2010 Gotham Award Noms: Focus on Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You

I thought we’d take a closer look at the five films selected in the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You category a.k.a the “fringe” titles that receive a helping hand and some extra love just by being nominated and have very little to do with batch of other films mentioned in yesterday’s Gotham award nominations announcement. Previous winners in the section include 2009’s You Wont Miss Me, 2008’s Sita Sings the Blues, 2007’s Frownland, 2006’s Choking Man and 2005’s I Am a Sex Addict, but this year a documentary could win with a ratio that sees three docs and a pair of narratives. I was only familiar with two of the five in Robert Greene’s Kati with an i and Mike Ott’s Littlerock, so logically I thought about whipping up breakdown of the section and presenting the mentioned pair and Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood’s On Coal River, Lynn True and Nelson Walker’s Summer Pasture and Laurel Nakadate’s The Wolf Knife.

Kati with an i – Directed by Robert Greene, the docu is actually going to be shown at the upcoming first edition of DOC NYC. This is an intimate documentary portrait of a teenage girl in Alabama, about to graduate high school. The film captures her moment-by-moment emotional transformation over the course of three tumultuous days that leave her future in doubt. (Trailer)

Littlerock – Selected as part of AFI Film Festival’s new section on new U.S indie filmmakers, directed by Mike Ott, this is about a sleepy Los Angeles exurb and its shiftless young residents are seen through the eyes of two Japanese tourists in this intimate evocation of a small town in Southern California where everyone’s talking but no one really understands. (see pic above) 

On Coal River – Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood premiered their set in Coal River Valley of West Virginia docu at SilverDocs this year. It follows a former coal miner and his neighbors in a David-and-Goliath struggle for the future of their valley, their children, and life as they know it. 

Summer Pasture – Supported by Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Cinereach, co-directed by Lynn True and Nelson Walker, this follows Locho and his wife Yama live in Dzachukha, eastern Tibet – nicknamed “5-most” by the Chinese for being the highest, coldest, poorest, largest, and most remote area in Sichuan Province, China.

The Wolf Knife – Midway this year, Laurel Nakadate’s tale of two sixteen year old girls living in Hollywood, Florida preemed at the Los Angeles Film Festival. We follow the girls from Florida to Tennessee, and watch as their lives become complicated by lies, jealousy and love.