20 FEET FROM STARDOM director Morgan Neville will be part of free DOC NYC panel discussion about the art of documentary filmmaking
DOC NYC
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Wednesday, November 13, free, 5:00
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.docnyc.net
www.ifccenter.com
The annual DOC NYC festival, which celebrates documentary storytelling with a week of screenings at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre, kicks off on November 13 at 5:00 with the free panel discussion “Meet the DOC NYC Short List.” The Short List category consists of ten recently released nonfiction films that festival organizers Raphaela Neihausen, Thom Powers, John Vanco, and Harris Dew believe are the ones to watch come awards season. Moderated by Powers, the talk will feature eight of the directors whose work has been selected for the Short List: Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing), Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Blackfish), Lucy Walker (The Crash Reel), Richard Rowley (Dirty Wars), Alan Berliner (First Cousin Once Removed), Dawn Porter (Gideon’s Army), and Roger Ross Williams (God Loves Uganda). Free tickets will be available at the box office thirty minutes before the event, first come, first served, after Insider Pass holders have entered. The festival runs November 14-21, with Errol Morris’s The Unknown Known, about Donald Rumsfeld, the opening night selection; John Maloof and Charlie Siskel’s Finding Vivian Maier the centerpiece film; and Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky the closing night pick. The stated mission of DOC NYC is to “curate, cross-fertilize, cross generations, cultivate new audiences, expand distribution, create social space, and make the most of NYC,” which it has been doing now for nine years.
In 1976 France, it’s love at first sight when eight-year-old Boule (Charles Crombez) sets his eyes on cocker spaniel Bill (voiced by Manu Payet) in Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier’s utterly delightful Boule & Bill, based on Jean Roba and Maurice Rosy’s popular comic strip. While Boule’s mother (Marina Foïs), a piano teacher, wants to adopt the dog for her son, his father (Franck Dubosc) is firmly against it. He’s not exactly in favor of adding a lost tortoise, Caroline (voiced by Sara Giraudeau), to the family either. Soon Bill and Caroline are on their way home with the clan, but Boule’s father, a stick-in-the-mud appliance designer, immediately begins planning how to get rid of the dog, even moving the family to an oddball apartment complex in the middle of nowhere. Once there, Bill continues wreaking havoc, including perpetually annoying the depressive neighbor (Nicolas Vaude) one floor below. Meanwhile, Caroline falls madly in love with Bill. But when Boule and Bill go too far, his parents begin considering whether they have to give the dog away. From the opening scene, it’s apparent that Boule & Bill is no mere silly kiddie movie, as Mother, Father, and Son are in their little red car, singing a song about male genitalia. Charlot and Franck, who previously collaborated on Imogène McCarthery, load the charming tale with laugh-out-loud flourishes, from the mother’s encounters with the downstairs depressive to Bill’s turning himself into a stuffed animal in an emergency. A series of brief dream sequences, along with several plot twists, feel forced and unnecessary, but Charlot and Franck always manage to turn things around and get back on track. And they really have a ball with Bill’s deepest dog thoughts, reminiscent of Jean Shepherd’s narration in A Christmas Story. Running at the Quad November 8-14, Boule & Bill is a colorful, fun adventure that is more than just your average boy meets dog movie. 
“There are some stories which we are not only an audience to, but may become their participants,” Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger says at the beginning of Matej Mináč and Patrik Pašš’s poignant, powerful documentary Nicky’s Family. Schlesinger is one of hundreds of Czech and Slovak men and women who, as children, were saved from the Nazis by unassuming Englishman Nicholas Winton on the eve of World War II. Winton’s story remained virtually unknown for sixty years, until his wife found a suitcase in the attic filled with documentation detailing her husband’s quiet heroism. Over the last fifteen years, the “British Schindler” has been celebrated around the world, being knighted by the queen, meeting many of the people he helped save, and inspiring children who are not directly part of “Nicky’s Family” to help others in what is called the “Winton virus of good.” It’s an unforgettable story centered around a man who didn’t set out to be a hero and still appears to be somewhat uncomfortable with all the accolades, which include being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The film interviews such members of Nicky’s Family as Alice Masters, Ben Abeles, Liesl Silverstone, Dr. Lenata Laxova, Tom Berman, and Tom Schrecker, who have made significant contributions to society that might have never happened had they not been rescued as children by Winton. Director-producer-cowriter Mináč and producer-cowriter-editor Pašš include unnecessary staged re-creations of some of the events of 1938 that actually detract from the central narrative, and the documentary overplays the emotional card in its final scenes, but it tells a story that needs to be told, of a remarkable man who, even at age 104, continues to be an inspiration and proves that one person can indeed make a difference. Nicky’s Family is screening on three successive Sundays, November 10, 17, and 24, at Symphony Space as part of the Thalia Docs series.
