February 2008

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

No End in Sight (Magnolia Pictures) A Representational Pictures Production

Filmmakers: Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs

The story: Former Bush administration officials drop a film's worth of dimes on their former bosses, outlining what went wrong in Iraq.

To learn more, click here.

Mainstream Thai cinema is coming up on the international radar lately. In 2003, Francis Ford Coppola spearheaded the international release of Suriyothai, one of the highest grossing Thai films ever when it was first released in that country. It recalls the heroic exploits of a 16th Thai queen defending her country against Burmese invasion.

As the Writers Guild of America Strike seems to be finally nearing its end after three months, The Independent offers this concluding segment in its screenplay series. You can also read the other strike screenplays, written by Rufus Chaffee, Dorothy Blyskal, Dane Young and Randy Steinberg.

About this new column: Many filmmakers ponder in anguish, How do other people—celebrated people—do it? Am I taking too long to make this documentary? Does everybody spend as much money as I am spending, or am I spending too little? And when filmmakers share their lessons learned in interviews in the glossy trade magazines, their tales seem to follow the arc of otherworldy heroes rather than real documentary makers, i.e. human beings like you and me. So starting this month, the Doc Doctor decided to go out into the world (this real world) of filmmakers who are successful and find out how they made it. Each month, her "anatomy" will be a chance to learn from their hits and misses in real life examples. —Fernanda Rossi, story consultant a.k.a. the Documentary Doctor