If you are in the UK and missed it catch it here on the BBC iPlayer

If you are outside the UK I’m sure you can find a way to see it, at least I hope so.

• Filmstock #8
• After all this, won’t you give me a smile?
• Who’s who and who are you?
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Vote for The Retirement Village

It’s been a long time coming but I’ve finally packed the DN bags, jumped on a plane and hit the indie directors’ favourite film festival, South by Southwest, or SXSW for those in the know. We open up with an interview for a film I originally saw at last year’s London Film Festival, but whose gentle charm has stuck in my mind ever since, Ken Wardrop’s His & Hers. I spoke to Ken about the jump from shorts to features and how the stories of women from middle Ireland can have the power to touch festival audiences around the world.

SXSW folks can catch His & Hers tonight at 7pm & on Thu, Mar 18th at 2pm.

Showlinks
His & Hers

• His & Hers – Ken Wardrop
• DN EP 108: We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• DN EP 097: Inside the Circle – Marcy Garriott
• SXSW2010: Kick-Ass
• INSIDE THE CIRCLE Breakin’ Convention Screening

His & Hers (2009)
A 90-year-old love story told through the collective voice of 70 ladies at different stages of their lives.

• DN SXSW10: His & Hers – Ken Wardrop
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• Tokyo Cowboys – Daneeta Loretta Saft & Patrick Jackson
• They Turned Our Desert Into Fire – Mark Brecke

This film was made to coincide with the launch of Megaslumming, the new book by Share The World’s Resources that was launched in Kenya in January 2010. The film vividly portrays some of the realities of poverty for the residents of Kibera – Kenya’s most notorious shantytown, and focuses on Djemba the street boy who is the central character in the book.

The book Megaslumming sets out to unravel how an informal settlement such as Kibera came to exist, what economic forces shape the reality of life for slum-dwellers in Africa, and what it really means to live in extreme poverty. Written as a lucid introduction to global justice issues, the book ultimately raises serious questions about the current direction of world development.

You can find out more about the book, purchase a copy or download an abridged version here: stwr.org/megaslumming

Djemba, a boy from Kibera from jason taylor on Vimeo.

• Who’s who and who are you?
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Vote for The Retirement Village
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• Trusted Computing – Benjamin Stephan & Lutz Vogel

Memory Marathon is a filmic record of that day.

If you want to learn more about Memory Marathon visit the official website, where you can find out where the film is being screened and exhibited

• Talk To Me – Mark Craig
• Miss D 2007 Top Ten
• Jennifer – Stewart Copeland
• Happy Monday – Andrew Filippone Jr
• Globe Street Video Challenge – Sébastien Abes

Humorous, inventive short doc about the service that’s fast eating up Internet hours around the globe.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

• The Suburbs – Lee Kern
• DN LFF09: Paper Heart – Nicholas Jasenovec
• DN Ep 033: Lee Meets the Psychics – Lee Kern
• DN Ep 006: The Suburbs – Lee Kern
• Who’s who and who are you?

via eddiepra

• DN LFF09: American: The Bill Hicks Story – Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas
• DN EP 067: Four Eyed Monsters – Arin Crumley & Susan Buice
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Watch Sita Sings the Blues for Free
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley

NYC View from Jeanie Finlay on Vimeo.

• Big Sky ‘10: Meeting the man from Disney
• Big Sky ‘10: Mountain Views and Heated Debates
• Big Sky ‘10: Goodbye with a Big Old Fire
• Big Sky ‘10: Day One – Getting There, Slowly
• His & Hers – Ken Wardrop

Outside the Wilma theatre (Photo: Big Sky)

The pitching event this year was fantastic, a real highlight and it has transformed my ideas of thinking about working with / applying to ITVS. Richard Saiz was a total inspiration.

Richard Saiz - ITVS pitch event and workshop

There’s been so many highlights – the ITVS pitch, the deliberation and judging of the competition films, a gondola ride after a great party at Boom swagger (Missoula’s hair salon), the mountains, getting to hang out with my good friends from over the pond.

The transport of choice - Transport chief Jeff Medley rides the gondola (Photo: Big Sky)

The packed out 1100 seater Wilma (Photo: Big Sky)

Aside from the competition films that we awarded prizes to I thought that Racing Dreams was phenomenal. On the surface it has the feel of the classic 3 character 5 part story on the way to a final race outcome, but it was so much more than that. The film is about 3 teens on the brink of changing their lives forever, they fall in love and find out who they want to be. Seek this film out!

The festival ended with a fire party at festival founder Doug Hawes Davis’ house. Until next year then, here are a last few views.

The frozen river - It's hard not to see the Twin Peaks visuals everywhere in David Lynch's home town

Doug Pray shows his best "Up with people" smile

Inspired by the party in the salon I ended up going back for a 50's blow dry.

The foyer of The Red Bird - my favourite place to hang out in Missoula. made me feel like an extra in The Shining

All of the lovely big Sky festival team - punch drunk and happy on the last day

Fire Party

Festival programmer and the man with an extraordinary English accent - Mike Steinberg

DHD - the man who started it all attempts some firewalking

Southern Charm - Stewart Copeland

My lovely hostess - Lulu Steinberg

The one and only Jeff Medley

• Big Sky ‘10: Meeting the man from Disney
• Big Sky ‘10: Mountain Views and Heated Debates
• Big Sky ‘10: Made it to NYC
• Big Sky ‘10: Day One – Getting There, Slowly
• His & Hers – Ken Wardrop

Director Neil LaBute’s career has spanned numerous theatre and feature film productions, but for his latest project, LaBute collaborated with the team behind new PS3 game Heavy Rain, to create a documentary where famous ‘witnesses’ answered the question How Far would You Go…? to save someone you loved.

