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Awards season keeps ticking right along, but tonight’s Cinema Eye Honors promised at least a tiny respite from narrative-based filmmaking, as the New York City-set ceremony is all about honoring the best in the year’s documentary filmmaking.

Big winners included Kirsten Johnson’s “Cameraperson,” which picked up Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking, along with editing and cinematography wins. Right behind it was Ezra Edelman’s “O.J.: Made in America,” which earned Edelman a directing win, along with a production win for Edelman and Caroline Waterlow. Best TV offering went to “Making a Murderer.”

Nominations were lead by Raoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” and “O.J.: Made in America,” which each pulled in five nominations apiece, though Johnson’s “Cameraperson” and Gianfranco Rosi’s “Fire at Sea” aren’t far behind, with four nominations each. Both Peck and Rosi’s features ultimately walked away without an award.

Festival brass on Wednesday added two Documentary Premieres as well as a pair of favourites from the vaults – Desert Hearts and Reservoir Dogs.

Documentary Premieres are Haitian activism story Bending The Arc from Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos, and Long Strange Trip, about The Grateful Dead, from Happy Valley and The Tillman Story director Amir Bar-Lev.

Desert Hearts and Reservoir Dogs premiered at Sundance in 1986 and 1992, respectively. Quentin Tarantino and Reservoir Dogs producer Lawrence Bender will participate in a post-screening Q&A.

The archive films are selections from the Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA, a joint venture between UCLA Film & Television Archive and Sundance Institute established in 1997 that has grown to more than 4,000 holdings representing close to 2,300 titles.

The four additions boost the 2017 roster to 118 feature films representing 32 countries and 37 first-time filmmakers, including 20 in competition.

Entries were selected from 13,782 submissions including 4,068 features and 8,985 shorts. Of the feature submissions, 2,005 were from the Us and 2,063 were international. One hundred...

The idea behind the Local Voices ad campaign is to capture the concerns that everyday Americans have about presidential hopeful Donald Trump in unscripted, personal commentaries that later air as one-minute ads in the same swing state communities where they were filmed. The key is to find voices who belong to community leaders who aren’t normal Hillary Clinton supporters, may they be conservatives or generally apolitical figures.

Read More about Local Voices: How Filmmakers Are Making a Difference in Swing States

In swing states where the voters have been confronted with constant barrage of political ads, the other key ingredient is authenticity, so they are not dismissed as just another manufactured political message.

To accomplish this, founder Lee Hirsch (“Bully”) turned to fellow documentary filmmakers and recruited some of the top filmmakers working in nonfiction, including Amir Bar-Lev (“Happy Valley, “The Tillman Story”), Amy Berg (“West of Memphis”), Marshall Curry (“Street Fight,...

The nominees for the 10th annual Cinema Eye Honors have been announced, with “I Am Not Your Negro” and “Oj: Made in America” both receiving five each. They’re followed in short order by “Cameraperson” and “Fire at Sea,” which along with “Weiner” are all in contention for the top prize. A total of 37 features and five shorts will be in contention at the upcoming ceremony, which “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James will host from the Museum of the Moving Image on January 11. Here’s the full list of nominees:

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

“Cameraperson” (Kirsten Johnson)

“Fire at Sea” (Gianfranco Rosi)

“I Am Not Your Negro” (Raoul Peck)

“Oj: Made in America” (Ezra Edelman)

“Weiner” (Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg)

Outstanding Achievement in Direction

Kirsten Johnson, “Cameraperson”

Gianfranco Rosi, “Fire at Sea”

Raoul Peck, “I Am Not Your Negro”

Robert Greene, “Kate Plays Christine”

Ezra Edelman, “Oj:...

The idea behind the Local Voices neighbor-to-neighbor campaign is simple: use a documentary approach to capture the concerns every day Americans have about Donald Trump in unscripted, personal commentaries and then air them as one-minute ads in the same swing state communities where they were filmed.

Filmmaker Lee Hirsch (“Bully”), who started the Local Voices Democratic Super Pac in 2008, has spent the last three election cycles studying and experimenting with how best to engage and motivate voters.

Read More: The Presidential Debate ‘Late Night’ Helped Prove That Seth Meyers is the Host Network TV Needs

“I’ve seen the same thing over and over again,” Hirsch wrote IndieWire, “election season is intense, and perceived community norms lead to an almost palpable intimidation that suppresses an honest public dialogue about the presidential candidates, and has the deepest affect on those who might be leaning towards the democratic ticket.”

See More Local...

It was 1992, and the Rodney King riots were being felt across the country, especially amongst the high school students filing into Sarah Feinbloom’s Ancient History class at Boston Latin School in Massachusetts.

“My students were riled by the riots. They couldn’t concentrate. I felt like what I was teaching was irrelevant. What they really wanted to talk about were issues of police brutality, violence in their neighborhoods, the fact that they couldn’t sleep because they heard gunshots in the night, and they were scared.”

Feinbloom veered off the curriculum and started talking with her class about civil rights, and soon she and her students were collaborating on her first film, "Youth to Youth: A Video About Violence." With no film school experience, Sarah improvised as she went along.

