HEADLINES
 

‘The Ability to Say Yes’ to Stories Long Neglected on the Screen
Nicole Sperling writes in The New York Times: “Like so many anxious filmmakers the week before the start of the Sundance Film Festival, Erica Tremblay was tucked inside a dark room in Los Angeles, prepping the final sound mix for her feature debut, Fancy Dance. Ms. Tremblay has one of those quintessential Sundance tales: abandoning her career in publishing at age 40 to pursue filmmaking, specifically to tell stories centered in her Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma. Her first short film, Little Chief, premiered at Sundance in 2020. Her script for Fancy Dance was accepted into the 2021 Sundance Lab, and with the help of the Sundance Institute, she secured financing to make the movie. Production concluded in September, and just three months later, Fancy Dance was chosen out of more than 4,000 feature film submissions to be shown at this year’s festival, which begins Thursday. None of it would have happened without her financiers. One, Nina Yang Bongiovi of Significant Productions, has been financing indie films like Fruitvale Station and Passing since 2013. Another, Tommy Oliver, the founder and chief executive of Confluential Films, is relatively new to the finance game after spending the past decade producing and directing his own films.”

Charlotte Cook on Criteria for New Partners & Preventing Staff Burnout
Natalia Keogan reports for Filmmaker Magazine: “Last month, a letter from Field of Vision’s co-founder and executive director Charlotte Cook announced that the non-profit organization would be splitting from its parent company First Look Media and become an independent studio. Formed in 2015, Field of Vision has been behind documentaries like Hale County This Morning, This Evening, American Factory and Riotsville, USA among others. They’ve also had their hand in producing several films made by 25 New Faces of Film alums, with Alison O’Daniel’s The Tuba Thieves and Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s King Coal premiering at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. As part of the split, First Look Media has provided a sizable financial stipend to aid the organization as it searches for new partners and supporters. As a result, Field of Vision is continuing to offer grants and other means of material support to the filmmakers they work with, many of which are often first-time directors. Several weeks after the announcement first broke, Cook hopped on a phone call with Filmmaker to discuss the future of the organization, its impressive stability during this transitional period and four Field of Vision films that are premiering at Sundance.”

Netflix’s U.K. Documentary Talent Fund Returns For Second Year
K.J. Yossman reports for Variety: "Netflix has launched its second documentary talent fund for emerging filmmakers in the U.K. – and this year the streamer is extending applications to Ireland. The fund will again be produced by Elisabeth Hopper with support from supervising producer Georgie Yukiko and assistant producer Daisy Ifama. Open to everyone – even those with no experience – the fund provides filmmakers with a budget of £30,000 ($36,500) as well as guidance from Netflix executives and other industry professionals to enable them to make a documentary short. Among the support offered by Netflix is a series of production workshops covering legal, creative, HR and finance, among other things. The theme for this year’s documentaries is ‘connection.’ The chosen applicants will present their final documentaries at a showcase in early 2024. Applicants must be a resident of the U.K. or Ireland. Each filmmaker will come away with an 8-10 minute documentary that will be pushed on Netflix U.K.’s social channels.”

India Slams BBC Narendra Modi Documentary, Broadcaster Defends It
Naman Ramachandran reports for Variety: "The Indian government has slammed a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, dismissing it as ‘propaganda,’ but the corporation is sticking to its guns. The first episode of the two-part documentary India: The Modi Question aired on BBC Two on Jan. 17. The episode description on the BBC website says: ‘Narendra Modi’s premiership has been dogged by persistent allegations about the attitude of his government towards India’s Muslim population. This series investigates the truth behind these allegations and examines Modi’s backstory to explore other questions about his politics when it comes to India’s largest religious minority.’ The documentary has not been screened in India. On Jan. 19, Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said: ‘Do note that this has not been screened in India. So, I am only going to comment in the context of what I have heard about it and what my colleagues have seen. Let me just make it very clear that we think this is a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative. The bias, the lack of objectivity, and frankly a continuing colonial mindset, is blatantly visible.’”

