Evan Crean traveled to Montreal for the 22nd annual Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), which took place November 14 to 24, 2019. Of the 154 films from 47 countries it screened, he offers reviews of the five best he saw during his time there.
Directors, Writers, and Editors Deragh Campbell and Sofia Bohdanowicz are adept at indie film budgeting or what they call the “microbudget.” In this interview, they talk about creating and funding their film, sharing some of the tips they’ve learned along the way, such as keeping the shoot to a minimal number of days, finding locations that would offer space for free, and raising funds from Canadian grants and screening fees.
Lucie Guest is on our 10 to watch for her work as an actress, writer, and director in her award-winning short film, Never Better, about a loveable loser and the search for closer at the end of a relationship.
Collaborators in life and work, the husband/wife team of Stéphan Beaudoin and Sophie-Anne Beaudry join The Independent’s 10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2016 for their upcoming feature Yankee, which explores the idea of a woman entering traditionally male-dominated domains of violence. Here, they talk about Yankee, self-financing a film, and shooting on location.
Paisley Smith first found her niche in Virtual Reality working with the “Godmother of VR” Nonny de la Peña and the Emblematic Group. Smith now makes The Independent’s 10 to Watch list for her most recent project, an animated Virtual Reality documentary Taro’s World based on the story of Taro, an exchange student from Japan who lived with Smith and her family for his teenage years, but at age 17, took his own life.
“Sometimes I’m watching what I’ve shot and I’m like, ‘I could have never written that dialogue.’ People are really good actors in documentary,” said Montreal-based filmmaker Jean-François Lesage about making his doc, A Summer Love. Lesage and four other filmmakers with work screening at the 2015 RIDM Film Festival sat down with The Independent’s Patrick Pearce to talk elements of film style.
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.
“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.