IDFA DocLab Presents Liminal Reality: 5 New VR Projects (And One Encore Experience) I’m Hoping To Catch In 2022

For the past decade and a half the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the world’s largest nonfiction fest, has both incubated and showcased our digital future through its perennially impressive IDFA DocLab. And this latest hybrid edition’s Liminal Reality program (which ran November 19-28) continued that trend. In addition to a wealth of in-person experiences and live events in the Netherlands’ capital (well, until the country went into pandemic lockdown on the final weekend), there was also a free online exhibition. Which is always great news not only for XR fans and obsessive gamers on a budget, but also for those of us travel-restricted and/or festival-gathering hesitant in the US and beyond. And while no gear was required for many of these projects (only Google Chrome browser and a desktop computer or laptop recommended), hardcore VR aficionados with headsets on hand especially seemed to have gratis entry into a wide array of mind bending worlds. So with this in (sound) mind, here’s an eclectic selection of new experiences from around the globe – plus one oldie but goodie that rocked my world a half decade back – that I’m guessing, if the following program synopses are any indication, will cause much more than a ripple when they hit this side of the pond. To read my recommendations/plea to US-based new media programmers visit Hammer to Nail.

"We Found Ways to Combine Drama Therapy with Filmmaking into Something New”: Director Robert Greene on the Netflix Documentary Procession

At the root of the word “procession” is “process” — really a fitting description for any Robert Greene film. But the title of the nonfiction veteran’s latest foray into character-collaborative doc-making has other meanings. It nods specifically to the Holy Spirit’s procession and also to the dictionary definition of people moving forward, a march that includes the risk-taking filmmaker himself. Procession (which premiered at Telluride and just hit Netflix November 19) is perhaps Greene’s boldest cinematic move yet. Once again the director (and “filmmaker-in-chief” at the University of Missouri’s Murray Center for Documentary Journalism) blurs the lines between narrative and nonfiction, casting six male survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests and clergy in a creation of their own making. It’s “a radical experiment in therapeutic collaborative filmmaking” — one specifically designed to return power to the victims. Supported by a crew that includes a trained drama therapist with a background in sexual assault prevention and education, the mainly midwestern men painfully and painstakingly mine memories, dreams — and, for one, still raw anger at a woefully inadequate legal system — to stage a series of often inspired fictional scenes. (Another uses All That Jazz, Fosse’s fake take on real life, as a touchstone.) Shortly before the streaming release of Procession, Filmmaker reached out to Greene to learn more about the film and, yes, his own process, but also whether we might see more instances of “therapeutic cinema” in the future.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“While I Knew the Music Inside Out There Was So Much I Didn’t Know About the Story Behind the Album”: Alison Klayman on Jagged

As perhaps one of the few people on the planet who managed to nightclub through the ’90s without any awareness of shooting star Alanis Morissette (her music just didn’t penetrate my punk/goth/new wave bubble) I came to Alison Klayman’s latest doc Jagged, part of HBO’s new Music Box series, with a positively clean slate. The film is an in-depth look at the Canadian-American musician-singer-songwriter-actress through an exhaustive amount of archival material, juxtaposed with straightforward interviews with the mercurial Morissette herself. (For those also in a Morissette-defying bubble, this would be a good time to state that the musician is not all that thrilled with the final product – something I find truly perplexing. My big takeaway from Jagged? Morissette is shockingly down-to-earth normal for a global rock star.) Prior to the film’s HBO debut on November 18 (it received its U.S. premiere at DOC NYC after world premiering at Toronto) Filmmaker reached out to Klayman to learn more about Jagged; and how she got from Ai Weiwei (2012’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry), to Steve Bannon (2019’s The Brink – which really should be required viewing for Errol Morris on how not to get played), to the feminist force behind 1995’s industry-upending album “Jagged Little Pill.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

The SCAD Savannah Film Festival presents Wonder Women: Below the Line

Taking place on a Thursday morning in late October at the Gutstein Gallery (or online for pass-holders who didn’t care to brave the rain), the Wonder Women: Below the Line panel at this year’s SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 23-30) felt like a breath of fresh air. Moderated by Variety’s Jazz Tangcay, the participants included talent agent June Dowad, editor Pamela Martin (King Richard, Battle of the Sexes, The Fighter), and production designers Diane Lederman (CODA, The Americans, The Leftovers) and Ina Mayhew (Queen Sugar, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, Second Generation Wayans): All fiercely self-assured, middle-aged women with a wealth of knowledge. Not to mention careers long enough to allow them to bluntly call BS on a still gender-biased system.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

What (I Plan) To See At DOC NYC

For a doc geek like me there’s no such thing as a DOC NYC shortlist. Indeed, my original screener request document contained close to 40 feature films – which to be fair is only a third of this year’s feature-length lineup (so I guess I can’t be accused of being all that greedy). That said, since there’s only 24 hours in a day I find it practical to prioritize according to my own idiosyncratic categories. Which basically breaks down into three (often overlapping) sections: Nonfiction Auteurs, Intriguing Character Studies, and Weird Shit. The following is just a baker’s dozen of my highly personal, admittedly incomplete, DOC NYC must-sees. (DOC NYC, “America’s largest documentary festival,” runs in person November 10-18 and online nationwide November 19-28.)

