Skip Channel4 main Navigation
Explore Channel4
Food
Homes
Film
4Car
News
See All
Fourdocs
FourDocs is an online documentary channel. It is the place to be to find short-form documentaries on the web. Please come and look around the site, but note we currently aren't accepting film submissions. Look out for the new refreshed 4Docs coming soon!

McAllister unhinges the nail that sticks out sorely. A review of Japan: A Story of Love and Hate

Author: Rebecca Frankel|Posted: 13:50 on 12/11/08

Category: festivals

How to make a film using Sean McAllister’s tried and perfected method:

1. Head to a hostile environment to report on an important political issue
2. Brutally collide camera lens with your topic head on
3. Realise your subject is a victim sprawled open for examination, like a bug in a petri dish, divorced from the context of its being and devoid of individual detail
4. Become depressed and think you’re losing your way with no human narrative to grasp onto, as you drink and talk your frustrations through at night with a bar fixture
5. Leave, and almost give up on the facade of making a film, until you understand the one who propped you up with their near-immunity to the surrounding scenario is the one you must return to
6. Stake down your claim on this surviving social misfit whose eyes dance above a slouching spine, and attach yourself fast for the next 6 months
7. Question the basics until they laugh and reveal their seams
8. Spot the potential drama of their destiny, and divine it

Again, Sean McAllister has cast the most charismatic of characters, in another free-spirited hero, at odds with his society and expected role. Welcome to Naoki and the class of working poor in Japan. read more

 

Top film tips from Sheffield Doc/Fest that are on the telly this week!

Author: Rebecca Frankel|Posted: 23:18 on 10/11/08

Category: festivals, theatrical documentary

There was a surprising amount of films commissioned directly for television playing at Sheffield Doc/Fest this year, several already broadcast, and many being aired very soon. So, this week, from the comfort of your home, you can play catch-up and watch a selection of the best suggestions.

A quick glance at the Storyville home page shows that tonight on BBC4 at 10pm is Prodigal Sons, which follows an old football hero who is now a post-operative transgendered lesbian woman, home for a school reunion, and was the film my festival comrade James Newton recommended most. In next Monday’s slot is Elizabeth Stopford’s touching film I’m not Dead Yet about an inheritance battle within her family, and apparently there is a twist in the middle that changes your perspective on everything. Strangely the film that played in last Monday’s slot, Operation Iraqi Filmmaker, played at Sheffield a whole year ago, and was picked up as an acquisition there, to be aired much later than its festival outing. read more

 

Previous Posts

This pitching competition – clarification

Author: Rebecca Frankel|Posted: 13:14 on 05/11/08

Category: Uncategorized

My Home Town Winners

Author: Rebecca Frankel|Posted: 17:05 on 28/10/08

Category: FourDocs competition

Review of J D Thomas’ Melancholy Objects

Author: Lee Kern|Posted: 22:28 on 21/10/08

Category: FourDocs competition

Review of James Graham’s Little Apple

Author: Lee Kern|Posted: 12:08 on 21/10/08

Category: FourDocs competition

Review of Mathy Tremewan’s Parade

Author: Lee Kern|Posted: 09:47 on 21/10/08

Category: FourDocs competition


Channel 4 © 2009. Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of external websites.