“If the Content is Sh*t, It Will Still be Sh*t in VR and AR”: Virtual Reality and Hard Truth at the 2018 FilmGate Interactive Media Festival

The Virtual Reality Portal at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival, which this year overlapped with Art Basel in downtown Miami, featured a wealth of new discoveries alongside some stellar high-profile projects. Among the three-dozen or so interactive works on display were a pair that made for great companion pieces. The first was Lynette Wallworth’s “psychedelic documentary” Awavena, an inner trip that I’d just missed experiencing at IDFA DocLab (and which made me wish that every VR experience came with a hammock). The second, Eliza McNitt’s Sundance-premiering outer trip Spheres, also had perhaps the widest target audience of any of the pieces represented. As I waited in line, watching a little boy who looked to be having a ball participating in this Darren Aronofsky-produced “songs of the cosmos,” I noticed an elderly woman in a wheelchair chatting amiably with the project’s creator. (I later learned this was McNitt’s 90-year-old grandmother, who’d shown up to don a headset for the very first time and experience her granddaughter’s Florida debut.)

To read all about my own Miami trip visit Filmmaker magazine.

A Sneak Peek at the 6th FilmGate Interactive Media Festival

The upcoming FilmGate Interactive Media Festival (November 30th – December 6th) will mark its sixth year of bringing the immersive arts to South Florida. A quick glance through the lineup shows it’s the most impressive edition yet. Divided into four programs — Miami @ Play, Festival Panels, Interactive Installations, and the Virtual Reality Portal (with its 35-plus interactive experiences to choose from) — not to mention the many parties (this is Miami after all), the 2018 edition may just make the folks in town that same week for Art Basel look 20th century passé.

To read my top picks visit Filmmaker magazine.

In With The New at The 31st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

This edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November 14th-25th) — now in its third decade, but also marking its inaugural year under the exciting new leadership of Syrian documentarian Orwa Nyrabia — offered one of the most binge-worthy lineups I’ve experienced in all my years covering the world’s largest doc fest. Of the nearly two-dozen films I managed to catch both in Amsterdam during my stay (once again guests were put up at the lovely — and couldn’t get more convenient — Hotel NH Carlton, which doubles as the fest’s headquarters) and online, not one disappointed. Indeed, veteran filmmakers working at the top of their game were well represented by some stellar films. This included Vitaly Mansky (Putin’s Witnesses), Werner Herzog (Meeting Gorbachev), Errol Morris (American Dharma), Ruth Beckermann (The Waldheim Waltz), Kazuo Hara (Extremely Private Eros: Love Song 1974), Sergei Loznitsa (The Trial), Maria Ramos (The Trial), Nikolaus Geyrhalter (The Border Fence) — and that’s just off the top of my head.

To read all about my inspiring time visit Filmmaker magazine.

IDFA 2018 Presents Industry Talk: Steve James and Claire Simon on Storytelling in Serialized Documentaries

People are “natural scriptwriters,” Claire Simon noted towards the beginning of what turned out to be a surprisingly lively discussion between the French documentarian and the US’s own Steve James about one of the hottest topics in the doc industry today: serialized storytelling. The setting was an intimate theater at De Brakke Grond (the longtime headquarters of IDFA DocLab, where this year’s Humanoid Cookbook theme whimsically allowed for browsing a menu before ordering, or rather requesting, VR experience time slots).

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

“High Security Was Essential, In Order to Protect My Sources, My Crew and the Ability To Complete the Film”: Alex Winter on The Panama Papers

Alex Winter’s The Panama Papers is a globetrotting, newsroom-hopping peek inside the multinational process, which ultimately brought together over 100 media organizations in 80 countries under the auspices of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). That led to the 2016 mass publication of documents from the highly secretive, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca — which in turn brought down heads of state and business leaders the world over, and cost the lives of at least two reporters affiliated with the leaked trove.

I was fortunate enough to catch Winter’s film at this year’s IDFA (in the stunning Tuschinski Theater, no less, which Winter proclaimed the grandest venue any of his films had ever played in), especially because the post-screening chat featured a conversation with not only the director, but also three of the journalists who’d worked on the exposé. (That included Pulitzer Prize winners Bastian Obermayer, whose Munich-based newspaper initially received the tip, and Icelandic journo Jóhannes Kr. Kristjánsson, whose work on the project led to the resignation of his own country’s prime minister.)

Prior to the film’s Epix release on November 26th, Filmmaker spoke with Winter about his logistically challenging, filmed-in-secret film.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Courage Under Fire Award: Stephen Maing and the NYPD 12

This year’s Courage Under Fire Award recipients, director Stephen Maing (High Tech, Low Life) and the whistleblowers of the NYPD 12 that he documented in his exquisite doc Crime + Punishment, may not at first glance seem as likely honorees as, say, journalists facing down the daily guns and bombs of the war-torn Middle East. But look closer. Maing, an Emmy Award-nominated Brooklynite, and the black and brown men in blue that he collaborated with, have taken on, as Maing reminds us, “the most powerful policing organization in the nation” in order to expose the illegal quotas that disproportionately affect New York City’s minority communities. So how dangerous is exposing systemic corruption in this force? Just ask Frank Serpico.

To read the rest visit Documentary magazine.

Top 10 Picks for IDFA 2018

The program for the 31st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November 14th – 25th) — the first under the new artistic directorship of Syrian documentary filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia — feels equal parts familiar and fresh. On the one hand, as in years past, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world’s largest nonfiction film festival. Once again the fest will include exceptional industry events like the IDFA Forum (and Docs for Sale, the IDFA Bertha Fund, IDFA Academy, etc.), competitions (14 in total), and more meet-and-greets and parties than one can reasonably attend. (Do I stop by the Korean night of food and music or the Scandinavian reception?)

On the other hand, Nyrabia and his team have made the upcoming event more navigable than ever, with a slimmed-down lineup — only a dozen films in each competition category this time — and a new site feature called Program Pathways, which groups films into 15 thematic categories (everything from “Lovers, Rebels, and Skateboarders,” to “Show Me Your ID,” to “Back to the USSR,” and “Backstage Politics”). This inspired me to get organized and create my own personal “Top 10” list of events not to be missed.

To read my suggestions visit Filmmaker magazine.