Late summer in beautiful Northern Michigan with Michael Moore and lots of movies (and Madonna too)

[marmar]

http://www.traversecityfilmfest.org/


Festival Basics

The Traverse City Film Festival is a charitable and educational non-profit organization that holds an annual event in one of the most beautiful areas of the country — Traverse City, Michigan. The festival is committed to showing "Just Great Movies" and helping to save one of America's few indigenous art forms — the cinema.

The fourth annual Traverse City Film Festival will be held July 29 through August 3, 2008.

Highlights of the Traverse City Film Festival

The Traverse City Film Festival has grown to become one of the largest film festivals in the Midwest, and one of the most respected in the country. Last year, there were over 80,000 admissions to nearly 100 screenings, a number of them U.S. or world premieres. A special emphasis is given to foreign films, American independents, documentaries, and films which have been overlooked but deserve the attention of a public starved to see a good movie.

The festival also presents classic movies free of charge on a giant, inflatable outdoor screen overlooking Grand Traverse Bay in the Open Space Park at dusk.

Panel discussions with directors, writers, actors, and other members of the film industry are offered daily.

About the Traverse City Film Festival

The Traverse City Film Festival is a charitable, educational, nonprofit organization committed to showing "Just Great Movies" and helping to save one of America's few indigenous art forms -- the cinema. The festival also owns and operates a year-round, community-based, mission driven art house movie theater, the State Theatre. Founded by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore and co-founders local photographer John Robert Williams and New York Times best-selling author Doug Stanton, with filmmakers Larry Charles and Terry George rounding out the Board of Directors, the festival brings films and filmmakers from around the world to northern Michigan.


Following is the list of ONLY the documentaries showing at the fest. There are plenty of other films:

Anvil! The Story of Anvil
(USA, 2008, 81 mins)

Director Sacha Gervasi's amazing documentary follows the criminally overlooked Canadian metal band Anvil -- a group whose core members started playing together in high school and are still going strong 35 years later. After nearly making it big in 1984 (when they shared the stage with acts like Whitesnake and Bon Jovi), the band has continually fallen just short of stardom, but hasn't given up on the rock-n-roll dream. A touching portrait of this real-life Spinal Tap, the film focuses equal attention on music, friendship, and the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into keeping this duo together for decades. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the L.A. Film Festival. Following both screenings of the film, the band will perform a short live set on stage. And catch them later on Friday night at Union Street! Not Rated

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Baghdad High
(UK, USA, France, 2007, 82 mins)

Filmmakers Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter made this movie based on a simple but intriguing idea: find four typical teens in Baghdad, give them video cameras, and ask them to document a year of their lives. The results are truly remarkable. Living in Iraq's war-torn capital, these four middle-class, religiously diverse teens aren't so different from teens in America -- they worry about getting into college, listen to pop music, and send text messages to their girlfriends. But they also have to avoid roadside bombs on the way to school, and weigh the option of abandoning their hometown. An intimate look into the lives of ordinary teens living in truly extraordinary conditions. Not Rated

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Body of War
(USA, 2007, 81 mins)

This transfixing, emotionally charged documentary follows Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, a 25-year-old soldier who was shot after only five days in Iraq. Paralyzed from the legs down by the bullet wound, Young goes on to campaign against the failures of government as a member of Iraqi Veterans Against the War. The body in the title of this documentary refers not only to Tomas, but also to the U.S. Congress -- the body whose decisions got Young into the war. Co-directors Ellen Spiro and television legend Phil Donahue will be in attendance for our screenings of this film, an impassioned documentary about a truly remarkable American. Not Rated

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CSNY Déjà Vu
(USA, 2008, 96 mins)

Following Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on their 2006 Freedom of Speech tour, this documentary offers a look at an unabashedly political band whose activism never takes a back seat to the music. Though thoroughly committed to the anti-war movement, the band nevertheless provides an entertaining show both onstage and off -- the group's in top form, performing CSNY standards and some of Young's new material. Your hope for America will be lifted after seeing this incredible movie, and the music is rockin, too. Rated R

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Dust
(Germany, 2007, 90 mins)

A ninety-minute movie about -- dust? Therein lies the genius of this German documentary. Ever-present but hardly ever noticed, the titular subject of veteran filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky's fascinating new documentary isn't something most people would think twice about. Unless, of course, one was dealing with Sahara sandstorms, the Oklahoma dustbowl that devastated countless lives in the thirties, or the toxic dust at the World Trade Center site after 9/11. From the mundane to the majestic, from scientific to philosophical, this all-encompassing documentary about "what is left of what is left" focuses both on the particles themselves and the people who study them -- scientists, artists, professional cleaners, and even astronomers. You'll never see dust the same way again. Not Rated

