peter raymont Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Academy Shortlists 15 Docs
Filed under: Documentary », Foreign Language », Independent », Politics », Oscar Watch », Religious », Cinematical Indie », War »
Documentary filmmakers deserve much more love and attention than they receive. One way to get more attention is to make the list of 15 documentaries short-listed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Variety has this year's list and cites three Iraq War-themed films as being "center stage": Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Body of War, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight (which Cinematical's Kim Voynar gave high marks when it played at Sundance) and Richard Robbins' Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.Kim is a self-styled "documentary dork" -- her words, not mine -- and wrote a column two months ago about films she thought "have (or ought to have) a shot at Oscar gold." She included No End in Sight, as well as the following docs that all made the short list: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix-Fine's War/Dance, Michael Moore's Sicko, Daniel Karslake's For the Bible Tells Me So, and Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's Nanking. Kim was pulling for Logan Smalley's Darius Goes West, which sadly did not make the list. Other notable exclusions included David Singleton's In the Shadow of the Moon and Seth Gordon's The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.
Here are the remaining eight that did make the list. First, the ones we've covered so far: Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire, Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen's The Rape of Europa, Weijun Chen's Please Vote for Me and Peter Raymont's A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman. Next, the ones we haven't seen yet: Steven Okazaki's White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which has played on HBO), Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side (due for release in January), Bill Haney's The Price of Sugar and Tricia Regan's Autism: The Musical.
Now the Academy's Documentary Branch will review the 15 films and narrow the list still further to the final five nominees, which will be announced on January 22.
Rwanda Pics Share Documentary Emmy
Filed under: Documentary », Awards », Cinematical Indie »
The Emmys aren't only for television shows -- they also give props to documentaries that air on TV, and this year, two films about the Rwandan genocide in 1994 received the award. Canadian filmmaker Peter Raymont was honored as the co-recipient of the 2007 Emmy Award for Best Documentary yesterday, for Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, along with Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman for God Sleeps in Rwanda, a documentary short narrated by Rosario Dawson. This is a great launch for the feature adapted from Raymont's doc, similarly-named Shake Hands with the Devil, which comes out at the end of the week.It's been a bittersweet ride for the filmmaker. His partner, Lindalee Tracy, succumbed to breast cancer last year, and she's been spoken of often, both in his discussion of his new documentary, A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, which I reviewed at TIFF, and last night: "This film was a chronicle of one man standing up for justice, and the quest for justice for those who can't fight for themselves was the goal that inspired Lindalee. She would be proud tonight."
Where Devil is about Dallaire's attempts to stop the genocide in Rwanda, God Sleeps is about five women whose lives have been changed by that genocide (almost 1 million people in 100 days), which has left the country almost 70% female. This film is a little bit older, having premiered in 2005, and it was an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Short in 2006. It follows the women as they share stories of the atrocities as well as their current life, such as an HIV-positive woman who joined the police force, raises 4 kids on her own, and is attending school to become a lawyer.
TIFF Review: A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman
Filed under: Documentary », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Toronto International Film Festival », Cinematical Indie », War »
"They'll have to admit I was loyal some day." Ariel Dorfman
One of the biggest challenges that faces a documentary filmmaker is balancing the pursuit of passion and emotion with the quest to inform. To dig too deep in one leaves the possibility of short-changing the other. With fiction, they can be created together so that both thrive. With a documentary, however, there isn't that luxury. For Peter Raymont's latest film, A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, one excels at the expense of the other. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Promise unfolds the life of writer and activist Ariel Dorfman, and how it intertwines with Augusto Pinochet's 1973 Chilean coup against then-president Salvador Allende. At the time, Dorfman was a Cultural Adviser and should have been called to the capitol building when it was under attack -- but he later learned his name was crossed off the list so that he'd survive to tell the story. And it is an incredible account -- one that discusses not only the life of a man in exile, but the drive of passion.
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