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Fictional Documentaries: Is There Such An Animal?

[Mark Rabinowitz] The North Texas blog Art and Seek has a post by Greg Brown, the managing director of AFI Dallas International Film Festival who gives his thoughts about the Thin Line Film Fest that kicked off last night. "I love documentary films. They can inspire, teach and entertain," begins Brown. "Often, they are the gems to discover at a film festival." Too true, Greg! Brown goes on to say that "for me, a film festival dedicated to documentaries is an embarrassment of riches." I agree, completely." The fest looks like it has a lot of interesting docs to screen as well as a weekend industry conference called "Between the Lines."

That's all great, but the festival's "about us" page includes the following: "We celebrate the documentary as an entertaining art form without consideration for the factuality of content. In fact, not only do we screen traditional documentaries, but also mockumentaries, and even 100% fictional documentaries."

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Doc Think | Empty Screenings For Oscar®? AMPAS Needs New Rules

[Mark Rabinowitz] Following up on yesterday's post on the Academy documentary deadline I direct your attention to this story in the New York Times. While the Academy has simplified its rules for Oscar® qualification for docs, it's still expensive and rather absurd. The story talks about filmmakers basically renting out theaters in art houses and multiplexes in order to qualify for Academy Awards consideration which on the surface seems ok. Four-walling goes on all the time. However, in this case, the filmmakers are deliberately not seeking audiences because many of them are planning on regular theatrical releases later in the year and a 1 week qualifying run would blow advertising and review opportunities.

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Style, Substance And The Documentary: The Debate Continues

[Mark Rabinowitz] Over at All These Wonderful Things, AJ Schnack posts about his favorite (and worthy) topic, craft in documentary films, this time using Lynne Hershman Leeson's excellent "Strange Culture" as a subject as written about in Shaun Huston's post on PopMatters. There are two main questions surrounding this film, one of which being "when is a doc not a doc and does 'Strange Culture' take too many liberties with re-enactments for it to be called a documentary?" The other one, which AJ seems more concerned with is about the art in the filmmaking process itself, to wit:

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NYFF-Whither The Docs?

[Mark Rabinowitz] So the New York Film Festival announced the full lineup for their 46th annual event and yeah, there's a lot of stuff I am excited about. I won't be in Venice, so it'll be nice to see Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," the Clint Eastwood film "Changeling," Laurent Cantet's "The Class" ("Time Out" was genius) and of course one of my all time favorite films, Nagisa Oshima's 1983 masterpiece "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence." Indeed, I do love this festival. The press and industry screenings have a sort of pomp and circumstance all of their own and most other fests don't do full on press conferences after the press screenings. But.....

Aside from Ari Folman's "Waltz with Bashir" and Alexander Olch's "The Windmill Movie," nary a doc is to be found unless you count Jia Zhangke's "24 City" ("Er shi si cheng ji"), described as "straddling the border between fiction and documentary." I haven't seen it, so I can't say where I think it ends up in its straddle but 2 (maybe 3) docs out of almost 30 films?

I know there are plenty of docs screening in Venice and Toronto and it's not like the Film Society hasn't programmed films from those two festivals before. I do understand that it's a programming committee and maybe they just didn't like Ross McElwee's "In Paraguay," Agnès Varda's "Les Plages des Agnès," Chai Vasarhelyi's "Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love" Or Paul Cronin's NY-set "A Time to Stir." Hell, maybe they all suck (doubtful) or maybe they did like them and the filmmakers didn't want to play the NYFF. Maybe.

What do you all think? Am I being too doc-centric (the name of the blog notwithstanding)? Too harsh on the selection committee?



Is ITV Doing Away With Political Docs? Not If Sean O'Grady Has His Way

[Mark Rabinowitz] Sean O'Grady of The Independent newspaper has a column in which he bemoans the death of "public service" programming on UK broadcaster ITV and issues a call to arms of sorts. "Television is an ephemeral medium," he writes, continuing, "but it is still possible to recall the superb programming that ITV used to offer in this field. "World In Action," "This Week," "Weekend World," "Walden" - all tremendous, long-running series that broke news, investigated crooks, threatened governments. They even had brilliant theme tunes."

"Millions watched and were moved by Jonathan Dimbleby's "This Week" 1973 documentary "the [sic] Unknown Famine" about starvation in Ethiopia, a decade before Michael Buerk did the same for the BBC. "This Week"'s "Death on the Rock" documentary investigated the shooting by the SAS of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar in 1989, the sort of trouble-making by broadcast journalists that is almost impossible to imagine now."
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UK Flap Over Scope Of Publicly-Funded Docs...Say What, Now?

[Mark Rabinowitz] UK newspaper The Guardian is reporting on its website that a number of publicly funded documentaries are somewhat less objective than some think they ought to be. Ofcom, the UK regulator of matters such as this are planning on investigating claims that one of the docs, "Beat: Life on the Street" about police community support officers, broke sponsorship rules when it aired on UK broadcaster ITV.

The newspaper reports that critics of the film "which was commissioned by the Home Office and received £800,000 in government funding, portrayed the officers as helpful and effective, despite criticism of the scheme [that’s "plan" in UK-ese. -Ed.] from opposition MPs and the police."

Er....say what, now? £800,000? That's about a million six in our increasingly worthless currency. Claims of non-objectivity aside, the government of the UK is paying out $1.6 million for TV docs? Where do I sign up? This reminds me of the old joke about the screenwriter who, after returning home from a meeting finds his street blocked off and crowded with police and emergency service personnel. Approaching a cop, he identifies himself. "What's the problem, officer?" "Mr. Jones," the officer replies, "I am sorry to tell you this, but earlier today your agent came to your house, killed your wife and children, butchered your dog and burned down your house." Stunned, the writer wobbles back against a police car, his hand on his head, his eyes wide. "My agent actually came to my house?"

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