BEYOND: Non-fiction film fest has ‘arrived’

At a press event previewing this year’s selections for Silverdocs, the documentary film festival from the American Film Institute and Discovery Channel, artistic director Sky Sitney said the festival is “emerging” no longer.

“We’ve fully arrived as the pre-eminent documentary film festival,” she declared.

She makes a good case. All five films nominated as Oscar’s best documentary feature this year were shown at Silverdocs (although only one made its world premiere there) — an impressive achievement for a festival just seven years old. Organizers expect this year’s event, which runs Monday through June 22, to attract more than 25,000 people. The festival will showcase 122 films from more than 50 countries.

Festival opener “More Than a Game” looks at how Akron, Ohio, produced five friends who became great basketball players, including NBA superstar LeBron James. Organizers hinted that Mr. James would attend the screening if he didn’t have a game to play — and maybe he will, because his Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t make it into the finals.

“The Nine Lives of Marion Barry,” a look at the District’s troubled former mayor and current city councilman, closes the festival. District natives Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer present their view of a man whose personal demons have overshadowed his civil rights work.

In between, Silverdocs offers a whole world of film to explore. Legendary documentarian Albert Maysles Is the honoree at this year’s Guggenheim Symposium. The festival is screening nine of his shorts and two of his features, including “Grey Gardens,” the documentary about high-society eccentrics that inspired a Broadway musical and HBO’s recent made-for-cable film. A full schedule can be found at silverdocs.com.

Other highlights include:

The September Issue — The director of the Bill Clinton campaign doc “The War Room” takes us inside another fortress — Vogue magazine. This fascinating look at how the magazine assembled its September 2007 issue, the largest it had ever published, goes far beyond the tell-all novel and film “The Devil Wears Prada.” Vogue editor Anna Wintour is notoriously private, but director R.J. Cutler gets her on camera talking about her life and work. She might inspire fear in underlings and designers, but it turns out the most powerful woman in fashion doesn’t get that kind of respect from her own family.

“I think they’re very amused by what I do,” she says, slightly hurt, about her sister and brothers, one of whom is the political editor of the Guardian. Even her daughter, who appears on-screen, dismisses the idea she would ever work with her mother. “I would never want to take it that seriously,” she says of fashion. Perhaps Miss Wintour’s steely gaze is actually a defense mechanism.

Trimpin: The Sound of Invention — “What is Trimpin?” asks composer Charles Amirkhanian of the engineer-cum-composer-cum-installation-artist. “I’d call him an intermedia artist.” It’s an apt description of the German-born, Seattle-based sound artist, who goes by his last name only. The motivation for his avant-garde soundscapes is a charming one: He has kept a promise he made to himself as a child to keep on doing just what he liked.

His work is based on found objects, and he moved to the United States after a few trips here in the 1970s. “I couldn’t believe what access to high junk you had in this country,” he says.

Trimpin doesn’t always find; sometimes he takes, as when he asks a friend what she’s planning to do with those high heels after a party. Trimpin is an anti-Glenn Gould — he doesn’t like recorded music, so no recordings of his music exist.

The engaging man seems well-liked, but that doesn’t mean his work doesn’t bring him into conflicts with other musicians. While working with the Kronos Quartet on a piece inspired by rock music and toy instruments, he explains that a violin must be smashed at the end. “I philosophically have trouble with that,” one member of the quartet says. “I kind of feel the same way,” another murmurs.

“Trimpin” is a challenger in the music competition.

The Time of Their Lives — When I get very old, I would like to live at the Mary Feilding Guild. The North London home for the “active elderly” has some rather distinguished retirees: Alison Selford, 87, a journalist and novelist; Rose Hacker, 101, a former sex therapist and current columnist; and Hetty Bower, 102, an antiwar activist.

Story Continues →