Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), directed and produced by Jason Kohn, is a richly painted, riveting documentary weaving together threads of political corruption and disparity of wealth distribution in Brazil, frog farms, kidnappings in Sao Paulo, reconstructive ear surgery, and the growth of the personal security business in Brazil. If all this sounds like a lot to meld together into one coherent tale, it is, but Kohn proves himself more than up to the task. Cinematical spoke to Kohn by phone recently about Manda Bala, which has received numerous awards on the fest circuit over the past year, and recently won three awards at the inaugural Cinema Eye Awards.

Cinematical: I read that at the Cinema Eye Awards, in your acceptance speech you talked about this film being made out of anger; can you talk a bit more about that?

Jason Kohn: Really that came out of my sense of frustration at the state of contemporary documentary films, at least at the time when I started making the film. There was a lot of talk going on about the democratization of docs, how it's cheaper to make them with new technologies, and I thought that was mostly bullshit. This idea that people on the marginalized fringes of society now have access to these technologies – it's just not true.

Indie Doubleheader is a new feature we're trying out, where I will give fest-length reviews to notable indie films playing the fest circuit. If you're a filmmaker with a film you'd like me to consider for this column, or a film lover who's seen a film you loved and you'd like to see us cover, drop me a line at kim (at) cinematical (dot) com.

Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)

What do corrupt politicians, tree bull frogs, plastic surgery and kidnapping have in common? In Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), director Jason Kohn skillfully weaves these seemingly disparate elements together into a cohesive tale of power and corruption, poverty and wealth in Sao Paulo, the capitol of the state of Sao Paulo. Opening on a money-laundering tree farm, Kohn sets the tone of the film early with some beautiful cinematography and a riveting, unobstrusive score.

At its heart, Manda Bala is a tale about money and power. The disparity between the very rich and the very poor is marked in the bigger cities of Brazil, where the wealthy live in fantastic mansions and high-rises that overlook Brazil's favelas -- thousands of rickety shacks of cardboard and metal sheeting, where millions of poor Brazilian's struggle to survive amid crushing poverty and brutal living conditions. In Sao Paulo, the kidnapping of wealthy civilians for ransom has become a huge problem the police force is ill-equipped to resolve.

My personal pick is the powerful, haunting There Will Be Blood, but there are other intriguing titles to explore. Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) won the inaugural Cinema Eye Award for Best Feature; according to one synopsis, the documentary examines the "cycles of violence that plague Brazil's upper and lower economic classes in fits of rampant corruption and violent kidnappings." The DVD from City Lights includes an audio commentary by the director and producers, as well as several additional scenes.

Linda Hattendorf first met the subject of her documentary, The Cats of Mirikitani, on the streets of New York. He was homeless; she bought one of his drawings. "Thus began a strange, intimate relationship," Martha Fischer wrote in her review. She called the doc "a treasure of personal filmmaking, created on a shoe-string budget and completely devoid of pretensions or aspirations beyond simple, intimate, storytelling." The DVD from Arts Alliance America includes 20 minutes of bonus footage, deleted scenes and Mirikitani art gallery images.

We told you a couple ago about the Cinema Eye Awards for documentary filmmaking, the brainchild of director/blogger (and all-around great guy) AJ Schnack and IndiePix. The awards were held last night at the IFC Center, and thanks to former Cinematical editor/current Spout queen Karina Longworth and her impressive Twittering skills, I was able to feel almost like I was there at the awards, instead of sitting here at home continuing to nurse this seemingly endless SXSW cough-from-hell I've been fighting all week.

Here (well, after the jump) are the award winners, per Karina. For the far more entertaining version, you can read the text of her live-posting over on her Twitter site as well. I expect the Cinema Eye folks will add a list of the winners to their site once the open bar closes at the after party, or at least sometime today, so here's a link to the official site as well. We at Cinematical appreciate both Karina's tenacity and her ability to provide entertaining awards coverage in 140-character Twitterings while, presumably, also enjoying the open bar at the party. That's dedication.

http://twitter.com/KarinaLongworth?page=2

Back in January, we wrote about director AJ Schnack's (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) efforts to create awards for non-fiction filmmaking that would be ... somewhat more relevant than the Academy Awards. Back when the Oscar shortlist for docs came out, Schnack wrote an angry diatribe about the process and the films selected (and, more importantly, those that were not selected) that echoed the sentiments of many of us who write about, or make, documentary films.

Although I'm not at all displeased that Alex Gibney ultimately won the Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and would have been equally happy if No End in Sight had won, there were some glaring omissions in the Oscar shortlist that were truly appalling, most notably In the Shadow of the Moon and King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.