It is always really interesting to see what is in the works and to look forward to seeing the finished films in coming months and years. These 20 projects were selected from nearly 800 submissions from more than 70 countries. Whew! Congratulations to all the recipients.

DEVELOPMENT

Elinyisia Mosha
TANZANIA PROJECT (Tanzania/U.S.)
This film explores the impact of foreign direct investment in the filmmakers native Tanzania.

Priya Giri Desai and  Ann S. Kim
MATCH +: A STORY ABOUT LOVE IN THE TIME OF HIV (U.S./India)
At the Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education (YRG CARE) clinic in Chennai, India, Dr. Solomon and her staff launch a matrimonial matchmaking service for their positive patients.

Tina DiFeliciantonio and Jane C. Wagner
SEEKING REFUGE (U.S.)
At the Bellevue Hospital Center N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, three patients from around the world come together in a journey of healing.

Marianna Kaat
THE PIT (Estonia/Ukraine)
Once prosperous during the Soviet era, the small town of Snezhnoje in East Ukraine now lives in poverty. The town’s desperate residents decide to start mining on their own.

Macky Alston
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE (U.S.)
An openly gay bishop from New Hampshire travels to London, where the Anglican Communion will decide to either retain or split gay leadership from their ranks.
Patricio Guzman
NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ (Chile/France)
In the desert of North Chile, astronomers study the ancient universe above, while women search below for signs of their family members disappeared under Pinochet’s dictatorship of 1973.

Mahmoud Al Massad
THIS IS MY PICTURE WHEN I WAS DEAD (Jordan)
This is a film that artfully imagines the future of a four-year old boy who almost died in the assassination of his PLO lieutenant father 25 years ago.

PRODUCTION/POST-PRODUCTION
Lynn True and Nelson Walker, with Tsering Perlo
A NOMAD’S LIFE  (U.S./Tibet)
In the mountains of Tibet, Locho and Yama struggle to maintain their family and way of life, and to reconcile their nomadic traditions amidst rapid modernization.

Andrew Berends
DELTA BOYS (U.S./Nigeria)
In the oil rich Niger Delta, Chima is a 21-year-old who is swept into the world of armed militants after a prison break. His story is part of a complex tale of oil, power, poverty and corruption.

Petr Lom
LETTERS TO THE PRESIDENT (U.S./Iran)
Across Iran, villagers share their hopes and fears through letters to President Ahmadinejad and his Presidential Letter Writing Center.

Mona Nicoara
OUR SCHOOL (Romania)
Roma children struggle to break the barriers of segregation in a small Transylvanian school. Rejected by teachers, they find strength in the friendship of Romanian classmates.

Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer
OUT  IN THE SILENCE (U.S.)
The filmmaker’s same-sex wedding announcement in the local newspaper ignites a firestorm of controversy in his rural Pennsylvania hometown.

Eric Daniel Metzgar
REPORTER (U.S./Congo)
New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof  journeys into the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, inviting a consideration of the future of journalism.

Danae Elon
THE EVIL TONGUE (U.S.)
In the Orthodox Jewish family, those affected by sexual molestation may be unable to disclose the information to secular authorities.

Pamela Yates
THE RECKONING (U.S.)
The film chronicles the history and launch of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the world’s first institution created to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

DISCRETIONARY

Edet Belzberg
Watchers of the Sky (U.S.)
Drawing from Samantha Power’s book “A Problem from Hell” four exceptional visionaries traverse time and continents to explore the world’s response to genocide.

Oren Jacoby
INJUSTICE (U.S.)
This film uncovers the backroom maneuvering during the waning days of the Bush Administration which led to the unprecedented and illegal firing of U.S. Attorneys David Iglesias, JohnMcKay and three of their colleagues.

Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman
SEMBENE: REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST (U.S./Senegal)
The story of independent filmmaker Senegal’s Ousmane Sembene, providing an alternate history of contemporary Africa and a window into world cinema.

Thomas Wallner
THE GUANTANAMO TRAP(Canada/Germany)
Murat Kurnaz, born in Germany of Turkish heritage, was detained, tortured at the U.S. military base in Kandar, Afghanistan and in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and held for five years. This is his story.

