New York International Documentary Festival Announces Innaugural Lineup

by indieWIRE (April 28, 1998)

New York International Documentary Festival Announces Innaugural Lineup

by Eugene Hernandez

Thirteen films have been selected to screen at "docfest", the first New York International Documentary Festival, running May 27 - 31 in Manhattan. Documentary filmmaker Gary Pollard founded the event and has spent the past two years putting it together as the first project of a new organization called The New York Documentary Center.

In a conversation with indieWIRE yesterday, Pollard said that docfest emerged as an answer to New York's defunct Global Village Documentary Festival which ran for over 15 years at Manhattan's Public Theater -- it ended in 1991. On board as founding sponsors for docfest are The Atlantic Monthly, FILMMAKER Magazine, Independent Film Channel, The New York Times, Sharff Weisberg Inc., and Zuma Digital. Pollard explained that "once the first few sponsors came on board it did not take a big pitch," although, likening the creation of a film festival to the making of a documentary film, he laughed, "The biggest obstacle was getting over my fear of asking for money."

David Douglas' IMAX film "FIRES OF KUWAIT" opens the festival at Sony's Lincoln Square on May 27. The film chronicles the battle by hundreds of firefighters to contain the oil well fires left in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. "Morley Safer's Vietnam: A Personal Report" and "The Anderson Platoon" kick off the festival's run at the Director's Guild Theater on 57th Street, the main venue for the event. The two screenings are CBS News Special Reports documenting the Vietnam War -- they originally aired in 1967 and are presented by noted journalist Morley Safer. On closing night the festival offers the U.S. Premiere of Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir's "The Brandon Teena Story", an exploration of the 1993 Nebraska murder case of Brandon Teena, a 20-year old who was raped and murdered after it was discovered that she was actually Teena Brandon, a 20-year-old woman living as a man.

Also on tap are a host of premiere screenings: Bennett Miller's LAIFF premiere, "The Cruise" (New York Premiere) which shadows the philosophical and poetic Timothy "Speed" Levitch as he gives tours of Manhattan; Mark Daniels' "Melvin Van Peebles Classified X" (New York Premiere), an exploration of the history of African-Americans in Hollywood film, and "The Running Man" (U.S. Premiere), a look at the life of filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles; "The Saltmen of Tibet" (New York Premiere) from German filmmaker Ulrike Kroch; Paul Wilmhurst's "Mob Law" (U.S. Premiere) a look at a Las Vegas mob lawyer; "Midnight in Cuba" (U.S. Premiere) , a portrait of four young Cubans by Dimitri Falk; Maggie Hadleigh'-West's "War Zone" (U.S. Premiere) about "street-level Sexual harassment"; and Vicky Funari's documentary of a Mexican woman, "Paulina" (New York Premiere), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Jean Rouch's 1961 documentary "Chronicle of a Summer" will screen as the festival's centerpiece event, while Li Hong's "Out of Phoenix Bridge", Dan Katzir's "Out for Love...Be Back Shortly", and Elizabeth Schub's "Cuba 15" round out the docfest lineup. Additionally, the festival will host two weekend seminars: "Documentary Making in the Digital World," an exploration of new digital technologies for low-budget documentary production, and "Half a Century of Documentary: Dialogues with Jean Rouche and other docfest Directors. The 81-year-old filmmaker will join other makers in a discussion about non-fiction filmmaking.

Festival founder Gary Pollard explained that docfest is the first initiative for The New York Documentary Center, whose mission is "to get the public more excited about documentaries (and) to expand the audience and grow the demand." Additionally, Pollard hopes to help documentary makers exhibit work through a relationship with Manhattan's Quad theater, develop an annual retreat for doc filmmakers on Block Island, inspire grass-roots doc festivals in other cities and create a year-round documentary venue in New York City.

[For more information on docfest, call 212/668-1100, send email to docfest@aol.com, or visit the festival website at: www.docfest.org.]

posted on April 28, 1998
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