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Last week, I had the rare pleasure of seeing docs over consecutive nights in a theater. Of course, it’s not unusual for me to watch a doc for as soon as we open for entries in November, I will watch several hundred films going into the festival. The thing is most of those screenings are on my laptop or a television but not that often in a theater, which is a vastly different experience.
On Wednesday, I went to the IFC theater in Greenwich Village, where I saw Racing Dreams, which was playing as part of DocuWeek, a great program sponsored by the IDA (International Documentary Association). Docuweek was created to help docs qualify for the Academy Awards, by playing for a week in NY or LA. At the IFC, they are running three weeks of docs, several of which I had seen (including Rock Prophecies, which we played at Mountainfilm this year).
I knew from its description that Racing Dreams didn’t feel right for Mountainfilm but it won the Best Doc award at Tribeca so I was looking forward to checking it out. The film follows the now-classic competition formula (which I first saw in Spellbound) where it follows a couple of the competitors over the course of a film, which provides the narrative thread. Then in-between the races, you get to know the kids who are very well-cast. My instincts were right not to go after the film for Mountainfilm as the subject matter – car racing – is not really our thing, but the film certainly was a compelling look at this subculture.
The next night I went to the HBO screening room to watch another film that wasn’t really right for our festival – The Nine Lives of Marion Barry. A friend had worked on the film, which chronicles the rather remarkable story of the former mayor of Washington DC. I grew up in DC and he was a formidable figure in a town that watches power closely.
The film (which premiered at SilverDocs and is playing on HBO this month) is very well-done and moves quickly through the highs (so to speak) and lows of Barry’s wild, wild life. After the screening, I was talking to another member of the audience who said it was nice to see a film about redemption. It was then that I realized that for me, I didn’t really see that redemption. After all, the film closes by telling us that he tested positive for cocaine in 2008, while holding a seat on the City Council representing Ward 8, the poorest part of the city. And the crushing part to me is that Ward 8 particularly needs a city council member who isn’t so diminished by being a cokehead.
Either way, it was great to sit in a darkened theater and take in these films (I have also seen In The Loop, which is extremely funny and worthwhile and Harry Potter) . No distractions of cell phone or email, no pause button, just the films on their unfiltered own. Hope you get to a movie … – David Holbrooke
February 10, 2009
The MF Screening Committee is in the thick of it…
David and I often get asked if we watch all the film entries.
We try to watch as many as we possibly can—which will add up to multiple hundreds apiece before the submission season ends—but fortunately we have a very dedicated group of volunteers on our Screening Committee to help tackle the daunting task of watching and reviewing films for the festival.
I am the kind of geek who loves to look at spreadsheets and statistics, so managing the Screening Committee is one of my favorite jobs. One of the statistics that continues to blow me away is the huge increase in film entries the last few years. My first year as Program Manager (2006), we had about 350 film entries. Just three short years later, we are well on the way to doubling that number. Significant in any case, but especially for a small (but persistent!) niche festival in the middle of nowhere in Colorado.
What would happen if David and I tried to watch all the films? Well, we wouldn’t have a life, for one.
As of today, we have 340 entries. That’s 14,535 minutes of movies, or more than 245 hours. More than 10 non-stop days of adventurers climbing intimidating mountains, indigenous tribes in remote tropical locales, environmentalists revealing corporate deception and empassioned people of all flavors doing extreme and amazing things. We expect that number to double by early next month.
With help from the screening committee, we watch them all. Twice.
Posted by Emily Long
December 3, 2008
posted by David Holbrooke
This year at Mountainfilm we will probably end up screening about 75 films or so (up from the 65 we played in 2008). How do we find those films – really, through any number of ways. More than 600 films will be submitted this year from people who know the festival and want to come to Telluride. An untold number of other films will come through tips from friends of the festival.
Another important way to find films is through other festivals, which is why I recently found myself on a plane to Amsterdam. The city is host to IDFA – the biggest documentary film festival in the world, where they play more than 300 non-fiction films.
I had always wanted to go and two years ago, submitted my film, Hard As Nails. Sadly it wasn’t accepted and I couldn’t rationalize the cost to just go to check it out. Now as Festival Director of Mountainfilm, I had plenty of reasons to be there and bring back some films for our festival.