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Encounters at the End of the World
(USA, 2007, 99 mins)

In this breathtaking new documentary, visionary director Werner Herzog (who has now earned the distinction of being the only director to have shot a film on every continent) trains his lens on the hauntingly beautiful landscape of Antarctica, offering a look at a small community of scientists, researchers, and adventurers who call the South Pole their home. Herzog promises that his documentary (follow-up to TCFF-fave "Grizzly Man") will not be "another movie about penguins," and he mostly stays true to his word -- his focus on the frozen continent is certainly more on its human than on its animal inhabitants. "Encounters" is an awe-inspiring achievement from one of modern cinema's true masters. Rated G

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Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
(USA, 2008, 109 mins)

Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (whose films "Taxi to the Dark Side" and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" were smash hits at previous TCFFs) brings this lovingly-crafted biography of Hunter S. Thompson to this year's festival. Gibney presents a vast amount of material on Thompson's life, including never-before-seen home movies, archival footage, and interviews with figures such as Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Buffet, Tom Wolfe, and Thompson's illustrator Ralph Steadman. This thoroughly absorbing documentary charts Thompson's rise and fall from fame, exploring the life of this counterculture hero and unlikely patriot. As the election season draws near, Gibney's look at passionate reporting offers the perfect antidote to the mainstream media. Rated R

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View Trailer Helvetica
(UK, 2007, 80 mins)

The first documentary for director Gary Hustwit shows an innovative, remarkably assured hand behind the camera, weaving together a fascinating tale about visual culture on a global scale with the titular ubiquitous typeface. From the font's origin in 1950s Switzerland to its current position as the typeface of choice for many international corporations, this sleek documentary moves rhythmically around the globe, tracking the font's prominence on countless billboards, subway graphics, storefronts, and warning signs. A stylish, intelligent film, "Helvetica" opens a surprising world around a seemingly mundane topic.
Not Rated

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Kenny
(Australia, 2006, 103 mins)

Director Clayton Jacobson delivers this fascinating, heartwarming character study about -- ready for it? -- a port-a-potty deliveryman named Kenny. The film starts with a rather thorough tour of Kenny's professional life at Splashdown, a company that supplies portable toilets to major events in Melbourne. Clever toilet humor aside (and there's quite a bit of it to wade through), Jacobson shows Kenny to be a remarkably decent chap as we follow his troubled relationship with his disapproving father (who calls him "a glorified turd burglar") and his charming courting of an airline stewardess on the way to the port-a-john convention in Nashville. A huge success in its native Australia and one of the funniest films of the year, "Kenny" is an endearing, upbeat portrait of a truly uncommon common man. Rated R

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Man on Wire
(UK, 2008, 94 mins)

Winner of both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize for best foreign documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, this dizzying, death-defying film recounts French wirewalker Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire crossing between New York's Twin Towers (which were then the world's tallest buildings). Widely acclaimed as one of the year's best documentaries, the film is a mesmerizing, poetic look at a daredevil and the crew who helped him smuggle equipment to the top of the Towers and rig the wire, with no safety net to separate Petit and the ground 1350 feet below. The history of the Towers is explored in detail, with their haunting 9/11 fate ever-present but never mentioned. Rated PG-13

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Miss Gulag
(Russia, USA, 2007, 80 mins)

Celebrating beauty in the least likely of places, "Miss Gulag" centers on three inmates in an all-female Siberian prison who enter the jail's annual beauty pageant. An in-depth look at the lives of these three women, director Maria Yatskova's film documents life both inside and outside of prison, offering a portrait of the challenges of life for young women in post-Soviet Russia. Both tragic and beautiful, "Miss Gulag" weaves the stories of these women's lives on both sides of the fence, revealing the hardships they face while free and incarcerated. The film's producer will be in attendance to take questions from the audience. Not Rated

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A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy
(USA, 2008, 85 mins)

Cinema-vérité pioneer director Robert Drew revisits his own 1960s documentaries on Kennedy in this powerful film. Drawing material from his four 1960s films, this newly-assembled documentary follows Kennedy on the campaign trail and through his presidency, to the widespread shock caused by his tragic assassination. Particularly relevant as a point of contrast to modern politics, this portrait of Kennedy shows a man whose actions and ideals resonate profoundly even today. Narrated by Alec Baldwin. Not Rated

