Stronger Than Fiction 2018
Nineteen films making up the work of the second graduating class of the Documentary Journalism Program at the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. Each graduate and undergraduate filmmaker spent nearly a year crafting a film for this capstone experience.
Beginning with a pitch process that brings internationally-known documentary filmmakers, funders and programmers to Columbia for two days of intensive discussion about the films, running through months of field work collecting footage, interviews and information and through the final months of nonstop editing, these films have been borne of nothing but hard work.
Special thanks this year go to Jennifer MacArthur, Dan Nuxoll and Betsy Tsai for serving as member of our Pitch Forum jury and helping steer these filmmakers in the right direction from the very start.
This year’s films put character front and center, introducing us to some fascinating people who opened their lives to our cameras. From would-be actors to modern day vagabonds to a venerable old soul, the people you meet in this films will stick with you long after your viewing has ended.
We take pride each year at the very broad definition we apply to the term “documentary.'“ We hope you will appreciate and understand just what each filmmaker was trying to accomplish.
-Robert Greene, Filmmaker-in-Chief
-Stacey Woelfel, Director
Festival Jury
Eric Hynes is a New York-based curator, journalist, and film critic. He is Curator of Film at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, overseeing programs such as the annual First Look film festival celebrating innovative works in the cinematic arts, and the ongoing New Adventures in Nonfiction series. He writes a column on the art of nonfiction, “Make It Real,” for Film Comment Magazine, and other outlets have included the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Slate, the Village Voice, Sight & Sound and Reverse Shot, where he’s a staff writer and host of the “Reverse Shot Talkies” video interview series. Starting in January 2018, he and collaborators Jeff Reichert and Damon Smith launched Room H.264, an iterative, ongoing 21st century answer to Wim Wenders' Room 666, with contemporary filmmakers contemplating and confronting the future of film.
RaMell Ross earned a BA in both English and Sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and his writing has appeared in such outlets as the NY Times and Walker Arts Center. He was part of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2015 and a New Frontier Artist in Residence in the MIT Media Lab. In 2016, he was a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, winner of an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship Grant and a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow. In early 2017, he was selected for Rhode Island Foundation's Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Artist Fellowship. RaMell is currently on faculty at Brown University’s Visual Arts Department.
Lana Wilson is an Emmy Award-winning and two-time Spirit Award-nominated director, writer, and producer based in New York. Her most recent film, The Departure, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. Wilson’s first film, After Tiller, premiered at Sundance in 2013 and went on to win an Emmy for Best Documentary. It was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, four Cinema Eye Honors, and the Ridenhour Prize. After Tiller was theatrically released in 50 US cities by Oscilloscope and nationally broadcast on POV. Flavorwire named it one of the “50 Best Documentaries of All Time.” Wilson has also worked in television, including writing the premiere episode of the miniseries I Am Rebel for National Geographic Studios. She is currently a MacDowell Fellow, a Women at Sundance Fellow, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt.
Films
Basking Season
dir. Morgan Magid
Basking Season joins the Swamp Apes as they hunt down the invasive Burmese python. The film follows founder Tom Rahill and fellow Swamp Ape Sergeant Major on one of their surveys through the beautiful sea of grass that makes up the Florida Everglades. While road cruising and jungle busting, the Swamp Apes discover plenty along the way – alligators, a water moccasin, a nest of old python eggs. But will they find one of the giants they’re looking for?
The best of me.MP4
dir. Michael English
In September 1996, 21-year-old Ricardo López mailed a package to pop singer Björk containing a device rigged to spray sulfuric acid to kill or disfigure her. Upon his return home, he committed suicide, leaving behind nearly twenty hours of video diaries recorded over nine months as evidence of his actions. The diaries not only captured the building of the letter bomb, but also López's personal thoughts on his life, his family, and his sanity. Twenty years after these diaries were discovered, they shock and fascinate curious viewers in an online world.
Chiane from Far Rockaway
dir. Cassidy Minarik
As 17-year-old Chiane enters her senior year, she realizes her past is not all she will become. Through the lens of a disposable camera, she delves into an exploration of the places that have shaped her. In this collaborative nonfiction portrait, Chiane uses this new medium to capture who she is in what she sees. The film illustrates how we express our identity in an environment that pressures us to conform.
Fools at Heart
dir. Nate Compton
Setsuna Steele, a Romani man—more commonly known as a Gypsy—grapples with the sudden and unexpected loss of his brother. Chasing down trains and climbing through caves and mountains, Setsuna travels through Colorado Springs with his kin and guild. As outcasts from their own families, the guild members have formed their own bond beyond blood.
Here I Will Hanker
dir. Sebastián Martínez Valdivia
An abandoned schoolhouse in the Flint Hills of Kansas; highways and development pushing in on an untouched glade in the Ozarks; a class of first-graders carrying the last best hopes of a dying language in Osage County, Oklahoma: this is modern life on the prairie. The American Midwest is a region whose history lies buried under endless fields of soybean, corn and more than a century of popular mythologizing. Here I Will Hanker is a nonfiction adaptation of Carl Sandburg's poem Prairie that goes looking for that hidden past by exploring the last vestiges of a broken landscape, and the people who call it home.
