Ten Documentary Films

I was reading a post tonight on DVXuser that asked What’s the best documentary you’ve ever seen? and I was inspired by the challenge and made a list of 10 documentary films to watch that are worthy of both viewing and analysis. I can’t begin to rank what I would consider a top ten of documentaries, nor could I ever narrow things down to ten, but if I had to pick ten documentary films right this instant to program in a virtual documentary film festival, here are ten films I’d consider programming right at the moment.

One is a short to make up for the epic length of one of the selections.Ask me tomorrow and my answer will be a little different, ask me next year and it will be really different. So here’s the list in chronological order:

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Art Film Talk: Kleiler’s theory of film festivals

In Episode 15 of Art Film Talk I talk with David Kleiler about his theory of what makes for a good film festival, it was a fun conversation on a stoop outside of the closing night party and award ceremony at the 15th Woods Hole Film Festival.

Renting movies from the iTunes movie store?

It looks like Jon Feltheimer, Chief Executive Officer of Lions Gate Entertainment made a pre-annoucement of things to come from the iTunes Music Store when he said during a Q1 2007 Earnings Conference Call, “We also have digital delivery deals in place with Cinema Now, MovieLink, and iTunes, with upcoming announcements with at least two more major industry players,” very interesting. We’ve been waiting for the 16×9 wide screen video iPod, and it looks like there’s going to be some content from mainstream video distributors it in addition to the millions of audio and video podcasts available for free through the iTunes Music Store Podcast Directory. With the proliferation of media devices, the demise of the neighborhood video store, and the rise of NetFlix, this is a natural evolution for Apple, but it will not be as simple to moniate the field as they did with music.

Art Film Talk: Who Killed the Electric Car?

After a long hiatus I’ve relaunched and renamed my audio podcast. Under the new name of Art Film Talk the podcast will feature conversations on the art, craft, business, and technology of filmmaking. This week’s episode is an interview with Chris Paine, director of Who Killed The Electric Car? recorded during the 15th Woods Hole Film Festival. The film is currently showing in several U.S. theaters. I invite you to listen and subscribe to Art Film Talk, and please let me know what you think.

Film or video? It depends on what you mean.

The tools, techniques, grammar, and cultural practices surrounding the production, distribution, and viewing of “video” and “film” have been converging for a long time. Film has adopted much of the grammar of the “video” while video can now be used to shoot a film. Each term can be on the one hand used interchangeably, while each can also be used to describe a very specific set of tools, techniques, grammar, and cultural practices.

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Woods Hole Film Festival

On Sunday Alice and I attended the Filmmaker’s Brunch and met many of the filmmakers attending the Woods Hole Film Festival, after catching up with some friends, we attended the tribute to Ricky Leacock. The festival continues through Saturday night. If you live in New England and you love film, Woods Hole is where you want to be this weekend. I’ll be back down in Woods Hole on Thursday for the “Social Issue Documentary” Panel and the screening of our film, Remembering John Marshall on Friday. We’re looking forward to catching as many films as we can on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

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Beyond Theatrical: Handout

On Saturday during the “Beyond Theatrical: New Opportunities for Distribution” panel at the Roxbury Film Festival I promised I’d post a handout and here’s a link to the document: Macro-Trends-v2.pdf (PDF, 164KB). I welcome any comments or crtiticism you might have of the piece. It’s based on my article “Macro Trends in Media and Entertainment” that originally appeared in Imagine (Vol. 9, No. 90 (December 2005/January 2006).