Jason Kohn gave a great speech when he won the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking at the Cinema Eye Honors last week. He spoke about making Manda Bala “out of anger” after watching Marshall Curry’s Streetfight play to an empty theater at a festival in Sao Paulo. “I was so god damn mad. . . because when these movies don’t get seen you feel like you’re fucking losing, you feel like somebody else is winning and that person is no good.”

Earlier in the evening Kohn had spoken about how he felt that Werner Herzog and Errol Morris had been making films in response to each other, in a kind of unintentional dialog. There’s an interesting conversation between Herzog and Morris in the latest copy of The Believer. They talk a little bit about Herzog’s ideas about “ecstatic truth,” a lot about serial killers, and Morris finishes with some great thoughts on the tension between planning and spontaneity in documentary:

I feel that element of spontaneity because so much of what I do is controlled. The element of spontaneity is not knowing what someone is going to say to me in front of the camera, having really no idea, of being surprised. I know that there’s this moment in all of the interviews I’ve loved where something happens. I had this three-minute rule that if you just shut up and let someone talk, within three minutes they will show you how crazy they really are. And it has happened time and time and time again.

If everything was planned, it would be dreadful. If everything was unplanned, it would be equally dreadful. Cinema exists because there are elements of both in everything. There are elements of both in documentary. There are elements of both in feature filmmaking. It’s what makes, I think, photography and filmmaking of interest. Despite all of our efforts to control something, the world is much, much more powerful than us, and more deranged even than us.

Jason Kohn accepting his award. Photo courtesy of IndiePix.

I just posted something about the How’s Your News? show I saw at SXSW on the Shooting People Festival Focus blog. I wanted to link to it here too because if you haven’t seen How’s Your News? yet you should, and you should definitely try to catch them playing a gig if you ever get the chance. These guys rock the mothereffing house!

One of the only bum notes at SXSW last week was hearing that filmmaker Benh Zeitlin’s car had been rear-ended while he was driving to Austin for his Glory at Sea screenings resulting in some really nasty injuries. I don’t know Benh personally but it’s awful to hear about stuff like this, especially when health insurance is an issue (which is often the case in our community). Rooftop Films are going to be posting more information about Benh’s insurance situation and a possible benefit screening but Benh also missed the entire festival due to his injuries so go here to find out more about sending him your SXSW films.

The first Cinema Eye event was held at the IFC Center on Tuesday night and it was a wonderful evening to be part of. The ceremony had just the right touch of rock and roll spirit (because lets face it award ceremonies can be deathly boring, especially when you have to eat food that tastes like it should only be served above 10,000 feet). Everyone seemed really grateful that the craft of documentary filmmaking was finally being recognized, and the need for Cinema Eye is clear when you consider that the American Society of Cinematographers do not even have an award for nonfiction. Looking around the room and seeing so many of my friends and colleagues who are so passionate about documentary did bring the expression “preaching to the choir” to mind but it just means that we need to make that choir bigger so that the producers, directors, cinematographers, editors, graphic designers and everybody else who plays such a vital role in bringing a film into the world get more recognition and so that great films like Manda Bala, The Monastery, Billy The Kid and The King of Kong are seen by more people in more cinemas and beyond.

My camera is on its last legs so this is the only picture I managed to get. The out of focus person in the middle is Jason Kohn picking up his award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking for Manda Bala.

These are the award recepients:

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking
MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)
Directed by Jason Kohn
Produced by Joey Frank, Jared Goldman and Jason Kohn

Outstanding Achievement in Direction
Alex Gibney
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE

Outstanding Achievement in Production
Seth Kanegis, Tomas Radoor & Mikael Rieks
GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography
Heloisa Passos
MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)

Outstanding Achievement in Editing
Doug Abel, Jenny Golden & Andy Grieve
MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)

Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Animation
The Team from Curious Pictures
CHICAGO 10

Outstanding International Feature
THE MONASTERY – MR. VIG & THE NUN
Directed by Pernille Rose Gronkjær
Produced by Sigrid Dyekjær

Outstanding Debut Feature
Jennifer Venditti
BILLY THE KID

Audience Choice Prize
THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS
Directed by Seth Gordon

Read more on indieWIRE.

I’m at the airport and it’s just before 7am. I feel surprisingly awake, perhaps it’s the excitement of knowing that I’m about to go to one of my favorite cities to watch lots of great films.

I’ll be blogging over on the Shooting People Festival Focus blog along with a few other folk for the duration of the fest and am going to try Twittering for the first time too. My Twitter feed is here and I’ve added some handy widgets to the blogs. There isn’t much to see yet – but there will be. Yes, indeedy.

