamed up in the first place was because both of their previous work has been pretty raw and they both looking to seek a truth in their documentaries.

Did they emerge from their experience with an attitude about social policy and what they believe should happen with responsibility of various governmental agencies, one audience member asked. Ed replied that that’s not part of the film, he basically thinks that “the Bush Administration wanted to viscerate what the Federal government could do well, everything from Social Security to FEMA.” They didn’t make the film for social policy, but more for the fact that “citizens believe that they have a right to a safety net.” Lucia said they had been talking about making a film about poverty in America, “and when Katrina hit, it was a lens in which to address this issue,” Lucia said. “We did want to tell the story of the diaspora of Katrina, but it was more the long-term story of the history of our nation and the neglect for planning for these kinds of disasters.”

Stranger Than Fiction - "Must Read After My Death" - Feb. 3, 2009

Stranger Than Fiction
Must Read After My Death
Q&A with director Morgan Dews
IFC Center
New York, NY
February 3, 2008

(Morgan Dews and David Nugent. Photo by Brian Geldin.)

Last night’s Stranger Than Fiction was Morgan Dews’ Must Read After My Death, “a documentary about documentation” or in other words, Dews took his late Grandmother Allis’s home movies and audio tapes from the 1960s and constructed them into one cohesive story arc dealing with Allis’s unconventional relationship with her husband Charley and the psychological effects it had on their four children. The entire film is told through these documentations without any narration or talking heads. Must Read After My Death, which debuted last fall at the Hamptons International Film Festival, will be distributed by Gigantic Releasing and opens Feb. 20 at Quad Cinema in New York. David Nugent, head programmer of HIFF, moderated last night’s discussion. Below are some of the highlights. (I have not included any of the audience Q&A because most of those questions pertain to specific things that go on in the film, and I don't want to give too much away. You just have to see it for yourself.)

Nugent: How did you come across the tapes and what was it like the first time for you to listen to them?

Dews: I actually found out about the tapes really late. I always knew about the films, but my uncle’s ex-wife told me about the tapes…It was kind of shocking actually. I was very close to my grandmother…I was born about the end of the story. She in fact never really talked with me about Charley. She would talk with me about lots of other things…It was really crazy to hear this life that she had that I had no idea about.

Nugent: In looking at the film again I realized, with the exception of one shot, there really isn’t sync sound footage in the film. What sort of guiding principle do you have in your editing choices?

Dews: I think a lot of the things I’m happiest with about the film happened through necessity. I really had no sync film, except for…the black and white television interview with Charley…The majority of the footage of the original material is from about 10 years earlier…I basically worked out this idea where I would use the images in a very poetic, sort of metaphorical way…One of the things that interested me about the material was that in the visual, you’re presenting a classical view of the ‘50s where everything’s kind of shiny and new and everybody’s very happy, but on the tapes, it’s a very subterranean view of what’s going on, sort of whispered secrets…I really thought the juxtaposition was very beautiful because I feel like a lot of the pressure of the ‘50s and the later explosion from the ‘60s that were put onto people was this idea that everything had to be perfect on the outside and I think that caused a lot of anguish. The guiding principle I used was can I use a person that’s talking? If I can’t use a person that’s talking, is there some image that I have that says something to what they’re saying or contradicts it in some way?...It really became like trying to make one puzzle out of a box of maybe 20 different images.

Nugent: How much do you think the time period compares now from 40 years ago in respect to the social morays, the state of psychiatry and communication challenges?

Dews: I was really shocked in just the way the whole situation seems extremely conditioned by the times and the belief system of the times. The whole thing with their sort of love of psychiatry comes true in the visual footage of their love of trains and airplanes and tape recorders. All of this stuff somehow is part of the same thing…It made me wonder how much of what I do or how my life is conditioned by my time, emails and cell phones, things like that that they didn’t have. I always kept thinking that my grandmother had one of the first driver’s licenses in the state when she was young and they didn’t have telephones when she was born. Her father was a great fan of telegrams…I think they were a transitional couple maybe. That they were sort of stepping from the 19th Century into the 21st in some way because of the decisions they made and the beliefs they had, but…for some reason or another they couldn’t see through to get divorced…I struggled with this idea that they were so advanced and so modern in some senses and just not in others.

