NonFics
Monday Memo: Cinema Eye Honors Turn Ten
by Raphaela Neihausen | Monday, January 16th, 2017
Last Wednesday marked the end of a week of a celebratory filmmaker outings for those nominated for this year's Cinema Eye Honors, which is now in its tenth year of existence. IndieWire's Eric Kohn documented the pre-award show outings, which included a private visit to the Whitney, live band karaoke featuring the likes of Steve James, the Ross brothers and Robert Greene, and much more. At the Cinema Eye Honors awards ceremony, "Kirsten Johnson's CAMERAPERSON took home three awards, Outstanding Cinematography for Johnson, Outstanding Editing for Nels Bangerter and Outstanding Nonfiction Feature for Johnson and producer Marilyn Ness," while "O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA received two awards: Outstanding Direction for Ezra Edelman and Outstanding Production for Edelman and Caroline Waterlow." This year's Audience Award went to Clay Tweel's GLEASON. The full list of honorees can be found here.
In other awards news, the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) revealed their nominees this past week, putting 13TH, THE EAGLE HUNTRESS, WEINER, NOTES ON BLINDNESS and THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS up for Best Documentary. And while Cara Buckley debated whether O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA was a mini-series or a just a really long feature film in The New York Times, Glenn Whipp wondered aloud in The Los Angeles Times whether the film will be upset at this year's Oscars. A pair of must read end of year rundowns also appeared this week, one from Robert Greene in Sight & Sound and a whole host of cinephilic lists over at Senses of Cinema's World Poll 2016.
Monday Memo: DOC NYC PRO Announced, Field of Vision Sets Off
by Raphaela Neihausen | Monday, October 5th, 2015
While the New York Film Festival rages on with the upcoming premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's JUNUN this coming week and Jacob Bernstein's EVERYTHING IS COPY (which was reviewed by Steven Zeitchik in The Los Angeles Times and by Variety's Nick Schager) this past week, DOC NYC is gearing up for their own festivities, announcing a rebrand of their industry conference with DOC NYC PRO. The eight-day series of talks, panels, masterclasses, and professional development workshops was reported on by Realscreen's Kevin Ritchie. Speakers already scheduled to present at the already stacked event include Sheila Nevins, Jon Alpert, Abigail Disney, Kirby Dick, Justine Nagan, Simon Kilmurry and Dan Cogan.
Stephen Holden wrote a broad overview of the New York Film Festival for The New York Times, making special mention of Michael Moore's TIFF-premiered WHERE TO INVADE NEXT, which was just picked up for theatrical release this past week by ex-Radius heads Tom Quinn and Jason Janego and Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League's still unnamed new distribution company. Jeremy Kay of Screen Daily broke the news, with subsequent reports coming in from Variety's Dave McNary and Brent Lang, as well as from Deadline's Patrick Hipes. The Guardian's Nigel M. Smith quoted Moore speaking at the press conference of his new film and why he didn't invade the UK for ideas as saying, "We don't have much to learn from the UK…The UK has in recent years started to look too much like us." Eric Hynes reviewed Moore's latest project (along with other TIFF Docs) for Film Comment, aptly observing that "Every interview is a setup, every scene is "a scene," and his every appearance contradictorily signifies both Liberal Crusader and Ugly American. We're invited to see these layers of artifice, and encouraged to feel and think more deeply because, not in spite, of them." In anticipation of the film, The Close-Up podcast released an in-depth conversation with the filmmaker recorded back in 2012.
As festival season rolls on, Oscar debate begins to heat up, as Peter Knegt's pair of pieces in indieWIRE on the likeliest doc candidates to go up for Oscars later this year. He pegs AMY as the front runner, but only head of THE HUNTING GROUND, CARTEL LAND, THE LOOK OF SILENCE and THE WOLFPACK by a smidge.
Last week here at Stranger Than Fiction we kicked of our Fall 2015 season with director Evgeny Afineevsky's WINTER ON FIRE: UKRAINE'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. If you missed the screening, you can now watch the post-screening conversation between Thom Powers and the filmmaker, or read Jeffrey Fleishman's rave in The Los Angeles Times. We also had a late addition to our Fall schedule, slotting in director Jennifer Peedom's Mount Everest climbing doc SHERPA on on November 5th. The film was, in addition to being selected as WNYC's Documentary of the Week, glowingly reviewed by Sheri Linden in The Los Angeles Times and Ken Jaworowski in The New York Times. Tomorrow we welcome directors Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue with their intimate and transformational new feature, BODY OF WAR! Screening tickets and season passes are still available for purchase here!
Monday Memo: Oscar Noms/Snubs, Sundance Primers and Early Pick-Ups
Here at Stranger Than Fiction, the big news of the past week happened to be that we've announced our Winter Season series line-up! Running from February 3 to March 24, the IFC Center will be playing host to screenings of THE HAND THAT FEEDS, BEST OF EGG THE ARTS SHOW, SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION and many other great documentaries and the filmmakers who saw brought them to the screen. Season passes, which include a variety of perks including free popcorn at all STF shows and a free DVD courtesy of Docurama, can be purchased here.
Surely the most talked about story elsewhere was that on Thursday the Academy finally announced their official nominations, including CITIZENFOUR, FINDING VIVIAN MAIER, LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM, THE SALT OF THE EARTH, and VIRUNGA for best documentary feature, as well as CRISIS HOTLINE: VETERANS PRESS 1, JOANNA, OUR CURSE, THE REAPER (LA PARKA), and WHITE EARTH for best documentary short. Writing for NonFics, Christopher Campbell covered the announcements, as did Basil Tsiokos at What (not) To Doc and Adam Benzine for Realscreen.
Peter Knegt and Ben Beaumont-Thomas, writing for Indiewire and The Guardian respectively, took a moment to reflect on the nominations, while at the POV Blog, Tom Roston reached out to filmmakers Orlando von Einsiedel and Charlie Siskel to get their reactions to the news. Eric Kohn on the other hand took time to call attention to the fact that LIFE ITSELF is sorely missing from the list over at Indiewire. As both Laura Poitras and Rory Kennedy expressed concern about in Mark Olsen's report of the nominations in the LA Times, I'm personally still a bit shocked that Jesse Moss' THE OVERNIGHTERS didn't make the list.