On Sunday at True/False, filmmaker/blogger AJ Schnack screened the first thirty minutes of Convention, his verite-style film documenting the 2008 Democratic National Convention with an eye on the Denver locals (politicians, city administrators, journalists, protesters) who were in the mix. Shot by Schnack in collaboration with nearly a dozen documentarians (including the Oscar-nominated directors Laura Poitras and Julia Reichert, and Daniel Junge, who directed the Oscar-shortlisted They Killed Sister Dorothy), the film’s making-of process was almost as much of a serendipity-dependent feat of execution as the event captured on screen.
As his, uh, primary inspiration, Schnack cites Robert Drew’s Primary, a Direct Cinema landmark documenting the Wisconsin primary race between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. The first American nonfiction picture filmed with sync sound, its IMDb profile reads today as a who’s-who of 60s documentary film: Drew as audio recordist, Albert Maysles and Ricky Leacock behind the camera and D.A. Pennebaker in the editing room. Time will tell if Convention’s slate of collaborators seems as starry 50 years on, but in the present it stands out as a film built out of and on top of connections made on the film festival circuit. If, in the context of the incestuous world of indie film, that hardly seems all that noteworthy, it is relevant that the production seems to have harnessed the scrappy, obsessive energy of that rather insular community and put it to the service of documenting an event that could potentially have meaning to a much larger segment of the population. …Read more
Late last Friday, word began to circulate that social historian and famed lefty Studs Terkel had died at the age of 96; Roger Ebert, Chuck Tryon and filmmaker Steven Bognar are among the many who have offered memories and appreciations. I went on YouTube this morning to find footage of the man, and I stumbled on this clip of Terkel talking about his participation in Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool. The nine minutes of footage were collected by Paul Cronin, ostensibly for his documentary on the making of Medium Cool, Look Out Haskell, It’s Real. Make sure to watch it all the way through to find out what happens when Cronin calls Terkel “The Poet of Chicago.”
The Democratic National Convention is over, and all the ecstatic party members have left Denver to go back to their zombie-esque lives (Bob Hope said it, not me). But after four days of celebrating what it means to be a Democrat, some may not wish to settle down and calmly wait out the next two months until Obama’s (possible) win, let alone the next five months waiting for the candidate to (possibly) be sworn in as President, participating in the normal non-specifically-Democratic, non-self-congratulatory activities that most of us are content with.
So, one thing excited Democrats can do is watch movies that will continue to inspire and encourage their beliefs and politics. As Karina already wrote, The American Presidentis one movie that just barely may allow Obama fans to relive his DNC speech. Also, beginning yesterday, the Oscar-nominated documentary No End in Sight will be available in full on YouTube through till Election Day. Of course, there’s always other anti-war and anti-Bush docs for free viewing online, at such sites as SnagFilms and FreeDocumentaries.org.
And since there are so many docs out there that can make a Democrat giddy with the want for change, I’ve decided to limit today’s list to fictions and dramatizations, because they are more about feelings than facts, and that’s all you really need for political inspiration these days. As usual, I’m leaving out a lot of picks, both obvious and obscure, so feel free to tell us what movie make you feel most proud to be a Democrat.
“Lee Atwater destroyed the business of politics by going negative,” said Terry MacAuliffe yesterday, introducing an Impact Film Festival screening of Stefan Forbes’ Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. “Democrats don’t fight hard enough. They play tougher on the other side. The bottom line is that these guys will do anything to win.”
Forbes’ film, which caused such a ruckus at its premiere in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, essentially functions as an ideological ink blot––people see what they want in it. It’s possible (and, based on the director’s comments after the film, probably preferred) to see Boogie Man as a vicious indictment of the political operative who mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush whilst helping the latter’s father overcome the Iran Contra scandal to win the presidency, destroying Michael Dukakis’ political career in the process. But Forbes, to his credit, also clearly explicates Atwater’s appeal. You might need to put blinders on a bit, but it would be possible to walk away from this film cheering McCain to turn Obama into the new Dukakis
In fact, after the screening, Forbes acknowledged that there are lessons the left could learn from the enemy. “When a fight gets dirty, do you have to join? If you just play defense, you end up looking guilty. You have to turn the attacks into a referendum on the other party.”