Nugent: How do you think this film would have been different if it wasn’t your family?

Dews: I can’t really answer that, but I try to think of it as if it was somebody else’s family, but they were just characters in a way. I don’t know in what sense that I succeeded, but a lot of people at first found this material and decided to make a film kind of pushed me in a direction where I can do a personal documentary about my discovery of these secrets of my family. I just felt that it would be such a disservice of the material. The material was so powerful and these voices kind of whispering at you from beyond the grave would be so much more compelling than whatever experience I could have of the material.

Stranger Than Fiction - "The Education of Shelby Knox" - Jan. 20, 2009

Stranger Than Fiction
The Education of Shelby Knox
Q&A with Marion Lipschutz, Rose Rosenblatt and Shelby Knox
IFC Center
New York, NY
January 20, 2008

(L to R: Hugo Perez, Marion Lipschutz, Shelby Knox, and Rose Rosenblatt. Photo by Brian Geldin.)

Marion Lipschutz’ and Rose Rosenblatt’s 2005 documentary, The Education of Shelby Knox, that centers on then teen Shelby Knox’s advocacy for better sex education programs at her Lubbock, Texas, high school as well as compassion for a gay-straight student alliance, was the second screening of the spring season of Stranger Than Fiction at the IFC Center Tuesday night. Shelby, a teen with a liberal view on life, despite her parents’ conservative background, comes-of-age in this funny and poignant story, that’s told in a verité structure without being preachy. A now grown Knox who lives and works in New York and travels across the country speaking about youth feminism, responded to questions from the audience about the film together with Lipschutz and Rosenblatt. Hugo Perez, who was pinch-hitting for Thom Powers who's currently at Sundance, moderated the discussion. Below are highlights from that discussion.

Perez: (To Shelby) What was it like to be filmed, and four years later looking back at the film, what are your thoughts?

Knox: You know when you hear yourself talking on the answering machine, and you’re like…do I really sound like that? That’s the same experience and I do regret a lot of those outfits…At the time, it didn’t seem all that odd…At 15, you don’t really know what’s normal and abnormal…The really fantastic thing about Rose and Marion and Gary (Griffin, cinematographer) as artists is they included us in the process…They told us everything that was going on and I had a lot of trust in them. I never felt exploited and I never felt really exposed because I really trusted what they were doing. I do think the one way it has affected me is it did make me more introspective at a very young age because you have to think of yourself as I am being looked in the lens of this camera and people are going to judge me. At 15, you’re thinking about how the high school quarterback is going to judge you, but I was thinking about how nationwide audiences were going to judge me…I think I went through all the existential and all of those phases a little before college more than most young people do.

Perez: (To the filmmakers) How did you come to the subject matter of sex education…and how did you meet Shelby?

Rosenblatt: This was an outgrowth of the last film we did called Live Free or Die. It tracked an OB/GYN in New Hampshire who was one of the few OB/GYNs who was doing abortions. He was also teaching sex ed in a local school. The Right to Lifers who had infiltrated the school board went after him and tried to get him kicked off. We tracked that story. We learned very quickly about the sad state of affairs about sex education. Post that film, we thought we’d try to find a place, a town where there was a fight between those parents who wanted better sex ed and those that wanted abstinence. We knew that the federal government was pouring a lot of money through faith-based groups for this abstinence-based program…We thought we would find a town pretty rapidly, but it took us a year. It was a horrible search. There was no such town where one side was against the other…Finally after a year of looking, we got a call from...‘Cowboy’ Fred Ortiz who was in Lubbock, Texas…He heard we were looking for a story…He was the adult advisor of a group of about 36 kids who were trying to advocate for better sex ed and he wanted to get the publicity, so he contacted us…We were pretty desperate for a story…Shelby didn’t present immediately…It’s kind of complicated what happened, but there was a group of other kids who were getting very frustrated with the town because they had been empowered to work on teen issues, but as soon as they wanted to do sex ed, the town started distancing itself from them…Corey (Nicholls) and Shelby kind of came forward and they did this dance around who would become mayor of this Lubbock Youth Commission…Shelby always showed up on time…Shelby’s parents were really into it and saw that she was, so she came forward and we started filming her.

Perez: Can you talk about how outreach and activism has worked into the distribution of the film?