2023 BAFTA Film Awards: Doc Nominations
Nick Cunningham reports at Business Doc Europe: “The five nominated films in the BAFTA Film Award Documentary category were named January 19 as: All That Breathes by Shaunak Sen (Prods: Teddy Leifer, Aman Mann); All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by Laura Poitras (Prods: Howard Gertler, Nan Goldin, Yoni Golijov, John Lyons); Fire of Love by Sara Dosa (Prods: Shane Boris, Ina Fichman); Moonage Daydream by Brett Morgen (Prod: Brett Morgen); Navalny by Daniel Roher (Prods: Diane Becker, Shane Boris, Melanie Miller, Odessa Rae). In the Outstanding Brit Debut section, directors Elena Sánchez Bellot and Maia Kenworthy are nominated for Rebellion (Prod: Kat Mansoor). Jane Millichip, CEO of BAFTA, said: ‘The EE BAFTA Film Awards are a celebration of the full spectrum of craft and creativity that go into filmmaking. We extend our warmest congratulations to the 215 people nominated today who represent 45 extraordinary films, spanning a vast range of narrative styles, genres and perspectives. We are proud of the role our Awards play in inspiring the public and future filmmakers around the world, and we look forward to celebrating all the nominees and their films at the ceremony next month.’”

Livia Bloom Ingram Icarus Films Moves on to NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs
Livia Bloom Ingram shared the news via email: “For more than a decade, it’s been an honor and a pleasure to represent the work of some of history's most extraordinary documentary artists as the first Vice President of Icarus Films. Chantal Akerman, Natalia Almada, Madeline Anderson, Nick Bentgen and Lisa Kjerulff, Nancy Buiski, Su Friedrich, Robert Greene, Dario Guerrero, Patricio Guzmán, Shohei Imamura, Hu Jie, Vitaly Mansky, Rosine Mbakam,  Bill Morrison, Eugenio Polgovsky, Jean Renoir, Jean Rouch, Kimi Takesue, Pema Tseden, Daniel Traub, Wang Bing, Andrea Weiss—the list goes on and on. I am grateful to Jonathan Miller, the firm's President and visionary leader, for entrusting me with this responsibility, and to the devoted Icarus team--and their endless stream of nerdy film jokes--for making it fun. I will be supporting our field from a new angle, managing capital projects for New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs. DCLA is the country's largest arts funding agency—giving more annually than state or federal agencies including the NEA and NEH—so if you're a NYC non-profit cinema or arts institution, feel free to reach out about your large-scale future plans: [email protected]. I’ll also continue to serve documentary film in every way that I can, including teaching a graduate film course on Distribution and Marketing this semester at CUNY’s City College.”

ON THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT
 

Top Docs Hit Sundance Hoping That In-Person Screenings Can Boost Rocky Market
Addie Morfoot reports at Variety: “For documentary filmmakers seeking distribution for independently made projects, Sundance is the golden ticket. It’s where a few lucky doc directors can nail down seven-figure deals with major distributors including Netflix, Amazon or Apple TV+ every year. But this year, with streamers not only tightening their purse strings but also increasingly commissioning their own content, and even shunning more provocative political-leaning fare, the Park City market for indie nonfiction features will be more competitive and likely less lucrative. Last January at Sundance 2022, which was an online-only event, the doc market got off to a strong start. Several Sundance nonfiction titles sold, including Aftershock (Disney’s Onyx Collective and ABC News), All That Breathes (HBO), Descendant (Netflix), Last Flight Home (MTV Documentary Films), Fire of Love (National Geographic), Mija (Disney+), Nothing Compares (Showtime) and The Territory (National Geographic). But as the year wore on, economic unease and the merger of major brands significantly reduced the number of docs being bought out of festivals.”

True/False Announces Inaugural Confluence Fellows
Announced via press release: “Ragtag Film Society is excited to launch the inaugural year of its Confluence Fellowship program during the 2023 True/False Film Fest. This new initiative brings together Midwest based filmmakers who are in development on their first feature-length nonfiction film to provide artist support at an early stage in the creative process, and centers Midwest filmmakers in order to uplift filmmaking voices from the region that True/False calls home. The 2023 Fellows will be joined by established international filmmakers and other industry experts for in-depth workshops, talks and screenings, as well as to enjoy camaraderie and professional engagement experiences over the course of the Fest. The fellowship aims to connect the projects and filmmakers with both the national and international industry for inspiration and collaboration.”

