Sundance 2011: Oprah, Movements and Branding

I have attended the Sundance Film Festival since the late 1990s, but this year marked my first time as a first halfer. The salient differences between the first and second halfs? More people, more parties, splashier premieres, fewer doc-specific panels, longer waits, more e-mails. And the thrill of discovery may have been more palpable with the launch of the 2011 edition.

First, The Parties, and the highest wattage one was the OWN party, which IDA and Sundance Institute co-presented.  Bold names abounded at the Sundance House/Kimball Art Center: Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato were there with Chaz Bono, subject of the World of Wonder duo's Becoming Chaz; Lucy Walker, whose Waste Land would earn an Academy Award nomination three days later; Barbara Kopple; Forrest Whittaker, on hand for One Last Shot; Marc Levin, from Brick City; Rosie O'Donnell, who will have a curatorial/presentational role in the doc programming at OWN; as well as representatives from some of the films on the docket for Oprah's Doc Club, including One Lucky Elephant, Louder Than a Bomb, Most Valuable Players and more. But the earth moved when Oprah herself hit the stage, declaring her longtime love for documentaries, and rocking the house with this statement: "I want to do for documentaries what I've been able to do for books."  Hey now!

The same day the first halfers were making way for the second halfers and the Oscar nominees were announced, the uprisings were beginning in Cairo, bearing echoes of another uprising some 18 months earlier, in Tehran. The Green Wave, by Ali Samadi Ahadi, documents that tragic event. Based in Germany, and unable to return to his native land, Ahadi created a powerful blend of animated re-creations, on-the-ground cell phone footage, on-camera testimonials from journalists, attorneys and activists who had escaped from Iran, and blog posts and tweets from witnesses to both the electricity of the movement and the horror of the crackdown.  This is guerilla filmmaking, the 21^st century answer to samizdat. The Green Wave is a powerful and horrifying testament to a struggle and the struggle to survive.  "It is our duty to make this film," Ahadi declared after one screening. "You need to work for democracy and freedom every day."

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 documents another heady movement, in American history. As the title of the film suggests, the film is comprised entirely of footage of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and '70s--filmed by Swedish journalists. The 16mm footage languished in a basement for decades until filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson discovered it while researching another project.  And, there, in pristine condition, are images of some of the prime movers of the movement: Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale talking about activism and democracy and social change and civil rights with a candor and openness largely unseen in their engagements with the American media. The footage is enhanced with audio commentary from hip-hop artists Erika Badu and Talib Kweli, as well as from activists like Harry Belafonte and Angela Davis herself. The filmmaker wisely kept the contemporary figures off camera--and minimized the music from that era--letting the footage, and history, speak for itself afresh and anew. The film earned the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award for Olsson and Hanna Lejongvist.

Activism--its uses and misuses, its usefulness and its futility--is a heady brew in Marshall Curry's latest film, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, on which Sam Cullman is co-director and producer. The film focusses on one activist, Daniel McGowan, as a touchstone for a deeper, full-bodied exploration of how an activist evolves, how activism crosses over into violence when non-violent resistance proves futile, and how violence--in this case, the torching of lumber yards--may not achieve the desired results. Curry and his crew managed to persuade all parties--Earth Liberation Front members, the police, the FBI, lumber executives--to come before the camera and tell their story. The result is a fair presentation and riveting tale of a complicated nexus of issues. Curry and editor Matthew Hamachek earned the Documentary Editing Award.

 One movement that wasn't violent, and that emerged quietly from the maelstrom of the 1960s, was the singer-songwriter community that blossomed in Los Angeles in the early-to-mid 1970s. And the crucible cum Algonquin for this community was the Troubador, which showcased such rising acousti-stars as James Taylor, Carol King, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell, among others, including the session musicians who played on everybody's albums. Morgan Neville, whose canon includes docs about both Los Angeles sub-cultures (The Cool School) and music (Johnny Cash's America), is tailor-made for Troubadors (IDA's own Eddie Schmidt produced the film). He takes us through the evolution of the genre, how it took root in LA and how it seemed to tap into the zeitgeist of America at that time. Well, to some ears, that is. Robert Christgau, the irascible dean of rock criticism, weighs in with some East Coast vitriol, and, like most artistic movements, the singer-songwriters got too successful for the Troubador--and then those old third-act reliables, cocaine and heroin, got the better of many of the artists. Things went from "Take It Easy" to "Hotel California," then, for me, punk obliterated everything else. One quibble I had with the film: Given that the artists and their followers were overwhelmingly white, it might not have been such a good idea to underscore that fact--without actually discussing it--by including the lone African-American in the film: the doorman of the Troubador.

Another California icon, who probably never stepped foot in the Troubador, was Ronald Reagan, the former actor, pitchman, Governor and US President whose 100^th birthday was just celebrated. Eugene Jarecki, whose previous feature doc, Why We Fight, was an astute, insightful consideration of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned America about in his valedictory speech, takes the helm here with Reagan, which just aired on HBO. Eschewing narration for a rich mix of commentaries from supporters and detractors alike, Jarecki aims to not necessarily debunk the Reagan myth so much as to examine its underpinnings---how a brand can captivate an electorate, while the man behind it perpetuated policies that resonate negatively to this day. Neither hagiographic nor a take-down, Reagan is well-considered study of what goes into the making of a president, for better or worse.

Finally, speaking of brands and branding, Morgan Spurlock returned to Sundance with The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, a wacky, post-mod, mobius strip of a meta-movie about product placement, in which the film itself is about the making of the film, and the process of getting the film made. The sponsors and their products are prominently placed throughout--POM Wonderful has above-the-title credit--but although they're both in on the joke and the butt of it, they don't seem to notice either way. Spurlock himself addressed the crowd afterwards, sporting  a blazer festooned with the logos of his sponsors, which he seemingly never took during his stay at Sundance. And although reps from POM Wonderful and the other sponsors joined Spurlock on stage, the pomegranate beverage itself was not allowed in the theater. Rules are rules.

Thomas White is editor of Documentary magazine.