You can watch How Far Would You Go…? on the Heavy Rain site.

• DN Special: Wholphin
• DN Special: Storm – Kurtis Hough
• DN Special: Joy Division – Grant Gee
• Time Piece – Kat Mansoor
• The Wonder Of Wes

The weather is crisp and bright and the mountains have never looked more breath taking. The landscape really is ‘the big sky’ and shapes the feel of the town and the films that are made here.

I’m going to go and see Sweet Grass tonight which won a big sky award about films made in the area. It’s a portrait of Norwegian farming community in Montana and is intriguingly made by a Brit expat Lucien Castaing Taylor. I can’t wait to see it.

I took part in the enjoyable but always nerve wracking ITVS Pitch presenting my new film ORION to Richard Saiz. It went really great despite my nerves and left me feeling fired up to make it. Richard gave great feedback about using the outsiders view, the British view of Americana and was incredibly generous and inspiring about how to work with them to get the film made.

My fellow feature jurors (Doug Pray and Cliff Froehlich deliberated long and hard and gave 2 awards. One to Last Train Home by Lixin Fan and artistic vision award to Josh Fox’s Gasland. Both films are devastating and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Missoula is an easy town to get talking to people and we met a guy drawing in the local Waldrens deli. Turns out he used to draw for Disney and he and fellow film-maker Cody Stokes exchanged sketch book views.

• Big Sky ‘10: Mountain Views and Heated Debates
• Big Sky ‘10: Made it to NYC
• Big Sky ‘10: Goodbye with a Big Old Fire
• Big Sky ‘10: Day One – Getting There, Slowly
• His & Hers – Ken Wardrop

Longtime DN friend Danni Lizaitis has, with co-directed Sam Burr, the short documentary The Retirement Village (below) in the running and it would be mighty good if you could pop over and vote for it – it’s clearly the best of the three.

The Retirement Village from First Light on Vimeo.

Set within 200 acres of idyllic woodland, Whiteley Village is described as a haven for retired pensioners. Founded in 1907 after a £1 million bequest in the will of William Whiteley, the village caters for older people of limited means. It is home to almost 400 residents who have been selected from hundreds of applications each year.

• Filmstock #8
• Who’s who and who are you?
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Vote for Duelity!
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of film filled days.

Soaring over the icy west and frozen lakes.

I made it to the mountains – woodland painting.

I’m staying with Mike and Lulu Steinberg. Mike is the director of the festival and I’m staying in their Glow house at the end of their garden.

My all important pass.

Sun behind the Wilma Theatre.

My annual visit to Quality supply to buy cowboy boots for my daughter.

Vivi Steinberg models a mini Stetson.

Back to the Wilma for salty popcorn…

…and the shorts programme with the Steinberg girls.

The view from the balcony.

An almost capacity crowd files in for Sweet Grass.

My fellow judge Doug Pray and the beautiful (still working) deco telephone booths at the Red Bird after a long evening’s deliberations.

The supermarket clerk who sold us beer at 1.58am and gave us his take on Sweet Grass. The whole town comes to the screenings.

• Big Sky ‘10: Meeting the man from Disney
• Big Sky ‘10: Made it to NYC
• Big Sky ‘10: Goodbye with a Big Old Fire
• Big Sky ‘10: Day One – Getting There, Slowly
• His & Hers – Ken Wardrop

Looking forward to seeing the Wilma, Montana's largest screen

I’ve made it to the throbbing city of Heathrow, terminal 4 (the location and setting for my husband’s film Mum & Dad, being here never fails to remind me of the film) – my cautious Father in Law made sure that I was here in plenty of time and I now have nearly three hours to kill before boarding the first of three flights that will get me to Missoula, via New York and Detroit. It is a killer journey – 16 hours but so worth it when you see the mountains at the end.

This will be my third visit to the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and my first without showing a film. This year I’m a juror in the features competition and will be presenting my new project ORION as one of 10 projects being pitched in the ITVS pitch.

Being a juror has meant watching most of the films ahead of flying out. They arrived in uniform DVDs – with simply the name of the film and director printed on them. Each film has been a surprise and a trip into the unexpected – no drum roll, no flyer campaign, no press preview, no earnest film-maker intro, no EPK and no flashy graphics and no clever log line to raise or dash expectations.

It’s been a curious experience. I’ve tried to ignore the (inevitable) twitter and online buzz attached to some of the titles as they play at other festivals and aimed to watch them as they came – simply, unannounced.

It occurred to me that this is the opposite of a usual film festival viewing experience. My living room is a world away from a packed screening room, full of ready to laugh and cry or ‘impress me’ or ‘film-fatigued’ festival goers.

Thinking about my recent cinema going experiences, the expectations I’ve had before the screening have inevitably influenced my opinion of the film – Avatar, I hated, I felt it was a flimsy, wafer thin story to hang such expensive graphics on. The packed cinema, the only free seat at the front of the Cineworld in the sore neck position, the expensive 3D glasses, my knowledge of the budget and the James Cameron campaign all conspired to color my appraisal of the final film. It was nearly impossible to like even though I wanted to.

Similarly watching Prodigal Sons (as I reported in my Top Ten Twleve of 2009) in a packed cinema, 30 minutes drive from where the film was set in Montana, with the director and many of the cast in the room couldn’t help but heighten the emotive pull of the story. Would I have felt the same if I had watched the film ‘cold’ at home, on my own, on my TV?

