AFI Docs 2016 — Highlights

Posted on June 28, 2016 at 4:44 pm

The 2016 AFI Docs festival is over and the audience award winner was “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise,” which will be featured on the PBS “American Masters” series.

This year’s AFI DOCS attendees included renowned filmmakers Judd Apatow, Ramin Bahrani, Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, Rachel Grady, Werner Herzog (this year’s AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree) and Barbara Kopple, along with documentary subjects Sharon Jones and Norman Lear. I was struck by the pair of films about the internet, Werner Herzog’s “Lo and Behold” and Alex Gibney’s Stuxnet film “Zero Days.” Other highlights included “Life, Animated,” the extraordinary story of a boy with autism who used Disney animated films to teach himself how to communicate (coming to theaters over the next few weeks), and “Gleason,” the story of football player Steve Gleason, who was diagnosed with ALS.

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AFI Docs 2016

Posted on June 20, 2016 at 3:42 pm

AFI Docs is the best documentary festival in the US, and the schedule for 2016 is filled with outstanding selections. I am most excited for the films about television icon Norman Lear, and the always-fascinating Werner Herzog’s new film about the internet, “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World,” followed by a conversation between Herzog and filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (“99 Homes”). “Gleason” is the story of former football player Steve Gleason, who discovered he had ALS as he was about to become a father. “Life, Animated” is the story of a wonderfully generous and devoted family, and the son with autism who taught himself to communicate and understand through Disney animated films, and “The Lovers and the Despot,” the crazy story of the kidnapping of South Korea’s greatest movie star and movie director (who were formerly married to each other) by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, who forced them to make movies for him.

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AFI Docs 2015: What I Saw

Posted on June 21, 2015 at 9:51 pm

I loved every film I saw at AFI Docs this year, with a wide variety in subject matter and tone. There were intimate, personal stories, and movies about major global figures and forces. And I also saw an eye-popping demonstration of new technology, VIZIO’s Ultra HD supporting Dolby Vision. With samples from computer animation to live action, the Reference Series TV, which will be available later this year, showed stunningly dynamic, clear, and accurate images. They will also be using their systems in movie theaters, including five AMC theaters this year.

The films I saw were:

“The Best of Enemies” The legendary William F. Buckley/Gore Vidal debates following the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968 are, according to this film, the origin of today’s partisan, combative television news programming.

“The Wolfpack” Like a Wes Anderson movie come to life, this is the story of seven children, six of them boys, growing up in New York, home schooled and not allowed to leave the apartment, completely isolated from the world except for movies, which they watch and re-create.

“From This Day Forward” As a filmmaker prepares for her own wedding, she explores the very unusual but deeply committed relationship of her parents, who remain married despite her father’s transition to being a woman.

“Hot Type: 150 Years of the Nation” The country’s oldest continuously operating publication faces unprecedented challenges in an era of new media and impatient readers.

“How to Dance in Ohio” A group of teenagers and adults with autism prepare for a prom to work on their social skills.

“Very Semi-Serious” New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and the quirky and engaging people who create cartoons tell us how they find what is strange about the familiar and familiar about the strange.

“Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” Alex Gibney, whose award-winning documentaries have covered Enron, Scientology, torture, Eliot Spitzer, and more, turns his camera on one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

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Movies for Memorial Day

Posted on May 24, 2015 at 8:00 am

I’ve already written about great documentaries and feature films about the military to watch on Memorial Day. These recent documentaries about our 21st century conflicts give the military a chance to tell their own story. They are not pro-war or anti-war. They are pro-soldier.

The War Tapes Operation Iraqi Freedom was filmed by three soldiers on the front lines in 2006.

Restrepo This documentary tells the story of the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, “Restrepo,” named after a platoon medic who was killed in action.

Gunner Palace This film shows us the lives of soldiers from the 2/3 Field Artillery in a bombed-out former pleasure palace once belonging to Uday Hussein.

Bomb Hunters: Afghanistan The US Army’s 23rd Engineer Company is are charged with clearing routes in southern Afghanistan and disarming the military’s number one threat: IEDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDvFdXyFw6c

Always Faithful Military dog teams are on the front lines of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Always Faithful” follows five young Marines and their four-legged partners.

Baghdad ER Like a real-life update on the kinds of facilities portrayed in “MASH,” this film looks at life and death at the 86th Combat Support Hospital, the U.S. Army’s premier medical facility in Iraq.

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AFI Docs Announces New Director: Michael Lumpkin

Posted on December 13, 2014 at 5:02 pm

I am a huge fan of AFIDocs, the documentary Film Festival (formerly SilverDocs) and am proud to have been a sponsor for the past two years. So I was delighted to hear that The American Film Institute has selected producer and Executive Director of the International Documentary Association (IDA) Michael Lumpkin as the new director of the festival. With nearly three decades of experience in the film community as a producer, documentarian and Executive Director of IDA, Lumpkin brings a versatile perspective to AFI DOCS, a well-rounded appreciation for the impact of the art form and a thorough understanding of AFI. In a press conference, Lumpkin spoke warmly about Washington D.C. as the location, saying that “a lot of what’s happened in the documentary world over the past few years in the documentary world is about impact and the way that documentary story-telling can change our world and have real concrete impact. Our nation’s capital is where a lot of that happens — or conversely doesn’t happen — and it provides a great opportunity for documentary filmmakers to have direct access to the people who can implement change.” One element of the festival that especially interested him was the opportunity to provide resources and tools to documentary filmmakers. “One of the great things about documentary filmmaking is its ability to connect all of us on this planet and inform us about people different from us,” he said, promising to make sure the festival has a diverse program, from the filmmakers to the subject matter of the films themselves. I look forward to seeing what he does with the festival.

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