Family Instinct follows the lives of Zanda, her two small children, her mother and the drunken men who drift in and out of their longtime home. Valdis was sent to prison after Zanda reported domestic violence, but she misses him and hopes that he will still love her when he returns in a year.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then You are all Captains speaks them all. The images in this film transcend any language barriers. The director Oliver Laxe is a Paris-native, his parents are Spanish and the movie takes place in Morocco. The film has a universal understanding conveyed in the images shown throughout. Although it’s subtitled, the images in the film capture what the characters say with more accuracy and emotion than words can express.
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Nowadays the film industry is imbued with the auteur theory, a fancy way to say that when it comes to films, we live in a director-centered era. This theory dominates the way we understand and see films. However, there are some dissidents of this theory. Four women producers and a woman filmmaker joined forces this afternoon to take this idea down at the panel Auteur Theory Exploded: The Role of Creative Croducers which was moderated by Judith Helfland (Chicken & Egg Pictures). Here they explained to the audience gathered at the Columbia Art League why creative producers are so crucial in the filmmaking process.
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The boundaries between life and death are easily crossed in Wisconsin Death Trip. Director James Marsh’s film based on Michael Lesy’s book of the same name, proves how humor can still be possible in the middle of dementia, violence and suicides.
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Armadillo is a war documentary about Danish soldiers fighting against the Taliban. It tours a military base in Helmond Province in Afghanistan for six months, following the lives of soldiers.
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The word history is enough to put many people to sleep. However, in the vast world of filmmaking, various techniques are used to tell a story and determine if there is a concrete idea that’s worth pursuing. In the panel Beyond Burns: The Next Wave of Historical Documentaries, four filmmakers stressed the importance about historical archives and how documentaries have a fundamental reliance on using these archives to tell their stories.
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True/False Film Fest marks the American debut for Italian director Pierto Marcello’s Italian film La Bocca Del Lupo.
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Troll Hunter provides an invaluable learning experience by revealing that all you really need when confronting a troll is a bright light, sheep for bait and some troll stench to blend in.
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The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the conceptual and actual reasons of the rise and quick fall of what was harkened “The City of the Future” in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The Pruitt-Igoe complex was a series of low-income, government-run housing in St. Louis built in the mid-50s. What was believed to be the ultimate utopian society quickly crumbled and was eventually demolished in the mid-70s. Director Chad Freidrichs covers the popular theories behind the complex’s demise including high-modernist architecture, the rapidity of its disappearance, bad planning and systematic segregation.
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Buck Brannaman grew up in terror of a father who knocked him around. Yet that scared little cowboy turned into a gentle man who understands horses’ fears as he helps them and their owners at clinics across the country. His story served as inspiration for the book-turned-movie The Horse Whisperer.
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Audience members that are fans of traditional and old-fashioned documentaries might be jarred by Project Nim. Director James Marsh goes far beyond simply showing data as he suggests ethical questions about the use of animals for scientific research. The journey of Nim, a chimpanzee, through the scientific and human world hides moral and ethical questions from the beginning to the end.
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It’s hard to fathom a chess player being a global icon, but that’s what Bobby Fischer was when at 16, he became the youngest grandmaster in history. At the height of his fame, news of his chess match was the top story over Watergate. But for all his genius and glory, Fischer was also enigmatic, unstable and reclusive. In Bobby Fischer Against the World, filmmaker Liz Garbus attempts to shed light on a man who is equally fascinating and frustrating.
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In six locations across the globe, people are living each day in search of their place in the world. Long Distance Dedication is a collection of six short films that tell the story of a different journey. For Mrs. Birk, a Japanese woman living in Britain, her journey lies in her passion for British cuisine. She narrates the story of her immersion into British culture in her native language, as the screen is illuminated with the detail of her wrinkled hands chopping and stirring.
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The first panel of True/False 2011 delved into an issue related to the title of the festival itself. Four directors, all of whom have films screening this weekend, talked about blurring the lines between reality and fiction, both in general and in their specific documentaries. Film critic Robert Koehler moderated the discussion and deemed the topic “almost as old as cinema itself.”
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© Vox Talk 2011
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