ripping reality

(A room with a view at the Dubai International Film Festival.)

Anne Marie Kürstein, Festival Manager at the Danish Film Institute, hosted a few friends for drinks prior to a big  dinner tonight in Copenhagen. The restaurant was converted from stables, yet still, in that Danish way, managed to be at once very cool and cozy. I’ve known Anne-Marie for as long as I’ve been programming, ten years now. If you’ve ever wondered how a country with a population of around five million manages to consistently produce innovative, first rate film (drama and documentary), look no further than the DFI. Its the best national film institute in the world, the reason Denmark always seems to punch over its weight  in world cinema. And I don’t write that just because they’re picking up the tab for dinner tonight.

Conversation at Anne-Marie’s place turned to our travels, as it often does when film festival people get together.  Artur Liebhart and Anne-Marie had just been to Iran, and another guest from Dox Box, a documentary festival in Damascus, was, well, she was from Syria, which we were curious about. As somebody who can be ambivalent about the places I go, sometimes I feel this job is wasted on me. At times I find talking about traveling similar to weather talk, the elevator music of conversation. Yet, as a Canadian, I’m very inclined, even enjoy, discussing the weather. And traveling is an inevitable topic for film festival vagabonds, and a good way to get to know people, if not places. Recently, in effort to cure myself of my travel malaise, I read a very good book, The Art of Travel. My take away: the problem with travel is that no matter where you are, you’re still yourself.

Anyway, I mentioned an upcoming trip to Dubai, where I’m now writing this post (catching up on my European trip notes  while in the UAE) as dawn brightens the Persian Gulf, or more specifically, the Burj, which sticks out like a swollen thumb (a “seven star” swollen thumb), on the otherwise ridiculously pleasant and unreal view from my hotel window. Dubai has been, for the past five years or so, an “it” site. The Xanadu of conspicuous consumption, a gold rush town which in the past fifteen  years has gone from a dusty trading outpost to a city of cranes, embarrassingly attentive service, gilded, big, best, everything. Luxury is the city’s brand. Its the Bizarro Copenhagen. Yet, more recently people’s curiosity about the city’s ostentatious show of wealth has given way to discussion of the darker side of Dubai’s ascent: a slave labour force and the eco-nightmare wrought by rapacious development.

“Why would you go to Dubai?,” I’m asked, suspiciously, almost as an accusation.  The film festival here is now in its fifth year, and this will be be my second visit.  Like one of  the world’s first film festivals, the Venice Bienniale, the Dubai International Film Festival was founded largely around promotional goals. Where Mussolini, a film lover, saw adding cinema to the Bienniale as an effective public relations and propaganda tool, in Dubai the prospect of attracting Hollywood stars must’ve made the pitch from the event’s founders an easy sell. An over-the-top party, complete with camels, Arabian horses and, legend has it (I didn’t see this), elephants, at the Toronto Film Fest the year Dubai launched set the tone for how DIFF would be perceived within festival land. Though invited, I skipped the first few events.

More recently a changing of the upper management here has brought some focus and, I believe, tangible measures of integrity to the festival. Okay, their party budget alone could probably fund many of the festivals I attend, including Hot Docs. Yet, they’ve also added initiatives clearly directed at developing, supporting and sustaining regional filmmaking, with a particular emphasis on documentary. Last year I was here meeting with regional producers and filmmakers, giving them a sense of the international festival and co-production landscape (it really is a bubble here). This year Hot Docs has co-produced a one day conference with DIFF, with sessions on co-productions, creative documentary and case studies of films being presented in the fest programme.

As well, two years ago Dubai launched competitions for Arab features and documentaries, the  Dubai Film Connection, aimed at promoting regional projects in development to the international industry, and a substantial new fund to support Arab filmmakers. The dividends are starting to show, and this year’s Muhr Awards For Excellence In Arab Documentaries programme has fifteen features, and the quality of the programme is quite encouraging. With continued support, I expect to see stronger work from the region in the year’s ahead. So, why do I go to Dubai? Its always better to have local voices tell their own stories, and along with Africa and India, the Arab world is too often represented by foreign perspectives. I’m here to, in a very modest way, support those filmmakers in telling their own stories. And, if doing so means spending a bit of time at the pool, or sipping champagne cocktails seaside, then that’s what I’ll do.

