After making a splash at Sundance, Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg's documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work has been acquired by IFC Films. The reported mid-six-figure deal gives IFC Films North American rights, who is eyeing a summer release.

Filmmaker R.J. Cutler is set to expand beyond the documentary world thanks to a two-year, first-look deal with Fox Television Studios. It's reported that The September Issue filmmaker (and DocU participant) will focus on scripted programming under the new arrangement.

The 2010 SXSW lineup is announced. Get a peek at the competition categories and films.

Editor's Note: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing's 12th & Delaware premieres August 2 on HBO. Here is a video interview by Tamara Krinsky with the filmmakers when they premiered the film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

Another experiment with video Doc Shots! I sat down with Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing, co-directors of HBO Documentary Films "12th & Delaware," at the Bing Bar. It was quieter than some other locations - a plus - but not the greatest lighting. Luckily, Heidi and Rachel's energy is enough to cut through any sort of technical challenges! 

In Part 1, the vivacious duo talks about the making of their film. Check out Part 2 for their personal take on their lives & their work. Click play for our conversation about cranes, clinics, new music and the need for occasional silence...

THE DOC SHOT
Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady
Directors, 12th & Delaware
[Part 1: Your Film]

The Red Chapel and Restrepo won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema and US Documentary Competitions, respectively, as the 2010 Sundance Film Festival came to a resounding close. The Red Chapel, directed by Mads Brügger follows  "a journalist with no scruples and two Danish-Korean comedians as they travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange visit to challenge one of the world's most notorious regimes." Restropo follows directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's yearlong tour of duty with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan's most strategically crucial-and dangerous-valleys. In presenting the award, juror Ondi Timoner  praised the film for being "raw, poetic and so fucking brave." For his part, Junger said, "If our movie can help our country understand how to move forward, we'll be incredibly honored."

The tragic death of editor Karen Schmeer Friday night cast a pall over the proceedings, for, in addition to having edited such films as The Fog of War, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control and The Same River Twice, she had won the Documentary Editing Award last year for Greg Barker's Sergio.  Barker, a juror this year, called her "a great editor and a great friend" and then presented this year's award to Penelope Falk for Joan Rivers-A Piece of Work.

Here's the complete list:

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary-Restropo (Dirs.: Sebatsina Junger, Tim Hetherington)

World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary-The Red Chapel (Dir.: Mads Brügger)

Audience Award: Documentary-Waiting for Superman (Dir.: Davis Guggenheim)

World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary-Wasteland (Dir.: Lucy Walker)

Directing Award: Documentary-Smash His Camera (Dir.: Leon Gast)

Documentary Editing Award: Joan Rivers-A Piece of Work (Editor: Penelope Falk)

World Cinema Documentary Editing Award: A Film Unfinished (Editor: Joelle Alexis)

Excellence in Cinematography Awards: Documentary-The Oath (Cinematographers: Kirsten Johnson, Laura Poitras)

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary-His & Hers (Cinematographers: Kate McCullough, Michael Lavelle)

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary-Enemies of the People (Dirs.: Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath)

Special Jury Prize: Documentary-Gasland (Dir.: Josh Fox)

As reported in The New York Times, Karen Schmeer, a documentary editor whose credits included several of Errol Morris's films, was killed Friday night in a hit-and-run incident in Manhattan. The driver, along with two cohorts, had been evading police after shoplifting from a drug store; the vehicle hit Ms. Schmeer as she was crossing the street at Broadway and 90^th.

Schmeer was born in Portland, Oregon, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in anthropology. It was there where she met Errol Morris and worked for him as a researcher. She edited his 1996 film Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.; the Academy Award-winning The Fog of War; and Standard Operating Procedure, on which she is credited as co-editor. Other documentaries that she edited included Robb Moss' The Same River Twice, Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson's Well-Founded Fear,. Luca Small's My Father, The Genius. She won the Documentary Editing Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival for Greg Barker's Sergio. Barker, a juror at the 2010 Festival, paid tribute to Schmeer at the closing night awards ceremony, calling her "a great editor and a dear friend."

According to The New York Times, she was working on a documentary about the laet chessmaster Bobby Fischer at the time of her death.

Spent my last morning at Sundance clad in 3D glasses at the Eccles theater watching Mark Lewis's delightful Cane Toads: The Conquest. Nothin' like a toad hopping directly off the screen first thing in the a.m. to wake you up!

In his intro, Lewis was in good spirits. He riffed on the current popularity of 3D films, informing us that his film would now be known by its new title:  Ava-Toad. He also reminded audience members to return their Dolby glasses at the end of the movie, as there was no point in taking them home, "Because they don't make reality TV any better." 

Not sure why pics in 3D glasses are so much fun to take, but here are a few others who made the morning trek to the Eccles...

Thanks to my colleague and part-time condo-mate Tamara Krinsky for taking us this far. I arrived for the second half, hit the ground running, getting my press credz at Sundance HQ, hightailing it to the Sundance Channel party, where the passed hors d'oevres included s'mores, that summertime, sing-around-the-campfire treat. Spotted among the revelers were Sundance Channel's Sarah Eaton, BBC's Nick Fraser, TV-2 Denmark's Mette Hoffman-Meyer, Participant Media's Dianne Weyermann, and filmmaker/doc juror Ondi Timoner.