Lipschutz: Very often the films we’re doing are on a political subject…you’re filming activities. You train a camera on an action and you tend to sometimes exaggerate…bring attention to it in ways that either exacerbates or hinder a particular situation. It’s kind of inevitable. You’re there and you’re working with people, so for example if Shelby is doing something with the youth commission and we need to film something, there’s an incentive for Shelby to plan in a certain way to make it better…By now we have a network of people nationally. Whenever you go into a town, one of the things I always do is find who’s going to disagree with us, because we do have a point of view that’s obvious…I usually try to find a reporter, somebody who’s on some kind of political group, find out basically who the players in town are…Then when it’s done, kind of the same thing, but less so. Usually when it’s done, things come to us. At that point, you’re just meeting opportunities.

Audience Question: (To Shelby) Was there a particular moment or event in your life that influence your call to action and advocacy?

Knox: Let me preface this by saying that I think that our culture tells young people to over and over again, yes you can do whatever you want, you can grow up and be president, but your opinion doesn’t matter quite yet. Keep in mind, I was a very good Southern Baptist girl and sort of had that idea, but what I thought wasn’t going to be valid to older people. When (the youth commission) decided to work on sex education, we really decided we wanted to lower the rates of teen pregnancy and STDs. We really didn’t know it had to do with sex education. It wasn’t until we started doing research that we found out what a political issue it was, that the federal government was funneling so much money to abstinence only, that it wasn’t working, that the school district was playing into that. It was very clear to me that the people who were supposed to be taking care of me and standing up for my interests were playing politics with our lives…It wasn’t a particular moment, it was this aggregation of knowledge about how much we were actually being screwed over and that no one was going to stand up for us.

Audience Question: How did you gain the trust of the pastor (Ed Ainsworth) who served as Shelby’s ideological counterpart?

Knox: The Jews that needed to be converted.

Lipschutz: He centered on a mission to convert us.

Knox: He said that their souls were my responsibility; because I might be the only Christian that they ever met, so it was my responsibility as a Christian to save them from burning in hell, and I tried in earnest…it didn’t work.

Lipschutz: Ed also was smitten a little bit with the cameras...We wanted to film a lot more with him than we did. In the end, I think he was a little upset because he thought it was going to be a film about him and Shelby…The worst thing someone can do is to a filmmaker…is say you won’t talk. Most of Lubbock refused to talk to us. To Ed’s credit, he was willing to talk to us.

Perez: Has he seen the film? What was his reaction to it?

Lipschutz: At first he liked it. We usually prep people ahead of time with what’s in the film. When he saw it alone, he actually though it was fair. We got his message out and he wished it hadn’t been told so much from Shelby’s point of view. I think then after he starts getting feedback, you can say what he thinks now.

Rosenblatt: We’re doing a little update. He agreed to be interviewed again. Shelby goes to his house now after all these years and talks to him…He tried to explain that tolerant thing.

Knox: As he got negative media attention, he then started to feel as if he’d been exploited, but the real truth of the matter was he was always there. He was always eager to be there in front of that camera…About the tolerance thing, when I went back, he had started his own church…I asked him about, because we’re looking into using the film to do anti-homophobia trainings in California, I asked him about gay congregants and if gay people came to his church. He said we would tolerate them, we would accept them into the congregation because it is our responsibility as Christians to tell them that they are committing a fatal sin. So I said, you would tolerate them to tell them that they’re going to hell? He said, I wouldn’t put it exactly that way, but they are welcome in order to hear the word of Jesus Christ. His thing about tolerance is basically you tolerate people in order to tell them that they’re wrong. I think in the gay community, that term is whether you’re tolerated or accepted. Now when a lot of people see the film, that term brings up a lot of issues.

Audience Question: How do you consider yourself religiously now?

Know: I consider myself a spiritual person. I would not consider myself a practicing Christian. The reason is I’ve come to a point in my life where I can’t belong to a faith that does not see me as divine. The Christian faith does not see woman as holy and does not see them as equal. While I do believe that Jesus Christ as a historical figure was one of the first community organizers, we can learn a lot from going back to his example. I say now that feminism is my new religion. My fellowship, my spirituality, how I get my energy and give my energy is by speaking to young woman and telling our stories and finding power in our shared experience.