(Michael Noer (VESTERBRO) at the World Premiere of his new film, the very funny (and somehow tender) moped road-trip flick THE WILD HEARTS….photo via Michael’s Facebook page)

Day 20 on  the Euro Doc Tour 2008  was another action packed festival day. Started with some screening in the market, then participated on a consulting panel at CPH:DOX’s Forum, then moderated a spirited panel dealing with copyright, then attended the World Premiere of The Wild Hearts (Michael Noer) and then a chatty dinner with about 100 doc folks. Phew.

Okay, despite my previous off-the-cuff rant re: pitching (its necessary, btw….just don’t think directors should get too wrapped up in it), I did participate in the CPH: Forum today, though it was structured more as a benevolent consulting session than a pitch, per se. CPH: Forum’s Tine Mosegaard has organized the event around a progressive mission (“out-of-the-box” is oft used here): to spark producers to think of  innovative, alternative distribution strategies.

Last year here I met the remarkable Artur Liebhart (Planete Doc Review/Against Gravity) at a conference panel on “21st Century Distribution”  which I moderated. It was Artur’s  first opportunity, at an international event, to speak about his Warsaw based distribution activities. I could say I was duly impressed, but actually my jaw dropped. Artur runs a very popular festival (Planet Doc Review) for feature documentaries in Warsaw. Through his distribution company, Against Gravity, he acquires rights for much of the festival programme, later coordinating theatrical releases (for some of the titles), tv sales (85% of last year’s programme was sold to various Polish broadcasters) and a branded DVD line. Its at once very obvious, and rather innovative. He thinks like a curator and acts, literally, as an entrepreneur (I suspect some of the old-school fest events in Poland, however, aren’t so thrilled with Artur’s endeavours….tough to compete with a festival that’s actually purchasing rights for the films being presented).

I expect to see the formalized melding of film festivals and various levels of distribution as a key component of whatever new models emerge following these very transitional times for the ways media find their audience. It just makes sense, and is already happening. Tribeca has started to partner with Verizon on VOD initiatives; Cinetic hired former sxsw impressario Matt Dentler (who is also at CPH: FORUM this year) for their newly formed Cinetic Rights Management arm, and Without A Box (how long before its a distributor?) did same with Christian Gaines, mostly recently of the AFI Festival.

This year at CPH’s Forum my fellow panelists are an eclectic mix of traditional distributors (Esther van Messel, First Hand Films; Jonathan Miller, Icarus Films), festivals (Gabriella Busman, Visions du Reel); newish media-ish entities ( Cay Wesnigk, Onlinefilm AG; Liz Ogilvie, Indiepix) and niche-within-a-niche distributors (Patrick Kwiatkowski, Microcinema; Cherelle Zheng, Channel Zero Media)….and many more. We offer profound, relevant, informed, witty advice on a wide variety of projects, mostly of them Scandinavian productions. And I make some lame jokes as Forum moderating superstars Jess Search and Karolina Lidin do their usual bang-up  job at creating a constructive, collegial tone. Yet, while many of the productions, most near completion, are quite compelling and will clearly be strong films with market potential, I get the sense that, well, the mood isn’t exactly bullish re: prospects. For anyone. Or maybe we’re all just jaded to the fact that the good work finds its way by invention, luck and perseverance. I mean, what do we know? Despite our keener  displays of distribution expertise (and, fuck, how did Dentler learn the distrib biz lingo so fast, tossing around words like “ancilliary” and “windows” like, well, like a distributor!), its very evident, to me, that the old show business chestnut still applies: “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess.” William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade.

BURMA VJ – REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY will be a much traveled documentary on the festival circuit this year. I screened it in the market here at CPH: DOX today, and later in the week it would win the Festival’s top prize, and more recently it captured the Joris Ivens award at IDFA, and earlier this week it was announced that it’ll be in the World Documentary Competition at Sundance. (Clearly, I’m taking a Siddharthan approach to time here…or a procrastinators!) But even in a little video booth in Copenhagen a few weeks ago, prior to its quick acquisition of accolades, it is easy to see BURMA VJ is special work.

