Thousands of filmmakers and fans may have occupied downtown Silver Spring all week, but now the SILVERDOCS festival kicks into high gear for the weekend.
By Joel Sparks
Thursday: Tonight’s Charles Guggenheim Symposium honors American documentary master Frederick Wiseman, with remarks by PBS president Paula Kerger and a conversation between Wiseman and Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”). Elsewhere, “Making the Boys” (9 pm) looks at the classic 1968 gay-themed play “The Boys in the Band” and its impact on 60s culture.
Friday: Expected to draw an audience of people who usually don’t watch documentaries, “The People vs. George Lucas” (10 pm) looks at who really owns a story that captured the minds of millions.
And of course dozens of other films run all weekend, like the story of the dying Russian space program and the wealthy people who underwrite it (“Space Tourists), the struggles of a small family-run Mexican circus (“Circo”), and the story of a black American who vanished in Vietnam, but maybe didn’t die (“The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan”). Meanwhile area restaurants and bars welcome theatergoers with drink specials and late hours, turning the streets of Silver Spring into a kind of once-a-year, documentary- themed Mardi Gras.
See silverdocs.com for more.