I also watched Still Walking recently, directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, director of one of my favourite films of all time After Life. I was so excited to see this film and went in to the screening with the expectation that I would meet an old friend. The film wasn’t what I expected (after After Life) but was a wonderfully warm and sometimes bitter examination of family life and grief. My previous relationship made me open to the film and welcome it fondly.

I’ve been told I can use whatever criteria I choose to judge the films. So I decided to set some ground rules – to watch all films in equal environments. The winning film for me must move me in some way, offer a window into another world – any kind of world and make the filmmaking invisible. By which I mean, if I’m watching the edit or the fancy camera moves then the narrative is failing, it’s got to all feel like one film.

I’ve watched eight films now, four more to go and know what my favourite three are so far; turns out I needn’t have worried, the good films always make themselves known.

• Big Sky ‘10: Meeting the man from Disney
• Big Sky ‘10: Mountain Views and Heated Debates
• Big Sky ‘10: Made it to NYC
• Big Sky ‘10: Goodbye with a Big Old Fire
• His & Hers – Ken Wardrop

I’m very pleased to welcome Andy Capper back to the show, to discuss the journey he and VICE founder, Shane Smith, took into the dangerous heart of Liberia for the latest revelatory film in The VICE Guide to… series.

Showlinks
VBS
CNN Presents VBS.TV
Liberia
Lariam
William Bennett / Cut Hands
Jihad Milkshake

• The VICE Guide to Liberia – Shane Smith & Andy Capper
• The Vice Guide to Liberia
• DN EP 150: Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh
• Time Piece – Kat Mansoor
• Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh

The VICE Guide to Liberia (2010)
VBS travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nation’s eventual intervention, most of Liberia’s young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust. America’s one and only foray into African colonialism is keeping a very uneasy peace indeed.

Watch the full series on VBS.TV

• DN EP 155: The VICE Guide to Liberia – Shane Smith & Andy Capper
• The Vice Guide to Liberia
• Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley

I got to take a sneak peak at the film and while I couldn’t call the tense viewing experience a ‘pleasure’, it’s certainly a stand out example of documentary making in a dangerous and difficult environment.

We’ll be posting an interview with Andy Capper on DN soon, but in the meantime you should definitely check out the series over at VBS.

• The VICE Guide to Liberia – Shane Smith & Andy Capper
• DN EP 155: The VICE Guide to Liberia – Shane Smith & Andy Capper
• Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh
• Lynch ‘em all
• DN EP 150: Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh

I’m joined this week by director Ivo Gormley, whose documentary feature Us Now explores the ways in which Internet communities are able to share knowledge and form intelligent, collective decisions, and how this could translate to the governing of our lives and society as a whole.

Showlinks
Us Now
Ivo’s Twitter
The Us Now Global Screening Project
Think Public
CouchSurfer
Mumsnet
Royal Society of Arts
Linux
Ebbsfleet
mySociety
Playmarkers

• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• INSIDE THE CIRCLE Breakin’ Convention Screening
• DN SXSW10: His & Hers – Ken Wardrop
• DN Special: Joy Division – Grant Gee
• DN LFF09: Trimpin: The Sound of Invention – Peter Esmonde

Us Now (2008)
Us Now takes a look at how the internet could allow us to do away with politicians and run the government ourselves. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government for ever.

• DN EP 152: Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Tokyo Cowboys – Daneeta Loretta Saft & Patrick Jackson
• They Turned Our Desert Into Fire – Mark Brecke
• The Super Noble Brothers – Mark Escribano

• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• Tokyo Cowboys – Daneeta Loretta Saft & Patrick Jackson
• They Turned Our Desert Into Fire – Mark Brecke
• The Super Noble Brothers – Mark Escribano

The People of Brighton – Short Film from Sim Warren on Vimeo.

• Who’s who and who are you?
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Vote for The Retirement Village
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• Trusted Computing – Benjamin Stephan & Lutz Vogel

After their successful collaboration on the decaying seaside town documentary Blackpool: Las Vegas of the North, directors Andy Capper & Leo Leigh have joined forces again and hit the streets of Swansea to produce their second film for VBS’ Rule Britannia series, Swansea Love Story. They both (separately) join us on the show this week to discuss their DIY methods for capturing the true lives of young and often homeless heron addicts.

Showlinks
VBS
SpineTV
The Plague Interview
Sony HVR-Z5
Heavy Metal in Baghdad

• Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh
• INSIDE THE CIRCLE Breakin’ Convention Screening
• DN SXSW10: His & Hers – Ken Wardrop
• DN Special: Joy Division – Grant Gee
• DN LFF09: Trimpin: The Sound of Invention – Peter Esmonde

Swansea Love Story (2009)
Swansea Love Story, is the newest installment of VBS’ Rule Britannia series, and follows young heroin users in the city, their families and their daily routines.

• DN EP 150: Swansea Love Story – Andy Capper & Leo Leigh
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• Tokyo Cowboys – Daneeta Loretta Saft & Patrick Jackson
• They Turned Our Desert Into Fire – Mark Brecke

and so began, Drunk History.