A Danish production directed by Anders Østergaard, the film  follows underground reporters in Burma. They – the Democratic Voice of Burma – are a loose association of videographers who smuggle their footage out of the country. The filmmakers had been following these activists prior to the massive protests (sometimes called the “Saffron Revolution” because of the colour of the monks’ robes) that began in August 2007 and continued through September. Obviously this became the central story of the documentary, which gives us incredible access to these events as they are unfolding. BURMA VJ is  another example of a documentary appearing well after a major event, yet still giving us new information and insight, despite the massive news coverage at the time.

The footage is gripping, reminding me of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED in its visceral depiction of a citizen’s uprising. Beyond providing a narrative context, the first person voice-over delivered by one of the DVB reporters is also effective in giving the film a resonant emotional core. I was moved by the commitment and courage of these activists. Later, I was discussing the film with an Iranian ex-pat living in Amsterdam. He hadn’t seen the film, though was quite interested in the work of  the DVB reporters. He had been a documentary filmmaker who, due to his own reporting, is no longer welcome in Iran. “Good tactics,” he mused, when told of how the DVB smuggled footage of Burma. BURMA VJ is  a film with work to do in the world, a field guide for media revolutionaries.

First, obviously I’m not in Copenhagen, or Amsterdam. And as I write this its not actually “Day 18″. But let’s pretend I’m not back in Toronto, that this incredible doc fest journey I’ve taken is somehow still unspooling. And allow me to note that, despite my worthy intentions, its difficult to post daily while in a film festival bubble. I mentioned this to Eugene and Brian, the intrepid IndieWire team, at breakfast the other the day. I’m in awe of their ability to return to their hotel many a evening, perhaps at times a little tipsy, and file their impressions from busy festival days. I usually just crash with CNN International on the telly.

But, subtle tense change, today in Copenhagen, the 18th day of my 5×5 doc fest tour (five weeks/five fests) ….today in Copenhagen I had a screening theme day: all music docs. CPH: DOX has a competition for music themed work, and I’m always finding films way off my radar. For me the best music docs either introduce me to unknown (to me) artists (Townes van Zandt, Roky Erickson) or indulge my inner fanboy (Bob Dylan, Neil Young). Among films screened today were both…I “discovered” Soulwax, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Wolf Eyes and, wow, Vashti Bunyan. And I soaked in some Bob Marley.

VASHTI BUNYAN: FROM HERE TO BEFORE is constructed with a simple premise. Bunyan recounts a remarkable journey which formed the creative grist for her first album. The second came 35 years later. Disillusioned following a flirtation with the late-Sixties pop music scene – branded as a new Marianne Faithful, she had recorded a single with Andrew Loog Oldham – Bunyan set off on an adventure with then boyfriend Robert Lewis. They bought a horse and cart and headed toward Isle of Skye to hook-up with Donovan, who was planning a commune. Along the way Bunyan was writing the songs that would become Just Another Diamond Day, released in 1970. Only 500 copies of the album were pressed and it did not garner an audience…until some 30 years later, when the rare recording would provoke bidding wars on eBay. Fueled by its influence on contemporary  “freak folk“  artists like Devendra Banhart (who’s in the doc) and Joanna Newsom (who’s not!), Bunyan’s lost classic had been rediscovered. She had dropped out of the music scene following the album’s release, spending the past few decades raising children, making house.

This is a “talky” doc, but Bunyan is an entrancing story-teller, drawing me in with her dreamy cadences. Okay, I fell in love with her, and her story. Having seen the film in the market (without fast forwarding!) I screened it again later in the fest, as a sort of balm following a late, fuzzy night. I brought a friend who I was sure would not like it, but she also melted into the film’s mellow rhythms. But while she did not fall in love with Vashti, later she said there was “no shame in having a crush on a beautiful woman displaying such rich emotion with no guard.” Hmmm, now I feel shame. The first question that was asked of director Kieran Evans in the Q&A was, “How did you keep yourself from falling in love with Vashti?”

Another music doc at CPH: DOX also recounts the “making-of” a classic album, Bob Marley’s Exodus.  BOB MARLEY: EXODUS ‘77 was directed by Anthony Wall, Series Editor for BBC’s remarkable Arena programme. Proceeding through Exodus track by track, the film uses both archival and contemporary footage and interviews to conjure the context of Marley’s breakout recording.  An evocation of the premise that Exodus was “the right record at the right time,” Wall’s documentary is part musical biography, part social history. Like all good music docs, it made me want more, and I’ve had Exodus on high rotation since watching it. It also provoked the thought that a major doc on Marley was overdue, and, alas, I recalled that one is indeed on its way.