In the Dark
dir. Jessie King
Reading isn’t natural, it’s not instinctual and it’s a fairly recent human invention. Reading is a struggle for each of us to master as children. But those with dyslexia must fight to read their entire lives. Doctors say there is no cure and aim therapy and teaching coping strategies. But Texas therapist Dr. Phyllis Books has been working to reverse dyslexia for more than 30 years. In the Dark follows those struggling with the condition and hoping Books can change their lives—in just five days.
Ironing with My Hands
dir. Rachel Tiedemann
Ironing with My Hands rides the line between passion and profession as seen through the eyes of a young improvisational comedian in the starting place of all great comics—Chicago. Attempting to define himself as a comedian and a new careerist in an overwhelmingly large community of young people, our main character explores within and beyond his identity as a comedian to establish a sense of individuality and selfhood.
The Locks
dir. Nicky Cook
Months after a devastating forest fire, this quiet and reflective film returns to Cascade Locks, Oregon—a humbly idyllic tourist town—where residents continue to struggle with the aftermath. Just a few miles from bustling Portland, the city of Cascade Locks now lies on the brink of economic and environmental destruction. Hidden among the cliffs of the strikingly beautiful Columbia River Gorge, a portrait of fear and faith unfolds as two local women recount their tales of resilience in the face of natural disaster and grapple with an uncertain future.
The Magic of Acting
dir. Jack Tideman
The film captures the techniques of the instructor, Ted Sarantos, who has been teaching acting for 40 years in the Chicago area—teaching some of the same students for almost half that time. Ted’s students are older than most would expect and now exploring the profession of acting after having long careers in other fields. In The Magic of Acting, students try to exhibit their passion against the pressure of mainstream society telling them they can't do what they want to do.
Moving Houses
dir. Will Linhares
An audio-visual portrait of Docktown Marina, a floating community in the heart of the Bay Area’s tech region, the film follows the more than one hundred residents who were forcibly displaced from their homes following a long battle between local city council officials, lawyers and real estate developers. Moving Houses seeks to portray a difference in perspective between the rhythms of a world vanishing and the possibilities of what is to follow.
Murder Files
dir. Liza Anderson
Betrayal, secrets, murder, and ... pizza sauce? With no witnesses and no leads, will forensic investigators be able to find who killed Ashley Stanley in her own home? This mockumentary film, based on the popular true crime series Forensic Files, will take a look at American audiences’ obsession with crime and especially…MURDER.
奶 奶 (Nai Nai)
dir. Wyatt Wu
Nai Nai follows the story of a Chinese immigrant grandmother, Chu-Ming Wu. Known as “Nai Nai,” Chu-Ming has always been a woman of control. But her grasp of reality and the control of her own mind is slipping away. Told through the lens of her grandson, the film focuses on her pain and struggles in the last chapters of her life.
Winner: Best Film
Roxana
dir. Bella Graves
The film follows a young mother’s visit to the juvenile detention center where she was once incarcerated, returning this time as a trained somatic therapist. Through an intimate look into the lives of incarcerated youth, Roxana shows us the consequences of childhood trauma.
Winner: Special Jury Prize for Storytelling
The Sit Down
dir. Laura Harris
Three years later a daughter tries to rid herself of a burden she carries. This intimate nonfiction examination of mental health captures a reveal that leaves a young woman wondering where she stands with her family. Conversations with her mother and father turn confrontational as her biggest secret is revealed. Supported by loved ones, this family works out real problems in real time. The pain she carries becomes the family’s pain as they try to face the unknown future together.
Winner: Best Director
Staci and Sadie
dir. Suzy Le Bel
Staci Manella and Sadie Debaun are best friends and business partners. This nonfiction buddy movie charts the determination of teammates to compete for each other, despite the obstacles that get in their way. As their challenges are revealed, the film focuses the importance of not letting any obstacles determine our lifestyles.
TAKE A PICTURE OF MY DICK
dir. Olga Brelavets
Violence against women is a pernicious force. It is so piercing and yet often ambiguous, a sensation that’s fleeting but a mood that’s enduring. A piece that is both deeply personal and virtually anonymous, TAKE A PICTURE OF MY DICK is an emotionally exploratory work that invites the viewer to become fully submerged in the moment, to sit in the silence, to stare uninterrupted and take in the experience of a night as a woman alone on the street.
Temporal
dir. Jackson Bollinger
The linear theory of time is challenged in this nonfiction essay, as a young filmmaker tries to form a meaningful relationship with a deceased relative. Taking the audience through this attempt to bend time and form connections, Temporal uses footage from Los Angeles and New York to analyze how spaces can hold memories, even after people are gone. The film is narrated by an omniscient voice that guides the audience through this ambitious attempt to blur the lines of past and present.
Ulisses
dir. Beatriz Costa Lima
The small beach town of Majorlandia is a place where time passes slowly and adventure comes quietly. Ulisses is a poetic observational documentary that follows the lives of a community of “jangadeiros” — fishermen typical to the dune-lined northeastern coast of Brazil. Although their numbers are dwindling, some jangadeiros continue to live off the ocean. The sights and sounds of their lives show more than a century’s worth of history woven into every sail.
Winner: Special Jury Prize for Cinematography
Until Arcturus
dir. Abbey Reznicek
Some believe the stunning red rock formations and the unusually calming atmosphere they create draw people to the seemingly mystical town of Sedona, Arizona. Others believe it is something more--the vortexes found under the city itself. Until Arcturus features a woman who sees the world through the eyes of her alien family while trying to live out her truth among the humans who surround her.