The programming for the Camden International Film Festival, which exclusively hosts nonfiction movies, is guided by three individuals: senior programmer Samara Chadwick, program director Sean Flynn, and executive director/artistic director/founder Ben Fowlie. While in the process of drafting a story about the festival, I sent them some questions, and then some more, and so on, […]
CIFF REPORT #1: ON “HALE COUNTY”, “BABY BROTHER”, AND “NORMAN NORMAN”
The nonfiction feature Hale County This Morning, This Evening [2018] is first and foremost a sensorial experience, not a narrative one. With that said, filmmaker RaMell Ross does introduce his main characters very early on: first Daniel and Quincy, two young basketball players on the come-up in Hale County, AL, and then Boosie, who is […]
CIFF INTERVIEW: DIRECTOR J.P. SNIADECKI, OF “EL MAR LA MAR”
The new film primarily displays landscape footage of the Sonoran desert, while the audio track features interviews with numerous figures that have experienced the location firsthand—including immigrants who had just crossed the border, as well as some patrolmen who consider it their job to stop them.
CIFF CAPSULE: “ABACUS — SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL”
The punchline to those lone criminal charges—as it’s told in this film by Hoop Dreams [1994] director Steve James—is that Abacus didn’t even contribute to the crisis.
CIFF CAPSULE: “MAINELAND”
While accommodating on a technical level, they meet the foreign students with typical condescension: signs for “English-only common spaces,” classes that begin with “so where are you from” conversations, that whole routine.
