Sundance Short Documentary Program

This post was lifted from an email I sent my Flashpoint Academy Documentary students after seeing the Short Doc. program yesterday.

Hello From Sundance,

I have been to six screenings so far and by far the best one was the short documentary program. There were 8 films selected out of 1200 entries. Just think about that 8 out of 1200. The only one you will be likely to see is an HBO Documentary on the actor John Cazale- Fredo from the Godfather. It was great, but it was also the longest and by far the most expensive, and it didn't seem to fit in with the other seven films as it was the most commercial.

A few trends I noticed:

Lots of graphics. Two films were originally designed for the Internet and were all graphics and/or found footage- one about nuclear weapons and the other about Internet censorship.

A third film was about a Canadian artist and they shot an interview, but the entire piece was animated. Very beautiful and poetic.

Another trend- recording dialog and interviews separately and shooting B-roll. No on camera interviews. Two films I saw- one was shot with a digital still camera and the other about people who store their belongings in public storage in Scotland- recorded their interviews on a digital disc recorder separate from shooting.

This is very interesting to me because of the emphasis it puts on the B-Roll. The Scottish storage locker film was great because of the images they shot, and perhaps because there were no talking heads or faces.

There was a fascinating film called Utopia Part 3 about the world's largest shopping mall- in China. The mall is a bust, no one goes, there are only a few stores open, but it really illustrates some of the problems China is having with growth and capitalism.

After the HBO/Cazale film perhaps the most traditional doc. was about high school kids in New Orleans post-Katrina. The filmmaker followed three students who were attending school even though they were living by themselves- their parents and siblings had moved or been taken to foster care. The filmmaker said that 20 percent of students at the school lived without their parents.

The final film- and one I hope I don't have to see again- is called Chop Off. It's about a performance artist who chops off body parts as his art. Very tough to watch- no amputations on screen- and full of medical and media ethics questions.

Those are the 8 films out of 1200 that made it. Just seeing them makes me want to explore some of these techniques and shoot more film.

PeterH

The Protagonist

I saw a remarkable documentary film not long ago called The Protaganist, directed by Jessica Yu. The film interweaves the stories of four unrelated men who have been consumed by their personal journeys. The men: a former German terrorist, an "ex-gay" evangelist, a bank robber and a martial arts expert.

From The Protagonist website.

But as their stories unfold, one starts to see the parallels between the uncommon, common experience of these four men. Each character embarks on a journey for valid reasons, only to find himself so deeply embedded in the cause that he becomes the opposite of what he had intended. He is blind to this fact, though, until the forces of fate and character boil and distill to a single moment of dark epiphany. In telling this echoing story, the film asks: what is the path to extremism? In responding to the turmoil of life, where does one draw the line between the reasonable and the unreasonable? And how does one recover from the delusion of certainty?

In addition, the film is based on the works of Euripides and the film uses quotes from his plays as chapter headings. Yu also uses wooden rod puppets- pictured here- to stage both excerpts from Euripides and scenes from the four men's past. The puppetry is really amazing and adds a layer to the film that would not otherwise be there.

Jessica Yu won an Oscar in 1997 for her short documentary, Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, who lived for decades in an iron lung after being paralyzed by polio. She has directed other award winning documentaries and in the small world isn't it category, a former student and regular reader of this page, has worked with her and says only good things.

Check out The Protaganist it's well worth it.

PeterH

Helvetica

During the late summer just before my friend Dan Devening, an artist, gallery owner and college professor, went to Austria on a fellowship (show-off) he told me about a film he just saw called Helvetica. It's a documentary about the typeface by that name and the revolution it has caused and the reaction to that revolution. Who would have thunk that a documentary about a font could be so interesting, but it was.

A lot of filmmaking is about paying attention to details. In fact almost all good art in some way pays attention to the little things. And perhaps there is no group of artists more into the details than graphic designers. Throughout Helvetica one watches half-crazed designers discuss the greatness of the font, while another group of designers talks about how Helvetica is a curse. One camp thinks fonts should be neutral while the other group says fonts should add something to the text. As a side note my favorite font- until seeing this film- has always been "default."

In addition to the joys of watching passionate artists in a great debate, and learning a lot about how typefaces are created and used, Helvetica is also visually very stunning and has quite a lot of humor in it. (Though it helps if you think it is funny that all the graphics in the film and in the subtitled part of the DVD are also set in Helvetica.) The director, Gary Hustwit, and his crew take great pains to frame all of the interviews and visuals -there is a lot of signage in the film- with great care.

To me Helvetica is an example of just how great the documentary form can be. Here is a film about something few of us care about and all take for granted(at one point Helvetica font is compared to air) yet our attention is riveted. I suggest you check it out.

PeterH