Each June, the American Film Institute convenes the Silverdocs Film Festival (they like to spell it in all caps, SILVERDOCS) in the Washington, DC suburbs. The festival, presented in partnership with the Discovery Channel, is actually a full-blown documentary conference, and it gives out sizable cash prizes to the winners of its awards. Cinematical missed the fest this year (though we did manage to notice their interesting choice to honor Spike Lee), but we figured we'd tell you about the results.

The grand prize for a US feature -- a handsome ten grand plus a lot of expensive film stock from Kodak -- went to Scott Hamilton Kennedy (2002's OT: Our Town) for The Garden. The movie told the story of the South Central Farm -- a 14-acre community garden that sprung up at the site of the 1992 LA Riots. Kennedy chronicles the farmers' battle with landlords, the city of Los Angeles, and the courts.

Perusing my rss feed today, I came across an interesting scanned article over at Jennifer Venditti's Billy the Kid blog. First, if you've been lurking around Cinematical Indie, it's no surprise that I love Venditti's feature documentary debut. I reviewed the film from Hot Docs, have mentioned Venditti in a few posts, and had a chat with her about her take on indie film. Now she's got a Filmmaker Magazine article up, which was written by Arne Johnson the co-helmer of another favorite 2007 Hot Docs film, Girls Rock!

In the piece, Johnson tackles the extreme pressures documentary filmmakers face when it comes to the troubles of truth. He cites his own struggles with the kick-ass tykes in Rock!, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's challenges with Jesus Camp, and Venditti's struggles with Billy criticism -- focusing on the Variety review I posted about in May. It hits a lot of bases, from the need to edit quotes in interviews, or be faced with a terrible-in-text sea of "ums" and awkwardness, to the discussion of whether documentarians taint their source material, or just present a truth that some viewers aren't appreciative of.

Johnson includes a quote from Judy Irving about subjectivity that I found particularly interesting: "When someone throws that at you, like that your film does not have journalistic integrity, or it's not objective, what they're really saying is "I don't agree with you. My subjectivity is different from your subjectivity and I wish you had portrayed what I feel about the subject rather than what you feel." It's a worthy thought -- complaints always come from those who disagree, so do those who agree turn a blind eye to subjectivity, or think that a film covers the bases? And overall, what do you think of this whole argument over truth, subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking?

Can't get enough of great docs? You may have missed these during their fest runs, but you can still catch them on DVD. Here are seven documentaries from the last couple years that are well worth seeing, if you haven't caught them yet ...

1) Deliver Us From Evil -- Amy Berg's wrenchingly painful documentary about Oliver O'Grady (pictured, above), a pedophile priest who was moved around from parish to parish to prey on unsuspecting families by his boss, Cardinal Roger Mahony , now Archbishop of Los Angeles (who just a couple days ago, announced a $660 million pre-trial settlement of sexual abuse cases involving other priests), in spite of Mahony's knowledge of O'Grady's penchant for raping children, is a must see, and frankly, I'm shocked that more people haven't seen this Oscar-nommed film. It was by far the most powerful film I saw at last year's Toronto International Film Festival last year. If you haven't seen this film, get it in your DVD rental queue post haste.

2) Jesus Camp -- Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing have kind of take the documentary world by storm the past couple of years, with two back-to-back years of being on the feature-length documentary Oscar short list (hey, it's only a matter of time before they win, trust me). In 2005 they made the excellent Boys of Baraka (also worth catching on DVD if you want to have yourself a Rachel-and-Heidi weekend), and then they hit the ball out of the park again with Jesus Camp, about which our own James Rocchi said, "The best horror film I've seen all year is a documentary."

It's taken awhile, but Kevin Smith is finally leaving New Jersey. The state will miss him. The people will miss him. But his fans, well, I have a feeling they've been waiting for the man to do something different. For the past few months, Smith has been teasing his next flick, a "horror" film, but not saying much about it. While out in London doing his usual speaking thing, the dude finally shed a bit more light on his plans for this so-called horror pic, as well as giving it a title -- Red State. With a title like that, I immediately expect a slew of zombie Republicans to invade some small, unassuming town in middle America. However, it doesn't appear Smith will be going that route.

For Red State, Smith is drawing inspiration from those extremist Church groups; the Westboro Baptist Church (led by Fred Phelps) being the one mentioned by Smith. He says, "That dude has always fascinated me and he's really informed the horror movie that I'm working on. The movie's called 'Red State' and it's very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme. It's certainly not Phelps himself but it's very much inspired by a Phelps figure." So, will this Phelps-like character throw on a mask and start wiping people out with killer bibles?

Smith was careful when it came to describing the overall tone of the film, and admits that it's hard to explain what he's going for. "It's weird because for a few months I've been saying 'horror movie' and technically it is, but it's also not a very traditional horror movie in the sense that people have been asking me, 'Is it a slasher movie? Is it like the Japanese horror flicks?' It'd be much easier to just show it to them when I'm done and be like, 'This is what I meant.' At which point I'm sure there'll be people saying, 'This ain't a horror movie!' But to me, it is." If Smith goes the Jesus Camp route with this film, then I can definitely see where he's coming from -- that flick was mega scary. But it's also not technically a horror film. So perhaps he's looking to show us how scary some people are without actually giving them knives to chop heads off? I'm intrigued; Smith will reportedly write the script over the next few months, then shoot it "somewhere in the middle of the country" later this year.