What was I looking for? Keep reading and you will get a pretty good sense …
DAY 1
I landed in Amsterdam Thursday morning Nov 20 to wet, cold and nasty weather, which isn’t so great when you are getting everywhere by bike. I had rented a great single-speed clunker from a cool bike shop recommended by Rob Story, where I convinced a former NYC bike messenger, Michel, to take the big piker-alert RENTAL BIKE sign off the bike.
The first film I actually managed to see (I was literally locked out of another screening because I was late after getting lost in the rain and dark despite asking nearly a dozen affable Dutch people for directions. Good start to the trip …) was Below Sea Level, about an isolated and desolate Californian desert community of unusual characters. The film was thoughtful and well-made, but I kept asking myself if it celebrated indomitable spirit (one of our Mountainfilm tag lines) or would inspire our audience at all.
The answer was a pretty resounding no. In fact, I couldn’t think of a film I’d seen that had gathered together such a group of domitable spirits. The film and its characters were certainly interesting and the film a worthy study of their broken down lives, but just not right for Mountainfilm.
I left early and wandered the theater to see what else was playing. I checked out a film called Gambling, Gods, and LSD, a three hour “transcendental” journey. The five minutes I saw had a series of shots from casino security cameras as well as some ‘interesting’ shots from inside a peep show. Maybe the five minutes I gave it was unfair, but again, it didn’t seem to be our kind of film.
I can’t say my next stop was a transcendental journey but a small bar with cold beer and Thank God I’m a Country Boy on the sound system was awfully pleasant.
DAY 2
It had been a few months since I’d been to a film festival (Telluride Film Festival was the last) so it took me a little while to remember my primary rule of film festival-going: eat when you can because you don’t know when your next meal will come.
With that in mind, I woke up, grabbed some sort of Dutch Danishes and went to see a lovely short film called Bronx Princess, made by Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed. The film follows a smart and sassy teenage girl from the Bronx who goes to visit her father, a Village Chief in Ghana.
Is Bronx Princess right for Mountainfilm? A film like this crystallized how tricky it is to define what a Mountainfilm movie is. I want people to be amazed and inspired and blown away by what they see in our theaters and this film doesn’t do that. It is however, original, carefully-crafted and certainly worthwhile. With a film like this, I will probably wait and see how our overall mix of films comes in before making a decision on it.
One reason to program it is Yoni Brook, a talented filmmaker, who I know from Tribeca when we both had films there. His film, A Son’s Sacrifice about a Halal butcher in Brooklyn who did not want to go into his father’s line of work, was an award-winner.
When I ran into Yoni at IDFA, he introduced me to Josh Weinstein who had directed a film called, Flying on One Engine, about a sick doctor who flies all over the world working on poor people for free – perfect for Mountainfilm, right? When Josh heard what festival I programmed, his face crumpled. He said that he’d submitted to Mountainfilm and we’d rejected his film and it had made him really sad.
Awkward.
Filmmakers are a sensitive bunch (I know this firsthand from my own many rejections as a filmmaker). I felt particularly bad because I had not seen his film (we get so many submissions and I manage to see only about 200 films myself. Our screening committee had seen it however and passed) but told Josh I’d check it out myself this time and if it wasn’t going to be programmed, I’d tell him why – and not just send him the standard rejection letter, which was something I always appreciated as a filmmaker
The rest of the day was spent seeing more than a half-dozen films that were spot on topic for Mountainfilm (climate change, wild animals, indigenous cultures) but I found the films (which I am not going to mention by name because as you already know, filmmakers are sensitive creatures) thin or obvious or heavy-handed or way, way too long (probably like this blog post). A huge problem with docs is that filmmakers get too attached to their material and often don’t have the discipline to make a movie that is a proper length.
So after a long and lonely day of watching depressing docs in theaters, I came back to my hotel room tired and frustrated at my lack of success at finding something that worked for Mountainfilm. I turned on my television, flipped past the many soft-porn ads and found the perfect filmic tonic: Meet the Parents with Ben Stiller and DeNiro.
DAY 3
The freezing rain had turned to snow but the theaters were warm, especially when I finally found a film that worked for us called Back to Africa. I loved this story of a touring circus in Europe called Africa, Africa. The film follows a few of the performers back to their home countries where the acrobats, dancers, and musicians are comparatively affluent but struggle with being away from their homes and families.
First of all, it was nice to see a film about Africa that wasn’t totally depressing and had a different take on what Africa means. We have to work out the details with the filmmakers – they want a screening fee, which we don’t have budgeted – but I hope to be able to play this film in May.
