DOC NYC
I was happy with the many positive reactions on Russian director Alina Rudnitskay, who was the one I praised in the post yesterday. Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjær told me that Rudnitskaya’s fine ”School of Seduction” was to be screened at DOC NYC, the festival in New York that runs November 6-15 (and at DocPoint in Helsinki January 2020). My knowledge of the New York festival is almost zero so I asked Dyekjær, who recommended it, and made me check the website:
Dedicated to D.A. Pennebaker, the festival ”is curated” in 21 (!) strands, it’s the 10th edition, and it has new strands Masters,
• Investigations, Green Screens,
• Food for Thought, plus
• returning sections include high-profile Special Events; competitions Viewfinders and Metropolis; national and global takes in American Perspectives and International Perspectives; and thematic sections Portraits (profiling singular individuals), Modern Family(on unconventional families), New World Order (on today’s most urgent issues), In the System (inside looks at institutions), Fight the Power (on activism), Art & Design (on art, photography and design), Behind the Scenes (on filmmaking), and Sonic Cinema (on music). Short-form content (114 films in total) is represented by the festival’s Shorts Competition and DOC NYC U (showcasing student work), selected by Programmer Opal H. Bennett.
I digged into the long list of films to be shown and found important films like ”Advocate”, ”Mother”, ”Honeyland”, all reviewed on this site, ”The Cave” that I am to see very soon, ”Diego Maradona” that I missed when it was in cinema in Copenhagen, embarassing, ”The Edge of Democracy”, ”For Sama”, both reviewed, as are ”The Wind. A Documentary Thriller” and ”Cold Case Hammarskjöld”… and many many others that I would love to see.
Number one on my list, however, is Michael Apted’s ”63 UP”, a milestone in the history of documentary. The participants in this documentary series were 7 years old, when Apted started filming them which he has done every 7 year. It’s amazingly wonderful, I have seen them all, I have talked to Apted about them, when my wife and I met him and his wife in Moscow and in Venice Beach, I would love to see the whole series again…
Apted is given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival. Of course!