Stranger Than Fiction: "Upstream Battle" - Jan. 13, 2009

Stranger Than Fiction
Upstream Battle
Q&A with director Ben Kempas
IFC Center
New York, NY
January 13, 2008

(Upstream Battle director Ben Kampas and STF's Thom Powers)

Tuesday night was the first screening of 2009 and new season of Stranger Than Fiction at the IFC Center. It’s been since last spring that I last reported from STF. Upstream Battle is story of the battle over the use of the Klamath River, where Pacific salmon have swum up to their spawning grounds and the people of four Native American tribes there (the Hoopa Valley, Yurok, Karuk and Klamath) struggle against a multinational corporation (PacifiCorp) that threatens this beautiful and natural phenomena. Director Ben Kempas (and co-host of D-Word) does an excellent job telling all sides of this open-ended story. “It was important to me that you get to know all these various parties that are involved and then make up your own mind,” Kempas said during the Q&A. Below are highlights from the rest of the discussion led by STF’s Thom Powers.

Powers: How did you get connected with the tribes?

Kempas: I have a good friend who does environmental PR work…He got asked by these tribes from North America to help them reach the British media while they were about to confront Scottish Power at their annual general meeting. I heard that and it instantly sounded like this David and Goliath-like story. I went with it and met these people and instantly connected with them and it kept me busy for the next three years.

Powers: When approaching a story dealing with Native Americans, you’re approaching a story dealing with layers of history, an indigenous culture that’s not even that well-known in our own country. What were the things you had to go through to get yourself into that world? What were the challenges?

Kempas: Just listen…I met them in Scotland and they invited me over…at the time of their annual renewal ceremony, which you actually don’t get to see in the film because it’s so sacred that you shall not take any pictures of it…That was there most important time of the year that they shared with us. We got to know all the people before we even got our camera…I think that was part of the getting access thing. Of course the corporation was much more difficult to than the tribes.

Powers: How was that negotiated? How skeptical of you were they and given you had spent so much time with the tribes…what was it like for you to open yourselves to the other point of view?

Kempas: I just focused on what I was interested on. There’s so many more parties in the basin that are involved in these settlements…there’s environmental organizations, there’s all the government agencies…I really just wanted to focus on the tribes mostly because I coming from Germany didn’t have a clue about Native Americans at the time. There was so much to be said about their culture, other than there all drug-addicted and that they run casinos now, all these kind of media clichés. The corporation…was interested in references, they wanted to see previous films. They actually wanted contacts of protagonists in previous films so they could inquire if they had been treated fairly…Also at the time, they were in a transition period where they already knew that they were going to be sold to Warren Buffett, but they still had to report to their bosses in Scotland (who) didn’t have a problem to say yes to this documentary, because they knew they would be getting rid of the company soon anyway….David Kvamme, the spokesman over at PacifiCorp, who you briefly see in the film, he does corporate videos for the company and considers himself a filmmaker as well, so I think he just wanted to support me in that way.

Powers: Has he commented on the finished film?

Kempas: They’ve regretted that we didn’t put in some footage of a dam that he showed us on the other river that they actually agreed to having removed as an example…We had it in the film for a long time, but then people got too confused because it seemed like they were going to remove a dam on the Klamath River…Toby (Freeman, the relicensing manager for PacifiCorp) liked the film. Toby would have like to come to Toronto but at the time that these confidential settlement negotiations were at such a delicate stage they felt they couldn’t do that. I know the film has gone quite high up in the corporate ladder. The CEOs of PacifiCorp and MidAmerican, their parent company, have seen it. Somebody told me that they wouldn’t be surprised if it had gone all the way up to Warren Buffett.

Powers: There’s an agreement now to remove the dams theoretically. Are the stakeholders in this optimistic that’s going to happen? What do they see as other challenges making that happen?

Kempas: The next big challenge is to get Congress to say yes to all of this, which is going to be tough in a time of the energy crisis. Can you really let go of a renewable resource? All parties have agreed upon that on the river. In the basin, you’ve got this new level of people that needs to be convinced.

Audience Question: Can you talk a little bit more about where your sympathies lay?

Kempas: I just really don’t like these black and white documentaries, these activist videos that tell you what to think. It was important to me that you get to know all these various parties that are involved and then make up your own mind. Obviously you can tell from the film which side my heart is on.

