I made the 4-hour trek up to Camden, ME with my friend and colleague Marie-Emmanuelle Hartness to attend the Camden International Film Festival and the Points North Documentary Film Forum.
I was attracted by the small scale of the event, combined with the strong industry representation - making for a great opportunity to get to know folks casually over a drink or meal.
One of the highlights of the forum was the Points North Pitch (pictured above), in which eight filmmakers presented their projects to a panel of 11 funders, broadcasters, and distributors. I was impressed by both the professionalism of the pitches - super well-crafted trailers and tight verbal pitches, even by the first-time filmmakers - and the panel's supportive, constructive feedback provided.
The project that most intrigued me, Mike Attie and Meghan O'Hara's In Country, won a $1,000 prize as the most compelling pitch. It's about Vietnam War re-enactments going on around America, put on by a combination of military enthusiasts, Gulf and Iraq War veterans recovering from recent traumas, and even Vietnam War veterans. One Vietnamese-American re-enactor featured in the film, who served in the South Vietnamese army, still considers those his glory days. Their trailer was very powerful, and raised complex questions about what happens when a more recent, and unpopular, foreign war is recreated in contemporary America.
I also really enjoyed the Hands-on with Zeega workshop, in which I got to try this brand-new online platform for collaborative multi-media storytelling (still in alpha mode which, they reminded us, "comes before beta"). I have been following what Jesse Shapins, Kara Oehler, and their crew have been doing - especially since they won the Knight News Challenge - and now I actually understand how easy they are making it to edit together all types of media from one's own files and from across the web. It's very interesting how this open-source platform enables an infinite new realm of media-mashing possibilities within the bounds of fair use, since it is all non-commercial, does not involve any actual duplication (you can't export your Zeega project - it is only re-streaming the media, with citation, from other sources), and carefully follows all of the source sites' terms of use.
With all the great forum events and the chance to socialize with colleagues and friends (including those from Boston I don't see enough of), I am embarassed to say that we didn't get to see as many films as we would have liked. I enjoyed Only the Young, which Variety described as the "most human and affecting" of the past decade's many films about skateboarding culture.
The (quite young) filmmaker Jason Tippet was there, and rather articulately described the aesthetic choices they made - making what seem like good use of the strengths and limitations of shooting docs with a DSLR (see my previous post on this topic). There was definitely a staged feeling to the whole film - teenagers performing for the camera - but at least it was consistent and felt intentional. Jason said that he wanted to make a film that was "easy to watch" - he certainly did that, and also managed to capture the feeling of youth inhabiting a very post-2008 landscape of foreclosures, overdeveloment, unemployment, Facebook, cell phones, and skateboards...