• The Upper Hand – Lana Schwarcz
• The Suburbs – Lee Kern
• The Raftman’s Razor – Keith Bearden
• The Man Who Needed A Traffic Light – Mark Jenkin
• SotW: Countertransference

Oil City Confidential tracks Feelgood’s rise from the Thames Delta (or Canvey Island as we know it), where the members started their music careers in retro style jug bands, to the rock & roll sensation they became in the late 70’s. Fueled on by energetic guitarist Wilko Johnson and charismatic lead-singer Lee Brilleaux, the band reached their pinnacle in 1976 with chart-topping album Stupidity. However, after a rise always comes a fall and when Wilko left the band a year later, their popularity soon dwindled and Feelgood mania was over.

Temple’s film is anything but just another music biography though, it’s an unusually constructed documentary where archive fiction film footage, stunning photography of Canvey Island and beautifully composed interviews, all melt into an frantic, hypnotic commentary on all things Feelgood. Although a film about a band and its four members, there seems to be two stand-out stars of Oil City Confidential; Wilko Johnson and Canvey Island. Temple appears to use Wilko (described by the director as “one of the great English eccentrics”) as frenzied narrator for the film, placing him in cinematic locations around Canvey Islands, he works the camera almost like a trained actor. Whether peering down the lens in extreme close-up or strutting across the widescreen frame, there’s no doubt the wild-eyed guitarist loves to be the centre of attention and even though he’s in a good 75% of the film, you still wish there was more Wilko. His other star, Canvey Island, has a bit of a reputation for being a dump and having some weird inhabitants (even Wilko admits people born there, below sea-level, have a ‘Submarine’ consciousness), yet through cinematographer Stephen Organ’s resourceful vision, Oil City Confidential paints it as an attractive place to visit. Creating a vision of England’s own version of the Blues ridden Mississippi Delta, Organ’s camera dwells on caravan parks, seascapes and power stations to support this vision, this really is the coastal town, that they forgot to close down.

If I was being a little harsh (which I usually am), I would have to say Temple’s latest, at 104 minutes is slightly overweight and could do with losing a bit of its bulk. Another slight grumble was at times, the director also over-egged his use of archive fiction film footage and although funny, it often felt lazy and unneeded, especially with such beautiful cinematography. Despite these slightest of complaints, Oil City Confidential is still not only the most aesthetically pleasing doc I’ve seen since Zoo, but also one of the most exhilarating documentary’s I’ve seen all year. Made even more enjoyable by the fact my girlfriend thought I was taking her to see a documentary about the Oil trade!

• Filmstock 11: The Best of the Shorts
• Filmstock: This One Goes to 11
• Filmstock: Establishing a Film Festival
• Filmstock 9: Nicolas Roeg – Puffball
• Filmstock 9: Choke

I have no regrets as I went to The September Issue Masterclass with R J Cutler. He was fabulously entertaining and endlessly quotable on his films, and film-making:

It’s all about trust. You gain their trust by being yourself and by being trustworthy,

The story belongs to the subject and not to me. Ask yoursefl? Is this what they do, is this truthful?

Fly on the wall? I don’t want to fade into the background, as comfortable with being themselves with me as anyone else

As a film-maker You spend your life in places you’re not supposed to be.

Tv is a shark , it’s got to eat. And what it eats is eyeballs

and my favourite:

The biggest burden of being experienced is that you think there are things that you can or can’t do.

Bye bye Sheffield, it’s been absolutely glorious and I am shattered! I really couldn’t have asked for a better few days or more positive response to my projects, now the hard work really starts, watch this space.

The hard working Videoteque boys

The packed luggage store in Showroom 5 – serving 1800 delegates worth of bags

September Issue Masterclass with R J Cutler

Phillip Parker, researcher at large (for my project Orion and First Person Shooter) engrossed in The September Issue, with resident Doc/Fest photographer Pixelwitch on the prowl.

Team Quark – Anna Higgs, Gavin Humphries and researcher Phillip Parker

Last looks

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• So near, yet so far
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket

Showroom Cinema.

All Tomorrows parties edit masterclass with Nick Fenton. Truly inspiring.

All Tomorrows parties

New this year, The mighty Britdoc Bar

Stitch and pitch with craftivists.

I learnt how to knit again, first time in 20 years. I knitted and pitched, a moment of calm in a crazy festival

The a to z chatshow with AJ Schnack (all these beautiful things, about a boy) and Debbie Zimmerman (women make movies). Laid back chat on the Sheffield experience, from getting served at Mecure Point after 2 am to vod vs theatrical distribution.

The Britdoc pub quiz. We came in a valiant 3rd.

The hennaed hands of Nikki Parrott, Tigerlily Films

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• So near, yet so far
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket
• Fly on the wall? I don’t want to fade into the background

In the third installment of our daily Doc/Fest gems, Super 8 legend Norwood Cheek takes us through the Attack of the 50 Foot Reels filmmaking challenge.

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A Buzz Films Production

• Doc/Fest 09 – The International Pitch
• Doc/Fest 09 – Crossover Summit
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod03 – Daisy Asquith
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod02 – Emily James
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod01 – Lee Kern

As well as having 4 pitch meetings and taking part in 10×10. I still am yet to watch a single film. Today I saw:

Art docs at the chapel

Sandwich and lack of chair crisis at the delegates centre

Lisa and Dylan 10×10

All aboard the coach…

…to the gala dinner at city hall

Just a few of those 1000 shots of nordik vodka

The guilty pleasures cabaret

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• So near, yet so far
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket

Sheffield Doc/Fest day two sees six filmmakers pitch for a £10k DFID funded opportunity to create a 10 minute short for the Community Channel. Greg Sanderson chairs a panel of judges including Executive Producer Jane Stephenson.

