Fittingly, Frederick Wiseman attended the 40th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival with his 40th documentary, In Jackson Heights, about a diverse New York neighborhood in flux. The Independent asks Wiseman to discuss the editing process, the communities he discovered in Jackson Heights, and the notion of screening all of his films in a continuous 100 hour stretch.
If cinema can function as a vehicle for a nation’s collective memory, Afghanistan only recently began to recollect itself. Pietra Brettkelly’s documentary, A Flickering Truth, mines the Afghan Film Archive for the nation’s cultural history and follows the team of people who are working to protect it and share it with the world.
Lizzie Velasquez turned down interest from a lot of TV outlets and documentarians before agreeing to work with first-time director Sara Hirsh Bordo. Together they capture Velasquez’s inspiring story of personal triumph and anti-bullying political activism. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story hits theaters and VOD on September 25, 2015.
Counting is a personal, essayistic documentary in 15 chapters where Cohen composes images, sound and music with remarkable intensity, combining them into a hypnotic foray through the metropolises of our world: New York, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Porto and a city intended to remain unknown. Time passes and stands still at the same time. Counting has it’s North American Premiere at BAMcinemaFEST 2015 on Saturday, June 27th – a Q&A with Cohen will follow the screening.
“It is indeed a documentary about a huge fiction!” says Sophie Deraspe, the director of The Anima Profile, to Staff Writer Dana Knight, during their recent conversation.
New Zealand human rights lawyer turned filmmaker Amelia Evans is not one to shy away from controversy. She follows the lives of pedophiles to find ways to prevent child abuse and understand their taboo attraction to children in her thought-provoking documentary Minor Attraction.
“SUMÉ – The Sound of a Revolution is the story of the first Greenlandic rock band and its huge impact in the new awakening of the Greenlandic people in the 1970s.” says Inuk Silis Høegh
Joshua Oppenheimer’s latest film, The Look of Silence, is a companion piece to the critically acclaimed, and hotly debated, The Act of Killing. The Independent‘s staff writer Dana Knight spoke with Oppenheimer at SXSW, where he commented on how Americans misinterpret cinéma vérité. “It’s actually precisely because of the camera not despite it…that certain things are happening,” he said.
“Oh, he was frustrated with me and I was frustrated with him through the process of making this film, but I’m a fan of the man,” says Ondi Timoner to The Independent’s Dana Knight. The pair talks shop about filming Russell Brand for Brand: The Second Coming, which premiered at SXSW 2015.