Jesse Epstein, Shooting People NY Editor, has a short screening at the fest called 34×25x36 so check it out if you’re in town. In fact there are lots of Shooting People members with films screening at SXSW this year which is really exciting and we’ll be profiling some of them over the coming weeks.

Let the good times roll!

These were the bumpers that preceded all the films at True/False. Parkour, or freerunning, is incredible to watch, the films are beautifully-made (directed by Nathan Truesdell), and the audience applauded each and every time which is not the usual response to a pre-film bumper! The last two are especially impressive so make sure you watch those.

It seems that those of us who were in Columbia over the weekend can’t help but spread the love. Danielle DiGiacomo wrote a lovely review of the fest on the IndiePix blog. I love the idea of David and Paul as “bold and foolish lambs” convincing the rest of us to leap with them.

Here are some more pics – all taken by Shooting People’s Jesse Epstein who had a great short film called 34×25x36 at True/False. 34×25x36 is also screening at SXSW so you can catch it there if you’re going to be in Austin.

David Wilson talking to John Pierson and Anna Boinowksi (director of Forbidden Lies)

Paul Sturtz with Chris Bell (director of Bigger Stronger Faster*)

The wonderful Mucca Pazza at the Parade

True/False is larger than life

Mucca Pazza at the Lover’s Leap party

The awesome Scott Beibin from Evil Twin with his veggie powered van filled with Steaz

Blogger Joel Heller tries his hand at the saw.

John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants stands behind Jesse at the Volunteer’s Party, the last hurrah of the fest.

Nobody wanted the party to end

I knew I was going to like True/False before I arrived in Columbia, Missouri for the first time this year. Everyone who has gone in the past has raved about how friendly and fun it is and how David Wilson and Paul Sturtz, the festival founders, always program a really interesting slate of films. I was not disappointed. In fact I was quite bowled over.

The films were excellent, the parties were fun and everybody was so friendly it was almost disconcerting (for a Brit living in New York it’s a bit of a shock to the system). The local community gets very involved in the festival which means that there are enthusiastic volunteers everywhere and screenings are packed with locals rather than industry folk. And they really do come out to support the films. Every screening I went to was full or nearly full and most people stayed to participate in energetic Q&As after the screenings. I never saw the old Ragtag cinema but the new building is a great focal point for the fest and the Uprise Bakery kept me in caffeine and ginger peach muffins throughout.

I saw some wonderful films and will write more about these later but I, like many others, was blown away by Anna Broinowski’s Forbidden Lies and am really curious to know why it essentially vanished after screening at HotDocs last year. Forbidden Lies is the story of a woman with just a touch of The Usual Suspect’s Keyser Soze about her. In the spirit of True/False, we had been having some interesting debates about the nature of truth in documentary storytelling during the long ride from Kansas City Airport and continuing over coffee and beers in the Ragtag, and this film is a mascot for probing the slash between truth and fiction. Broinowski did a great Q&A with Brent Hoff from Wholphin that included the following classic lines:

The marriage between a con artist and a filmmaker is a match made in heaven.

To make documentary portrait you need to gain someone’s trust and then betray them. But in this case I was the one who was betrayed.

Norma (the film’s subject) was a joy to work with. One of the most fascinating things to watch is someone lying on film.

Other highlights for me were the wonderful closing night film James Marsh’s Man on Wire, Antoine Cattin’s and Pavel Kostamarov’s beautifully shot The Mother, and Andrey Paounov’s funny and disturbing The Mosquito Problem (and Other Stories).

David and Paul wrote in the festival guide:

“We started out this year debating whether we could have a fest at all. The Missouri Theatre was closing for renovations, Ragtag was getting ready to move. It all seemed a little overwhelming. But we decided to take the leap, jumping into the unknown with the hope that a net would appear.”

They jumped and the net did appear which is lucky for all of us who could be there to revel in the love that True/False inspired – for great films and good people and Mucca Pazza, best marching band EVER.

Mucca Pazza at the March into March parade up Broadway on Friday

At the parade

Mucca Pazza played again at the Lovers Leap Party later that night – I took this with my iPhone but I think it’s rather lovely

Trombones are the way forward!

Anna Broinowksi and Brent Hoff during the Q&A after a screening of Forbidden Lies

IndiePix’s Danielle DiGiacomo and her sister Alana at the Reality Bites event

Buskers played before every screening which is a really great idea. This is Andy Smetanka, who is also an animator, playing the saw.

Filmmaker Josh Weinstein (pretending to be on the phone) and Rivkah Beth Medow who co-directed Sons of a Gun

Paul and David got a standing ovation before the final screening of Man on Wire. Aw, bless.

The fest ended on Sunday night with a super-fun They Might Be Giants show. And then it was over. Sigh.