Author: |Posted: 12:55 on 16/12/08
Category: festivals, theatrical documentary
Tis the season to be making jolly little lists, that show what you like. All the bloggers do it now, to show what they consumed, and thoroughly enjoyed.
I’ve split my list into two though. The first part is for films that I skipped out of and spluttered with superlatives because they resonated on me with such an immediate level of captivation. The second list is for clever documentaries that I found utterly brilliant, especially as I thought about them afterwards. The two lists are obviously not binary; some films could have made it onto both, and other documentaries are nowhere to be seen, but I still carry them round in my thoughts. Anyways, here it is, docs I’ve loved from 2008’s offerings, with links to what I’ve written about them.
PART 1
1. Mechanical Love
2. Severing the Soul
3. Japan: A Story of Love and Hate
4. Man on a Wire
5. American Teen
PART 2
6. Solitary Life of Cranes
7. The Doctor who hears voices
8. The English Surgeon
9. My Winnipeg
10. The Shock Doctrine
Author: |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
Author: |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
Author: |Posted: 16:29 on 01/10/08
Category: FourDocs competition
The Mini-MeetMarket is a project pitching and steering session, and a great opportunity for new and emerging documentary filmmakers to meet industry mentors, at the Sheffield DocFest.
The aim is simply to help you get feedback on your documentary idea. Whatever stage you are at with it, you will get a response on how you pitched it as well as pointers on how it needs developing, where to go next, and how to improve your chances of getting funding. read more
Author: |Posted: 14:38 on 24/09/08
Category: FourDocs competition, festivals
As you may have noticed, the judges of our bursary scheme are looking for strong visual ideas that stand a good chance of being selected at film festivals. We want to help you get your docs made AND seen by folk far and wide, so they need to get played. This means you’d be wise to understand what festival programmers look for when selecting films from the mountains of entries.
I asked Hussain Currimbhoy, the newly appointed programmer at Sheffield Doc/Fest, to offer up some hints for improving your success of making a film that gets picked and played. Here is what he wrote me kindly for your consumption: read more
