The Sundance Film Festival named its jurors for the 2010 edition. The documentary jurors are as follows:
US Documentary Competition:
Greg Barker is an award-winning filmmaker who has worked in more than 50 countries across six continents. His most recent film, Sergio, won the Documentary Editing Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, is short-listed for the 2010 Academy Awards and screens on HBO this spring.
Dayna Goldfine--For more than 20 years, Emmy Award-winning director/producer Dayna Goldfine has, together with her partner, Dan Geller, created critically acclaimed multi-character documentary narratives that weave individual personal stories into a larger portrait of the human experience. The National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review recognized their film Ballets Russes, which screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, as one of the top five documentaries that year.
Nancy Miller joined Wired as a senior editor in 2006 and currently oversees much of the magazine's entertainment coverage. Prior to Wired, she was a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly and a freelance producer and on-air correspondent for KCRW in Los Angeles.
Morgan Spurlock's first film, Super Size Me, premiered at the 2004 Festival, won the Directing Award and went on to receive the Writers Guild of America Documentary Screenplay Award and earn an Academy Award nomination. Spurlock has directed, produced and distributed multiple film and TV projects, including the critically acclaimed FX television series 30 Days and the films Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? (Sundance Film Festival 2008), Confessions of a Superhero, Czech Dream, Chalk, The Future of Food, What Would Jesus Bu?, and the soon-to-be-released Freakonomics.
Ondi Timoner is the only filmmaker to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival twice, first for DIG! in 2004 and again last year for We Live in Public. Both films are now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Timoner has also directed the award-winning sociopolitical feature films The Nature of the Beast (1994) and Join Us (2007) and a short film, Recycle, which premiered at Sundance in 2005, continuing on to the Cannes Film Festival and schools worldwide.
World Cinema Documentary Competition:
Jennifer Baichwal has been directing and producing documentaries for 15 years. Her last feature, Manufactured Landscapes, about the work of artist Edward Burtynsky, was released in 12 countries and screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Act of God, a feature documentary about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning, opened Hot Docs in May 2009 and is currently in release through Mongrel Media in Canada and Zeitgeist Films in the United States.
Jeffrey Brown is a senior correspondent for PBS's NewsHour, responsible for conducting studio discussions and reporting from the field with an emphasis on culture, arts and the media. As a correspondent for the NewsHour since 1998, he has profiled and interviewed dozens of leading American and international writers, musicians and other artistic figures. As senior producer for national affairs for more than a decade, he has helped shaped coverage of the economy, social policy, culture, and the arts.
Asako Fujioka is the director of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and works out of its Tokyo office. She has been associated with the Festival since 1993 after earlier work in film distribution. From 1995 to 2003, she coordinated the New Asian Currents program, a collection of films and videos by emerging documentarians from all over the Orient. She has also been a member of the selection committee for the Pusan International Film Festival's Asian Network of Documentary fund (AND) since 2006.
Shorts Competition:
Sterlin Harjo, a native of Holdenville, Oklahoma, belongs to the Seminole and Creek nations. His first film, Four Sheets to the Wind, was developed at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab and screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where Tamara Podemski won a Special Jury Prize for her outstanding performance. His second film, Barking Water, screened at Sundance last year and was the only American film to play in the Venice Days section of the 2009 Venice Film Festival.
Brent Hoff is the editor and cofounder of Wholphin DVD, where he films drunk bees, crying competitions and illegal transborder volleyball matches. Before that he authored Mapping Epidemics, a book on pandemic disease transmission; created television programs at The Daily Show, VH1, and Nickelodeon; and wrote articles about squid. His first feature script on the last days of Ol' Dirty Bastard (Russell Tyrone Jones) is currently in production...he hopes.
Christine Vachon is an American movie producer who, along with partner Pamela Koffler, runs New York City-based indie film icon Killer Films. Vachon produced Todd Haynes's controversial first feature, Poison, which won the Grand Jury prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival and is screening this year as part of the Sundance Collection. Since then, she has produced some of the most acclaimed American independent films, including I'm Not There, Far from Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, and Safe, also for Haynes; and Boys Don't Cry, One Hour Photo, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness, I Shot Andy Warhol, Go Fish, and Swoon, many of which have screened and won awards at Sundance.
Hot Docs To Honor Longinotto, Rofekamp
Hot Docs, the Toronto-based doc fest, announced two of its honorees for this year's edition, taking place April 29 to May 9. The Outstanding Achievement Award will go to Kim Longinotto (Rough Aunties; Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go; Sisters in Law; The Day I will Never Forget), while Jan Rofekamp of Films Transit International will receive the Doc Mogul Industry Award. And to commemorate the turning of the decade, Hot Docs looks back on the past ten years of documentary filmmaking with a retrospective, Ripping Reality, aimed at mapping the explosive growth and popularity of nonfiction film during this time.
"We think the past decade has seen a new wave emerge within documentary culture," saiud Hot Docs director of programming Sean Farnel in a statement. "Yet unlike other new wave movements in the history of cinema this one remains largely undefined, unheralded. What are its attributes aesthetically, politically and socially? What are its key films and filmmakers? What are the factors behind the explosive growth of documentary filmmaking, festivals and their audiences? These are just a few of the questions with which we begin. But Ripping Reality is not just about looking back, it is about informing and furthering the vitality of documentary through the next decade."
In addition, Hot Docs will once again explore the contemporary documentary work of specific nations and regions with its Made In program this year, which will focus on films from South America. Showcasing the finest in non-fiction cinema from this vibrant and artistically-rich region, Made In South America will feature a selection of films that champion the strength and vivacity of South America's documentary film community.
Kuo, Wildman and Rogers Exit AFI Fest
As reported in IndieWire, AFI Fest announced that Artistic Director Rose Kuo, Festival Producer David Rogers and Head of Press and Public Relations John Wildman would all be leaving, following a well-received, but probably difficult-to-repeat experiment in making the festival free to the public last November. Kuo helmed the festival for two years, following Christian Gaines, who left after the 2007 festival to become director of festivals at Withoutabox. She told IndieWire, "I was honored to be a part of the organization and make a contribution. As you know, all festivals are in a state of change. I think we've made some meaningful improvements to AFI Fest. I think the free festival was one of the most successful aspects of the [event] that I've had the privilege to be a part of." As far as what's next for her ..."The next thing I'd like to do is start something from scratch or retool something existing. I'd like to see what we did this past year and see how it could translate to something broader."