So far all of my fears about this trip to Denver– that my flight would never make it out of JFK, that I’d get stuck in a traffic jam trying to get into downtown Denver, that the Secret service would decide I had insufficient credentials and throw me in a secret DNC prison–have been proven to be totally unfounded. 90 minutes after my plane landed (early!), I was sitting in the Starz Green Room, eating brie, awaiting my first Impact Film Festival screening. Maybe the Democrats can run the world after all.
The photo above? That’s in front of the security checkpoint outside the Denver Film Center. At some point I’ll try to get a pic of the billboard for Oliver Stone’s W, which sits right on the highway opposite the football stadium where Obama will speak on Thursday. The Starz! employee who drove me to the Film Center sighed as we passed by, “I never thought I’d see Brand from Goonies playing the President of the United States.” Did you?
Forty years after the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protesters are looking to repeat history in Denver this week. In fact there’s even a group calling itself “Recreate ‘68″, and if you’re a true internerd, you’ve already seen the popular YouTube clip of the crowd chanting “Fuck Fox News” at a Fox News correspondent (check out the other side here).
After so many attempts at making parallels between ‘68 and ‘08, I’m a little bored of the nostalgia, and I think the retro attitude is past the point of showing its ineffectiveness. Earlier this year, I groaned at the use of a modern (though really, mostly decade-old) soundtrack in the ‘68 DNC-set animated documentary Chicago 10. Yet two years prior to that film’s 2007 premiere at Sundance, I had already seen a failed attempt to callback ‘68 with the Medium Coolhomage This Revolution, the trailer for which is today’s clip of the day.
On Monday, I’m flying to Denver to spend a couple of days hanging around the Democratic National Convention before heading up to Telluride on Thursday. If I was reading that sentence unawares, two questions would inevitably come to mind. First: “Why, Karina, are you going to a political event when you have a movie blog to write?”
Answer: there actually are two major film events happening over the three days that I’ll be in town. The first, the Denver Film Society production Cinemocracy (previously mentioned here), will screen ten finalists in a short film competition that’s been winnowing down submissions online for months. You can watch the films and vote for your favorites here.
The second event is the Impact Film Festival. Founded this year by Jody Arlington, Jamie Shor and Kimball Stroud, IFF will screen “socially-themed documentary and dramatic films” every day at both the DNC and RNC. Films on the program include Battle in Seattle, I.O.U.S.A., and Flow. Check out the Bside page for info on the full lineup.
Fox has brought a lawsuit against Warner Brothers, claiming that the latter studio does not have the right to release Zach Snyder’s Watchmen movie, because the former studio never full gave up their rights to the property. The movie’s supposed to come out on March 6, and though a court could decide that Fox should be cut in on its eventual profits, apparently that studio would prefer if the film was shelved altogether. Why did they wait until the film was finished in order to take action? Your thoughts, please.
Josh Brolin, Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron and Morgan Spurlock are among the celebrities expected to “either cross paths with or interface with such politicians as Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and assorted other city, state and national elected officials” at the Starz! Green Room at the Democratic National Convention next week.
The Coen Brothers have hired“Michael Stuhlbarg, a Tony-nominated actor with little experience in front of the cameras, and Richard Kind, a character actor best known for his role on ABC’s Spin City,” to star as brothers in their upcoming period comedy, A Serious Man.
Oscilloscope, the fledgling distribution label spearheaded by the Beastie Boy formerly known as MCA, has picked up Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, which premiered at Cannes to raves from some but measured praise from me. It’ll open at Film Forum on December 10. If his boys don’t try to push Michelle Williams for an Oscar nod the same year her baby daddy has a posthumous nomination all but locked down, Adam Yauch needs to check his head.
Ted Johnson has details on the many film oriented events happening at the Democratic National Convention next month––or, as he calls it, “the Sundance of politics.” I think I might go and cover them. Would you like that?
Sophia from Golden Girls, ie Estelle Getty, has died.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
On Monday, I’m flying to Denver to spend a couple of days hanging around the Democratic National Convention before heading up to Telluride on Thursday. If I was reading that sentence unawares, two questions would inevitably come to mind. First: “Why, Karina, are you going to a political event when you have a movie blog to write?”
Fox has 
Oscilloscope, the fledgling distribution label spearheaded by the Beastie Boy formerly known as MCA, 
