New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival
Big Sky Film: “The Drug Years” Gives the ‘60s a Fresh Look
I like to tell my composition students that the narration on "The Wonder Years” strikes the sort of nostalgic, reflective, humorous tone they should aspire to as they think about the 750-word memoir unit. You know: "As I watched my sister drive off in her VW bus, I felt a little piece of my innocence slip away ... turn, turn, turn..."
On the other hand, too many made-for-TV documentaries about drugs and the counterculture in the late '60s aspire to much the same thing: that "Wonder Years” tone -- too tidy, too compact, too sentimental, too simplified. If you weren't there, you grow up thinking about flower power, the Haight-Ashbury, the First Human Be-In and so forth in rose-tinted terms because they're so often presented that way. Everyone wants a piece of Woodstock; no one wants to claim Altamont.
The Drug Years, a four-part co-production between Perry Films, VH1 and the Sundance Channel, goes some distance toward, if not a radical re-imagining of the decade, then at least the inclusion of some younger, fresher voices.
Editor's Note: "The Drug Years" is one of NewWest.Net's top picks for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which opens Feb. 15 at the Wilma Theater. "The Drug Years," part of the special presentations program at the festival, shows on Saturday, Feb. 17 at 1:40 p.m. in Wilma 2. Check back to www.newwest.net/bsdff for more NewWest.Net picks this week and coverage of the festival.
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New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival
Big Sky Film: “Montana Meth”
Since taking his first hit of methamphetamine more than a decade ago, 22-year-old “Weasel” has been hopelessly addicted to the drug and easy money he makes dealing it.
“I know it’s all going to come to an end, and it’s all going to come crashing down,” he says. “If I remembered who gave it to me the first time I did it, I’d probably want to shoot them.”
Weasel is one of the addicts whose voices make the film Montana Meth a disturbing yet compassionate look into Montana’s methamphetamine underworld. The film, set to premiere with a free public screening Thursday at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, was made through a collaboration between the Montana Meth Project and HBO Documentary Films.
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New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival
Big Sky Film: “Can Mr. Smith get to Washington Anymore?”
One of the first things Jeff Smith says in the documentary, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is that even his grandmother couldn't believe he was running for U.S. Congress.
And when you first meet Jeff Smith in the film, you'll see his grandmother's point.
Smith is a part-time university teacher with a slight lisp and what could be a clip-on power tie. We first see him standing outside a townhouse, yelling up to a possible voter on a balcony. "I'm running for Congress," he exclaims as he crosses the street back to the house, looking small and hurriedly desperate.
Editor's Note: "Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?" is one of NewWest.Net's picks featured this week to help you plan for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which opens Feb. 15 at the Wilma Theater. This film plays at the festival Monday, Feb. 19 at 6:45 p.m. Bookmark www.newwest.net/bsdff to keep tabs on the previews and coverage of the festival.
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New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival
Big Sky Film: ‘Silences’ Blurs Line Between Subject, Object
The line between subject and object is getting skinnier and skinnier in this crazy, mixed-up, postmodern world, and people like Octavio Warnock-Graham are doing little to rectify the problem.
Warnock-Graham is the writer, director and producer of Silences, a 20-minute entry in the Documentary Short competition at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival opening this week at the Wilma. He also is the movie’s star -- or, more accurately, "subject" -- alongside his mother, Harriet Warnock. We know this because moments after an intro montage of the idyllic suburbia of Maumee, Ohio, Warnock-Graham turns his camera on his mother and asks "Do you know what this is about?" She fumbles the answer and he interjects, "It’s about you and me."
As evidenced by the family photo that graces the movie’s DVD cover and website, Warnock-Graham is clearly not white. And at 36 years old, he’s decided to uncover the truth about his heritage once and for all.
Editor's Note: "Silences" is one of NewWest.Net's picks featured this week to help you plan for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which opens Feb. 15 at the Wilma Theater. Click here for the trailer for the film. "Silences" plays at the festival Sunday, Feb. 18 at 5:15 p.m. in a series of shorts screenings with Dig, Memento, a Boulder Life Line, My Name is Ahmed Ahmed and In the Glow.
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The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival will showcase 100 films from 32 countries when it takes over the Wilma Theatre next month.
Missoula's homegrown, internationally renowned festival kicks off February 15 and wraps up the 21st. Of the 100 screenings, 30 will be world or North American premieres.
Festival organizers announced their official picks Friday afternoon and the lineup is impressive to say the least.
There are seven divisions this year, including special screenings and "works-in-progress," which are three films from the legendary Les Blank. The full lineup is broad in scope, with films that drill into the likes of Jim Jones, the trial of Saddam Hussein, the history of milk, the Jewish-Arab conflict, the youth movement in conservative Christianity, auctioneers who sell of dwindling farms and closer to home, meth in Montana.
Click here to see the official picks. Tickets are on sale in advance online here or at the Wilma Box Office.
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Missoula Wows Filmmakers
Montana's premier documentary film festival wrapped up Wednesday night with record attendance numbers and praise from visiting directors. Festival organizers were encouraged by the high turnout of Missoulians that came to see the more than 90 films that screened over the course of a week at the Wilma Theatre in downtown Missoula.
"Every year this just gets better and better," said Doug Hawes-Davis, festival programmer. The festival has come a long way since this was just a hobby for the organizers, he said.
This year, the festival saw a 50 percent increase in ticket sales from last year. More than 7,500 people made it out to the historic Wilma theatre over the week, despite a cold snap that slowed attendance for a few days. hand-screened by the event's coordinators.
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big sky award winners
Intimate Film Fest Wraps Up in StyleIn a room packed with filmmakers, media types, and a spread of free sushi, Missoula’s modest film festival looked like it had hit the big time.
However, at the final awards ceremony and screening Wednesday night at the Wilma, most of the filmmakers praised the tight-knit, friendly feel at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
For East London filmmaker Eva Weber, the Missoula festival highlighted the cooperation and comradery of the film community.
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Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Panelists: Marketing Should Follow FilmmakingFilmmakers should focus on subject, balance and originality and worry about marketing and audience after the filming is done.
That was the consensus among the five directors in a panel discussion of Social Issue Documentaries in an Entertainment Driven Market Sunday at the Big Sky Documentary film festival. Marketing representatives in the discussion were tentative to agree.
"Are you pitching your film idea or are you making the film that you want to make?" said Brian Liu, director of "Disarm", a film about landmines. "We didn’t really think about audience, we just made the film."
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Women Filmmakers at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
In-Depth with the Women in Documentary Film Panel
What does it mean to be a woman and a filmmaker? What perspectives and qualities do women alone bring to the screen? And when, if ever, should making films be about being female?
Five women filmmakers explored these and other questions during the Women in Documentary Film Panel at the Big Sky Film Fest this afternoon.
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BSDFF Panel on Women in Documentary FilmInteresting panel on women in documentary film. Do women inherently bring different qualities to filmmaking than men? (more sensitive, better listening skills, less self-importance, etc). Or, is this gender differentiation just another stereotype, another way to keep us seperate, another way to keep us all from being just "filmmakers?" And, if we all became just "filmmakers," would something very special, very unique be lost? [more]