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has been traveling the world with his large-format viewfinder camera, taking remarkable photographs of environmental landscapes undergoing industrial change. For Manufactured Landscapes, cinematographer Peter Mettler and director Jennifer Baichwal joined Burtynsky on his journey as he documented ships being broken down in Chittagong, Bangladesh; the controversial development of the Three Gorges Dam Project in China, which displaced more than a million people; the uniformity at a factory in Cankun that makes irons and the Deda Chicken Processing Plant in Dehui City; as well as various mines and quarries. Burtynsky’s photos, which were on view at the Brooklyn Museum in late 2005 and often can be seen in New York City galleries (two shows just closed last week), are filled with gorgeous colors and a horrible sadness at the lack of humanity they portray. As in the exhibit, the audience is not hit over the head with facts and figures and environmental rhetoric; instead, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, although Burtynsky does give some limited narration. Baichwal lets the camera linger on its subject, as in the remarkable opening shot, a long, slow pan across a seemingly endless factory. She is also able to get inside the photographs, making them appear to be three-dimensional as Mettler slowly pulls away. Manufactured Landscapes is screening November 12 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Peter Mettler: Pictures of Light,” a midcareer retrospective of the innovative Canadian artist that also features eight shorts and full-length documentaries he directed, including Picture of Light, The End of Time, Plastikman, Petropolis, and Gambling, Gods, and LSD, with Mettler on hand to talk about his work at most shows. In addition, Mettler will participate in the free White Light Festival panel discussion “It’s a Matter of Time” on November 9 at 4:30 with Sylvia Boorstein, Daniel Casasanto, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Alan Lightman and a performance of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” by Alan Pierson and Chris Thompson, moderated by John Schaefer.
Woody Allen’s best film in years, Blue Jasmine is a modern-day Streetcar Named Desire filtered through the Bernie Madoff scandal. Cate Blanchett gives a marvelously nuanced and deeply textured performance as Jasmine French, an elegant socialite whose immensely wealthy husband, Hal (a wonderfully smarmy Alec Baldwin), amassed his fortune the new-fashioned way: by lying and cheating—only he was the rare financier who got caught and ended up in jail. Now broke and distraught, Jasmine moves in with her sister, Ginger (the delightful Sally Hawkins), a single mother with two kids living in a cramped apartment in San Francisco. Ginger and her ex-husband, Augie (an excellent Andrew Dice Clay), lost all their money by investing with Hal, and she is now trying to rebuild her life, working as a cashier and dating the gruff but dedicated Chili (a strong Bobby Cannavale). Not used to taking care of herself, Jasmine seems lost in a world that no longer treats her like a princess; she takes a job working for a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and attends a computer class, but she is determined to regain her previous status. And that chance comes when she meets Dwight (a gentle Peter Sarsgaard), a man with grand plans who just might be the one to lead her back to the level to which she is accustomed.
Todd Haynes’s dramatization of the musical life of Bob Dylan is ambitious, innovative, and, ultimately, overblown and disappointing. Working with Dylan’s permission (though not artistic input), Haynes crafts a nonlinear tale in which six actors play different parts of Dylan’s psyche as the Great White Wonder develops from a humble folksinger to an internationally renowned and revered figure. Dylan is seen as an eleven-year-old black traveling hobo who goes by the name Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin); Jack (Christian Bale), a Greenwich Village protest singer who later becomes a pastor; Robbie (Heath Ledger), an actor who has portrayed a Dylan entity and is having marital problems with his wife, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), a staunch defender of poetry and revolution; an old Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), who has settled down peacefully in the small town of Riddle; and Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), who is attacked by her audience when she goes electric. Each story line is shot in a different style; for example, Jude’s is influenced by Fellini and the Dylan documentary Eat This Document!, Robbie’s by Godard, and Billy’s by Peckinpah. Excerpts from Dylan’s own version of his songs are interwoven with interpretations by Tom Verlaine, Yo La Tengo, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Stephen Malkmus, the Hold Steady, Sonic Youth (who do a killer version of the unreleased Basement Tapes–era title track over the closing credits), and many more, with cameos by Kris Kristofferson (as the opening narrator), Richie Havens, Julianne Moore, Kim Gordon, Paul Van Dyck, Michelle Williams, and David Cross (looking ridiculous as Allen Ginsberg). The most successful section by far is Blanchett’s; she takes over the role with relish, and cinematographer Edward Lachman and production designer Judy Becker nail the feel of the mid-’60s energy surrounding Dylan. But the rest of the film is all over the place, a great concept that bit off more than it could chew. I’m Not There is screening November 8 at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big!” series, with Lachman present to talk about the making of the film.