(the CPH: DOX trailer captures the event’s eclectic/avant identity)

Arrived in Copenhagen today, for my third straight CPH:DOX. I’ve returned  because I consistently find  work, and meet people here,  that I don’t see elsewhere. In fact, I’ve found this event, for my tastes, the most consistently inspiring on the festival circuit. Tine Fischer and her team have positioned CPH:DOX  at the nexus of the doc, music and art worlds. Patti Smith will play closing night, Kenneth Anger has already done a live performance, there are several club nights featuring interesting DJs, including a night of Baile Funk connected with the music doc FAVELA ON BLAST.  And I  hope to meet one of my filmmaker heroes, James Benning, here with his new film (RR), and a playful retrospective (double-bills pairing one of his works with one made by his daughter, Sadie Benning). And, of course, many of the usual suspects on the doc circuit, especially all the wonderful regional folks, will be here.

I will also screen more experimental films this week then I do much the rest of the year.  That’s the bummer of being a “doc specialist.” Any top ten list of films which have had the greatest influence on me, both in the way I watch movies, and to some extent live my life, will always include James Benning’s ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE, Michael Snow’s WAVELENGTH and Bill Viola’s REFLECTING POOL…. and TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (but another time for that). Some, including myself, might be surprised that I’m now curating documentaries, seen by many as the  least “experimental” film form. Perhaps the connection is that I’ve always felt an  experimental film is, in a sense, a document of its making…..and that documentary, at its best, is the most fluid of film forms.  That, and documentary satisfies me more on the directly political level.

As prep for a CPH:DOX headspace, its a good thing, then, that I finally picked up a copy of Filmosophy (Daniel Frampton). Yarom Allon of Wallflower Press had a table at Sheffield, selling books and DVDs from their remarkable catalogue. Among them, Filmosophy, which I’ve wanted to to read since seeing a review a year ago, but resisted. I had vowed that my theory junkie days were behind me. I think it was a phrase from Harold Bloom that made me kick, something along the lines that theorizing about Shakespeare only lights up the theory, not the work itself. I had been starting the feel that way about documentary theory….it was only muddying the waters, not making anything clearer to me. (though Dai Vaughn’s book For Documentary remains among the best).

Filmosophy is written “as a provocation, a manifesto almost.” The provocation is Frampton’s argument that we think about a given film not as a representation of reality, or of our own thinking consciousness, but as its own reality, its own thinking consciousness. I’ve only read the Introduction and Chapter 1, but already I’m struck by the prospect of reconfiguring one’s viewing senses to move beyond representation. I don’t expect to see the words “documentary” or “non-fiction” at all in this book. But, the notion that cinema “allows us to re-see reality, expanding our perceptions, and showing us a new reality” seems like it’ll be quite applicable at a festival like CPH: DOX.

Not only does the CPH:DOX programme feature experimental and performance works, but they aren’t shy about including films that  are pushing the boundaries, or by any definition are simply not docs. GUMMO and TOTALLY FUCKED UP are part of a theme programme called “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” In the “New Philippine Cinema” programme is SLINGSHOT, a great film, but fiction with a documentary back-drop and style. And when I ask Kiko Goifman to send us a screener of FILMEFOBIA, which is being presented in the main “Dox Award” competition, he responds that its not a documentary.

Representing reality is increasingly complicated, somehow. I’ve come, in the past few years, to the realization that the most interesting formal spaces in cinema right now are those residing between documentary and drama. Its this “new reality” that I find most compelling, and CPH: DOX has plenty of it.

This festival has done in three days, that which takes five at most events…kick my ass. I’m done with the chat and all that, and will take a train, and then a plane, to Copenhagen later today. Its cozy there, and cute, and quiet, and you don’t have to drink beer at breakfast if you don’t want to. So just to wrap things up here….

The “Grierson:Sheffields” were handed out the other night, and my friend Margaret Brown collected a prize for her Sundance preemer, THE ORDER OF MYTHS. Its one of the best American docs this year, but its taken a relatively low key route through the fest circuit. The film deals with a racial divide in Mobile, Alabama (the black and white communities hold separate Mardi Gras celebrations) in a way that neither condescends to the audience, nor judges the action it observes. Its shot in a pure verite style, without narration. I think its relative low profile is a result of people having trouble talking about the film, precisely because it doesn’t tell us what to think, feel, say. It shows us.