Audience Question: As a European, was it easier for you to make this film than if you were an American director?

Kempas: Yes…these guys, they’ve come all the way over from Germany, we should at least listen to them kind of thing…I think that was the same with the tribes and the corporation…It was this curiosity thing. They recognized that someone had come from that far to look into the story. Maybe that gives you a different level of respect of something. Maybe because I’m not a white U.S. filmmaker, I wasn’t so much perceived by the tribes as a white person as maybe others are. I can only guess at that. I don’t know.

Audience Question: How do you approach shooting scenes? Everything seems to be at the right place at the right time.

Kempas: I often was surprised myself that I happened to be in the right place at the right time. (I asked) FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, about when exactly they were going to release a certain document and they would tell me. So I knew what day I had to be with certain people…When the decision by the judge came out…I phone Craig (Tucker, the environmentalist in the film)…and asked him before you call Wendy (George, wife of Merv George in the film)…can you wait until we’re there? I did these kind of little manipulations. He would have called her anyway, but I wanted to make sure we were in the room with the camera before the phone call would come.

Powers: When you started off, did you know you were getting into something that would be open-ended or did you have some kind of sense the story could be told quickly?

Kempas: I thought it was going to be told more quickly. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I originally thought I’d do a half-hour reportage for German television. It just became bigger and bigger.

Thom Powers Top 10 Favorite Doc Events 2008

Stranger Than Fiction's Thom Powers offers his Top 10 Favorite Documentary Events in 2008 over at the STF Blog. Thom's #2 (March: Cinema Eye Honors) is similarily my #2 from last week's Top 10 Favorite Panels and Q&As of 2008.

As a tribute to Stranger Than Fiction, here's my notes from the STFs I attended in 2008.

"Film As a Subversive Art" - Jan. 29, 2008
WHOLPHIN - February 12, 2008
"Join Us" - April 8, 2008
"My Generation" - May 13, 2008
"When We Were Kings" - May 20, 2008

Be sure to check out the schedule for Stranger Than Fiction's upcoming season at stfdocs.com.

Stranger Than Fiction - "When We Were Kings" - May 20, 2008

Stranger Than Fiction

When We Were Kings

IFC Center

New York, NY

May 20, 2008

Tuesday night at IFC Center, a second week of nonfiction film programming co-presented by the Woodstock Film Festival for the weekly series Stranger Than Fiction, showcased director Leon Gast's 1997 Academy Award-winning documentary feature When We Were Kings, about the events surrounding the famous 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Forman in Zaire.

Gast was on hand for a Q&A, along with producer David Sonenberg and editor Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. A sneak peak clip of Levy-Hinte's companion piece Soul Power, that focuses on the music festival that occurred in Zaire before the big fight, was also screened.

Meira Blaustein, WFF co-founder, who moderated the discussion, started out by mentioning how the film had been finished in 1974, but took nearly 22 years to come to the screen. She asked Gast to talk about how that came to be? Gast said the film had been hung up in litigation for many years. Don King had decided to sue the film production. Gast couldn't even get a work print of his own film. Levy-Hinte added that Gast eventually got physical possession of the film, and 17 years laters, finally got the copyright.

Now that he had both possession and copyright of his film, Gast was ready to show it to distributors. Gast said he first showed a cut of the film to Island Films' Chris Blackwell, who loved it and made an offer. But Gast went to Sonenberg it wasn't a good deal. They eventually showed it to Taylor Hackford who also loved it, but wanted to bring it more into the present by showing interviews with more contemporary artists such as Spike Lee, who Sonenberg felt had street credibility.

Blaustein then asked about Levy-Hinte's approach to the great cris-crossing of the music and fight scenes in the film, to which he replied Gas had already done a tremendous amount of work by the time he came to the project. He was in an interesting position, because he didn't know much about the fight at the time. He had this wonderful opportunity to take his editing into the storyline by showing a poetic and rhythmic value. And the reason it took so long to edit was because it was won enjoyable to cut.

And finally, Gast said the lesson he learned from Ali was that dreams do come true. Gast said that no sports writer or boxing fan thought Ali had a chance against Forman to win that fight, but he prevailed. Gast alluded to a moment when Ali hypnotized himself by pounding his fists together and repeating to himself, "There's no way he's going to beat me."

