This year’s Forum program continues to map the ever-changing terrain of documentary art and how its intersections with the documentary industry shape the aesthetics, ethics and politics of nonfiction image making. The processes and perspectives of filmmakers in the CIFF program – and those developing new works through our Artist Programs – serve as a springboard for honest, intimate conversations about what documentary is and what it can become.

Presenting Partner

10:30am – 12:00pm (French Room – Camden Opera House)

The Fictions of Race, co-presented by the Trust Issues Podcast and Film Comment

“To be Black is the greatest fiction of my life. Yet I’m still bound to its myth,” writes filmmaker and photographer RaMell Ross (Hale County, this Morning this Evening) in an artist statement accompanying his photographic series South County, Alabama. This panel explores the historical role of nonfiction cinema in teaching us how to see, inhabit, and police race. How does film form both reflect and reshape lived experiences? Are documentary images inevitably tethered to reality, or can they help us envision new ways of being?

• RaMell Ross (Director, Hale County, this Morning this Evening)
• Milisuthando Bongela (Director, Milisuthando)
• Jason Fox (Editor, World Records)
• Moderator: Devika Girish (Co-Deputy Editor, Film Comment)

This panel expands on the ideas in Trust Issues, a new podcast being launched in partnership with Points North. You can listen to all of Episode 1: The Freedom of Fiction at the Storyforms exhibit at CMCA in Rockland.

The audio from this event will be published on the Film Comment Podcast next week. Subscribe for free at filmcomment.com/podcast.

12:30pm – 2:00 pm (French Room – Camden Opera House)

The Art of the Pitch

Few people will tell you they got into filmmaking because they love to pitch, and yet it is one of the most essential skills for independent filmmakers to develop as they seek out funding, distribution and creative partnerships. Pitching can take many forms: on-stage presentations, “speed dating” meetings, at festivals and conference events, and sometimes even in the proverbial elevator. This conversation will explore what it means to translate the essence of a film and your vision for it into a pitch, and how you can use every pitch as an opportunity to build lasting relationships and better understand your story. Independent producers and executives will share case studies and experiences delivering and responding to pitches, and reflect on how to make your project resonate in a noisy media landscape.

• Loren Hammonds  (TIME Studios)
• Carolyn Hepburn (ESPN Films)
• Tara Nadolny (ESPN Films)
• Marley McDonald (Director, Time Bomb Y2K) 
• Brian Becker (Director, Time Bomb Y2K) 
• Darcy McKinnon (Gusto Moving Pictures)
• Moderator: Senain Kheshgi (MAJORITY)

1:30pm – 3:00pm (Tucker Room – Camden Opera House)

Artistic Encounters with the Archive

An archive has an all-encompassing contemporary meaning. We carry it in our phones, in huge vaults and cloud servers. How we approach it however, as the living organism that it is, requires a creative practice of resurrection – one that contends with the haunting question of what needs to be brought into the present, while other images, stories, and sounds are being enfolded into “the past.” Forgotten, stolen or erased histories are unfolded, creating space to reflect, relate and imagine. This panel looks into the creative process adopted by filmmakers who are engaging with this metaphysical practice of unearthing and enlivening archives. 

• Mila Turajlic, (Director, Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels) 
• Yousef Srouji (Director, Three Promises) 
• Vlad Petri (Director, Between Revolutions) 
• Moderator: Kirsten Johnson (Director, Dick Johnson is Dead, Cameraperson)

3:00pm – 4:30pm (French Room – Camden Opera House)

Moore for Sale

part of the Storyforms live documentary series

In 2017, filmmaker Keith Wilson started making a feature documentary about Frank Moore, the controversial Berkeley-based performance artist, public access TV host, shaman, and commune leader. With complete access to Moore’s extensive archive, Keith started shooting interviews, crafting grant proposals, and editing work samples for what would become his feature directorial debut: “Deep Inside the Shaman’s Den.”

Wilson was determined, his peers were enthusiastic, and a much-talked about Points North Pitch was delivered. But six years later, the film has not been made. What happened?

In this World Premiere of a provocative live documentary performance, Keith returns to CIFF to unravel his creative process and ethical dilemmas, interlacing Moore’s story with his own while unpacking the tangled relationships between success and failure, art and commerce, the living and the dead.

3:30pm – 5:00pm (Tucker Room – Camden Opera House)

Between Verité and Landscape Cinema

This panel reflects on the creative approaches to depicting landscapes in non-fiction cinema. How do the politics and history of space guide the visual language of its representation? What are the ethics to be considered in the process? And, is it possible to embody a more-than-human gaze when centering land?

• Hannah Jayanti (Topography)
• Alexander Porter (Topography)
• Daichi Saito (earthearthearth)
• Guilhem Causse (Knit’s Island)
• Moderator: Zaina Bseiso (Points North)

10:00 am- 1:00pm (Auditorium – Camden Opera House)

Points North Pitch

Whether you’re a film professional or not, the Points North Pitch is an invaluable chance to learn about the process of developing a documentary film and see first-hand how leading decision makers evaluate projects. Six teams of filmmakers selected for the Points North Fellowship will pitch their works-in-progress to a distinguished panel of funders, broadcasters, distributors, and producers. Each pitch lasts exactly 7 minutes, followed by 10-12 minutes of feedback.

Panelists:

• Dori Begley (Magnolia Pictures)
• Opal H. Bennett (POV)
• Megan Gelstein (Catapult Film Fund) Kiyoko McCrae (Chicken & Egg Pictures)
• Monika Navarro (Firelight Media)
• Maria Santos (IDA)
• Poh Si Teng (ABC News)
• Noland Walker (ITVS)
• Chi-hui Yang (Ford Foundation)
• Moderated by Elise McCave (Kickstarter)

Presenting Partner of the Points North Fellowship

With additional support from an anonymous supporter from our local community. 

3:30pm – 5:00pm (French Room – Camden Opera House)

Strata: a performance of Topography

part of the Storyforms live documentary series

Strata is a live-edited, improvisational documentary performance by artists Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter. Each iteration is a unique call and response between live documentary editing and a virtual landscape with documentary audio. Set in a small 3D scanned region of the Badlands of South Dakota, viewers piece together a chorus of diverse perspectives while performers construct it live. Voices carry you from paleontology to foraging, wildlife management to nuclear arms and geopolitics, and indigenous herbalism to cattle ranching. Strata layers histories, economics, natural sciences, deep time, and personal anecdotes within a unique immersive landscape that invites you into a meditation on the complex histories embedded in all lands and how profoundly human perspectives shape and define its future.