This week, we take a look back at SXSW and a look forward at New Directors/New Films ’10 and the Full Frame Film Festival.
Filmmakers, interactive folks, musicians and more converged on the 2010 South by Southwest Festival this past weekend. POV’s interactive director, Theresa Riley, attended the film and interactive portions of the festival, and will be posting about it later today. Blogs All these Wonderful Things and Still in Motion cover the documentary portion of the festival and interviews with many of the filmmakers, including POV alum Monteith McCollum (Hybrid, POV 2002) — whose Notes on Milk premieres with Food, Inc. next month — are up at indieWire.
From March 24 to April 4, New Directors/New Films ’10 will be presenting a new line up of fresh faces in New York City. The festival is a co-presentation of the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Society of Lincoln Center, and among this year’s films are a number of documentaries, including three docs forthcoming on POV: Lixin Fan‘s Last Train Home, which follows one couple in China as they travel home to see their daughter; Robin Hessman‘s My Perestroika, an exploration of a group of Russians who grew up during the collapse of the Soviet Union; and Laura Poitras‘ The Oath, which tells the stories of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a Guantánamo prisoner charged with war crimes. The Oath airs on POV on September 21, 2010. My Perestroika and Last Train Home will premiere on POV in 2011.
Full Frame just unveiled the lineup for its April 8-11 festival. In addition to new films from Rory Kennedy (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) and Alex Gibney (Casino Jack and the United States of Money), the festival also features POV filmmakers past, present and future. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, of The Boys of Baraka (POV 2006), bring their new film, 12th and Delaware; Yung Chang of Up the Yangtze (POV 2009) has a short film there called Ali Shan; and Marshall Curry, whose Academy Award-nominated Street Fight was on POV in 2001, brings his Racing Dreams to Durham. Two films from the POV archives, The Uprising of ’34 by Judith Helfand and George Stoney, and The Sixth Section by Alex Rivera, will also be shown at Full Frame. And on top of all that, a number of films that will be on POV in 2010 and 2011 are stopping by Durham as they make their way through the festival circuit. The aforementioned Last Train Home, My Perestroika, and The Oath will all screen at Full Frame. Promised Land by Yoruba Richen (July 6 on POV), In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee by Deann Borshay Liem (September 14 on POV), The Edge of Dreaming by Amy Hardie (August 24 on POV), and the Academy Award-nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith (2010 fall special on POV ) will all screen.