It’s been a great week so far for the Nashville Film Festival. It becomes apparent that, more and more every year, our little film fest is growing up, and this year’s festivities (and the beautifully chosen lineup of films), have been no exception. We’ve seen eye-opening docs like “Manufactured Landscapes,” “The Devil Came on Horseback” and “Kamp Katrina” (filmmakers David and Ashley were nice enough to sit and chat with us about and their first doc, “Mardi Gras: Made In China” is a DOC office favorite). We also had the opportunity to see the work of filmmakers like Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, and Ry Russo-Young, who made my personal favorite of this year’s festival—a film that I’ve heard folks buzzing about since our visit to SXSW in March—“Hannah Takes the Stairs.” Ry’s directorial debut “Orphans” also played our fest this year, and tonight is the fest’s first screening of filmmaker Craig Zobel’s “Great World of Sound” as well as a film that comes highly recommended by many folks and uniquely combines documentary footage with its fictional narrative. It’s been inspiring to talk to these filmmakers, and I’ve realized just how much the documentary medium has influenced their aesthetic and approach to movie making. I’ve heard many of my favorite names, from Maysles to Wiseman bandied about, and I’ve been left with an overwhelming “god bless us, everyone” sort of feeling that the future of film is in good hands. Many props and thanks to all the folks at the film festival who’ve made this a very enjoyable week and to the filmmakers who have given us a few moments of their time and insight into the creation of their work. Hope to see you at the closing night event.

Lawrence Bender, producer of Quentin Tarantino classics like “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs,” and now Al Gore’s documentary “Inconvenient Truth,” revealed he’s got more doc projects in the works.
“‘Inconvenient Truth’ led to a bunch of phone calls,” Bender said during a panel discussion at the Nashville Film Festival this week. “There were some very interesting ideas. Some will hopefully get made this year.”
Bender politely declined to specify for The Documentary Channel what projects he’s got in the pipeline. I bet some of the documentaries are related to the environment or at least one has to do with global warming. Every one who attended the panel discussion Friday got an energy star compliant light bulb, more energy efficient and better for the environment than the average bulb.
Bender said he is, of course, still devoted to making feature films, but that these days his head is split about 50-50 between Hollywood and his social conscience.
So, as one festival attendee asked him, is his career heading in a documentary direction? Bender replied: “The answer is yes.”

With national healthcare an early issue for Democratic presidential nominees, Michael Moore, the director who brought the documentary genre mainstream with his treatise on U.S. gun laws, “Bowling for Columbine,” is set to further the debate with “Sicko,” a film about the nation’s expensive healthcare system.

According to an article published this week in the New York Post, Moore aims to debut “Sicko” next month at the Cannes Film Festival. The documentary includes a Moore hosted-trip to Cuba for 9/11 Ground Zero workers in in search of cutting-edge healthcare from Castro’s socialized system, according to The Post.

In July 2006, Moore’s Web site reported that about 75 percent of “Sicko” had been shot. Several months earlier, Moore appealed to the public in a letter on his site asking for people to share healthcare horror stories.

“Ok, here’s your chance,” Moore wrote. “As you can imagine, we’ve got the goods on these bastards. All we need now is to put a few of you in the movie and let the world see what the greatest country ever in the history of the universe does to its own people, simply because they have the misfortune of getting sick. Because getting sick, unless you are rich, is a crime, a crime for which you must pay, sometimes with your own life.”

Moore received 19,000 letters in response to his request, which he said took him nearly two months to read. “Slacker,” another Moore documentary, is also in the works. At the Toronto Film Festival in September, the controversial director mentioned the project as one that chronicles the aftermath of the 2004 election, according to FoxNews.com.

It’s been our mission since day one to show all types of documentary films and showcase the diversity of the medium. A good example of this is “Ryan,” the animated documentary we frequently air. For some purists, the film has been the cause of quite a little bit of controversy. Can a doc be animated and still be considered a documentary?

I tend to think the answer is yes, and many kudos to our forward-thinking viewers out there who have written in about that film. It’s encouraging to know that there are folks out there with minds open enough to experience the entire breadth of what the medium has to offer.

It’s with this notion in mind and tongue firmly planted in cheek that we are proud to pull back the curtain and premiere a few films on our airwaves this month that may fool you if you aren’t paying close attention. That’s right folks, the mockumentary, that tricky cousin to the doc genre that has been blowing minds since Fellini first gave it its name and certainly since Rob Reiner and the lads in “Spinal Tap” showed us how to turn the conventions of documentary filmmaking, well, up to 11.

If you’ve caught the films “Vert,” “Icarus of Pittsburgh,” “A Fool’s Errand,” or “Get on The Limo,” on the channel the last couple of days, you may have scratched your head in disbelief at what you were seeing, thinking “gosh, this can’t be for real.”

Well you were right, and what started as a friendly April Fool’s Day joke from your pals here at Doc will soon find itself a regular part of our programming. Mocks on Doc. It’s gonna be weird and it’s gonna be fun. Two great tastes that taste great together. Can’t wait to hear what you guys think.