Top Docs: The 2015 Documentary Oscar Nominees Instructor: Michael Fox
Thursdays, 1:15-3:45 pm Oct. 8-Nov. 5, 2015
foxonfilm@yahoo.com
The Academy Award nominees for Documentary Feature are hailed (rightly or not) as the
best theatrically released nonfiction films of the year. We’ll watch one of the 2015
nominees each week, then discuss its goals, strategy, storytelling, social utility, artistic
qualities and ethics. We’ll consider the filmmaker’s point of view, the effect of the
camera’s presence, the line between journalism and activism, the balance between
information and emotion, and the need to entertain.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) sets the qualifications for
eligibility for all films for Oscar consideration. It won’t be a topic of discussion, but the
current key parameters for documentaries are found in Rule Eleven, #1, 5, 6, and 9:
www.oscars.org/sites/default/files/88aa_rule11_doc.pdf
Oct. 8 Finding Vivian Maier (John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, USA, 2013) 83 min
A suburban nanny took more than 100,000 photographs on Chicago streets, which she
warehoused in storage lockers and never exhibited. They weren’t discovered until 2007.
The filmmakers investigate Maier’s curious life and art through photographs, films and
interviews. www.findingvivianmaier.com/
John Maloof discovered Vivian Maier’s work at a thrift auction house on Chicago’s
Northwest Side. Maloof has spearheaded the archiving, cataloging and exhibition of
Maier’s work, and has a financial interest. Charlie Siskel is an Emmy-nominated
television producer, director and writer. His credits include “The Awful Truth” with
Michael Moore, “Important Things with Demetri Martin,” “Tosh.0” and “Review.”
interviews: http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2014/03/28/john-maloof-on-findingvivian-maier/
www.americanphotomag.com/interview-john-maloof-director-finding-vivian-maier
news: http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81309240/
Finding Vivian Maier unfolds simultaneously in the present and the past. How does the
editing reduce confusion and enhance the film’s effect? If a documentary is an act of
discovery, how do the filmmakers sustain that conceit (or illusion) for 83 minutes? How
does the order in which information is presented affect our perception and judgment of
the subject—and of the filmmakers? Does the fact that Maloof presumably benefits
financially from raising Vivian Maier’s profile affect our trust of what we see? What
(other) questions does the film raise that the filmmakers don’t want us asking?
Oct. 15 CitizenFour (Laura Poitras, USA, 2014) 113 min
In 2013, computer analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified documents he had obtained
from the National Security Agency detailing the extent of government surveillance of
U.S. citizens. After going into hiding to avoid extradition and arrest, Snowden himself
became a news story that threatened to eclipse the implications of the information he had
revealed. Poitras’s reporting on mass NSA surveillance based on Snowden’s disclosures
received the George Polk Award for national security journalism, and shared in the
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. CitizenFour won awards from the British Film
Academy, Independent Spirit Awards, Director’s Guild of America and others.
https://citizenfourfilm.com/
Laura Poitras is a filmmaker, journalist, and artist. My Country, My Country (2006),
about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Oscar. The Oath (2010) focused
on Guantánamo and the war on terror. Poitras’ honors include a MacArthur
Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Peabody Award. In 2006, the U.S.
government placed her on a secret watchlist and for the next six years she was detained
and interrogated at the border every time she returned from abroad. To protect her
footage from being seized, she relocated to Berlin in 2012
. She has taught
filmmaking a Yale and Duke, and is on the board of the Freedom of the Press
Foundation. She co-founded The Intercept with Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. Poitras
will have her first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art next
year, creating an environment of immersive installations related to the themes in her
films.
interviews: http://blog.frieze.com/citizenfour-an-interview-with-laura-poitras/
www.rogerebert.com/interviews/are-you-ok-laura-poitras-on-citizenfour
www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/10/laura-poitras-on-citizenfour-edward-snowdenand-whistleblowers
The heart of CitizenFour are the meetings between the whistleblower and the journalists,
where the filmmaker documents privileged, important moments. Do the subjects forget
about the camera, and reveal themselves? Or do they “perform” for the camera, and still
reveal themselves? How does the filmmaker translate abstract concepts into visual
images—and which have emotional resonance? How does she elevate a work of
journalism to a work of art? (Hint: metaphor, music, cinematography.)