It was also exciting to be in the Tuschinski – IDFA’s marquee theater – which is remarkable. My crappy IPhone photo doesn’t do it justice but it is kind of like the Sheridan Opera House on steroids.
After the screening, I met Andrew Berends who is pitching a film at IDFA called Delta Boys about a gang that has arisen in the Oil fields of Nigeria. Andrew had spent months photographing and filming this gang when he was arrested for ten days in Nigeria, a story that got international attention.Other than the sheer number of films, IDFA is also well-known for its IDFA Forum where filmmakers can pitch their film to a gathering of commissioning editors from around the world. It is a quick – but intimidating way of raising money.
Andrew was anxiously awaiting his turn at the Forum which sounded more stressful than the Nigerian prison. From everything I heard his pitch went really well and maybe we will see Delta Boys at Mountainfilm in 2010.
Later that day I saw another film that could work for us called Persona Non Grata. The film lays out the life of a defrocked Catholic priest and artist from Belgium named Francisco Wuytack who went to Venezuela to help the poor there. Having made several films about men of the cloth, I found it particularly compelling.
As I watched this really well-made film, I thought how there are so many great directors coming out of South America (like Stranded, by Gonzalo Arijon which won the Grand Prize at IDFA last year and played at Mountainfilm). It turned out that Persona Non Grata’s filmmaker is the subject’s son and Belgian but despite this so-called fact I’m sticking with my theory of an emergence of South American auteurs.
I had a great dinner with friends in Amsterdam, came home late and was pleased to see a piece on Mountainfilm 2008 guest Alexandra Cousteau on CNN International.
DAY 4
Just another day of asking myself, what is right for Mountainfilm?
After being at this for a year, you’d think I would have an easy answer by now. But it’s a question with many answers as I feel we are such a unique festival and I want our films to reflect that. Of course, I want the movies at our festival to educate and inspire, move and motivate, rattle and unsettle. I want them to take our audiences to a place they have not only not been to – but to a place they cannot imagine.
From the description, Togo looked like it had potential. One of the forty films they are screening here about Africa, it’s about the small country of Togo, which sent its soccer team to the World Cup as the African representative. The film gave a really nice sense of how much national pride was tied into the team but ultimately, did not make me feel like it was essential viewing for us.
The Sales Representative for Back to Africa told me that European broadcasters had told him that they had minimal interest in films about Africa since their viewers just don’t tune in. It’d be a shame if the Europeans stop helping to fund these films because there’ll be a major drop off in storytelling from this fascinating part of the world. As for American broadcasters picking up the slack, it’s just not going to happen.
The next film I saw was called Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies, which was quite something to try and figure out. It was a poetic rumination on boredom and so many other things that I still can’t clearly articulate what the film was about.
I quite like films that take you to someplace new and yet you are not quite sure how you get there. Bloody Mondays reminded me of What About Me from Mountainfilm 2008 and its predecessor One Giant Leap. I kept trying to connect to the film (which starts out about the girl from the Boomtown Rats song, I Don’t Like Mondays) and found myself going back and forth on it for Mountainfilm but in the end, it was just too impenetrable for me. If somehow any readers come across it, I’d love to hear what you think.
I checked out a bit of Madonna’s documentary about Africa, I Am Because We Are, which was fine but kind of – for lack of a better word – obvious for our audience. It’s message that we are all connected has been well-told at Mountainfilm. It’s a strange high-class problem we have at Mountainfilm as our audiences are so well-informed and widely-traveled, I don’t want to provide something that people already know and understand.
That evening I went to a festival programmer’s party where I met David Wilson, the founder and director of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri. He gave me a nice tip for navigating IDFA, which is to get a pass to something called Docs for Sale. Basically, you reserve a computer for a designated time and you can watch virtually every film off if a database. Generally, I can tell if a film is a possibility pretty quickly and this would short cut all that time going theater to theater.
When I came back to my hotel to write this, I turned on the television (something I don’t do at home but I like the company on the road) and a truly great film was on - Naked Gun 2 ½ – The Smell of Fear. I was struck to see that the plot of this 1991 film was about a nefarious plan by the oil and coal industries to stymie the development of renewable energy … strangely enough, seems like a Mountainfilm kind of film.
DAY 5
I went to see Solo, which is even more of a Mountainfilm film than say, Naked Gun. The film follows the attempt of a guy named Andrew McCauly to kayak the notoriously rough Tasman Sea.
