Irish filmmaker Cathal Black, known for making movies that fluidly mix fact and fiction, documentary tropes and dramatic technique, has maybe found his ultimate subject in Thomas Lynch. Lynch, who describes himself in Black’s Learning Gravity as “a father, a husband, an undertaker,” is also a renowned poet and essayist whose writings inspired Alan Ball to create his HBO series, Six Feet Under. In the film, Lynch says his poetry grew out of a desire to “leave a record” for his children of what was going on in his head while he appeared to be “staring at your ear, preoccupied.” Poetry, he says, is his way of making his subjective interpretation of his life, work and family into something concrete, an “effort to act out in language those most unspeakable feelings.” It’s a philosophy and practice tailor made for Black’s hybrid style.
Still a bit fuzzy on the recent changes to the Academy’s qualifying rules for a Best Documentary Feature nomination? Yeah, join the club––I had to look up this post from last October as a bit of a refresher. The biggest change, is that films are required to complete a seven-day run in both Los Angeles and Manhattan before August 31. So once again, the IDA has put together a mini-documentary festival later this month in Los Angeles to help a number of films make that milestone.
It seems to be a pretty diverse list, although maybe I’m not one to judge––the only title I’ve actually seen is Terrence Davies’ Of Time and the City, although I recognize others, such as Ellen Kuras’ Nerakhoon, and the Slamdance hit Dear Zachary. In any case, the full list is after the jump. DocuWeek runs from August 22-28 in Los Angeles.
AJ Schnack has some notes on the lineup for the 2008 True/False Film Festival, which I’m super excited to be attending for the first time this year. While the line-up features several holdovers from previous festivals (including Sundance hits American Teen and The Order of Myths, and Cat Dancers and Audience of One, both of which screened at SXSW in 2007), and a “Secret Screening” that sounds suspiciously like one of my favorite films from last year, there’s also, according to AJ, “more than a dozen” films having their US premiere at the festival. Some of the titles that caught my eye after the jump. True/False begins on February 28 in Columbia, MO.
Still a bit fuzzy on the recent changes to the Academy’s qualifying rules for a Best Documentary Feature nomination? Yeah, join the club––I had to look up this post from last October as a bit of a refresher. The biggest change, is that films are required to complete a seven-day run in both Los Angeles and Manhattan before August 31. So once again, the IDA has put together a mini-documentary festival later this month in Los Angeles to help a number of films make that milestone.
