ripping reality

Just closing Day 3 at IDFA, where U.S doc productions are currently in the majority in IDFA’s current Audience Top Ten (at least as of tonight). Erratic as such polling can be, its still my favourite award at any festival. IDFA posts running updates on the polling each day. Its like eavesdropping on a jury discussion.

Conversations here have been mainly about films in the programme, and those to be ready around the corner. When the conversation isn’t about films and film related stuff it has been about getting sick and trying not to get sick at film festivals. Also, there have been accidentally outer voice observations that doing laundry while in a lovely European city is a small price to pay for an incapacity to adjust to European underwear. Outside of an eye infection in Prague (unrelated to travel) and a close-call on several fractures at Sheffield’s roller-skating party, I’ve remained healthy and within the margins of thirty-seven celsius (which, Fate, i note with all due respect).

Over the past four weeks, I’ve heard of one case of H1N1 among people I know, but not at a festival. The person stayed home. Many fell with fevers following Sheffield, and the first few days in Copenhagen were shakey for some. Meanwhile, more than actual sick people are film festival survivors trying not to be sick.  Everybody is being careful, and the Dutch have cut back from the triple kiss greeting to the double (rimshot). And if distilled into a single capsule our motley preventative regimes would surely hold the miracle of life.

My own approach relies on what I’m beginning to realize is an irrational belief in oil of oregano. Its a belief founded solely on the enthusiasm of the ex-owner of my local natural foods store, and a google search. My oil of oregano base is rounded off with ginseng tea (daily), Emergen-C (brought a 12-pack), Vitamin D (daily), Valerian Root (daily), throat spray (often), vigamox (when required), Melatonin (daily) aspirin/ibuprofren (more than in normal life), and various hand disinfectants.

I predict hand solvents will be the film festival tchotchkes of choice in 2010.

(Harmony Korine’s video acceptance speech at CPH:DOX, via Michael Tully)

Four weeks and four festivals, each blearily backing into the next. Its Day 1 at IDFA, but I’m still chewing on CPH:DOX, like those tough, salty, delicious Danish licorice that linger.

CPH:DOX director Tine Fischer summed up the the goals of her event smartly in remarks at the festival’s closing ceremony. They, CPH:DOX, are striving to “create more space for documentaries.” The Copenhagen festival covered the usual ways of creating such space in their Forum, the focus of which was both traditional and “out of the box” distribution strategies.  But most festivals have such discussions these days, almost to the point of overkill. Where CPH:DOX most boldly opens the spaces for how we conceptualize and categorize documentary is in their curatorial approach. Only here would Harmony Korine’s TRASH HUMPERS win the DOX:AWARD for, well, we assume best “documentary.”

Michael Tully has a great wrap here, as does Allison Willmore here, and there are comments on the awards here and here.

The answer to the question of whether TRASH HUMPERS is or isn’t a documentary is immaterial to me. The point is can the work support the question, does it wedge itself into that shrinking gap between conventional documentary and drama? This is the most interesting space in current cinema and, top-of-head, some of my favourite work of the past year – BIG RIVER MAN, THE SOUND OF INSECTS, ENJOY POVERTY, THE RED CHAPEL – exists here. Why shouldn’t documentary festivals claim it, even if that means offending “the truth of accountants,” as Herzog put it.   Continue reading…

(the trailer for BLOOD IN THE MOBILE…will the feature doc crossover into obsolescence?)

While attending one festival can be exhausting, several in a row has given me something like vigour. Perhaps a tolerance is built up. Like with certain drugs and other things to which one should just say… maybe later.

Though its possible this, sure, ebullience was rooted in the shock of awaking to sunshine, my first natural intake of Vitamin D since arriving in Europe. So it was, given the natural light, a morning for optimism and epiphanies. Unprepared to spoil the mood in the darkness of actual documentaries, I spent the day basking in the radiant opportunities of Sheffield’s Crossover Summit.

I think “crossover” is the new “convergence,” and certainly means that “new media” is permanently retired to jargon’s shady lanes. Based on my observations at Sheffield it, crossing over, refers to a given content vessel’s ability to be malleable and deliverable and participatory across many platforms. But based on the expressions of some docster vets looking on (and their complete absence as speakers), crossing over also means, “Fuck, I thought I’d be retired before I had to deal with this shit.”  Continue reading…

(Is the heart of documentary still beating? Ummm, maybe. The market at DOK Leipzig)

The tag line for DOK Leipzig this year was “The Heart of Documentary,” and while the competition and survey programmes showed plenty of life, the chatter indicated that broadcast television was pulling the plug on creative documentary.

A fellow festival colleague expressed concern about where the films for her rigorously programmed event were going to come from without broadcaster support. The title of an all day summit was “Farewell To Television,” with speakers looking for alternatives to traditional funding sources for documentary. And in his opening address DOK Leipzig Director Claas Danielsen appealed to broadcasters to raise the bar, aesthetically:

While artistic authors’ documentaries are frequently successful in the cinema, I have been observing a marginalisation of the genre in television for years. I see more and more clearly that this is the result of a dangerous attitude of television programmers towards their audience. They often regard them as slightly retarded people of dim perceptions and ultimately as children rather than responsible citizens. Complex, unusual and challenging subjects and narrative styles are way beyond their intellectual capacity – or so it is said. Continue reading…

(Jihlava’s Silver Eye award winner, DISCO & ATOMIC WAR. Pay attention to this film…revelatory,  funny and seamlessly cinematic historical filmmaking)

Here we go again. I departed Jihlava this afternoon, which followed four days in Leipzig. It was an intense two festival week. Now a day of recovery in Prague (literally, I’m sick, yuck) then Sheffield, Copenhagen and, finally, a grand finale in Amsterdam. Five documentary film festivals in five weeks. I did this trip last year. I even remember parts of it.

Is there anything comparable to the phenomenon which is the contemporary film festival circuit? Obviously there are cultural festivals, conferences and trade fairs of every kind, but film fests are their truly own breed of cat. Filmmakers, producers, programmers, funders, critics, journalists, papparazzi, buyers, sellers, wannabes, sponsors, partiers, politicians, publicists, radicals, academics, the public. So many interests and agendas in play, sometimes beautifully intersecting, but also often colliding. And like hundreds (thousands?) of times a year, given the glut of international film festivals.

While this particular trip brings all of the fest circuit’s unique qualities to the fore, being in the trenches makes achieving perspective elusive. What am I doing here, exactly?    Continue reading…