Friday, June 20, 2008

Silverdocs this week!

IMG_6888silverdocs crew

It's that time of the year again in suburban Silver Spring, MD!!! Silverdocs Film Festival is full on again this year. Last year i had the honor of serving on the jury, while this year, i'm attending... mostly in hopes of inspiring myself to have a completed film ready for next year's fest. For anyone that doesn't know, Silverdocs is the Discovery Channel/AFI Documentary Film Festival that is currently in it's fifth year now, and kicking ass. This is by far the most cerebral of all the doc fests i have attended, with an always amazing film programming schedule.

This year's highly anticipated symposium special guest speaker was Spike Lee, who was vacantly inspiring, speaking about his documentary work in particular. Unfortunately, most of us felt that the discussion fell flat, partially due to the disappointing performance of the moderator/interviewer, a reporter from The Denver Post.

In any case, i've been running around with festival regulars/doc gurus Ryan Harrington, Danielle DiGiacomo from IndiePix, Liz Ogilvy from Docurama, Simon Kilmurry from POV, Andrew Mer, Mark Rabinowitz from Cinelan, Sadie & Jill from Full Frame FF, etc having an inspired week full of films, parties, discussions with Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky) about his new hi def art film project about the "sound of ice" in Antarctica, checking out Oscar winner Alex Gibney's panel discussion, and more...

So far, my year's pick is "The English Surgeon" by Geoffery Smith, an unflinching look at a friendship between two doctors tied through brain surgury (bonus: music score by Nick Cave).