“I wanted my students to cultivate a deeper understanding of how personal and systemic violence affects them and even in small ways do something themselves to prevent it. So we went out together and interviewed students, police officers, a Vietnam veteran, a rape survivor, and created segments about the ways people confront and experience violence. I was hooked on documentaries after that. I saw how important it was for young people to be able to tell their own stories and have safe spaces where they could discuss what was really going on in their lives.”

"Youth to Youth" ended up being shown in classrooms around the country, and this first foray launched a lifelong journey of framing social justice, diversity and human rights issues through documentary film.

Feinbloom, an award-winning filmmaker and educator, was one of the first directors to bring the voices of young people reflecting on religious diversity to the media spotlight. Her 2002 documentary "What Do You Believe?" highlighted the spiritual lives of American teenagers, leading Feinbloom along with Dp and co-producer Klara Grunning-Harris into the homes of Muslim, Pagan, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Native American teenagers. "What Do You Believe?" premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival, has sold more than 2,000 copies, was voted "One of Ten Best Videos for Young Adults in 2003" by the American Library Association, and aired on PBS.

“When I started touring with the film, it was often those kids that were in the minority at their schools that approached me. Muslim and Pagan girls said it was the first time they had ever seen something about themselves on screen. Some conservative Christian students said it was the first time they had ever really considered someone else’s religious perspective.”

Using her film as a centerpiece, Sarah created and led workshops nationally on interfaith dialogue and violence prevention and has been featured at conferences including the American Academy of Religion, Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogues, and the National Association of Multicultural Educators. However, her main goal has always been to reach young audiences.

"Teens are often the subject of stories about alcohol and drugs, crime reports, and educational statistics, but rarely are they asked for their intellect and perspective. I want people from different backgrounds to watch my films, talk about them, discuss them – together. I want them to talk about being alive."

Sarah’s filmography is expansive, showcasing a number of pertinent social concerns. Her film "Earth, Water, Woman" spotlights the Fondes Amandes Community Re-Forestation Project in Trinidad and Tobago, and its charismatic Rastafarian leader Akilah Jaramogi, in their ongoing efforts to transform barren hillsides into a vibrant, healthy ecosystem. "Daughters and Sons: Preventing Child-trafficking in the Golden Triangle" took Feinbloom to Thailand, where she profiled a program that rescues children before they are trafficked into the sex-industry, and subsequently won the award for Best Short in Child Advocacy at the Artivist Film Festival and helped raise over $250,000 trafficking prevention.

“I am especially interested in stories that offer solutions to what might seem like intractable problems, stories that offer hope and don’t just leave us in despair.”

Although most well known for her activist documentaries, Feinbloom also dabbles in lighter subjects. "In Search of the Heart of Chocolate," a “chocumentary” featured at Palm Springs International Short Fest, follows Feinbloom as she searches for the origins of her chocolate obsession, interviewing chocolate enthusiasts along the way, delving into chocolate cake, art, fantasy, chocolate croissants, spirituality, sex, love and hot fudge, and journeying into the past to uncover chocolate’s special place in our hearts.

Sarah’s success in documentary filmmaking, her experience as an educator, and her long time involvement with New Day Films prompted filmmakers to reach out to her for assistance with educational sales and community impact campaigns. After working as a consultant with several great projects, such as Jarreth Merz’s Sundance Film An African Election, Sarah founded the boutique documentary distribution company, Good Docs, in order to share her expertise with fellow independent filmmakers and generate revenue from sales in the educational market.

Good Docs’ curated collection highlights labor and civil rights struggles, environmental activism, juvenile justice reform, multicultural visibility, the fight for gender equality and much more. Their titles include several award-winning documentaries, including Amir Bar-Lev's "Happy Valley," Richard Ray Perez's "Cesar's Last Fast," Darius Clark Monroe’s "Evolution of a Criminal," and Grace Lee’s Peabody Award-winning film "American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs."

“They have been an indispensable partner with us in the educational market,” Grace Lee praised. “Good Docs has personally reached out to dozens of institutions and individuals, with a keen eye to the different disciplines that might appreciate my film, and there are many more than I had even imagined.”

Sarah’s right-hand woman, Alana Hauser, is the Educational Research and Outreach Coordinator at Good Docs. While earning her bachelor of arts in Latin American Studies and Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis, Alana worked at Whole Kids Foundation, Meals on Wheels and More, and the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project. After moving to Los Angeles, Alana looked to film to reflect the poignant micro-narratives she had collected over the years.

“Good Docs is a perfect synthesis of my knowledge and passions, as it uses film to shape social discourse and connect audiences with stories that are too often invisible from the public eye. “

Alana also interns at Sundance Institute Women’s Initiative and works for the La-based non-profit WriteGirl, constantly working to advocate for stronger representations of women in the media.

Feinbloom and Hauser make up a powerful Good Docs team, searching for films with the potential for positive social change, spreading the word about social activism, and supporting filmmakers both creatively and financially throughout the process. For further information about Sarah Feinbloom see http://sarafinaproductions.com or go to http://gooddocs.net to find out more about Good Docs and their work.