Related, today I hosted the Q&A for the screening of JUNIOR, which earlier this year won Hot Docs’ award for Best Canadian film. During the screening  (the film follows a Jr. A hockey team in Quebec, with a pure verite approach), co-director Isabelle Lavigne and I talked about the scarcity of strictly observational docs (there’s lots of narration over many of the films here). We agreed that too much documentary filmmaking, here and elsewhere (including at Hot Docs), assumes a kind of visual illiteracy, or lack of confidence in the stand-alone power of the image and natural sound. My European colleagues often refer to these, with turned nose, as “TV docs.”

Now, as a large portion of documentaries we all program are commissioned by broadcast television, I’m a little less categorical. Is MAN ON WIRE “just” a TV doc? And, if it is, why isn’t RENÉ? Aesthetically both prioritize character and narrative over any sort of classical cinema aesthetics. Yet, in many conversations I’ve had with those who prioritize “cinematic” work over “TV docs” the later cuts it, the former doesn’t. Yes, MAN ON WIRE does rely more on “talking heads” and reconstruction, both of which are associated with broadcast formats. But it also features some sublime imagery, and its overall construction is masterful. Isn’t narrative also a cinema convention? Granted, often sit-down interviews and reconstructions flag a firmly broadcast aesthetic. Often, but not always.

Isabelle used a phrase I liked to describe the effect of a preponderance of voice-over narration. “It thins out the image,” she said.

And back to Margaret…later at the party, celebrating her award, and life in general, we chatted with Michael Tucker, here with his latest made with wife Petra, BULLETPROOF SALESMAN. It was another reunion, this time with filmmakers whose debut works, BE HERE TO LOVE ME (Margaret) and GUNNER PALACE (Michael), premiered at TIFF in 2004, during my doc programming tenure there. What a difference four years make, we noted…..both films sold to theatrical distributors within days of their world premiere screenings at TIFF. Not so much these days.

(Producer on-a-roll Rachel Wexler (The English Surgeon, Garbage Warrior) pitches at Sheffield’s MeetMarket)

I popped into Sheffield’s MeetMarket this morning, just to get a sense of the “plastics” of the event. I’m not sure where formalized pitching markets started (somehow, I recall hearing the Danes conceived them), but such events, in varying forms, are now ubiquitous on the doc fest/market circuit. At Hot Docs we present the Toronto Documentary Forum (now headed by Elizabeth Radshaw, and the largest of its kind in North America…actually, I think the only), which was modeled after IDFA’s Forum. In these Forums, Commissioning Editors are seated around a large table, sort of “in the pit.”  For two days they listen and respond to short presentations from a selection of projects in varying stages of development and production. Its a show, sometimes tedious but more often a quite compelling snapshot of the current zeitgeist in the Industry.

Yet, my sense, these days, is that its a largely ceremonious endeavor. Most of the tangible action takes place over coffee, lunches and the hallway huddles that are the true pulse of such gatherings. Still, Forums serve an essential purpose for all the key stakeholders gathered. The projects presented receive a tremendous marketing opportunity, and in some cases tangible new financing. The CE’s are given an efficient platform for, in turn, marketing their channels (and themselves) while updating the  current state of affairs (in short, often: “Like it, but don’t have a slot for it” OR “Yes, we have met and…”). And, the Observers, who I believe somehow are in the best position, get to watch cagily in the wings, learning the lay of the land and reworking their own pitching and pouncing strategies.

At Sheffield the pitching format (MeetMarket) is speed dating….twenty minute meetings between producers and the significant number of CE’s here. For me, its somewhere within Dante’s fifth to seventh terrace, purgatory wise: a cramped, loud, chaotic room, everybody looking for something and assumptions darting about like bats. And so friendly, really. But I deal in completed work, and have no business here, so its easy to be invisible. And I’m sure people are looking right through me, anyway (and why shouldn’t they). No matter, everybody I talk to seems to be having a great time. “Yeah, its been GREAT,” I’m told several times. “Are you going to the party after?”