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The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
(Germany, USA, 2006, 72 mins)

The subject of this poignant documentary is Yunis Khatayer Abbas, an Iraqi journalist who was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib for nine months after being accused of taking part in a plot to kill British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Abbas gives a candid portrait of the military installation, revealed to be both sinister and comically inept. A personal film that doesn't try to cover the whole scope of the Iraq war, this tightly focused doc gives an intimate look at life inside Abu Ghraib, and is one of the most original and visually stimulating documentaries in recent memory. Rated PG-13

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Profit motive and the whispering wind
(2007, 58 mins)

Inspired by historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," filmmaker John Gianvito creates a portrait of American history by documenting grave sites and monuments that commemorate our nation's activist heroes. A mesmerizing experimental documentary, "Profit motive and the whispering wind" offers a unique, minimalist travelogue through our nation's past, taking stops to pay respects to figures like César Chávez, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mother Jones, and Malcolm X, as well as some lesser-known activists. This perfectly paced, elegiac film stands as a poetic testament to the fallen radicals who helped shape our nation. Winner of the National Society of Film Critics' Best Experimental Film Award, this film was on many Best 10 Films of the Year lists, including Cahiers du Cinema and Film Comment. The filmmaker will be in attendance to introduce film students and fans to his work, and to answer questions on the genre in which he works. Not Rated

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Religulous
(USA, 2008, 99 mins)

Director Larry Charles ("Borat," "Seinfeld," "Curb Your Enthusiasm") has split the sides of TCFF filmgoers since one of the most memorable premieres in film festival history in 2006. This year, he brings a hilariously irreverent documentary that follows comedian Bill Maher as he investigates the current state of religion around the globe. In the movie that's destined to be one of the most controversial films of the year, Maher confronts just about everybody he meets about their beliefs. Get a sneak peak at Charles' new movie here in TC before the rest of the world gets a chance! TCFF favorite and board member Larry Charles is scheduled to be in attendance at his screenings. Not Rated

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Song Sung Blue
(USA, 2008, 85 mins)

This down-to-earth documentary follows the life of Neil Diamond impersonator Mike Sardina, whose voice is a dead ringer for the legendary singer-songwriter. Mike goes on to form a Neil Diamond/Patsy Cline tribute act called "Thunder & Lightning" in Milwaukee with his wife Claire. Filmmaker Greg Kohs presents the couple's personal and professional highs and lows from their twenty-plus years together, beginning with their brush with fame performing "Forever in Blue Jeans" onstage with Eddie Veder, and ending with the tragic aftermath of a car crash that left Claire disabled. Both heartbreaking and inspirational, this is a fundamentally American story of a couple with a dream. Not Rated

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Theater of War
(USA, 2008, 95 mins)

Filmmaker John Walter offers an insightful and gripping exploration of the 2006 Central Park staging of Bertolt Brecht's masterful antiwar play "Mother Courage and Her Children" -- a project that attracted actors Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline as well as famed theater director George C. Wolfe. Walter goes behind the scenes, giving an in-depth look at the preparations for the staging of Tony Kushner's adaptation of this play, featuring a never-before-seen glimpse into lead actress Meryl Streep's process and preparation for performance. While this documentary is a must-see for fans of theater, it offers more than just a backstage pass: Walter's examination of the complex and convoluted relationship between war and capitalism will prove insightful to every citizen. Few films this year will move you as much as this one will. Not Rated

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Up the Yangtze
(Canada, China, 2007, 93 mins)

Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang returns to his family's homeland for this astonishing documentary about the ongoing Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze, China's longest river. Aboard a luxury ship on a "farewell cruise" along the transformed Yangtze River, Yung follows two characters representing old and new China. "Cindy" (Yu Shui) washes dishes on the cruise ship to support her family, poor farmers who were among the two million displaced by the dam. "Jerry" (Chen Bo Yu) is the ship's lounge singer, a young man from a middle-class family who can't wait for the development and progress promised by the project. A fascinating study of national identity and the cost of progress, "Up the Yangtze" was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at Sundance, and is the perfect film to see before the Beijing Olympics. Not Rated

[meowomon]

1. You had me until Madonna.

Sorry, I think she needs a good scrubbing with a 10% bleach solution.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I saw Up the Yangtze at the Mpls-St. Paul Int'l Film Festival this spring

It really shows the economic contrasts of the new capitalist China.