Be sure to attend next week's third and final co-presentation of STF with the WFF when Jonathan Demme will be there for his 2003 documentary The Agronomist about Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist Jean Dominique.

A Frenzy of Nonfiction Films at IFC Center

Q&A after screening of Barbara Kopple's My Generation at IFC Center.

This week I saw some really incredible nonfiction films at IFC Center. Monday night was a travelling festival of short documentary films called doxita, and last night was Barbara Kopple's 2000 feature documentary My Generation, about all of the Woodstock music festivals (1969, '94 & '99), which played as part of the Stranger Than Fiction series co-presented by the Woodstock Film Festival (taking place Oct. 1-5, 2008).

The six amazing little documentaries that made up doxita completely transfixed me into another world. All telling such simple, yet profound mostly personal stories from around the globe. The films included:

Vángelo Monzón (Argentina/Sweden, Andréas Lennartsson, 8 min.) - A visit with Vángelo Monzón who's been making bricks in Argentina since he was a boy.

Cross your Eyes, Keep them Wide (USA, Ben Wu, 23 min.) - An invitation into the San Francisco "Creativity Explored," a work space for artists with development disablilities

The Guarantee (USA, Jesse Epstein, 10 min.) - Through animated drawings, a man tells how he considered plastic surgery for his ballet career.

El Cerco (Spain, Ricardo Iscar/Nacho Martin, 16 min. ) - A breathtaking look at tuna fishing in the Mediterranean sea where the fight is a ritual of blood and death.

Martin Thomas (UK/Wales, Dylan Wyn Thomas, 31 min. ) - The sometimes painful yet ultimately joyous journey of one man's quest to stop his stammer.

Shit and Chicks (The Netherlands, Kees van der Geest, 10 min. ) - A portrait of a traditional method of feeding chickens in Ghana, done with gentle restraint.

To top that off, I really enjoyed watching the transition of music and generations from the late 1960s to the 1990s all in under two hours during the screening of Kopple's My Generation. Kopple was in attendance and did a Q&A along with the producer of all the Woodstocks, Michael Lang, who had asked her back in 1994 if she wanted to make a documentary about the 25th anniversary music festival. Kopple said that since the festival was being funded primarily by Polygram Records and the festival was going over budget, the film itself was nearly not made. Kopple said she wouldn't have that and somehow managed to work on it for the next five years up through next festival in 1999.

When asked if it was a problem getting the rights to the music for her film, Kopple said that Polygram already had the rights for the music in 1994. It was more difficult getting rights from Warner Bros. for the music from 1969. In 1999, she went individually to each band. For instance, she spent nearly six months leaving pleading messages with Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit. The experience to her was difficult, but well worth it.

Lang was asked what he thought while watching the film go from one era to the next and how he picked the bands to play each time around. He responded that when you look at such a long period of time, you see how you have changed. Things that felt the same from the first Woodstock through the last are the emotions. The different generations blended so easily together. In 1999, the kids who attended Woodstock felt lost. It was two years before 9/11 when the world would change again. The experiences from the first festival was similar to the later festivals in that the experience was re-created for a new generation. And as for the music, Lang picked the bands to perform in 1969 that he liked, while in '94 and '99, he picked the bands that both he and his kids liked.

Finally, Lang was asked what he felt about Woodstock '94 and '99 being sponsored by corporations. He said he would have preferred not to have corporate involvement, but there's a reality to making this happen. Had they not had those sponsors, tickets probably would have been as much as $300 a piece.

Stranger Than Fiction - "Join Us" - April 8, 2008

Stranger Than Fiction
Join Us
IFC Center – New York, NY
April 8, 2008

Tuesday night at IFC Center in New York, Ondi Timoner’s Join Us, a documentary that chronicles four families who undergo treatment at a cult recovery center in California after being controlled and abused by a pastor in a South Carolina church, played during Thom Powers’ popular nonfiction film series, Stranger Than Fiction.

David Nugent, Hamptons International Film Festival Director of Programming, stepped in for Powers, who was away, to host the program. Nugent began by introducing the film along with Timoner, saying that the film is timely due to the breaking news of the cult in Texas. Timoner said she began filming in 2005 at the only accredited live-in cult treatment facility in the world. She had been inspired to make this film in 2004 when Bush was re-elected, but that’s not what the film is about.