With some time to kill between the party and my first screening, I crossed the street to the New Frontier on Main, an always fascinating and bracing forum for cinematic experimentation and innovation. Two of the more remarkable video installations included Bordertown, from Oakland, California-based multimedia artist Tracey Snelling, which re-imagines a town on the Mexican-American border, in which the windows, doorways and apertures of seedy hotels, brothels, strip joints, liquor stores and food carts double as video screens depicting scenes from an ongoing binational/bicultural tale. And then there was Lobe of Lung (The Saliva Ooze Away to the Underground), from Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, who invites audiences to lie on mattresses and immerse themselves in a kaleidoscopic journey of sound and vision, in which, on perpendicular walls, we behold an edenic wash of undulating and morphing images.

Where do you go from there? Well, I hit my first screening-Alex Gibney's Casino Jack and the United States of Money. En route to the Temple Theatre, I had a nice chat with one of the cameramen on the film, who was about to see it for the first time. The ever prolific Mr. Gibney is also working on docs about bicyclist Lance Armstrong's 2008 comeback bid and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as well as a piece in the omnibus Freakonomics project.

Gibney introduced the film as "a comedy, but the joke's on us." He has a flair for making hard-hitting journalism entertaining and darkly funny, and Casino Jack bears echoes of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, in underscoring the outrage-inducing absurdity of its subject. Gibney has always showed a flair for aural texture, and the song cues in Casino Jack could make this a musical comedy-perhaps along the lines of Sweeney Todd (I can here it now: Casino Jack: The Demon Lobbyist of K Street).

Abramoff does not appear in on-camera interviews-he's currently serving four years in prison-but Gibney and his team have ferreted out some fascinating footage, dating back to Abramaoff's days as a Young College Republican, which planted the seeds for a decades-long crusade for Right Wing supremacy. Inspired by the Reagan Revolution, Jack was a de facto soldier of fortune, taking cues from General Patton, supporting so-called freedom fighters around the world, and even dabbling in the movies, as a producer.

He carried his zealous fervor into lobbying, and commandeered oceans of money to maintain Republican preeminence-until hubris, that time-honored equalizer, razed the house that Jack built.

The film clocks in at a longish two hours, so could stand some judicious cutting. It opens this April through Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media.

When asked about the Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates for corporate financing of the electoral process--and, let's face it, the legislative and judicial processes too--Gibney joked, "We've reached Tom Delay's paradise," but added "It makes this issue intensely important....It's time to mobilize popular anger. There's lots to be done, and if we don't get it done, we're done."

For Tamara Krinsky's Doc Shot with Gibney, click here.

Our condolences to his family and friends.

The following statement was issued by First Run Features this afternoon:

Today we mourn the loss of author, activist, historian and beloved folk hero Howard Zinn, who has been an integral part of the First Run legacy for many years. Howard lent his support to countless of our films, several in which he plays a central role. The most recent of these is The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, which opens in theaters tomorrow. Howard protected copies of the Pentagon Papers for Ellsberg--even hid them in his apartment for a time, and he later served as an expert witness for the defense at Ellsberg's criminal trial. In his recollections of Zinn on antiwar.com, Ellsberg writes that his friend is "the best human being I’ve ever known [and] the best example of what a human can be"

We invite you to learn more about this remarkable man through the biographical Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, based on Zinn’s memoir of the same name, as well as the documentaries Sacco and Vanzetti, The Camden 28 and One Bright Shining Moment.

Find out more about Howard Zinn on his website.

Another experiment with video Doc Shots from Sundance 2010! Shot this one on a li'l mini-DV cam. Many thanks to Alex Gibney, who was willing to brave the cold so we could escape the verrry loud background music playing at Starbucks, the location of our interview (though I guess if you're brave enough to take on the task of breaking down the story of Jack Abramoff, a little chill in the air isn't going to put you off).

We're shooting outside, close to the Yarrow and Holiday Village theaters. Between Alex's frozen breath and the sounds of Park City in the background, now you've got a sense of what it was like up there this past week. Enjoy this glimpse into the life and work of Alex Gibney, including tennis, Lady GaGa and a twisty tale of greed and corruption. And for more on the film, read my colleague Tom White's reaction to the screening.

THE DOC SHOT

Editor's Note: A Small Act airs July 12 on HBO. Here's Tamara Krinsky's video interview with director/writer Jennifer Arnold, when the film premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

This year at Sundance, I decided to experiment with some video Doc Shots. As you know, the Doc Shot is a regular feature on the site wherein we get a li'l insight into the work and lives of those creating and supporting documentary film. Seemed like a natural development to try a few video Doc Shots at Sundance this year, as so many fantastic filmmakers are in attendance.

This one's our first, and I shot it on my iPhone. Please forgive the slightly shaky cam...I promise, it gets better as it goes! I'll be trying different ways of shooting these throughout the week, so expect to see some changes as we play around with them. 

THE DOC SHOT
Jennifer Arnold
Director, A Small Act

Friday afternoon I caught Secrets of the Tribe, the latest offering from Jose Padilha's (Bus 174).  The doc examines the field of anthropology, looking at its history of studying and interacting with the Yanomami Indians of the Amazon Basin. There are allegations of sexual and medical misconduct, and a whole lotta anthropologists who disagree with one another.

While I was fascinated by the subject matter, I felt the film was a bit too inside. There is an assumption that the audience is familiar with the different schisms and players in the field, and by the time I caught up, I was feeling very frustrated. A quick fix: add a teeny tiny primer at the beginning of the film so that those who don't know about the different anthropological schools of thought can enjoy the academic infighting from the very start.