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A Buzz Films Production

• Doc/Fest 09 – Crossover Summit
• Doc/Fest 09 – Attack of the 50 Foot Reels
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod03 – Daisy Asquith
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod02 – Emily James
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod01 – Lee Kern

The time has come once again when the documentary film community converges on the city of Sheffield for Doc/Fest. With director Frank Boyd as their guide, Buzz Films‘ Jan Bednarz & Simon Wan captured the goings on at the inaugural Crossover Summit event.

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A Buzz Films Production

• Doc/Fest 09 – The International Pitch
• Doc/Fest 09 – Attack of the 50 Foot Reels
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod03 – Daisy Asquith
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod02 – Emily James
• Doc/Fest 08 Vod01 – Lee Kern

MeetMarket this way

Directors of men who swim

Niki, c4int sales agent

Nina pope and Karen Guthrie, artists and directors, staying in Sheffield on a house boat.

The Sheffield Eye

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• So near, yet so far
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Fly on the wall? I don’t want to fade into the background

Excited that at some point today I will meet Phil Parker, the researcher on Orion. Up to now everything has been done by phone, email and googledoc.

First stop was to buy new headphones, in my rush for the train I forgot to the essential tool for showing my pitches.

The hubs

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• So near, yet so far
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket

I made it, here’s the obligiatory Sheffield steel welcome.

Who’s who at the hubs – awarding the TV sock prize to Axel Arno for best TV commissioner pitch.

Charlie Phillips, the beating heart of MeetMarket

Jason Daponte, commisioner for BBC Mobile platform and aspiring beekeeper

I am ashamed to admit we went to Rutland pub instead of going to the opening film for fish and chips and catch up drinks.

Then on to the opening party for shouted exchanges and way, way too much wine for an opening night. Interspersed with Skype calls on my almost dead iPhone, attempting to arrange a shoot in Memphis with Stewart Copeland for Orion. I’m exhausted and it’s only day one.

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• So near, yet so far
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket
• Fly on the wall? I don’t want to fade into the background

In my haste to finish my various edits for Friday’s dfg group 10 x 10 event – I will be showing a teaser and two scenes from my new film Orion: the man who would be king. I missed the 2.15 train to Sheffield. I had to console myself with a volcano-hot hot chocolate and the salubrious surroundings of Nottingham station platform cafe.

If this later train makes it for 4 I’ll be going to the incredibly useful Who’s Who event. In a nutshell financiers, buyers and commissioners stand up and say a couple of minutes about themselves and what they’re looking for. Last year the Brit commissioners were very much evident in their absence and there was an amusing game to be played matching the guide photo (usually taken about 10 years ago) and the current incarnation.

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• SheffDocFest minus one and counting
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket
• Fly on the wall? I don’t want to fade into the background

The edit!

The night before Sheffield Doc/Fest I am doing what most directors I know are also doing. Staying up, way past my bedtime to finish cutting a trailer on my new project, to take and show to willing ears and eyes. The aim is, as always to get projects off the ground, financed, commisioned, seen, distributed, you know the small stuff of film-making!

I’ll be keeping an adhoc photo diary of my festival experience here through the week, armed only with an iPhone and unsuitable shoes.

www.jeaniefinlay.com

• Who’s who and who are you?
• Stitch, pitch and the a to z of Britdoc
• So near, yet so far
• Meet, meet not quite meetmarket
• Fly on the wall? I don’t want to fade into the background

Sadly, we’ve reached the last of our London Film Festival ‘09 afternoon tea interviews, but it’s a great one to go out on. I very selfishly took up a nice chunk of time with directors Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas, who were at LFF for the premiere of their much anticipated documentary, American: The Bill Hicks Story – a look at the life of one of the world’s greatest comedians and thinkers, as told by the family and friends who truly knew him.

Showlinks
American: The Bill Hicks Story
Bill Hicks.com
Waltz with Bashir
The Kid Stays in the Picture
La Jetee
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects

• DN LFF09: We Live in Public – Ondi Timoner
• DN LFF09: Trimpin: The Sound of Invention – Peter Esmonde
• DN LFF09: The Whites Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights – Emmett Malloy
• DN LFF09: Still Bill – Damani Baker & Alex Vlack
• DN LFF09: Starsuckers – Chris Atkins

Shot over seven years, DIG! is a feature-length documentary about musicians Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, head of the Dandy Warhols, star- crossed friends and bitter rivals. DIG!’s director Ondi Timoner took away this year’s Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, with Palm Pictures hot on her heals to pick up the North American theatrical and DVD rights.

How did DIG! come in to being?
I graduated and had made two films about women in prison in Connecticut America. One of them The Nature of the Beast (1994), about Bonnie Jean Foreshaw, who was railroaded into jail, ended up on public television, which is pretty much where documentaries went back then, and it was clear to me that people weren’t really watching documentaries. I felt the problem with documentaries was that they were retrospective, and so I felt I wanted to make a film where the story was unfolding on camera. So I came out to LA to turn The Nature of the Beast into a TV movie to get Bonnie out of prison and to continue making documentaries, but make them like narrative film.

In turning The Nature of the Beast into a TV movie, I was suddenly involved with a major talent agency, which was trying to package it with Queen Latifah playing the lead, while trying to give me a title and get me out of the picture. It became clear that in the face of commercial success or commercial venture, creative integrity is definitely a fragile thing. And in that crux where art and industry meet, art can die – or it can be diluted very severely. So I began looking at where art and industry meet by looking at 10 bands on the verge of getting signed, when I heard the music of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and it blew me away. It turned out that every label was interested in them, so I went to San Francisco to meet them and that’s the first footage you see in the film.

