Next week marks the start of the ninth-annual SILVERDOCS Documentary Festival.
Put on annually by AFI and Discovery Channel, SILVERDOCS brings the best new documentaries to the Washington, D.C. area in what has become one of the nation’s largest film festivals.
The festival will begin next week on Monday, June 20th and run until June 27th.
This year’s festival features an intriguing and eclectic mix of some of the most highly-anticipated and critically-acclaimed new documentaries from across the globe.
Opening the festival will be The Swell Season, directed by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis. As described by the filmmakers, the film:
“follows musical artists Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who captivated audiences and earned an Academy Award for their musical collaboration in the film, ONCE. As their fictional, on-screen romance blurred with reality, they fell in love, recorded a self-titled album called “The Swell Season” and embarked on a world tour. Fueled by two years of exhilarating, sold out performances and psychological turmoil, the documentary is a volatile and intimate portrait of a romance that fractures in the face of life on the road and personal tragedy.”
Meets Obsession will be covering the festival in its entirety, so be sure to check in each day for festival updates, film reviews, and exclusive filmmaker interviews.
Festival highlights include:
Centerpiece screening The Interrupters by directer Steve James (Hoop Dreams), which follows a group of former Chicago gang members as they attempt to make change and disrupt violence in their communities.
Closing Night film Revenge of the Electric Car, which is director Chris Paine’s follow-up to his highly influential Who Killed the Electric Car? which explores the triumphant comeback of the electric car in today’s society.
Legendary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (Dont Look Back, The War Room, Al Franken: God Spoke, King of Pastry) will be honored at this year’s Guggenheim Symposium–a SILVERDOCs event that honors legendary documentary filmmakers each year. The event will be hosted by Senator Al Franken.
Other notable festival highlights include:
Better Than Something: Jay Reatard
Actor Michael Rapaport’s highly-anticipated directorial debut Beats, Rhymes, Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, which follows the trials and tribulations of the legendary hip hop group throughout their decades-spanning career.
Better This World, the enthralling look at the two young men accused of planning to bomb the 2008 Republican National Convention, and the controversial trial that brought light to the actual story behind the tabloid headlines.
Page One: Inside the New York Times, a captivating look into the news room of one of the biggest and most influential newspapers of our generation.
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey, the story of Kevin Clash, the man behind the famous beloved red puppet. The film is making its Washington, D.C. area debut after a critically-acclaimed debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Project Nim, the latest film from Man on Wire director James Marsh. The film tells the story of the groundbreaking scientific study that found a scientist raising a chimpanzee as if it were a human.
Better Than Something: Jay Reatard, a profile of the highly-influential and mysterious underground garage-rocker and examines the circumstances behind his untimely and shocking death.
You can find information and schedules for all the films playing this year at the SILVERDOCS website: www.silverdocs.com
Be sure to follow us @meetsobsession on twitter for festival updates, reviews and exclusive interviews.
