Best of the Fest: Silverdocs

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Best of the Fest: Silverdocs

POSTED: Monday, June 22, 2009, 7:00 PM

Filed Under: Movies | Film Fest Movie Review

City Paper contributer Gary M. Kramer went to Silverdocs ' a festival in Silver Springs, Maryland showcasing more than 100 nonfiction shorts and features features from the around the world.

Discovering films and filmmakers who profile such unique personalities is what makes Silverdocs worthwhile. While distribution is likely for many of the films , most of them will only screen Philadelphia at film festivals or through other limited exposure ' if at all. Hence the silver lining of attending. Here are a trio of notable films from this year's strong program:

Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public is a portrait of Josh Harris, "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of.' Harris created web-based TV before selling it for millions. Super-rich, he became an insane party clown and he found his greatest pleasures (and personal guidance) in Gilligan's Island. He soon took a chunk of his millions to create 'Quiet,' an underground lair/bunker that was part endless party, part social experiment. As We Live in Public shows in naked detail, more than a hundren people lived for the last month of 1999 in a 'kooky cult kingdom,' where participants were filmed eating, sleeping, shitting and fucking. Harris played God until things got out of hand. When Quiet ended, the mad scientist became the lab rat and used his home surveillance cameras to record him and his girlfriend Tanya 24/7 for viewers. This experiment also backfired, eventually forcing Harris to reinvent himself again. Timoner's shrewdly-edited film took 10 years to make from the 5,000 hours of footage she collected; the longterm schedule in similar to her previous film Dig! Her painstaking efforts pay off.

Another person who became famous for being overexposed is Jack Rebney. His f-bomb laced flameouts while making an instructional video for Winnebago had him dubbed, 'The Angriest Man in the World.' Bootleg videos of this infamous rant circulated for years before turning up on YouTube. Ben Steinbauer's crowd-pleasing documentary, Winnebago Man considers what happened to this former newsman turned unexpected folk hero. Steinbaeur discovers a very different Rebney than the one we see on the Internet, but he is still profanely provocative. Steinbauer uses his film to raise topical concerns about cyber bullying while also considering how someone might reclaim their sullied reputation. (Take a lesson, Christian Bale.) At the post-screening Q&A, Steinbaeur got Rebney on the phone. He chatted about politics among other topics with his characteristic piss and vinegar. The DC crowd was appreciative.

Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri's October Country is a remarkable feature twist on the home movie genre, taking home the festival's Sterling U.S. Feature Award. The film chronicles a year in the lives of Mosher's family who, as the matriarch says, 'wouldn't know normal if it fell on us.' Don has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of a tour of duty in Vietnam. He does not speak to his sister, Denise ' a witch. His wife Dottie loves her foster son Chris, although he steals from them. Their daughter, Donna had an abusive husband and a daughter too young. That daughter, Daneal, continues the cycle, also marrying an abusive husband, and having a daughter too young. Donna's other daughter, Desi, may be the smartest member of the family, though perhaps not when she admits, 'the bright side of playing video games is that I watch less TV.' Mosher and Palmieri infuse their film with a touching lyricism. Images of lingering smoke or shots of the house before a custody hearing echo the emotions of these all-to-real people who painfully discuss the ghosts that haunt their lives, Moser the filmmaker seems to be exorcising some of his own personal demons here in this extraordinary family portrait, and he is well aided by his partner's outsider perspective.

Watch the trailer here.

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