Two weeks later they came down to play an industry showcase in LA and ended up in a fist fight pile-up by the fifth song, and I was just like, “OK, these guys are madmen and whatever’s going on with them and their music and their day- to-day life is more important than any kinda rules the industry has set up; they’re gonna play the game on their own terms if they’re gonna play it at all.” The day after the show Anton Newcombe said, “I’d like you to go and meet the Dandy Warhols; we’re gonna start a revolution together. We’re gonna revolutionise the music industry. Forget about those other bands you’re filming, we’re gonna show you how to do it in your movie.” And I was inclined to believe him.

I didn’t drop the other bands right away, but eventually my original idea, The Cut, was ripped off by MTV, which turned it into a game show. I’d brought it to them trying to look for financing and it ended up on TV in a mutated form, so I dropped the project and just picked up with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols, because I realised I could look at everything I wanted to explore about art and industry by looking at these two bands. So many other bands were looking at what the industry might want from them and then trying to be that, whereas both of these bands were just who they were. I thought the Dandys were more likely to get a ticket to ride through the industry than Brian Jonestown Massacre, so the relationship and contrast between them was perfect. So, seven years later we have 1500 hours of footage and quite a tale to tell.

Was it always the plan to follow the bands for seven years?
No, it was going to be a year originally, but you just can’t look at something like that over a year; things just don’t go that fast. For the first two years we filmed very consistently and a great deal of the footage is from 96-99, and then I slowed down a bit. I also realised that the revolution wasn’t going to happen the way that Anton or I thought it would. About six months into filming, the friendship between the bands started to go sour.

I still thought the Brian Jonestown Massacre could make it and the Dandy Warhols were making it, then about three years into it I realised that Anton was too rock’n’roll for rock and was going to self destruct at every opportunity of commercial success. Then I began to look at what success really is. Is it commercial success and would Anton be alive if he was successful? He’s put out 11 records, so he’s a very prolific and alive artist, but he just has to live on the edge. If he had a home and a family life he probably wouldn’t be making this music. Meanwhile, the Dandy Warhols were on this straight-up trajectory, having issues with their record label.

The Dandy Warhols’ favourite band is the Brian Jonestown Massacre – they just don’t want to be in the same room as them necessarily. They get a lot of inspiration from them. The Brian Jonestown Massacre became obsessed about the Dandy Warhols at one point, sort of stalking them, writing songs about them, becoming really jealous of their success and at the same time disappointed in them for ‘selling out’, because in Anton’s eyes you can’t really be commercially successful without having sold out: that seems to be his perspective.

Arguably, the Dandy Warhols haven’t sold out. They haven’t changed. They’ve just been the Dandy Warhols and the fact that people like them doesn’t mean they’ve sold out. The fact is they’ve just managed to navigated the industry enough to get their music out there.

Did you have problems with access?
Well, when you film people the camera’s like a mirror, so it’s not a good idea to hold it up when they’re not happy. There were phases like when Anton was into heroin: that wasn’t a good time to be filming. I would get a little bit in here and there, but I was not as inspired to film. It was too sad and hard for me as a filmmaker to not get involved, so I stayed away as much as possible and just checked in once in a while. But at no point did either band tell me not to film. That was an incredible thing about both bands; they opened their lives up to an experiment.

Did you let them see the footage?
Yeah. The Dandy Warhols have always been big fans of DIG!. The film is mostly about the Brian Jonestown Massacre, say 70:30, so it’s a fun look for the Dandy Warhols at all the antics and shenanigans over the years of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Anton never looked at the footage until the end and I think it’s hard for him to navigate, because it has his father, who committed suicide, in it, and then there are incidents where he says things in the movie that he remembers very differently from the reality on the tape. I think it’s a big shock to his system, so I’ve heard mixed reviews from him.

What was DIG! shot on?
We started shooting the film before there was DV on the consumer market, so we shot about 400hrs of Hi8 with a Sony VX3. Then my camera was stolen at a Dandy Warhols show, so I upgraded to DV with a TRV900, then the VX1000 and finally the PD150. I use the PD150 to this day and I worship the camera. A lot of the movie was shot on that, and a good 30 per cent was shot on spy cameras. I used spy cameras back before reality TV existed, so they were very expensive. Now you can get them for 50 bucks on the internet, but back then it cost me $2500 to buy one spy camera. I needed it because of the low-light, and I didn’t want to use lights because there’s nothing like that to blow a scene – especially when people are a little bit inebriated or in a club at night. So spy cams worked very well for that. We used spy cams and Super-8 primarily for the Brian Jonestown Massacre because they have that gritty, organic feeling that Super-8 brings across. Then once we got some resources together we shot the 16mm film of the Dandy Warhols and then there’s some 35mm in there too from their more hi-end videos, so it’s a real mixed bag.

What did you use for post?
Avid! I’m an Avid editor, and Angela Strachan, who really believed in both bands and the project, contributed a crucial 20-30 grand in the form of an Avid about three years ago, so the Avid’s been like my roommate since then. People have had to try and pull me out of that room with me just going through revelations editing DIG!. In August all the drives crashed and we lost half the media. We finished the film on 3 October, but there was actually a five hour cut in July, so within 3-4 months we’d slimmed the film down from five hours to 1hour 45mins, but stay tuned for the DVD – its gonna be great. As Joel Gion from Brian Jonestown Massacre said, there’s the potential to make three movies that tell the exact same story using different footage. I couldn’t stop filming because the relationship was so extraordinary and the story just kept unfolding. It’s like the project became bigger than me; I just had to hold on to the seat of my pants and keep going.

