Sundance 2007 preview: Documentary Comp

January 18 to 28, 2007
Counting Down:

Another eclectic docu section this year ranging in subject matters such as U.S Foreign policies, internal American struggles, global issues and human portraits of the young, old and stupid.

On the war front we have Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, where Rory Kennedy looks at the abuses at the Iraqi prison, No End in Sight by Charles Ferguson looks at the chain of decisions that led to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and in hindsight. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki directed by Steven Okazaki looks at the human cost of atomic warfare.

On the global scale, Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold’s Everything's Cool looks at alternative energy and the fight against global warming. Jason Kohn’s Send a Bullet looks at corruption and violence in contempo Brazil, while War Dance –Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine’s doc looks at the efforts of three young Ugandan girls and their refugee camp school to travel to compete in a national music and dance festival.

On more personal matters Jessica Yu returns to Sundance, this time with Protagonist that focuses between the organic relationship between human life and Euripidean dramatic structure. Hear and Now sees Irene Taylor Brodsky camera focus on her deaf parents cochlear implant surgery in an attempt to gain hearing, while Crazy Love by Dan Klores tells the obsessive relationship between a married man and a beautiful, single 20-year-old woman that started in 1957.

Pieces of Americana that borders on the bizarre will be found in Robinson Devor’s bizarre relationship of man and animal in Zoo, Daniel Karslake’s For the Bible Tells Me So looks at five conservative Christian families as a way of analyzing how the religious right has tried to use the Bible to stigmatize gays and advance the separation between church and state. My Kid Could Paint That by Amir Bar-Lev focuses on a four-year-old girl whose paintings have already netted her parents $300,000. The young girl was also the subject of an ABC news piece….something is fishy here.

Going into the archives, Marco Williams’s Banished is an exploration of what might be done to right the wrongs committed in three American towns that forcibly ejected their black populations in the early 20th century. Nanking by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman looks into a study of the “Rape of Nanking” by the Japanese in the '30s, with attention to the special efforts of a small group of Westerners who saved more than 250,000 people in the midst of the violence. David Stenn’s Girl 27 is an investigation into the cover-up of a scandal stemming from the rape of underage dancer Patricia Douglas at a wild MGM stag party in 1937 and finally Chasing Ghosts by Lincoln Ruchti looks at the winners of the original 1982 Video Game World Championship.

Banished – Marco Williams
Chasing Ghosts – Lincoln Ruchti
Crazy Love – Dan Klores
Everything's Cool – Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold
For the Bible Tells Me So – Daniel Karslake
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib – Rory Kennedy
Girl 27 – David Stenn
Hear and Now – Irene Taylor Brodsky
Send a Bullet – Jason Kohn
My Kid Could Paint That – Amir Bar-Lev
Nanking – Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman
No End in Sight – Charles Ferguson
Protagonist – Jessica Yu
War Dance – Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Steven Okazaki
Zoo – Robinson Devor