DOC NYC - Manhattan Gets a True Doc Fest

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Parent Category: Film Festivals
Category: Previews
Published on Tuesday, 19 October 2010 23:12
Written by Laura Blum
Errol Morris in Tabloid

You can find everything in New York City, as the cliché goes, but until now – with the November 3 to 9, 2010 launching of DOC NYC -- it has lacked a major documentary film festival. (The 90s saw DocFest, but it’s been a while.) If Durham, North Carolina can have a Full Frame and if Missoula, Montana can have a Big Sky, surely the greatest city on earth can have a five-day salute to non-fiction cinema.

At least that’s what artistic director Thom Powers and executive director Raphaela Neihausen reasoned when this programming pair decided to expand their weekly IFC Center series, Stranger Than Fiction, into a festival format.

And format isn’t the only thing that’s expanded. Taking a catholic view of documentary filmmaking, the Festival will encompass practicioners of eclectic fields, from writers and photographers to radio reporters and spoken word artists. This impetus to “cross fertilize” has informed the cobbling together of DOC NYC’s 44 films, tributes, panels, workshops and other events.

The Opening night film will be Werner Herzog’s hotly anticipated Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Presented in 3-D, the documentary will take viewers inside the Chauvet caves of southern France, home of 30,000-year old drawings thought to be civilization’s oldest. To close out the fest, Tabloid will feed inquiring minds. The latest work from Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line and Oscar victor The Fog of War) tracks a former Miss Wyoming on her ripe-for-gossip search for true love. Both Herzog and Morris will be honored in Spotlight retrospectives of their key works.  

Two jousts, the Viewfinders Competition and the Metropolis Competition, will unfold along with along with such sidebars as a family-friendly matinees and midnight flicks.

The Viewfinders program, which takes audiences around the world in eight films, includes:

Closer to home, the Metropolis selection presents six films set in New York City. Josef Birdman Astor retro-glimpses the artists studios above Carnegie Hall in Lost Bohemia and Ryan Kerrison profiles theater director Richard Foreman in mindFLUX in two of the slate’s world premieres.

for the full picture, go to http://www.docnyc.net

DOC NYC
November 3 to 9, 2010
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave and 3rd Street
New York, NY 10014

NYU-SCPS: Kimmel Center
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts and Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square
New York University