Docs, 12/20.

"Every film has a backstory just like every life has a history, but rarely do the two commingle to such a fantastic and phantasmagoric degree as they do in Austin filmmaker Steve Bilich's 13-minute short Native New Yorker, which took home the Best Documentary Short award at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival." Marc Savlov tells that story in the Austin Chronicle.

Also: "Turns out there's money to be made in selling supplies to people bringing drugs into this country and in incarcerating those unlucky enough to get caught holding them." Josh Rosenblatt previews American Drug War.

"Today is the 4th day of our 5-day online discussion on The D-Word with key staffers from the Independent Television Service (ITVS)," notes Doug Block. "It's a rare opportunity for doc makers to get their questions answered and glean insights into the submission and decision-making process of one of the biggest funders around (and not just for US projects)."

"Nancy Buirski, the founder, CEO and Artistic Director of the influential Full Frame Film Festival, announced yesterday that she is stepping down from the festival." AJ Schnack has more.

For the Los Angeles Times, Addie Morfoot talks to a slew of documentary filmmakers and discovers: "When the cameras stop, many filmmakers find the relationship with their subjects goes on - for better or worse - sometimes for years."

Les Blank's "enthusiasm and fun practically radiate from the screen; a documentarian for nearly 50 years now, he doesn't seem to be interviewing or investigating his subjects so much as amiably hanging out with them," writes Dennis Harvey at SF360. "[T]he vast majority of Blank's movies have been celebrations of good-time music and good food, sometimes both at once. Really, who wouldn't like this guy's job? His latest, All This in Tea (which was co-directed with his editor Gina Leibrecht), is typical Blank."

In the Voice, Nick Pinkerton finds Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, "a survey of how American cinema has historically interpreted Nazi atrocity," to be "a serviceable, abridged guide to his subject, though some omissions do rankle."

For the New York Times, Felicia R Lee talks with Jamie Kastner about his doc, Kike Like Me, which he calls "a black comic road movie about identity."

"The occasion of the Berlin Philharmonic's 125th anniversary November 4 saw the premiere of the documentary film Das Reichsorchester (The Reich's Orchestra), directed by Enrique Sànchez Lansch (Rhythm is it!, 2004)," notes Verena Nees at the WSWS. "The question hung in the air—how could such an outstanding orchestra, which embodied the heights of a developed culture, allow itself to be used by barbarous dictatorship? Unfortunately this question remained largely unanswered after the film."

Posted by dwhudson at December 20, 2007 3:17 PM