Thomas Allen Harris
THROUGH A LENS DARKLY: BLACK PHOTOGRAPHERS AND THE EMERGENCE OF A PEOPLE  (U.S.)
Using an experimental approach, Harris shows how black communities use photography and imagery to construct political, aesthetic, and cultural representations of themselves in the world.

Not bad, not bad. This list often causes some consternation in the doc community as great films are ignored in favor of the obviously not so great but this year’s list includes some really strong films. I, like many others, am disappointed that Margaret Brown’s assured and intelligent The Order of Myths is not on this list but I am really thrilled to see Jeremiah Zagar’s In A Dream on there. I saw In A Dream at the Woodstock Film Festival in October and was mesmerized and moved by it. I have a British allergy to anything overly earnest but this film manages to be honest and funny and full of the warp and weft of genuinely raw emotion without making me squirm once. I love beautifully made films that tell very personal stories about ordinary people and include all the yukkiness and beauty of life as it is lived. It is hard to pull this off and I think this is a film that succeeds.

You can watch the trailer here:

In A Dream Trailer from Herzliya Films on Vimeo.

Here’s the list:

At the Death House Door
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
Encounters at the End of the World
Fuel
The Garden
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
I.O.U.S.A.
In a Dream
Made in America
Man on Wire
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Standard Operating Procedure
They Killed Sister Dorothy
Trouble the Water

Congrats to everyone involved! And New Yorkers: The Betrayal opens at the IFC Center on Friday, November 21st. This is a tour de force collaboration between Ellen Kuras, cinematographer for directors like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, and Laotian-American activist Thavisouk Phrasavath and it took an incredible 20 years to make. Don’t miss this opportunity to see it on a big screen.

On November 22nd, Shooting People turns 10. Whoo hoo! Filmmakers Cath Le Couteur and Jess Search set up Shooting People in 1998 after making their first short film and it has grown from 60 members to 37,000 over the past 10 years. I am hugely proud to work for an organization that fights so hard to create a vibrant independent filmmaking community that is all about collaboration and innovation. As Mike Figgis says:

“Congratulations to Shooting People! Shooting People continue to be at the forefront of filmmaking and technology. I believe their next ten years will be even more transformational and I want to be along for the ride. Viva independent film!”

Here are 10 things you may not know about us:

1.    The Shooting People official anagram is Pigeonhole Post.

2.    It took filmmakers Cath Le Couteur and Jess Search all day to think of the name Shooting People in a messy bedroom in 1998 when they launched the network with 60 filmmaker friends signed up to help each other make films.

3.    Shooting People shares its birthday with 349 of its Members on 22 November. That makes Shooting People Sagittarius. Sagittarians are sometimes distracted, but this is only because they are so forward thinking that they forget about the present.

4.    Director Shane Meadows (‘Room for Romeo Brass’, ‘This Is England’) was the first guest to speak at a Shooting People event – in 1999. He had to sit on the bar with a microphone because there was no stage. Cheers, Shane.

5.    Someone once posted in asking for a flea-training expert. They got one.

6.    1.3m people have watched Shooting People’s Watch Film facility since its launch last December.

7.    Shooting People has crewed up over 50,000 films in the last 10 years– fiction, animation, documentary, music video every week.

8.    As far as we know NO ONE has ever got married because of Shooting People. Sorry.

9.    Shooting People sends out 7,500,000 packed email bulletins to Members a year. That’s a lot of envelopes to lick.

10.    Shooting People is celebrating its tenth birthday this year, just like Google. Shooting People thinks Google is a slightly bigger brand and wishes them all the best.

This has been such a rollercoaster week. Purple prose aside, I really do feel like I have witnessed something momentous. I’m not an American citizen but I live in this country and, in any case, I think Obama’s victory is something that the whole world has a stake in.

To cut a long story short, I am very, very happy and very, very hopeful.

Here are some photos from the night. I started out at Rockefeller Center before the polls closed in New York and then moved to a friend’s house to watch the results unfold. After the speeches (and much weeping and jumping up and down) we took it to the streets and joined the jubilant crowds at Union Square. I hugged a lot of strangers.

Rockefeller Center lit up and ready for action

Tense and hopeful at our election party

Celebrations at Union Square (I was clearly too excited to hold my camera still!)

Yup!

It ain’t a party without saucepan music!

Happy voting everyone. May the force be with you.