POLLYWOOD | DOCUWOOD
LIVES UP TO ITS NAME
In a town dominated by politics
and news (mostly revolving
around politics), the growth
of the SILVERDOCS: AFI/
Discovery Channel Documentary
Festival has been a reminder that
the greater Washington area is also
home to one of Americas most
important centers for documentary
film. This years festival only served
to enhance that image. The festival
is a marriage of two Silver Spring
neighbors. Discovery, which has led
the resurgence of documentaries,
opened its world headquarters
in Silver Spring in 2003, a few
weeks before the AFI-which is
headquartered in Hollywood-opened
the AFI Silver Theatre just across the
street.
Starting from the kick-off
screening The off Heart of the Game
with special guest Sheila Johnson, the
week-long festival entertained and
informed through film screenings
and symposiums, including the fourday
International Documentary
Conference, for which Al Gore
delivered the key note address. The
hot button issue at the conference
this year was definitely trends in
distribution and the impact of digital
media. The festival also shed a spotlight
on the fi lms of South Africa.
But, the biggest splash at this
years festival came in the form of
the health-focused documentary
segment, aptly named: DOCS Rx: A
World of Documentaries on Global
Health. SILVERDOCS organized
an interesting take on the idea of
"audience participation" by videotaping
interviews with breastcancer
survivors throughout the
length of the festival. A montage of
the testimonies was then previewed
before the screening of Linda
Pattillos fi lm Breast Cancer Diaries.
DISCOVERING
SILVERDOCS
BY DON BAER, SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE
PRESIDENT, STRATEGY AND DEVELOPMENT
DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS
When Discovery
Communications and
the American Film
Institute launched the
SILVERDOCS Documentary Festival four
years ago, our goal was simple: To create the
most important documentary festival in
the world. Our two organizations are based
in the Washington area in Silver Spring,
Md., and we wanted to bring together
independent non-fi ction fi lmmakers with
people in this area who focus on policy,
politics and media.
This year, we had an amazing array of
special guests. Martin Scorsese, one of the
greatest fi lmmakers of our times, came to
SILVERDOCS to be recognized for the
body of his documentary work as part of
the annual Symposium that honors the life
and work of the late Washington-based,
Academy Award-winning documentary
maker Charles Guggenheim. Director Jim
Jarmusch engaged Scorsese in a riveting
conversation about his career and the nature
of fi lmmaking. Afterwards, SILVERDOCS
held an outdoor screening in Silver Spring
of Scorseses 1978 fi lm, The Last Waltz,
about the fi nal performance by The Band.
SILVERDOCS also hosted former Vice
President Al Gore, who spoke to a packed
house at the Silver Theater as part of the
documentary conference. Building on his
new fi lm, An Inconvenient Truth, about the
potential catastrophe of global warming,
Gore provided a provocative and inspirational
presence for the fi lmmaking community. We
were also pleased to have Thomas Friedman,
award-winning New York Times columnist,
who premiered his latest documentary for
the Discovery Channel - Addicted To Oil, a
look at Americas dependence on fossil fuels
and constructive steps we can take to end
that addiction.
Having this caliber of celebrities at
SILVERDOCS definitely helped to raise our
profile. But even more important were the
extraordinary fi lms, the intense discussions
among filmmakers, and the crowds of
people from all over the world who flocked
to Silver Spring to be part of the festival.
All of us who have been a part of making
this festival a reality are very proud, because,
in its fourth year, we believe it is clear that
SILVERDOCS has really arrived."
LIGHTS, CAMERA ...
GROWTH
BY PATRICIA FINNERAN,
SILVERDOCS FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
For me, the most inspiring aspect of this years
Festival is the variety of ways in which the fi lms and
accompanying discussion touch peoples lives. Our
Community Diary Project, which was inspired by
the documentary The Breast Cancer Diaries, involved
audiences in a whole new way. Making them not only
part of the Festival but adding their personal stories to
a permanent record which will live on, on our website
and at other screenings. Air Guitar Nation brought
audiences young and old out and on to the stages of
the SILVERDOCS Cinema Lounge to rock out. And
Word Play drew out the crossword fanatics for some
serious, though light-heated competition.
Someone asked me last week if it is was hard to
get Washington audiences involved and excited
I answered 'absolutely not. Washington is full of
highly educated and engaged individuals hungry
for authentic entertainment, great storytelling and
an opportunity to have fun at the same time. At
SILVERDOCS, we talk a lot about bringing diverse
constituencies together. Just prior to the Guggenheim
Symposium I found myself standing in the same
room with Former Vice President Al Gore, legendary
director Martin Scorsese and the independent director
Jim Jarmusch all talking about documentaries. These
leaders draw new audiences to the festival and help
create an open environment that adds freshness and
excitement to the national dialogue. More than ever,
both professionals in the fi lm and television industry
and Washington area fi lm afi cionados are designating
SILVERDOCS a must-attend event.