At the Q&A after the screening, Nugent asked where do we draw the line between organized religion and cults when it comes to living in a country that was founded on religious tolerance, to which Timoner responded that the whole idea of religious freedom has gone too far. Giving some religious organizations not-for-profit status is really highly abused thing in our country. The film raises awareness of this and every organization should be transparent and judged accordingly. A lot of cults have some of the smartest members of the population. The film is about our need to believe in and our feeling of belonging to something. She hopes that people of faith won’t be offended, but that they learn to balance faith when they’re ceding their lives to submit.

Nugent asked Timoner if there was anything in her religious background that prompted her to make this film. She replied that she has always been an individualist and was never in any clicks. Her dad is Jewish and her mom was Christian, but converted to Judaism, though they were never really religious.

One audience member asked Timoner what her process and personal involvement was to the characters. She said that these people’s faith had been violated, but when they showed up to the treatment facility, they were so open to being filmed. She showed respect and didn’t ever judge them.

Another audience member asked her how she got access to the Pastor and his wife, Raymond and Deborah. She said she wouldn’t have a film without Raymond. She learned of a book he wrote and contacted him to tell him she was making a film about religion, but didn’t mention that she was also including the ex-congregants.

When asked if any of the subjects have seen the film yet, Timoner said the ex-congregants who did see it, loved it and she thinks Raymond and Deborah have also seen it because someone ordered the DVD from the film’s website that was most likely them.

To purchase a DVD of Join Us, visit http://www.neoflix.com/store/Int03/.

Stranger Than Fiction - WHOLPHIN - February 12, 2008

Stranger Than Fiction
WHOLPHIN
IFC Center
February 12, 2008

Wholphin's Brent Hoff and Emily Doe at Minetta Tavern after Stranger Than Fiction

Two weeks ago, The Film Panel Notetaker shared notes from the Film as A Subversive Art Q&A at Thom Powers’ popular documentary series at New York’s IFC Center, *Stranger Than Fiction. Last night was week six of STF presenting Brent Hoff and Emily Doe of the DVD anthology Wholphin published by McSweeney’s. The event was sold out.

* Next week at Stranger Than Fiction is Best of Orphan Film Symposium presented by curator Dan Streible and special guests. Every other year, archivists from around the country gather to present unusual films of unknown origins dubbed "orphans." Founder Streible returns to STF with a rich sampling.

Thom opened the program by asking the audience if they had ever heard of Wholphin. A good chunk raised their hands. Thom said, “You’re virgins now, but you’re leaving here experienced.” Then he mentioned that that Issue 5: Winter Edition of Wholphin will be available soon. Thom then brought up Brent and Emily, who came in from San Francisco to brave the snowy weather in New York.

Last night’s line-up included a diverse array of non-fiction films from the outright hilarious to the very serious. And they were:

Heavy Metal Jr.
This was third viewing of this humorous short doc about a band of pre-teen Scottish heavy metal rockers. The first time I saw it was on the 4th edition Wholphin DVD. Then I saw it again on Sundance Channel recently. It was even better in a theater listening to other people’s reactions. Brent made a joke that there were no CDs of the music from the film to sell afterwards in the lobby, but it is available online.

Drunk Bees
This, and all of the following films, was my first viewing. The short doc examines the behavior of bees that are drawn to a special flower that produces fermented nectar, enabling them to be in an inebriated state. Other bees are also given alcohol in a research lab to examine their behavior. The doc, which was produced by Wholphin, features Brent in a bee suit.

Piece By Piece (Producer Jigar Mehta in attendance)
Much like the strange behavior of the drunken bees, Piece By Piece examines the addictive behavior of human beings who are drawn to making the Rubik’s Cube the soul essence of their being. Groups and individuals talk about their experiences of solving the colorful cubical puzzle in competitive matches. Brent said that all of the records since the film was made have been shattered. Jigar, who worked with Westside Filmworks on the film, said the idea for the documentary came from students at a summer workshop to film speed cubers. The directors of the film picked up cubing during the production and they all became quite good at it.

