I’m heading up to HotDocs this weekend to celebrate with Ron Mann, whose work is featured in this year’s Focus On program of a mid-career filmmaker. The retrospective was curated by filmmaker Astra Taylor, whose Examined Life recently made the festival circuit and a wonderful screening in Austin as part of AFS’s Doc Tour. I’m very excited to see Ron and Astra, and hopefully get to see a bit of their Toronto.

I’ll also be moderating a panel on Monday, Creativity in Doc Making at 1 PM on Monday, May 4. Panelists include Jennifer Baichwal, Act of God (Canada), Laura Bari, Antoine (Canada), Peter Liechti, The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy (Switzerland) and Menna Laura Meijer, Sweety, The Friends, Betrayal and Murder of Maja Bradaric (Netherlands). I’m excited to watch their films and to think about creativity in doc making. It’s a subject that tends to get overlooked by people who are getting into documentary. They watch a lot of nonfiction television and think that a doc has to follow a certain form while in reality, the best docs push the boundaries of the form. Please stop by if you can!

I know this isn’t a documentary I’m posting; it’s a piece of political media, but I think it is really important so I’m posting it here. If you watched I.O.U.S.A. or An Inconvenient Truth or any other myriad of works created in the past few years, you know we are in deep shit. We came together to elect Obama because we believed that he would assemble the right people and get us on a course to changing our tides. He’s trying but I have to admit to having dropped the ball. The election and inauguration were such high moments, it was a long pendulum swing back into “real” life. That’s the thing though, our “real” lives are in jeopardy.

Ray Pride had a video project at Sundance were  he was asking people to share a hopeful, truthful moment with him/everyone. My outlook is bleak so I told him I wasn’t sure if I could come up with anything to share for the project. I did come up with something but he never asked me again to do it, so hey, blog fodder, right? Well, you’ll notice that I even forgot to make my post about it post-Sundance.(Ray, help me out with a link if you read this – I can’t find it.)

I was tagged by Danielle DiGiacomo in a Sundance blog meme. To quote her, “To refresh people’s memories: a meme is kind of like a chain letter but instead of passing on worthless information, the hope is that you’ve added something of value to a continuing thread, or blog wave if you will.”

Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with listing their Sundance favorites, separated into 8 categories.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their 8 favorites and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

Here goes:
1. Favorite feature: Sin Nombre by Cary Joji Fukunaga – Read Q&A with the award-winning director

2. Most problematic/interesting/thought-provoking feature: There were two films that have kept me thinking about their subjects and their filmmaking, Tyson by James Toback and Against the Current by Peter Callahan. For different reasons, obviously, but both were complicated in their own ways. I appreciate the challenges they present.

3. Favorite short film: Joel Stein’s Completely Unfabricated Adventures by Walter Robot – Toilet humor will always get my vote!

4. Film most regrettably missed: The September Issue by RJ Cutler

5. Most fun party: The Britdoc/Afghan Star Affair, oh what a night!

6. Best post-screening Q & A: The Reckoning with Pamela Yates, Paco de Onis & Peter Kinoy – They have set up a worldwide social network giving viewers of their movie a way to become involved in the international justice fight IJCentral.org and they were  selling their Sundance Edition DVDs at the festival, a bold move which I admire.

7. Favorite nonfiction character(s): The Yes Men from The Yes Men Fix the World, need I say more?

8. Most memorable moment: Watching President Obama’s inaugaration with a room full of progressive people who have put their lives into service of progressive beliefs, and to watch them as our dream become a reality, amidst a festival, was amazing.

Now, I have to tag some fellow bloggers, though Danielle & Karina already tagged most of our mutual friends. Hmm:

David Leitner – His Sundance coverage here
Kevin Kelly – Kevin writes for Spout but he also has a great personal blog, General Rubbish
Yance Ford – I’d love to hear Yance’s pics at P.O.V Blog
Jesse Epstein – See what Jesse was up to at Sundance:

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