Alternative Film Guide

The Iraq War documentaries presenting the point of view of U.S. soldiers, The War Tapes (above) and The Ground Truth, will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Spring 2008 "Contemporary Documentaries" series on Wednesday, May 28, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.
Patricia Foulkrod, [...]

Laura Bialis‘ well-received documentary Refusenik chronicles the thirty-year grassroots movement to free Soviet Jews. (Read Ella Taylor’s positive — if sobering — review in The Village Voice.)
Refusenik is told through the eyes of the activists, among them those then living in the Soviet Union — some of whom were punished for their efforts. Much [...]

Deliver Us from Evil, Dear Talula, and Two Hands will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Spring 2008 "Contemporary Documentaries" series on Wednesday, May 21, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
Amy Berg’s 2006 Academy Award-nominated documentary feature Deliver Us from Evil [...]

The photos below are from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ April 15, 2008, John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film, which presented a special screening of two controversial World War II documentaries directed by John Huston, San Pietro and Let There Be Light. The event was held at the Linwood Dunn Theater in [...]

"This film reflects my inner experience," says Iranian artist/director Mania Akbari about 10 + 4, a documentary that chronicles her battle against cancer in a society where gender roles are strictly enforced. "It is vitally important to expose deep inner truths no matter how difficult and painful they are. 10 + 4 depicts a part [...]

In Strange Culture, which was released on DVD this past March 25, filmmaker Lynn Hershman-Leeson tackles the bizarre case of Steve Kurtz, an associate professor of art at SUNY/Buffalo and founding member of the award-winning art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble, whose interactive projects include the examination of biotechnology and the issues surrounding it. [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film will acknowledge John Huston himself with a special screening of his controversial World War II documentary classics San Pietro (aka The Battle of San Pietro) (above, 1944) and Let There Be Light (1946), on Tuesday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m. at [...]

Fitna, the work of hate created by Dutch far-right-wing member of Parliament Geert Wilders, is now available online. (Don’t expect a link to it here.)
I managed to watch bits and pieces of it before fast-forwarding through repetitive hate-filled discourses by fanatical Muslim clerics interspersed with scenes depicting terrorist attacks committed by Muslim fanatics. By using [...]

The documentary-focused Full Frame Film Festival, to be held in Durham, N.C., from April 3–6, has announced its 2008 film line-up.
Among the entries are James Marsh’s Man on Wire, about Frenchman Philippe Petite’s balancing act between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, and the winner of the World Cinema Jury Prize [...]

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, to be held from April 3–6 in downtown Durham, N.C., has announced that the recipient of this year’s Career Award is filmmaker William Greaves.
The Career Award presentation will showcase Greaves’ first film, The First World Festival of Negro Arts, as well as a 20-minute section of his most [...]

The 46th Ann Arbor Film Festival will be held from March 25–30. More than 100 independent filmmakers from around the world are expected to attend, in addition to several special guests on a night devoted to freedom of speech issues. Among those guests are Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, cinematographer-filmmaker Ellen Kuras, and artist Steve [...]

Q&A with We Are Wizards director Josh Koury at indieWIRE (which is conducting several Q&A’s with SXSW 2008 filmmakers). Koury’s documentary is described as a "portrait of the unusual and passionate culture of Harry Potter fans." A sample question and answer:
indieWIRE: "What was the inspiration for this film?"
Koury: "I’m actually a big Harry Potter fan. [...]

Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 Oscar-winning documentary feature An Inconvenient Truth and Chris Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car? will kick off the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Spring 2008 Contemporary Documentaries series on Wednesday, March 19, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
An Inconvenient Truth follows former [...]

Directed by John Ealer and Laura Bialis (above, lower photo), View from the Bridge: Stories from Kosovo, described on the film’s official website as "the first documentary feature about post-war Kosovo" was recently screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The bridge in question is located in the town of Mitrovica, which [...]

CineKink NYC 2008 will take place from February 26–March 2. The scheduled shorts and features sound kinky enough, but I can only vouch for two that I’ve seen: John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus and Anna Biller’s Viva.
The former, a sexual dramatic-comedy about various New York City couples of myriad sexual orientations and dysfunctions, was screened [...]

Top: The Director and the Rolling Stones: Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Ron Wood
Bottom: Jack White, Mick Jagger
 
Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones concert movie, Shine a Light, opened the 58th Berlin Film Festival this evening.
"Raunchy and affectionate," writes Lee Marshall in Screen Daily, "Scorsese’s Rolling Stones film [...] is as much homage as [...]

SXSW FILM FESTIVAL 2008 - DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION
The SXSW Film Festival runs March 7–15, 2008
 

Bulletproof Salesman
Director: Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein
Fidelis Cloer is a self-confessed war profiteer who found The Perfect War when the US invaded Iraq. It wasn’t about selling a dozen cars, or even a hundred, it was a thousand-car war where [...]

London’s 12th Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF) will take place from March 12–21, 2008.
The festival will screen 25 films from 19 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Chad, Chile, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, former Yugoslavia (I’m assuming that means Serbia), Iran, Iraq, Japan, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Palestine (true, not officially a country — [...]

Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, a thriller about two economically strapped women (Melissa Leo and Misty Upham, above) who turn to immigrant-smuggling at the US-Canada border, was chosen best American fiction film at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. (In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan calls Leo and Upham "magnificent," adding that Frozen River is a [...]

2008 Sundance Film Festival Awards
2008 Sundance Film Festival: January 17-27, 2008
Sundance 2008 Award Winners - Article
 

Grand Jury Prize Dramatic: FROZEN RIVER, directed by Courtney Hunt

Grand Jury Prize Documentary: TROUBLE THE WATER, directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal

World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic: KING OF PING PONG (PING PONGKINGEN) - Sweden, directed by Jens [...]

According to its press release, John Ealer and Laura Bialis‘ View from the Bridge: Stories from Kosovo is the first feature documentary about post-war Kosovo, a semi-autonomous Serbian province inhabited by Albanians and currently under the aegis of the United Nations.
Last fall, the European Union Planning Team for Kosovo began using View from the [...]

Three documentaries at Slamdance 2008:
SPINE TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY (right, Jan 22 10:30pm)
The Audience Award winner for best documentary feature at the 2007 AFI FEST, Jeffrey Schwarz’s Spine Tingler follows the rags-to-riches story of William Castle, the Alfred Hitchcock of B horror films of the 1950s and 1960s.
spinetinglermovie.com
PAGEANT (Jan 22 12:30pm)
Ron Davis and [...]

Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern’s Darfur documentary The Devil Came on Horseback is currently available via Netflix.
In the documentary, former American Marine Capt. Brian Steidle attempts to spread the word to the U.S. government and public about the atrocities he witnessed in Sudan’s Darfur region. Estimates about the number of dead — black Africans [...]

CineKink will present two documentaries on the private sex lives of celebrities from the adult film industry, the 46-minute Damon and Hunter: Doing It Together (2006) and the 28-minute Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story (2002), both directed by Tony Comstock. The screenings will be held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 11, at [...]

International Documentary Association Awards - 2007
The 2007 International Documentary Association winners will be announced at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood on December 07, 2007.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

 
FEATURE DOCUMENTARIES
CRAZY LOVE
Dan Klores, director/producer
Fisher Stevens, producer
Dan Klores, writer
Shoot the Moon Productions, Greenstreet Productions, Magnolia Pictures
OPERATION HOMECOMING: WRITING THE WARTIME EXPERIENCE
Richard [...]