Oct. 22 Last Days in Vietnam (Rory Kennedy, USA, 2014) 98 min
In April 1975, the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon and South Vietnamese
resistance crumbled. Cities and villages fell to the North while the few U.S. diplomats
and military operatives still in the country contemplated withdrawal. The Americans were
confronted with choosing who among the South Vietnamese would go and who would be
left behind to face brutality, imprisonment and possibly death.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lastdays/
Rory Kennedy, Ethel and Bobby’s youngest child, has produced and directed more than
25 documentaries, including Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (Primetime Emmy Award, 2007),
Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House and Ethel. Her films have
aired on HBO, A&E, MTV, Lifetime and PBS.
interviews: www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a34662/rory-kennedyinterview/
http://caamedia.org/blog/2015/04/21/rory-kennedy-talks-about-oscar-nominated-lastdays-in-vietnam/
critique: http://franksnepp.com/rory-kennedys-vietnam-doc-draws-fire/
Last Days in Vietnam is a historical documentary whose context and parameters are
narrowly set by the filmmaker. What is gained and what is lost by that fundamental
decision? The film is constructed from archival footage and contemporary talking head
interviews. That’s the second crucial decision: Whose story is told? How does the
filmmaker begin the film, in order to grab our attention? What is the film’s emotional
center, and how is it expressed? How is patriotism (symbolized by the U.S. flag) handled
in a film aimed at a mainstream audience?
Oct. 29 Virunga (Orlando von Einsiedel, UK, 2014) 100 min
A team of park rangers in Virunga National Park in the eastern Congo protects the
UNESCO world heritage site and its mountain gorillas from armed militia, poachers and
others seeking to profit from the natural resources. When a new rebel group declares war,
and oil is discovered beneath the park, the gorillas and wildlife conservationists are
threatened. http://virungamovie.com/
A former professional snowboarder, Orlando von Einsiedel has made more than a dozen
short documentaries since 2007, from a skateboard school in Afghanistan to the tracking
and arrest of pirates in West Africa. Virunga is his first feature.
“The thrust of the project was to try to tell the story of the rebirth of the eastern Congo
because there'd been a period of stability for a few years, and I came across the story of
the park's brave rangers. And I thought their story was a sort of metaphor for the wider
rebirth of the region. Within a few weeks this new civil war started, and I found out about
the oil discovery. So I ended up making a very different film.”
interviews:
http://uinterview.com/videos/orlando-von-einsiedel-virunga-leonardo-dicaprio-princeemmanuel-de-merode/
http://scenecreek.com/interviews/5-questions-for-orlando-von-einseidel-director-ofvirunga/
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2015/1/6/interview-virunga-producer-joannanatasegara.html
Virunga is a cinema verité film whose structure derives from the characters as much as
from the chronology of events. Can we discern the hand of the filmmaker (and editor) in
the film’s shape and trajectory? How much of the tension derives from the events, and
how much from the filmmaking? How important or valuable is the hidden-camera
footage, and is it undercut by other techniques, notably the brief reenactments?
Nov. 5 The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, 2013) 109’
For the last 40 years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has witnessed international
conflicts, starvation and exodus. His current project is a discovery of pristine territories,
of wild fauna and flora, and of grandiose landscapes.
www.sonyclassics.com/thesaltoftheearth/
Wim Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in 1945. After two years studying medicine and
philosophy and a year painting in Paris, he attended the University of Television and
Film in Munich from 1967-70. A key figure of the New German Cinema, he co-founded
the distributor Filmverlag der Autoren in 1971 and established the production company
Road Movies in 1975. In addition to directing feature films such as Paris, Texas and
Wings of Desire, Wenders is a photographer whose images of desolate landscapes evoke
memory, time and movement. He has published several books of photographs and essays,
and exhibited the series “Pictures from the surface of the Earth” and “Places, strange and
quiet” in museums worldwide. He is a film professor at the University of Fine Arts of
Hamburg.
Juliano Ribeiro Salgado was born in 1974 in Paris, and raised in a Franco-Brazilian
environment. He made his first doc, Suzana, in 1996 on the use of anti-personnel mines
in Angola. He has made docs in Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Brazil for French TV, and
filed news reports for Canal+ (France) and TV Globo (Brazil). Nauru, an Island Adrift
(2009) screened in numerous international festivals. Salgado is developing his first
feature, to be shot in Sáo Paolo. He graduated from the London Film School in 2003.
interviews: http://collider.com/wim-wenders-juliano-ribeiro-salgado-salt-of-the-earthinterview/
www.thelmagazine.com/2015/03/wim-wenders-family-therapist-talking-co-directors-saltearth/
www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/interviews/the-salt-of-the-earth-wimwenders-and-juliano-ribiero-salgado/
Whose film is it? Whose story gets told, and who tells it? Is the filmmakers’ personal
connection relevant, or is it a device to work Wenders into the piece to reach a wider
audience? How do they avoid the sense that Salgado’s story is unfolding entirely in the
past? Must a portrait of an artist aspire to be art? Can we compare The Salt of the Earth
with Finding Vivian Maier, another artist portrait?