Next up was a series of one-minute films involving violence to balloons made by Wholphin contributor and artist William Lamson. Thom asked William why he chose balloons? William said they are really cheap material and all have a life span. Lamson is also known for his giant paper airplanes short film that has been playing as the trailer before the main program in Stranger Than Fiction for the past several weeks. Thom mentioned this short will also appear on Issue 5 of Wholphin.

American Outrage
A 30-minute excerpt of the feature documentary American Outrage was the final film screened. It is about two Shoshone Indian grandmothers in Nevada who struggle to keep their animals and livestock on native land that had been granted to their ancestors in a peace treaty many years ago. The U.S. government claims that these women and the Shoshone do not have rights to this land, and take evasive actions to round up their horses, killing and injuring most of them in the process for the sole purpose of clearing the land so they can dig for what is supposed to be one of the richest deposits of gold in the world. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the government soon decides that they’re going to make this land a test site for nuclear bombing, so the grannies and the people stand up and protest.

Stranger Than Fiction - "Film As a Subversive Art" - Jan. 29, 2008

Stranger Than Fiction
Film As a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel & Cinema 16
Q&A with Cinema 16 Veteran Jack Goelman
IFC Center
January 29, 2008

(Thom Powers and Jack Goelman)

Week four of Thom Powers’ (TP) popular documentary series at New York’s IFC Center, *Stranger Than Fiction, presented last night director Paul Cronin’s Film As a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel & Cinema 16. (FYI, Cronin is also the co-author of Herzog on Herzog.) The screening was followed by a Q&A with Cinema 16 veteran Jack Goelman (JG). Last night’s screening was co-presented by Rooftop Films. A bit of background on Vogel—he was the founder of the New York City avant-garde cinema club, Cinema 16 in the late 1940s. He later became the co-founder of the New York Film Festival in 1963. Film As a Subversive Art is also the title of Vogel’s 1974 book.

* Next Tuesday night, Stranger Than Fiction will present Sweet Dreams by Eric Latek.

(TP) What was your first interest in experimental cinema?

(JG) I started young. I was a film nut. I saw my fist documentary, The River by Pare Lorentz at the New York World’s Fair (1939/40). When I came out of the Army, I went to film school to become a film editor, but became distracted when I heard of Cinema 16. I attended a screening. It was very small. Experimental films fascinated me.

(TP) What’s different about cinema now than from back then?

(JG) The birth of Cinema 16 took place because the conditions were right at the time. There was no place to show short subject or off beat films. Amos came up with this idea.

(TP) Did you ever have differences of opinions with Amos?

(JG) Of course! And we talked a lot about them, but they had to fit into a concept of what we were planning, sometimes up to a year in advance. We kept track of them. We took notes. We had to like a film almost immediately. It was a question of blending programs and films together.

(TP) In the documentary, we see the 1,600-seat auditorium where Cinema 16 ran. Can you talk about that?

(JG) It was scary. I was there every minute taking notes. People would get up from their wooden seats and make noise. We would discuss the tempo of the show the next day. It was very much alive.

Audience Q&A

Q: How involved were filmmakers in the Cinema 16 screenings?

(JG) We tried not to involve them. Relationships with filmmakers were a different story. There was enough going on without that.

Q: What is Amos doing now?

(JG) We’ve all gotten older and slower. He’s not teaching anymore, but very much alert. His wife Marsha has been ill, and he’s watching over her.

Q: Why was it called Cinema 16?

(JG) Simply, Amos found out he could get a lot of film in 16mm. Screenings evolved where audiences grew larger and we needed more powerful 16mm projects. We wanted to show the films looking good. We also showed 35mm films such as John Cassavetes’ Shadows. We had a choice between 16mm or 35mm for that, but chose 35mm. We were criticized for it.

Q: The documentary mentions that Bosley Crowder, the film critic of The New York Times back then, didn’t support Cinema 16. Were there any other critics who did support it?

(JG) Yes. The Herald Tribune. Archer Winston loved Cinema 16. We did get a lot of members through The New York Times through advertising.

Q: What interests you in today’s cinema?

(JG) I read reviews. I have a sense of the directors. I don’t have a list of favorites with me, but I do go to the Walter Reade Theater, Cinema Village, etc.

Q: Do you think film programming now is diverse enough?

(JG) There’s a powerful situation now with television and DVD. It’s a different world. They’re useful, but competitive.