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Sundance 2009: Highlighting Social-Issue Content

Published on February 18, 2009

By Harriette Yahr

This year’s Sundance Film Festival, which ran January 15-25 in Park City, Utah, was jam-packed with media-with-social-muscle programming - from films to panels to awards to announcements of initiatives to keep activism in film alive and well.

The mood at the festival was enjoyably low-key, with more social issue content than I’ve seen in recent years. Frat-like crowds were down, film more a focus than schwag (though organic goodies organized by Alive! Expo Green Pavilion were notable). Documentaries were a consistent bright spot of the festival, now in it’s 25th year, yet even that milestone was downplayed, or at least overshadowed by another celebration which grabbed festival time and was broadcast on a giant screen on Main Street: Obama’s inauguration. You certainly didn’t want a Tuesday morning screening time!

The Cove

Topping the list of standout documentary films was Audience Award winner The Cove, one of several non-fiction offerings tackling global eco-environmental issues, here with a focus on the brutal slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. Directed by Louie Psihoyos, The Cove has all the markers of superlative filmmaking, from the perfect protagonist (Rick O’Barry, who trained Flipper then had an epiphany and became an dolphin rights advocate) to an edge-of-your-seat narrative (plays like an action-thriller). Think of The Cove as a blueprint for activism filled with anger, outrage, and hope. You can donate to the cause here.

Also of the sea was Rupert Murray’s The End of the Line about the catastrophic consequences of overfishing. The call-to-action documentary offers solutions, including creating marine reserves and waking consumers up to the importance of eating sustainable fish (if they like fish). The film’s website provides tools you can use to affect change, including downloading handy wallet-sized cards about fish to eat or avoid. People can also reclaim their 1/6 billionth of the world’s oceans. “Each person is allocated a nominal 2.5 hectares in any part of the world’s oceans and the resulting petition will be presented to politicians asking for the oceans to be looked after for the true owners, us, the citizens,” says Murray, who plans to take the film city to city educating people. A massive outreach campaign was part of his intention with this film from the start. “We want to have a tour bus and a big fish roadshow and make some noise for the sea.”

Crude

Veteran filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) was on hand with his stirring documentary, Crude, which considers “What is Justice?” through the story of the infamous Amazon Chernobyl case, a now 14-year-old legal battle between Big Oil (Chevron) and The People Devastated by Big Oil. Can 30,000 plaintiffs from five indigenous Ecuadorian tribes find justice? Who is responsible for the unconscionable dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon, poisoning one of the most biodiverse places on the planet?

Eric Daniel Metzgar’s Reporter follows New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof into the disturbing depths of the Congo. In part witness to unspeakable human atrocities, in part a biography about the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Kristof and aperture into his methods to wake people up to do something, Reporter illumines the vastly changing landscape of journalism in the age of Google-Blog-Post-Next. “Win a Trip with Nick Kristof” reporters accompanied Kristof and Metzgar. Reporter will air on HBO this coming fall.

Burma VJ

HBO Documentaries’ presence was strong and also included Burma VJ, which previously nabbed several key international festival awards. Burma VJ is journalism at its most vital. Remember when Buddhist monks led a massive protest against the Burmese military dictatorship in September 2007? The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) consists of about 30 Burmese reporters who secretly filmed the abuses in their country, risking their lives to do so. The footage was uploaded to the internet or smuggled into Thailand then broadcast via satellite from Oslo, Norway. These were the images seen around the world. Danish director Andres Ostergaard culls them together in this documentary which took home this year’s Sundance World Cinema Documentary Editing Award.

In other documentary news, the Sundance Institute announced the first grant recipients of the Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary Initiative, a $3 million, three-year partnership with the Skoll Foundation designed to explore the role of film in advancing knowledge about social entrepreneurship. The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation was also on hand to announce a partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program to take The Good Pitch—the innovative social-issue documentary and outreach pitching forum—to several key film festivals.

Rounding out the activist film presence at this year’s festival were Chicken and Egg Pictures, the International Documentary Association, Working Films and the announcement of the 2009 Nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors Nonfiction Filmmaking award.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

Other films documenting social change include The Reckoning, directed by Pamela Yates, which documents the creation and challenges of the International Criminal Court, and has the coolest international justice outreach campaign on the planet. About the courts in the USA,William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe tells the story of famed attorney Kunstler from the perspective of his filmmaker daughters Emily and Sarah Kunstler. The film was picked up by Arthouse Films and is slated for broadcast on P.O.V in 2010. Also noteworthy was Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech by veteran Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola, USA). This is a rousing must-see film for anyone concerned about civil liberties. HBO will air Shouting Fire July 9th of this year.

The World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize was presented to Rough Aunties, directed by Kim Longinotto and distributed by Women Make Movies: “Fearless, feisty and unwavering, the ‘Rough Aunties’ protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa.”

Using monkey-wrenching as a tool for change, The Yes Men premiered The Yes Men Fix The World, their new installment of socio-political mischief. This time the culture-jamming activist duo rib the likes of Dow Chemical (for the Union Carbide ongoing tragedy in Bhopal) and profiteers of Hurricane Katrina.

Lunch Break

Hailing from the innovative New Frontier section of the festival, Sharon Lockhart’s Lunch Break uses an experimental approach—a single slow-motion tracking shot of lunch hour at a shipyard—to offer a meditative experience of the state of U.S labor. Know this is cinematic art (that will provoke you at 80 minutes) not an Ashton Kutcher comedy.

And finally, in Paul Saltzman’s Prom Night in Mississippi—just in time for Obama’s swearing in—Morgan Freeman prods the school board in his hometown of Charlestown, Mississippi to wake up to the fact segregated proms are so outdated. It wasn’t until 2008 that there was an integrated high school prom in Charlestown, and to watch the white-only-prom advocating parents (and by default, kids) insist on a prom of their own (not sanctioned by the school) is equally ridiculous as frightening. But most of the students decide on Yes We Can.

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival proved there are many ways artists are using film to affect change. Documentary films were a highlight this year, supported by panels and discussions - such as Truth or Consequences, Now or Never and Blueprint for Change - to offer up the possibility of creating great films and a more just world.

This article is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. It was originally published on MediaRights.org, a project of Arts Engine, Inc. This notice must accompany the article at all times.

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