FILMMAKER
TO FILMMAKER
The 2006 Guggenheim Symposium, named for four-time Academy Award-winner
and Washington-area fi lmmaker Charles Guggenheim, honored Martin Scorsese
for his contributions to documentary fi lm. The on-stage was led by
independent fi lmmaker director Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Broken Flowers,
Coffee and Cigarettes) and included visual outtakes from Scorseses documentary
oeuvre, including The Last Waltz; No Direction Home: Bob Dylan; Il Mio Viaggio in Italia
and the '70s exploration of his family in Italianamerican.
Jim Jarmusch: Italianamerican
is a portrait of your family, but
other themes in the fi lm include:
parents, immigration, relationships,
clubs, Sicily, resentment, meatballs,
marriage, work, class, money, history, survival
and homemade vinegar. There is so much in this
fi lm; I love this fi lm.
Martin Scorsese: It was part of a series called
"Nation of Immigrants" for the U.S. bicentennial.
There were fi lms being made on different ethnic
groups, and I was asked if I could do one on
Italian Americans. I said that Id do it if I could
do something different. I fi gured the best thing
would be to fi lm an afternoon with my mother
and father. It took three hours on a Saturday and
three on a Sunday, but during that time, I began
to see a relationship between the two of them
and the life they had before me. I saw a love story
of practically 60 years of marriage. I learned that
I could ask one question and theyd go on and on
[laughter]. I began to see this point counterpoint
argument - how one perceived what actually
happened, and the other perceived another thing.
I really got a sense of two people in love.
JJ: There is a really beautiful moment in
the fi lm that I think infl uences some of your
narrative work. Your father is talking about his
father and his mother, and he says she was "a
real whip." The camera turns on you and your
mother and father - youre not looking at each
other - and it just sort of hangs there. Its a very
emotional moment.
MS: Hold a camera on a person and they talk;
they tell a story. It goes back to a person sitting
around a camp fi re telling a story. All the great
camera moves in the world are unnecessary in
a way.
JJ: Its a matter of style, right? Can you talk a
little about your style?
MS: I struggle between American and
European styles sometimes. I want to keep
the camera fl at and straight, but I cant help
moving it a little bit. In one fi lm in particular,
King of Comedy, I felt like I was just hiding
out; there was this constant battle in my mind
between movement and staying static. Style
these days? ... I try not to watch modern fi lms
as much as possible. I dont know if there is
any more "style" left now that we have the
capabilities of digital imaging. A kid told me
the other day that he had just watched this
fi lm on his computer. I said, 'Well, what was
it? He says, "Secret of My Success." And I said,
'And you saw that on a computer? Now
theyre talking about putting fi lms on IPODs
... thats cinema? Its frightening to think of
the infl uence of that on style.
JJ: When youre making a feature fi lm, you
have a lot of control over style; how does that
work when youre making a documentary?
MS: The material definitely leads me. Its
usually the music that takes me - particularly
in Dylan. Its an obsession with music really;
the music begins to tell the story. For Dylan
we [editor David Tedeschi and Scorsese]
went through years of footage - it was a huge
investment of time. We had to fi nd the story in
the footage, but eventually the music led us to
the style; just as it led us to the artist.
JJ: It seems like you got everything that you
needed for that documentary; you really found
the "boxer" in Dylan, didnt you?
MS: Yes. His manager Jeff Rosen shot about
10 hours of Dylan talking. Bob did it because,
he told Jeff, that it would be his last interview
ever. Jeff had known Dylan for 26 years, so he
could get away with a lot. Dylan could even
say things to Jeff like, "People like you bother
me." In the fi lm, watch Dylans face, watch
his eyes, and hes saying one thing, but hes thinking something else. Is he saying what he
thinks you want to hear? He says at one point
that he may be telling the truth ... or maybe
not. The whole picture pulled together on that
close-up.
JJ: The fi lm you executive-produced in the
Blues sequence I loved it. It goes back to
Africa and to Maui for an all-star jam with
Clapton, and a couple other places. When
youre working, do you listen to music that
is going to inspire you or connect you to the
project? Who are you listening to now?
MS: I keep going back to Dylan and [Van]
Morrison.
