It’s A Hard Doc Life

own isolation in a New York he thrives on and despises, the result is a cinematic trip both hilarious and tragic, witty and profound. (One audience member sitting next to me uttered an audible "wow" at multiple times during the screening). The film cleary resonated with the full house audience, eliciting extended applause and cheers. Bennett, a one man crew shooting on digital video in black and white (then bumped up to 35mm) took three years to complete the film and didn't realize how much "it speaks to people" until he had his first rough-cut screening. "It does seem to have some mystical gravitational attraction for people. If given an opportunity, it will find an audience. I think it can live in a small theater for a long time."

While Miller is a 32 year-old NYU film grad accepting business cards, applause and looking towards a future career, Susan Koch and her husband-producer, Christopher Koch, are an experienced team, having received five Emmy Awards with the notable 1996 "Blacklist: Hollywood on Trial" on their resume. "City at Peace" is a dramatic, emotional portrait of Washington D.C. youths of all races and classes, getting together to perform a theater project. Although the Kochs have worked steadily in broadcast television and have name recognition in the industry, they still find it a daunting task to make an independent feature documentary. "Even though we've won 5 Emmys, we've won a Peabody, it doesn't matter. That's what I've found. In this market, it doesn't matter." The Kochs worked in spurts over a year, getting bits of cash at a time, working on paid gigs in-between, and in so doing so, remained independent, but she explains, despite "loving having your own control, it's a real struggle." Not used to the marketing side of the indie world (the LAIFF is Koch's first film festival), she laments the documentarian's struggle, "Documentaries aren't considered to be as viable." But Koch, like Miller, is committed to bringing her film to the theatrical audience that she knows exists for her film. "I'm determined to get this out," she said. "It may be an unconventional route, and I'm realistic to know that this is not the kind of film that becomes a theatrical blockbuster, but I think it will reach some people, and people have seen it and they have been very moved by it."

"On one hand, you want to do what you want, on the other hand, you have to know what the market wants," says Koch "so there's that balance you have to strike." Arriving at that balance is no easy task. Koch evokes the "Hoop Dreams" phenomenon, a film that showed the opportunites for documentaries theatrically, but also raised the financial stakes with distributors expecting similarly astounding receipts. For both the novice Miller and the experienced Koch, navigating the theatrical world will be a challenge. Their road is an especially difficult one, always much harder than the narrative feature, but as "Speed" Levitch said, "let's roll!" -- and these documentarians will be ready.