It’s a classic on-the-edge adventure story. Well-told and well-structured, the film is compelling as hell and I could see it being a part of our programming if it hasn’t already aired on television by Memorial Day.
That afternoon, I went to see Johnny Cash at Folson Prison, which is really quite good. It focuses on this one chapter in Cash’s life and uses it to help us understand how the prison shows were much more than performances for Cash. Besides capturing his constant flirtation with darkness (after all, he was the Man in Black) the film shows how he felt a very thin line separated him from being in the audience when he played at Folsom.
Again, is this right for Mountainfilm? The answer’s not an easy yes like Solo but it is my job to decide these things, and I feel a film that poses the questions asked – and answered – by Johnny Cash at Folson Prison, belong in a festival like ours.
That night I went to a party with my friends Kelly Devine of the Global Peace Film Festival and Sky Sitney of SilverDocs. They seemed to know everyone at the party – I felt like a hermit (a very tall one) by comparison – and it was easy enough to just meet people in their wake.
One of the people I met was Steve James, the acclaimed doc filmmaker who made Hoop Dreams. Steve has become one of the major figures in doc filmmaking with a long string of strong docs. His latest, At the Death House Door, played at IDFA this year and I strongly considered for Mountainfilm 2008. I really liked the film, which followed a minister who was working on the Texas Death Row in Huntsville but in the end, I decided that it wasn’t – a phrase I seem to be using in this post a lot – right for us.
However, I do think one of his older films, Reel Paradise would be so that may be on the program in May.
Being immersed in docs at IDFA was a great experience and gets me ready to go for the upcoming viewing season. As I write this, we have 120 films submitted already (last year at this time, we had 24) and I am jazzed to check those out. We will also scour the Sundance lineup, which is being announced sometime this week for more films.
And what will I be looking for? Have I begun to answer that question?
I want to see films that are well-crafted and thought out. I want to see films that shake me to my core and make me reconsider previously held beliefs. I want films that make my jaw drop or make me jump up out of my seat because I have to tell someone about it. I want to see films of wondrous beauty and endless possibility, films that show me the harsh face of reality and the glorious journey of hope.
And I also want to see films that make me laugh … so I might have to check and see what the Naked Gun guys are working on.
Editor’s note: We’ve been taking a brief siesta from the blog, but we’re back now. Thanks everyone for reading, and welcome back to the Conversation! In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding new posts with post-fest updates, office antics and just plain fun stuff.
July 28, 2008
Posted by David Holbrooke, Festival Director
My Mountainfilm Commitment was to start a vegetable garden in our backyard in Brooklyn and as you can see from the picture below, it turns out that growing food is not so easy.
We have a couple of cucumbers and some tomatoes but a lot more weeds and brown dirt—and of course, holes that our crazy dog Lola has dug. The real problem with our yard is that half of it gets great sun while the other half is shaded all day.
Besides our own garden, one of my other commitments was to work on getting an Urban Agriculture movement started in our neighborhood. My first goal is to see if our neighbors will put in a greenhouse on their roof.
They have a reinforced roof (something many brownstones including ours do not have), plenty of sunlight and not unimportantly, money. Doing all of this—putting in irrigation and planting boxes and building greenhouses—are real capital expenses and I hope I can convince them of its importance.
Since my friend Carol Black (whose film Schooling the World premiered at MF 2008) offhandedly mentioned the value of urban agriculture, I have become slightly obsessed with the idea. It makes sense on so many levels and could solve a variety of problems.
I have also seen the idea showing up a lot in the media. Michael Pollan wrote about the value of Victory Gardens in the NY Times Magazine Green Issue and I came across this article in a nice little magazine called Edible Brooklyn.
Despite our own lack of real edibles in our backyard so far, we are going to continue to try and grow food super-locally. To be honest, it is really my wife, Sarah who is leading the charge on this—I yap about it but she does most of the work.
She has also led the way into another bit of Urban Agriculture for us: chickens. A number of years back I saw a short doc called Chickens in the City at a film fest and made the mistake of telling Sarah about it. Since then she has been slightly obsessed with getting our own chickens, something I have been protesting.
With all the noise I made about Urban Ag, she was able to convince me that we could take on a chicken or two. Of course, that ended up being a chicken for each family member (mine is named Oeuf) that she ordered from www.mypetchicken.com
They showed up via US Mail three days after they were born and I have to admit they are cute as hell.