How hard was it to cut down such a huge volume of footage?
Really hard. It was practically impossible to make it happen. Basically I had to spend many, many weeks throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck. It was really painful; it’s like killing your babies or something. Someone said, “a work of art is finished not when there’s nothing to add but when there’s nothing left to take away.” I had to throw away stuff as good or better than was on the screen just to stick with the story. There are some antics and choice, choice things, but I had to just let it go.

Did you seek guidance when editing?
Yeah, Vasco Lucas Nunes our co- producer spent a lot of time in the edit bay with me. He sat with me at length and really worked with me. Then at the very end I showed Doug Pray (director/editor of Hype and Scratch) a cut when it was already down to two hours 12mins, and he helped me take it down to 1 hour 45mins, just by sitting with me for a couple of sessions and making some comments. He has an editorial adviser credit on the film; he was very helpful.

I had to finish the film because I was due to give birth that week, so I actually didn’t have the feeling that it was done, because I didn’t have that satisfactory, “OK, that’s it”. We output it and then did a polish before Sundance and cut another seven minutes out of it, and now we have our distribution deal I want to do another polish, not to cut time but just to tweak a few things I saw while at the festival. I don’t think it’s ever done for filmmakers; we’re way more critical of our work than other people.

How did you finance the project?
I didn’t raise a budget, I funded DIG! by working as a director. I produced, directed and edited a show for VH1 called Sound Affects; I did a bunch of EPKs and was nominated for a Grammy in 1998 for a piece I did about fastball. Then I did documentaries about Paul Westerberg and music videos for people such as Lucinda Williams. Very low budget music videos, but it was my bread and butter and I would just take my money and make DIG!. I looked for money at different times, but it was such a waste of time because everybody looked at the amount of footage and said, “Well, lots of luck.” Nobody could see the light at the end of the tunnel and I don’t blame them; it was a hard project to complete.

The budget was less than a million, but more than $500,000, just because it was shot over so long and there were so many journeys in it. I toured Europe with the Dandy Warhols three times, went to Japan with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and did national tours with both bands, and that costs. Plus a lot of tape, film and transfer costs, and I’ve had to upgrade the Avid and get more drive space for the film. And there’s people I brought on at different points; I brought my brother on to edit for a little while last year, and another editor, Oscar Daniels.

I kept trying to hire editors to get the perspective and just direct, but it never worked out; I just ended up having to edit it to the end. It was such a massive project that it was hard for anybody to wrap their arms around it. I was the only one with it the whole time, and had all the pieces of the puzzle in my head. I would literally lie in bed and de-reconstruct the scenes. So ultimately it came down to me being tortured till three in the morning. I would wake up with these epiphanies. One of the final epiphanies was Courtney Taylor doing the narration. I wrote it and then he and I ad-libbed and he went away and did some extra stuff which was great. It just ties the whole thing together having him tell the story. Even when the bands go their separate ways and you don’t see the bands together for the last five years of the film you’re hearing about it from Courtney.

And he did know about it and they did follow each other’s stories, even though they don’t share the same space. In the last conversation I had with him, Courtney said “My life wouldn’t be the same if Anton didn’t exist. I would have had a completely different life.” So it’s this star-crossed friendship between the two of them. They are each other’s barometer of success.

Dandy Warhols defined commercial success for the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the ability to be a good band and successful, which the Brian Jonestown Massacre couldn’t seem to do, but they defined creative integrity, the prolific nature of songwriting and the ability to ride that edge. As Peter Holmstrom said, “Courtney was either unable or unwilling to ride that edge that Anton seems to ride.” It’s a very uncomfortable place to live, but it’s an amazing place to write music from.

So what next?
I have two documentaries that I’ve been shooting. One I’m shooting in Portugal with Vasco Lucas Nunes. We’re documenting a form of bullfighting that he used to perform, it’s a very rustic form of bullfighting that’s done in Oria on the border between Portugal and Spain. It’s a very beautiful thing, where they don’t actually kill the bull. The second is a film I’ve been doing about a dam in Maui, West Africa that’s threatening one of the oldest living civilizations.

I also have a feature-length script called Fortunate Sun that people are looking at, which I wrote a while ago, about a man that spent his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit here in America. He’s basically like a rock star of the prison system. I’m really interested in individuals fighting circumstances they can’t control. Then there’s another film I would love to make about my father, but I only have the story outline not the script. I’m basically looking to do a feature next. I’ll keep doing documentaries forever, but my next move would be a feature. I also wanna keep doing music videos and a few commercials here and there, because they’re such a shot in the arm for a filmmaker who does something over such a long period of time. I’m very excited cause I have a lot of potential opportunities right now.

• Overnight
• DN LFF09: We Live in Public – Ondi Timoner
• We Dreamed America – Alex Walker
• Us Now – Ivo Gormley
• Tokyo Cowboys – Daneeta Loretta Saft & Patrick Jackson

Double Sundance Grand Jury prize winner Ondi Timoner, must have thought she was living the documentary filmmaker’s dream, when in 1999 she was asked to document a social experiment/art project involving 100 artists living in an underground bunker in New York for a month. However, the project soon turned into a nightmare as the life of its instigator (internet pioneer and main focus of We Live in Public), Josh Harris, started to spiral out of control.