In the September issue of DOX (which isn’t available online, but should be) Jonathan Goodman Levitt has written an insightful article on the necessities and challenges of wearing two hats – that of producer, and that of director. The article’s title says it all: “How I Learned to Stop Directing and Think Like a Commissioning Editor.”  Goodman Levitt finds it increasingly essential that directors “moonlight as producers,” developing  a knowledge of the market. “You need to see yourself first as a Producer with a capital P,” he writes, “as in someone who makes a product for sale.”

My own ambivalence about the effect of pitching culture on documentary filmmaking derives from the way it winches everybody into becoming a sales person. First, that tends to be intimidating, at best, or totally, inaccessibly terrifying to those amongst us who are not professional extroverts. And, there’s significant evidence in the history of creativity that introverts can be pretty darn good at, well, being creative. Of course, the work around to this obstacle is to align oneself with a good producer, one who is in sympatico with your vision as a filmmaker….and let her do the talking.

Also, I’ve seen where the pitch culture at festivals can really fuck with a filmmaker’s head, if taken to heart. They start only thinking of making films that pitch well. Or worse, the successful fruition of the long pitching process (ie. financing) somehow exhausts their enthusiasm in mustering the creativity, passion and stamina to actually complete the project.

So, finally, on pitching: If you’re a filmmaker “don’t say pitch.”  Even when you hear a great pitch, don’t say “That was a great pitch!” Try to stay clear, poked-eye-like, of  any instance where you could be exposed to pitches. Don’t take a pitching workshop, or practice a pitch in the bathroom mirror, or pitch your pitch. If you can avoid it, don’t dream abut pitches, even if you’re into the whole lucid dreaming thing. Especially if. Really, you should not pitch your friends, and please don’t pitch me, or write down a pitch, or google “how to pitch.” You may, and should, discuss pitching a project with your producer, but don’t discuss pitching with other filmmakers, or festival programmers, or your mom (unless she’s a CE). Your producers should pitch the piss out of everything you do. But you make films. You’re good at it, and when it isn’t killing you it makes you very happy. Its probably better if you focus on that.

(from left, Robert Cibis (JESUS LOVES YOU), Geoffrey Smith (THE ENGLISH SURGEON), Simon Kilmurry (P.O.V.), Minou Norouzi (ANATOMY OF FAILURE), and Boris Despodov (CORRIDOR #8)

It feels like a Hot Docs ‘08 reunion at Sheffield as I’m meeting many filmmakers who presented their work at this year’s Festival. I’m doing the Intros and Q&A’s with Boris Despodov (CORRIDOR #8) and his film was quite well received, if sparsely attended, at the first screening. I’m finding this to be an intensely market orientated event, and am wondering how/if delegates find time to attend screenings given all the networking, pitching, partying going on. It will be an exhausting few days.

But back to Boris, who is here with his terrific producer, Martichka Bozhilova. Martichka is a producer  with the Bulgaria based AGITPROP, which is on a roll. Andrey Paounov’s GEORGI AND THE BUTTERLIES and THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM, and now Boris’ CORRIDOR #8, have been ubiquitous on the international fest circuit over the past few years. She’s here participating in the “Meet Market,” looking for financing for upcoming projects. Producing docs is a tough business, and people like Martichka are its unsung heroes. And, with filmmakers, they are often the true patrons of documentary. She will take meeting after meeting repeating her pitch, looking for very small pre-licences or other financing from as many sources as possible. Its a grind. Few, if any, commissioners have the budget to bank-roll a production on their own. Producers fill their financing coffers by the spoonful, traveling event to event pitching themselves hoarse. “Yes, it gets easier,” she says, of looking for money following a string of successes. “But never easy.”

On the eve of Sheffield, the other UK market event, Brit Doc, announced a partnership with Doc/Fest. They will fold their nascent three-year old event in Oxford, taking Brit Doc “online and on the road.” Brit Doc has quickly developed a distinct vision and brand as boutique conference, so I’m pleased they will continue in another form. And given the re-emergence of Sheffield I can see where it makes sense to partner rather than compete. Alliances and partnerships between festivals and markets are becoming a trend, and the recent formation of the ominously named Doc Alliance is a particularly interesting development in Europe. Doc Alliance is an emerging partnership between five events – Planete Doc Review, Visions du Reel, Jihlava, CPH:DOX and DOK Leipzig. For their first initiative, each event selects a film which becomes part of a touring package that is presented at these five notable events. IDFA’s decision to be stricter regarding its premiere policy could be seen as a kind of response to Doc Alliance. All of this should unfold in juicy and intriguing ways.

