Greetings loyal DOC Viewers.

Just wanted to take a moment to congratulate filmmaker Peter Raymont, whose powerful film “Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Daillaire,” was awarded the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary last evening. The film had its television premiere here on DOC, and this marks the first such honor for us. It’s not a stretch to say that we are beside ourselves with joy and appreciation for Peter and his truly moving film. The film rarely airs on the channel without our receiving mail from viewers who have been just as deeply emotionally touched by “Shake Hands” as we all were when we screened it for the first time. We’ve known for a long time that we had something special on our hands. Peter shared the honor of the win with his wife and longtime filmmaking partner Lindalee Tracey, who tragically passed last year after a battle with breast cancer. We hope Peter can rest assured that Lindalee’s legacy could not have been preserved  by a more important and eye-opening doc than “Shake Hands.” So there you have it folks, we here at DOC just wanted to take a few moments and show the pride. We hope this is just the first of many wonderful things to come (from our Channel as well as Peter Raymont). We don’t mind telling you the taste of victory is awfully sweet.

As I wrote about earlier in the year, the great filmmaker Errol Morris is wrapping up his latest effort, “Standard Operating Procedure,” a documentary set to be released sometime in 2008.

The movie is about the war in Iraq and whether or not, or how, facts can be obtained from a photograph. Morris said in a recent New York Times blog that he’s spent the last 18 months working with and interviewing U.S. military prison guards who photographed some of the inmate torture at Abu Ghraib.

What kind of information will those images - like the man standing on a box wearing a blue sheet and blue hood with an electrode attached to a finger on each of his hands - impart to people who look at those photos 100 years from now? Will any describe what actually transpired at the time?

“I’ve never liked the idea expressed by Godard that film is truth 24 times a second,” Morris said in a lecture titled “The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist” published on his Web site, www.errolmorris.com. “I have a slightly different version. Film is lies 24 times a second. Almost the same, slightly different.”

The hooded man photo is one example Morris gives in his blog of how false information and a photograph can work in tandem against the 3-dimensional reality of everyday life.

In March 2006, The New York Times and several other respected journalism outfits published articles misidentifying the man under the blue hood. A man imprisoned at Abu Ghraib named Ali Shalal Qaissi, of Amman, Jordan, came forward - with the image on his business card - to reveal he was the hooded man. Turned out he was not the man in the iconic photo. But, according to Morris, a photo of Ali Shala Qaissi holding the famous image out in front of himself, which appeared in the New York Times, somehow
“created an associative link much stronger than mere words might have.”

“Photography presents things and at the same time hides things from our view,” Morris wrote in his blog. “It allows us to not-see at the same time that it allows us to see. But language plus photography provides an express train to error. The photograph should be a constant reminder of how we can make false inferences from pictures. And of how pictures and language can interact to produce falsehood.”

A companion book to the documentary, also called “Standard Operating Procedure,” by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris is to be published by Penguin Press on March 13, 2008.

Greetings DOC Fans. Heard some awfully cool news from one of our favorite filmmakers. Mr. Dominic DeJoseph the filmmaker of DOC channel fan favorite “Johnny Berlin,” is in the process of editing together his follow-up to that film. “Johnny Berlin” is a film we’re very proud to have on our airwaves and its been a real pleasure to watch the mail come in from viewers that are loving the film as much as we do. Dominic’s news of a sequel will come as a pleasant surprise to the ever-growing cult of Johnny. Something about John’s way of keeping his tongue so firmly in cheek as he talks about all the twists and turns of his life has really seemed to resonate with a lot of folks out there (including yours truly) and it’s a fair bet that the sequel will be the same mix of hilarity and profundity that make the original such a memorable and important film. I’m definitely going to keep you posted on this one as I know that there is a good number of you just as excited as I am.

With the last all-day barbecues and lazy days of Labor Day weekend behind us, summer has uttered it’s last. But fear not Doc viewers, the fall film festival season is ushering us into the chillier months with a bang. Every September sees a collection of film buffs, movie critics, potential distributors, and industry movers and shakers attending the premieres of a number of heavy-hitting hopefuls on the film festival circuit. It is here that initial buzz will be generated for a number of this fall’s features, both positive and negative.

The 64th Venice Film Festival (August 28-Sept. 8) is in full swing, yesterday honoring Tim Burton with the much-coveted Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement in filmmaking. Portions of Burton’s newest venture, a remake of the classic Broadway play Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, are being shown at the festival.

Jeremy Podeswa’s drama Fugitive Pieces kicked off the Toronto International Film Festival(Sept. 6-15), long known as a stepping-stone to Academy Awards success. On the documentary front, politics is ever a strong subject. Michael Moore’s new political doc Captain Mike Across America will be premiering as well as Jonathon Demme’s Man From Plains. Moore’s newest shock doc takes us inside the 2004 election campaign, while Demme’s film focuses on the life of former president Jimmy Carter. Other than politics, the festival’s Real to Reel documentary programming section is heavy with music-themed documentaries, including Grant Gee’s Joy Division, Murray Lerner’s Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, and Soorush Alvi’s political and music-themed documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad.

This week has also seen the unveiling of this year’s film lineup for the AFI Los Angeles Film Festival, another one of the expected stops on the road to nomination and higher box office achievement. The Rome International Film Festival in Rome, Georgia kicks off today as well, along with the Southeastern Film Industry Expo. For tickets and information, visit www.riff.net. Stay tuned the Documentary Channel blog for more festival updates and buzz-worthy docs as the season progresses.