After filming the whole experiment for a month and editing for two and a half months, director Timoner returned from pitching her project Dig! at Sundance to find the Avid system gone and the master tapes missing. In her absence, Harris had gone through the rough cut, decided he didn’t like how it made him look and took possession of everything, leaving Timoner unpaid and without a film. Ten years later the film has evolved from a story about this one experiment (and the possible birth of reality TV), to the incredible tale of the rise and fall of Josh Harris.

At an early age, Harris began predicting a future dominated by the internet and as this prediction came to fruition, he was at the head of the queue to cash in, becoming one of the key dot-com kings. After making millions with his share in Pseudo.com, a website for live audio and video streaming, which Harris later described as an art project, he went on to push the boundaries of art/society with his Quiet project, where he gathered together a community of 100 artists and scenesters to live for one month in a fabricated bunker, complete with a thorough, ‘nowhere-to-hide’ security system, under New York. Featuring a church and a firing range, the residents of Quiet were provided with everything they could need for free (including food, drink and drugs). The only thing that wasn’t free, was the footage that was shot, Harris owned that. After the project descended into chaos and the NYPD brought the experiment to an end (they believed it to be a cult) on January 1st 2000, Harris went on to his next project, We Live in Public. Whilst conducting the Quiet mission, the internet pioneer formed a strong relationship with Tanya Corrin, an ex-presenter on Cherrybomb, one of his video streaming channels and asked her to participate in his next stunt. Harris and Corrin would live out their relationship in a loft apartment fitted with 24 hour surveillance, live in front of the internet viewing public. Sharing all their intimate, personal moments, including a camera in the toilet, the couple would share their new life with anyone who wanted to see it. Obviously, this relationship didn’t last (in fact Harris now refers to Corrin as a fake girlfriend), another project fell apart and a stock market crash meant the millionaire lost it all. What happened to Harris after this point is only fractionally covered towards the end of the film, but it appears he tried to disappear from public view. Although, I doubt this is the last we’ll see of Josh Harris.

Timoner’s film is expertly crafted from vast quantities of footage and is a joyous, informative watch. The director was in a strong position when brought into record the Quiet project, as she not only became a documenter, but also a participant. Speaking after the film, Timoner confirmed this is the kind of filmmaker she is, by admitting “I’ll pick my subject up if they fall over, but I’ll film them first“. The fimmaker seems very close to her project and speaks very personally, honestly and frankly about it, especially when quizzed on the subject of Tanya Corrin. As a friend of Harris’ ex-girlfriend, Timoner still seems very unhappy with his references to her as a ‘fake’ girlfriend.

This was the second film that focused somewhat on reality TV and fame that I’d seen at this year’s LFF (in fact I saw them only hours apart). Where Chris Atkins’ Starsucker was a light, somewhat uninformative doc, We Live in Public feels like a very personal, informational, dense story. In fact, when the credits roll, you almost find it hard to believe you’d never heard of Josh Harris before and like the titles at the start of the film declared:

This is the story of ’The greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of’.

The only misstep in We Live in Public was the horrible inclusion of Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity at the end of the film – A far too obvious choice and far too awful song to end such a brilliant film.

• DN LFF09: Starsuckers – Chris Atkins
• DN LFF09: 45365 – Bill and Turner Ross
• DN LFF09: Up in the Air – Jason Reitman
• DN LFF09: Trimpin: The Sound of Invention – Peter Esmonde
• DN LFF09: The Whites Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights – Emmett Malloy

Chris Atkins made his name with his Blair busting documentary Taking Liberties and now with his new doc he takes a look at fame, celebrity and the media. Although the director’s latest film does provide entertainment and plenty of laughs, it does seem as if the ‘facts’ it’s revealing are things the majority of it’s audience will already know:

• Kids watch too much TV – Hardly fresh and revolutionary information.
• Today’s Society is obsessed with fame – anyone who watches TV, reads newspapers or listens to the radio will already be far too aware of this.
• The media lies – Ok, so not everyone will know not to believe everything the read, see or hear, but you’d like to assume people have the smarts to question a story’s validity.

Visually this feature shows some nice touches of flair, using graphics and a set of floating magician’s hands to present information to its viewers. Atkins attempts to divulge the secrets behind the curtain of media and fame, like a magician exposing the methods of their tricks. It’s a nice metaphor and the graphics are particularly pleasant, however it does seem a little bit of a ‘party-trick’ to link segments together and make the information seem all the more revealing.

The footage in the film’s 100-minute duration does seem slightly repetitive and I began to wonder if Atkins had used a lot of the material just to fill the visual space under the voice over. At times the voice over does feel like the dominant element of this piece, which is obviously a bit of a let down when watching it on a big screen as a cinematic experience.

There are some fascinating characters in this documentary but unfortunately, just like the Ross Brothers’ film 45365, they didn’t really get enough time to settle on our screen and just as we start to become interested, they disappear.

In the end there simply wasn’t enough of a hook to Atkins’ examination of fame to keep me mesmerized for its entirety and instead I found myself drifting in and out of the film. Don’t get me wrong, at its core it’s a very entertaining and humorous film, it just felt a little lightweight (a bit like this post!), considering it’s selling itself as a ‘revelatory’ documentary.

• DN LFF09: We Live in Public – Ondi Timoner
• DN LFF09: 45365 – Bill and Turner Ross
• DN LFF09: Up in the Air – Jason Reitman
• DN LFF09: Trimpin: The Sound of Invention – Peter Esmonde
• DN LFF09: The Whites Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights – Emmett Malloy