My kids are over the moon (in fact as I write this, my six year old son, Wiley is downstairs in the basement playing with Sasquatch, Casey, Sugar, Omelette, Dr. Bob and Oeuf). What the photo does not convey is how much our apartment now smells like a barn.
The chicks are big enough to move outside now and hopefully the smell will abate. Soon, they should be big enough to be laying eggs (the Urban Ag part of all of this) … I will keep you posted.
by David Holbrooke, festival director
I am back in Brooklyn for the weekend before a final push to Mountainfilm. Given that the festival takes place over Memorial Day weekend which I consider to be the start of summer—and it is only two weeks away, it was a little odd to drive through snow to get to the Durango airport.
Between various airport trips and the jaunt to Fruita recently (see previous post) I have been driving around the Southwest quite a bit. I have to say I look at it differently since seeing Laurel Garrett’s film, A Land Out of Time, at MF last year. That film focused specifically on all of the natural gas that is being taken out of this area.
This year we have the very fine film, Brave New West which looks at this issue and so many others facing the region. BNW is about Jim Stiles, the editor and publisher…and writer…and cartoonist…of the The Canyon County Zephyr. The film shows how the West is changing dramatically—and quickly—from a rancher based economy to more of a tourist or leatherneck culture. This film shows how there are no shortage of mining and natural gas claims popping up everywhere in the region. You don’t often see them from the road but you can see their devastating effects from a plane—and you can see the abundant and enormous trucks winding their way through the mountains.
This issue also dovetails right into our festival theme – water. In Fruita, there were several gated communities with McMansions—even though there is very little water to sustain these things. It will be interesting to see how these houses are doing ten, fifteen years from now with Lake Mead (the largest reservoir in the country) being given a 50/50 chance of drying up by 2012.
May 5, 2008
Posted by Festival Director David Holbrooke
“Let go” they tell me …
We had a staff meeting earlier this week and everyone on the MF staff told me it was now time for me to let go.
After taking in a whole LOT of films/books/articles/conversations we have finally got the matrix as they call it around here locked. It has been quite a wild process to see – particularly as a filmmaker myself. I have to say the programming came about through a strange elixir of fortunate happenstance, late night hunches, and listening to as many, many, many wise people as I could. It also came about from a whole lot of time thinking about this.
So then, with this behind Emily (one of the wise people by the way) and me, the staff tells me I no longer have control over this festival. They said the schedule was in place and it was time for me to let the people who actually know what they are doing (as opposed to me) do their jobs – that the festival takes off from here on out and that I could relax. Even though I don’t think I am a control freak (probably not hard to find someone to disagree) I have to admit hearing that unsettled me.
It also left me with the question – what in hell do I do now? There are a bunch of emails and phone calls to return but I figured the first thing I’d do is something I could control – which is this post.
I don’t have a lot to say, having said most of it writing the program (which Lise, Anne and Casey have done a great job putting editing/designing). However, I will keep trying to fill this space with really interesting things you might want to read or see that are part of our program.
First check out this Huffington Post by Laurie Garrett. She is part of our Village Green initiative (we will have a really strong explanation of this potentially exciting new idea on our website soon). But what she really is: a brilliant thinker and passionate writer who is a leading expert on infectious diseases. She is finishing a book about global health in a post-9/11 world and has written this really important piece about what is happening throughout Asia. Besides the Village Green – where she will be talking about leading the charge to retrofit her 80 year old, 30 story Brooklyn building, you will also be able to see Laurie at a breakfast talk where she will blow your mind with what is happening with the food crisis in Asia right now. In the meantime, check out her article here.
I am going riding in Fruita tomorrow and am going to have dinner at the Hot Tomato and visit with Anne Keller (who will be showing her photos of Tara Llanes at MF and who blogged for us earlier).
Now with all of this free time, I will have more good stuff soon.
David
David Holbrooke is in the full depths of his first year as Mountainfilm festival director.
December 17, 2007
I wanted my first post on the MF blog to be a little more thoughtful. You know, introducing myself and explaining my vision for the festival. Instead I am going to do just a little bit of self-promoting as a film that I directed premieres on HBO tonight called Hard As Nails. (Click here for more info.)
Justin Fatica, unordained Catholic minister
The film played at MF this past year and actually won the Student Award which was really nice.
I promise my next post will have something a little more MF-relevant. In the meantime, you can also check out this piece I wrote for the Huffington Post about Film Festivals (it mentions MF).
Posted by David Holbrooke
Editor’s Note: Read David’s newest Huff Post article about the making of the film here.
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