To read my eclectic suggestions visit Hammer to Nail.

The SCAD Savannah Film Festival presents Wonder Women: Producers

A perennial highlight at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 23-30), this year’s back-to-in-person (and virtually for pass-holders) Wonder Women: Producers panel was jam-packed with industry insights from a refreshing range of female perspectives. Engagingly moderated by SAGindie executive director Darrien Gipson, the event took place at the cozy Gutstein Gallery late on a Friday morning. On hand were Alison Owen (Harlots, Ghosts, Elizabeth), Seanne Winslow (The Lego Movie, The Life of Pablo/Yeezy Season 3 and The Falconer, which took Best Narrative Feature at the fest), Kaila York (a producer working mainly with Lifetime, Hallmark and Netflix), Jaclyn Moore (Dear White People, Love Life, Queen America), and Katie Spikes (a CBS vet and senior story editor at 60 Minutes).

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Nine Best of the Fests Must-Sees at DOC NYC

This year’s DOC NYC is actually two consecutive fests. From November 10-18, vaxxed and masked fans of nonfiction cinema will be able to gather in person for the 200-plus films and events at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Cinépolis Chelsea. And for those outside NYC (but still in the US) or pandemic hesitant, most of the more than 120 features will be available virtually from November 19-28. In other words, “America’s largest documentary festival” is also now one of its most accessible. And while both US and world premieres abound at this 12th edition (60-plus by my last count), DOC NYC has also selected a number of films that rocked my world on the 2020-2021 festival circuit. So for those looking for foolproof viewing chockfull of cinematic risk-taking, with the following you can’t go wrong.

To read my recommendations visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Al Victory, 'Attica'

Fifty years ago, an uprising at a prison facility in upstate New York changed the course of history. And yet today the word "Attica" might more easily bring to mind Al Pacino’s infamous line from Dog Day Afternoon. Which is a shame — although also perhaps inevitable. For what turned out to be the largest prison rebellion in US history — culminating in "the deadliest violence Americans had inflicted on each other in a single day since the Civil War" — was also a media spectacle that played out for five days across TV screens around the world. But for the incarcerated — and all the families on the outside — who experienced the cataclysmic event in real time, "Attica" is not a meme. And one of those formerly imprisoned men is Al Victory, who was only 27 in September 1971. Shot twice, then later beaten and thrown down a set of stairs (and ultimately threatened in an attempt to get him to cooperate with authorities and "lie against fellow inmates"), Victory has for decades been on a righteous mission to ensure that the lessons of Attica not be relegated to some dustbin of fictional Hollywood history. He sees parallels to the protests sparked in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, as well as to today’s calls for racial justice and police accountability. And notably, he’s also one of the few white faces to appear in Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry’s Attica, a masterful revisitation of the uprising and its aftermath. The film premieres November 6 on Showtime. Documentary is thrilled Victory found time to chat with us about the doc, what’s changed over the past half-century and what has not — and to agree to take the spotlight as our November Doc Star of the Month.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Transformations in Non-fiction Filmmaking: The SCAD Savannah Film Festival presents the 8th Annual Docs to Watch Roundtable

This year’s SCAD Savannah Film Festival – the “largest university-run film festival in the world,” which ran from October 23-30 – was a conveniently hybrid event that also marked my own return to the in-person festival circuit. Admittedly, as someone residing in a blue state with a strict mask mandate in place, traveling to the Deep South was a somewhat disorienting experience. And a stark reminder that the U.S.’s politicization of a global pandemic really is a war within – and specifically within the states themselves. On the one hand, Georgia’s Republican Governor Kemp issued an executive order back in August that banned local jurisdictions from imposing mask mandates. On the other hand, the liberal college city of Savannah has a mandatory mask mandate. Which, like elsewhere in our exasperatingly dysfunctional country, seemed to result in a disturbing hodgepodge of mask-less red tourists mixing it up both indoors and out with the masked up blue locals. Fortunately, this southern fest doesn’t play when it comes to health protocols (as at the Savannah College of Art and Design itself, proof of vaccination and masks were both required and strictly enforced), giving the 24th edition the air of an all-inclusive Covid bubble. And this sentiment was made all the more palpable at the 8th annual – first return-to-in-person – Docs to Watch Roundtable on October 24. Taking place once again at the Lucas Theatre for the Arts (and also virtually for pass-holders), the annual Docs to Watch roundtable, hosted as always by The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, featured a who’s who of likely upcoming Oscar nominees. Taking the stage one by one, there was Evgeny Afineevsky (Francesco), Julie Cohen (Julia), Liz Garbus (Becoming Cousteau), Robert Greene (Procession), Todd Haynes (The Velvet Underground), Matthew Heineman (The First Wave), Amanda Lipitz (Found), Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Flee), Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)), and E. Chai Vasarhelyi (The Rescue).

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.