Sheffield opened tonight with THRILLER IN MANILA (John Dower), which recounts the famous rematch between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in, yes, Manila. I rarely, if ever, watch boxing, but somehow I seem to like documentaries about boxing. And there are many, every year.  Along with “Thriller”, also here is James Toback’s film, TYSON. And, as I’ve mentioned earlier, this Fall I was on a jury which gave the main prize to BIG JOHN, which follows the career of a famous Norwegian boxer.

Anytime I think, “Not another film about boxing!” I find myself being pulled into it, against any resistance.  In this instance, despite the plethora of Ali lore that we’ve seen over the decades, I was surprised to learn many new things, mostly just how malevolent (really, that’s the word) he was to Frazier in the lead-up to the fight. And how this malevolence loomed over Frazier the remainder of his life, and to this day. As much of the film’s pleasure comes from its revelations about the fight’s back story, I’m reluctant to go into to detail, except to say like all good films about boxing, this is a story that transcends the subject. Its somehow tragic in depicting the scope of the impact of the fight on these two men.

TRADING PREMIERE PUNCHES

Sheffield is my third film festival in as many weeks, and one consistent topic of discussion has been the “premiere’s issue.” Its a particularly heated subject in European documentary circles now, as IDFA took a strident stance on their premieres policy this year. Many producers and distributors had to make the difficult choice of IDFA over those festivals, all quite good and important in different ways, which proceed it. In some instances this meant foregoing the opportunity to present their film on home turf. And I just noticed that next week’s CPH:DOX issued a bulletin that RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO (Brett Gaylor) has been pulled for their festival. The film will be premiering at IDFA. Of course, what is especially ironic in this instance is that scenes from RIP are available for mash-ups via Open Source Cinema. Perhaps premieres are “old media.”

My own opinion has been that premieres are irrelevant (except to Festival directors) or at least should be a low priority variable in the decision making process. Its much more of important, I believe, to present the highest quality programme possible to Hot Docs audiences and attending Industry. The fact is, on the Industry side, one is not capable of seeing every film at a festival, and we need other chances  to view work that may have been missed at a previous event. That, and to cut through the clutter certain films deserve the opportunity to play in a critical mass of high profile festivals. The quest for premieres often negates these opportunities.

Yet, with four very strong documentary festivals having emerged (most in the past few years) in the weeks proceeding IDFA, I do understand the instinct to be protective of the exclusivity of the event. Its a very competitive festival landscape here, and as the largest and oldest event IDFA is asserting itself.

Anyway, Nick Fraser gets the last word on this (for now), “The whole idea of a documentary premiere is a bit silly.”

(Barak Obama speaks in Berlin earlier in campaign…a spirit of awakening.)

Strolled around Berlin for six hours yesterday.  Have been trying to clear my head going into another festival double-header…Doc/Fest (Sheffield) and then straight to CPH: DOX. As it was Election Day, I decided to visit the Kennedy Museum and other “political” sites in Berlin. In the Kennedy Museum I was particularly struck by a phrase describing the tenor of the times as informed by  “a spirit of awakening.”

Indeed, when I awoke, literally, the next day, Barak Obama was President Elect of the United States. Like everywhere else, it was media saturation, all the papers plastered with Obama pics. The night before I was walking “home” quite early in the morning/late night, but before McCain had conceded. The streets were buzzing, even at 2am, and I stumbled across a street party outside what looked like an old cinema house, Babylon Theatre. On the marquee was “Election Night With Democrats Abroad.” It was so packed inside with people watching on the big screen that the party had spilled out on to the sidewalks, everybody waiting to erupt….though by this point many spirits seemed already quite awakened.

Heading to the Sheffield this morning. Heather Croall and her team have, in the past two years, have taken what was by most accounts (this is my first time attending) a somewhat fusty event in decline and have re-energized it. The award winner film at Hot Docs 2008, The English Surgeon, had its world premiere here last year. I’m hoping to discover some similar finds this year. Yet, having scanned the programme, it seems the emphasis at Sheffield is fixed on the market events, not to mention the parties. They has been frequent mentions of the “legendary”  parties in the emails proceeding the event. I’m frequently leery of “legendary” parties.

A Lips sighting at the Heathrow Airport today. He looked dazed and confused strolling around Terminal Five.