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November 20, 2008
IDocFestAmsterdam - Day One
The festival hasn't officially begun yet, but they decided to screen during opening day, in the dayparts, to decidedly soft results. I've been in 3 films today and seen about 40 ticketholders.
Still, two of the three films were great to see... and one was interesting, even if I still don't know what it quite was.
The great ones were Solo - the tale of a man trying to cross the Tasmin, the ocean between southern Australia and New Zealand... in a solo kayak - and Return To The War Room, a Sundance Channel look back - by Pennebaker & Hedegdus - to their landmark doc about the 92 election.
Solo is in the style of Touching The Void, though in place of recreations, we get actual footage of our kayaking hero. There is also a distinct Grizzly Man feel to it all. It's not quite the filmmaking effort that the other 2 were, but still, enormously compelling stuff.
War Room Redux is all joy, though it now feels short an hour on how the crew handled being the media leaders around the Obama run.
The oddball was Playing, a doc consisting of auditions that blur the lines of reality. Like I said... not really sure what the endgame was meant to be, but it felt, from early on, like a concept that could lead somewhere profound... Though not so much this time out.
About to start the new Tucker/Epperlein doc, Bulletproof Salesman...
More later.
Posted by dpoland at November 20, 2008 08:28 AM
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