Pushing off for the Berlinale tomorrow, then back home to complete our selections for Hot Docs 2009. We have over half of the programme in place, and we’re quite pleased with it. An interesting thing starts to happen now, in that our remaining selections will be very much informed by the films to which we’ve already committed. This means that some strong work will be excluded simply because it doesn’t fit the programming puzzle.
I really don’t know if its better to submit a film early, or late. I do know that, given the range of choice, sometimes a decision to select one work over another is simply a matter of timing, of when we see it. Festival selections can sometimes baffle those not familiar with the process, and we all scratch our heads at certain choices festivals make. Its an intense, fast, and imperfect process….but the good work always finds its way.
As is always the case, I assume that some of the docs we really like have been submitted, and declined, elsewhere. Just as some that we decline will find love from other festivals. Of course, programmers get a little defensive about these instances (especially when a declined film becomes a hit or award winner elsewhere), but its just a part of the process.
Now, to give you, dear blog reader, a sense of how I’m responding to work, I offer a few snippets from my now burgeoning index card box. Those in quotes are direct quotations from characters or voice-over in the film, the others are my reactions as I screen:
- terrific access, good, natural ‘performances’
- re: gentrification: “How come there’s room for the rich, but not the poor?”
- “an ‘ars poetica’ told, not through theory, but through stories.”
- fairly mundane opening, what’s this going to tell me?
- heroin, sex, pixelated night shots, s&m > very transgressive
- a relationship therapy film
- little/no critical analysis…but do we need that in this instance?
- reading images and making connections > ie. classical montage
- quiet, impressionistic, textured…but still about a junkie thief > what sets this apart?
- strangely structured, but a kind of surrealism emerges
- “If you learn to get men to like you, you won’t need to work a day in your life.”
- “Have I ever had counseling? I’ve had many a counseling. Many a times. I’ve been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder with an impulse control problem. Which means I don’t like people and I’m a little bit of a psychopath.” …other guy : “A little bit?”
- sort of interesting, but just misses…doesn’t elevate the source material
- another first-person therapy film…but a really good one