Main Tribute of the 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
Announced via press release: “A multifaceted and intriguing tribute to observational documentary, titled 'the Art of Reality: Beyond Observation' is hosted by the upcoming 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (2-12 March, 2023), accompanied by a special bilingual edition. Masterpieces of world cinema redefine our perspective and interpretation of life and the world, while masterclasses from acclaimed international and Greek filmmakers unfold the secrets of this fascinating cinema genre. Within the context of observational documentary, filmmakers fully permeate the world they study, permitting their topic to unfold with the bare minimum intervention, giving the viewers the time and space to reach their own conclusions. Drawing inspiration from the principles of documentary pioneer and director of the legendary Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty, Italian neorealism, the French cinema verité, the American direct cinema and the working methods implemented by the science of social anthropology, the genre of observational documentary is not confined to simple recording and documentation.”

Berlinale Completes Generation Selections; New Special Title
Nick Cunningham reports at Business Doc Europe: “Seven documentary titles, including Ukrainian Alisa Kovalenko’s We Will Not Fade Away, about five teenagers living in the conflict-ridden Donbas region of Ukraine who are given a brief respite from reality when they are send on a Himalayan expedition, are selected for Berlinale Generation 2023. The other European selection is the short doc Of Dreams in the Dream of Another Mirror by Yunyi Zhu. ‘The films in this year’s Generation programme form a kaleidoscope of young worldviews. They look at what moves the present and in doing so, open our eyes onto astounding new perspectives. They create protective private spaces, formulate clear objections, and insist on the right to fantasise. They find new cinematic forms for untold truths,’ comments section head Sebastian Markt."

61st New York Film Festival Unveils Dates and New Updates
Announced via press release: “Lesli Klainberg, president of Film at Lincoln Center, announced today that Matt Bolish has been named to the newly created position of managing director of the New York Film Festival (NYFF). In this role, Bolish will work closely with artistic director Dennis Lim, who oversees the curation and programming process, to produce the world-renowned event. Bolish has been a member of the FLC staff since 2011 and is currently the organization’s vice president of operations, in addition to serving as NYFF producer since 2016. An enduring part of New York’s cultural landscape since 1963, the NYFF is an annual bellwether of the state of cinema that shapes film culture. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the 61st edition of the NYFF will take place over 17 days, from September 29 through October 15, 2023.”

MISCELLANEOUS
 

Todd Haynes Discusses New Velvet Underground Doc 
Dan Schindel writes for Hyperallergic: “Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground (2021) is more than a documentary about the band. It is an evocation of a now legendary moment of creative exploration in the New York art scene, formed through an impressively dense assemblage of film, music, and art, contemporaneous with the Velvets’ ascendance in the 1960s. The Criterion Collection’s recent home media release of the documentary includes extensive outtakes and full versions of several of the avant-garde shorts excerpted in the film. I spoke to Haynes about the film’s meticulous split screen and montage, New York’s queer culture in the ’60s, and the “structuring absence” of Lou Reed. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.”

Inside Sundance’s Top-Secret Brett Kavanaugh Documentary
Marlow Stern writes in Rolling Stone: “A collective eyebrow was raised when the 2023 Sundance Film Festival announced a last-minute addition to the lineup: Justice, a documentary probing the allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. That the film marked the first documentary directed by Doug Liman, the man behind Swingers and The Bourne Identity, and was produced by Amy Herdy, an ex-journalist and key researcher for the documentaries Allen v. Farrow and On the Record, only piqued curiosity further. Would the film contain new claims against Kavanaugh beyond what emerged during and around his explosive hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee? Or perhaps offer new evidence corroborating the accounts of women who’d already come forward against Kavanaugh alleging a range of sexual misconduct, including Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick? Justice debuted on Jan. 20 to a capacity crowd of 295 people at Sundance’s Park Avenue Theatre, including a few dozen members of the press. Liman made his entire crew sign NDAs and financed the project himself in order to keep it completely under wraps.”