It should be a green-tie affair at the opening night gala of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. The event, happening April 25, will be hosted by Al Gore and is set to feature some entertainment that will focus on the global warming issue. This entertainment is part of a partnership with the SOS (Save Our Selves) Campaign, which raises climate crisis awareness and will include live performances from some of the artists participating in SOS' Live Earth concert series happening on July 7. The acts set for the gala weren't revealed, but some of those involved with the Live Earth shows include Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Mayer, John Legend, Black Eyed Peas, Korn and Melissa Etheridge, who recently won an Oscar for the song she wrote for the Gore-featured documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Also, the night will include the premiere of seven short films, each of which deals with the problems and the solutions of the crisis and each of which is shorter than ten minutes. The directors and titles of these shorts were not yet revealed either, because the seven showcased films have not been chosen yet. They will be selected by the festival's planners from the 60 shorts that were commissioned by SOS. Some of the filmmakers who participated include Jonathan Glazer, Kevin Macdonald, Abel Ferrara, Amy Berg, Ari Sandel, the doc duo Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady and someone from Aardman Animation (Peter Lord? Nick Park?). It isn't completely made clear, but it seems that all 60 of the commissioned films will be shown during the Live Earth event. So, if you can't make it to New York City for the world premiere of the seven shorts, you can see at least those if not all of them at one of the concerts (so far the only locations announced are Shanghai, Sydney, London and Johannesburg, while the cities in the U.S., Brazil, Japan and Antarctica are TBA). I probably won't be able to attend the gala or one of the concerts, so hopefully there will be another place for me to see the films. After all, this is the best news for shorts fans since Cannes' announced its own opening night compilation.

Knowledgeable people have been talking a lot about documentaries lately, about how new, smaller digital technology is allowing people to get closer to their subjects -- not to mention producing films much more cheaply. It's a renaissance for documentaries, they say. Eight documentaries released in 2006 cracked the list of the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time, and another 15 currently reside on the second hundred.

But here's a simple question: how many of these would anyone want to watch a second time? How many have a shelf life? For example, here's my personal documentary "shelf life" top five: Crumb (1995, Terry Zwigoff), Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997, Errol Morris), Lessons of Darkness (1992, Werner Herzog), To Be and to Have (2002, Nicolas Philibert) and My Voyage to Italy (1999, Martin Scorsese).

Brokeback Mountain -- Last year's controversially Oscar-snubbed romance drama earns itself a brand-new 2-disc special edition. Word is that this re-release contains only a trio of new featurettes, so don't be so quick to give in to that double-dip sensation. On the positive side, this edition DOES come with eight Brokeback Mountain postcards ... for that special someone.

The Guardian -- Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher star in a water-logged remake of An Officer and a Gentleman ... or any other military drama of the past 25 years in which a brash and headstrong recruit butts heads with a grizzled old veteran only to rely on the old guy's help when his lack of experience does indeed catch up with him, (Insert yawn here.) Extras include a director's commentary from Andrew Davis, a few deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and a pair of featurettes, one on the production and another focusing on the Coast Guard.

Jesus Camp -- Some people called it a stick in the eye to religion; others called it an impressively objective look at religious zealotry. I call it a pretty fascinating documentary either way. This eye-opening look at one particular religious camp may warm your heart or it could chill your blood, but it's a pretty compelling look at a section of people I don't normally come across, and that's generally a worthwhile way to spend 90-some minutes. Extras include a filmmaker commentary and some deleted scenes.

It ought to be relatively easy to narrow down a list of films I've seen and liked in 2006 into a cogent top ten -- and to be fair, I whittled it down to the top 20 pretty easily -- but figuring out in just what order to rank my final ten was incredibly frustrating. How to rank a list of films, so different from each other, into a semi-ordered list that would be less than random? Equally frustrating was realizing that, in spite of the number of films I did see in 2006, there were still some great films that I missed catching, some of which might have made it onto my list had I seen them. Nonetheless, I can only rank from amongst those films I did see; here then, are my top ten films of the year.

Here at Cinematical, we know there's nothing you like more this time of year than reading all about who's nominating whom for what critics' award. The latest nominations to come down the pike are from the Windy City, where the noms are lining up with nothing terribly shocking compared to other critics' groups.

Best Pic noms include Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, The Queen, and United 93. In fact, the Chicago critics love Babel so much they nominated Alejandro González Iñárritu's little gem of a film for no fewer than nine awards, including Brad Pitt for Best Actor, Iñárritu for Best Director, Rinko Kikuchi for Best Promising Newcomer, and assorted other goodies.

Hey, did you know it was awards season? The one crappy thing about all these awards and nominations is that the majority of people out there have not seen any of the films on the list. For example, The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) announced their nominations for the 12th annual Critics' Choice Awards (which is kind of like the Viewer's Choice Awards, except P. Diddy isn't hosting and everyone in the room is feverishly typing on a blackberry), and just by looking at the best picture category, I assume most folks have only seen two of the films listed. Mayyybe three. But isn't that always the case?

The wonderful thing for pics like Dreamgirls and Letters from Iwo Jima is that, with these awards and nominations pouring out ahead of their release dates, it's all free marketing. But all that does is benefit people with a lot more money than you, so let's move on. With 200 members, the BFCA is the largest critics' organization in the United States and Canada, and the actual awards ceremony will be broadcast this January 20 on E! Entertainment Television. The nice thing about these awards is the diversity; basically everyone gets to join the party. Beside your standard categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Supporting, Animated, Documentary), you have Best Ensemble, Best Young Actor, Best Young Actress, Best Comedy, Best Soundtrack and Best Family Film (Live Action) -- a category I feel should be included at the Oscars.

Any surprises? Well, Deliver Us from Evil and Jesus Camp were both left off the documentary list, and Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated twice (The Departed, Blood Diamond) in the same category, Best Actor. As far as who has the most nods, The Departed, Babel, Little Miss Sunshine and Dreamgirls each received seven.

As always, a full list of nominations is waiting for you after the jump.