JJ: I read somewhere that you said that the
news, now, is pure entertainment. Can you
talk about that in terms of "recording" verses
"interpreting."
MS: Its interesting because, when you get
a camera, you have an immediate impulse to
capture something thats moving. Lets go to
14th street and record the cars going back and
forth, etc. Whats the impulse? The impulse is
to record or to create something dramatic that
is interpreted. As soon as you put the camera
down, youre interpreting what the audience
is going to see - the image of the car going
by. That impulse is whats fun for me. At a
certain point, as far as being moved and using
discretion, there is no difference to me in what
they call a documentary and a fi lm. Once that
camera starts, the fi rst impulse is to record, but
then someone says "lets record an explosion on
Mount Etna." Then all of a sudden, they desire
to interpret, to involve theatrical interpretation.
So, for me, thats where the lines get blurred.
There is no doubt, for me, that news now, in
terms of television, is pure entertainment.
JJ: Now there is a corporate media that seems
to suppress or deny ideas and information I
mean I cant distinguish corporate media from
corporate government.
MS: Youre right. Youre right. [applause from
the audience]
JJ: Ill end with a quote from one of your
fi lms, which is, "As with heroin, the antidote
to fi lms is more fi lm."
ADDICTED TO OIL:
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
REPORTING
Pulitzer Prize-winning NewYork Times columnist
brought globalization to the masses with his
book The World is Flat. In his new documentary,
Addicted to Oil he hopes do to the same for
petropolitics. Enviro-babe Nora Maccoby found
out more about that
in an exclusive Q&A
interview for WL.
Nora Maccoby: What
steps do you see to cure
Americas oil addiction?
Thomas Friedman: The conclusions from
the research we did for
the fi lm are that we have to push everything.
There is no magic bullet. You have to push
solar. You have to push re-design and design,
because when you design with the mass
energy of a building in mind that saves more
energy over time than anything else. You have
to push hybrids. You have to push ethanol. You
have to push sugar ethanol, not just ethanol
in this country, and I think you have to push
nuclear. You have to push everything. There is
no single solution that is going to eliminate
our dependence on fossil fuels.
NM: What about domestic fuel alternatives
like coal-to-gas?
TF: The good thing about coal-to-gas is that
you get the mercury and the sulphur out. The
bad thing is that youre still left with CO2
emissions when it goes up the smoke stack.
So, you get rid of a lot of pollution but youre
still left with the impact on the climate. This is
where you get into the issue of sequestration.
Can you take that CO2 and sequester it?
Coal-to-liquids, coal-to-gas theyre all better
than coal.
NM: What about China?
TF: China is keenly aware that its growing
at 10 percent but giving 2 percent back a year
to pollution. So, it has to go green. It already
has higher mileage standards [than the U.S.]. In
the documentary, we show a Chinese village
being designed by William McDonough [a
green architect, who is designing a number of
renewable energy cities in China]. My hope is
that China will do for the cost of solar power
what it did for the cost of tennis shoes.
NM: Can we fi nd the will to act as a nation
on this?
TF: Weve said all along that it will take a crisis.
Well, the argument of our fi lm is that the crisis
is here - weve
even had the
President defi ne
it as a crisis -
and, yet, people
dont seem to be
concerned.
NM: What
about the
Defense Department focusing on better energy
effi ciency and conservation?
TF: Yes, thats all a start, but it has to be with a
much greater sense of urgency.
NM: How can that happen?
TF: Well, theres nothing like the bully pulpit
of the Presidency. Its great to give a State of
the Union on "addicted to oil," but you need
to give that speech every day and everywhere
before it really starts to take hold.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Peter Bart and I had been developing
concepts for TV to commemorate Varietys 100th
anniversary when Peter met one afternoon with
Sheila Nevins and John Hoff man of HBO. As
a producer and one of the savviest guys in the
business, Peter might have intimated that other
networks were interested in doing a show with
us. Sheilas extremely competitive and within
no time we came to an agreement to make a
documentary for HBO.
We never wanted to make a doc on Varietys
history. Instead, we wanted to use Variety as a
prism through which to view the art and the
business we cover. Boffo! is about that strange
alchemy that results in great commercial cinema -
and what sometimes happens when that alchemy
is wrong. Director Bill Couturié did a terrific job
of illustrating that natural tension.
Boffo! was an offi cial selection at the 2006
Cannes Film Festival and we were really heartened
by the response. It was a real treat as a kid born
and raised in D.C. to have our fi lm selected as
the opener for this years SILVERDOCS Film
Festival. The crowd in Silver Spring was even
warmer than that in Cannes, but then again, none
of my family was in Cannes.
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