A section that throws the competitive spirit out the window, but actively becomes part of the year-end docu-talk, last year’s dozen minus one offerings included current Oscar front-runner Steve James’ Life Itself and the controversial Happy Valley from Amir Bar-Lev. 2015 will be a highly flamable one, courting controversy friendly titles from established docu auteurs in Amy Berg (Prophet’s Prey), Kirby Dick (The Hunting Ground) and Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief). Here are the docu thirteen docu (world) premieres:

Beaver Trilogy Part IV/ U.S.A. (Director: Brad Besser) — A chance meeting in a parking lot in 1979 between filmmaker Trent Harris and a young man from Beaver, Utah, inspired the creation of an underground film that is now known as Beaver Trilogy. But the film itself is only part of the story.

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution/ U.S.A. (Director: Stanley...

An acquaintance told me that he was at a premiere last week of Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary Happy Valley in State College, Pennsylvania, the setting for the story of serial sex abuser Jerry Sandusky, godlike coach and patriarch Joe Paterno, and the institution that allegedly looked the other way, and that the screening was “intense.” After seeing the film, I think it’s a wonder that the crowd didn’t rush the filmmakers. The really incendiary part is not the first half, which recounts the accusations against assistant coach Sandusky, the firing of Paterno (and the college’s president), the huge rallies in support of the most revered figure in college football, Paterno’s swift death from cancer, and the ultimate conviction of Sandusky on 45 counts. It’s what comes after. It’s the militant mass cries to protect Paterno’s and the college’s name and “move on.” It...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Voting ends today for the Academy’s documentary branch who must narrow the list of 134 documentaries vying for a spot in the Oscar race to a shortlist of 15 films, which will be released in December. Of the 15 films, five Oscar nominees will be chosen in January.

Though a number of film festivals, such as the Savannah Film Fest, are becoming documentary hotspots, a number of Oscar-nominated documentaries premiere at the Sundance Film Festival each year. In the 21st century, seven of the Oscar winners have debuted in Utah: Born into Brothels (2004), March of the Penguins (2005), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Man on Wire (2008), The Cove (2009), Searching for Sugar Man (2012) and 20 Feet from Stardom (2013).

The rest of the documentary winners were unveiled in the states (2000’s Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport and 2001’s Murder on Sunday Morning) and at the Cannes, (2002’s Bowling for Columbine,...

A long time in the making, Reach Me, from filmmaker/actor John Herzfeld brings ‘positive thinking’ and ‘self-help’ to the big screen. It stars a bevy of Herzfeld’s actor friends and friends of friends, including Sylvester Stallone, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Connolly.

The title is one of a dozen or so newcomers opening in limited release this weekend. Music Box’s Happy Valley and Kino Lorber’s Monk With A Camera are among Friday’s debuting documentaries.

Happy Valley, named after the area where Pennsylvania State University is located, dives into the child sexual-abuse scandal that rocked Penn State, while Monk looks at an unlikely ascetic who gave up life in the fast lane.

Kino Lorber also is launching Iranian Western Vampire pic A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, which it is releasing with Vice Films. The title, which was born out of a previous short film, debuted at Sundance in January.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke With "Happy Valley," director Amir Bar-Lev ("The Tillman Story," "My Kid Could Paint That") examines the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and Americans’ tendency to worship their heroes to the point where they turn a blind eye to atrocities they committed, as long as those idols provide their fans with whatever escapist pleasures they crave. Would Sandusky, the former assistant coach for the Penn State football team, who was given 60 years in prison for sexually molesting at least ten boys, one of them his own adopted son, be allowed to continue his heinous acts for almost another decade after being caught by the administration if he was the university’s jolly janitor instead? Would Joe Paterno, the legendary head coach, still beloved by many Penn State football fans, hesitate to go directly to the police...

Films gods be damned. After guesstimating its eventual arrival on the film fest circuit and tracking it since it first went into production back in 2012, I’m inclined to think that the shot in state of Washington production either hit a rough patch, needed a longer production schedule due to seasonal shifts in backdrops or, my latest theory: Robinson Devor concurrently worked on not one, but two projects: the other being Pow Wow, his latest documentary project. Devor began editing the film at the start of the year and as part of Park City fabric in the naughts with successive releases of The Woman Chaser (2000), Police Beat (2005) and Zoo (2007) – we may see the filmmaker double up his presence with You Can’t Win finally cutting the finish line ribbon. Cast includes Jeremy Allen White, Charles Baker, Julia Garner, Will Patton, Hannah Marks and Louisa Krause (look out for her perf...

Happy Valley

Written and directed by Amir Bar-Lev

USA, 2014

Happy Valley is the very definition of a documentary whose parts are greater than their sum. At every turn, the viewer can sense a much greater film that could have been, tantalizing possibility lurking in the margins. The Penn State sex abuse scandal and its aftermath suggest so many things (not many of them terribly flattering) about American culture, specifically its football and college culture. But a lot of these themes are more gleaned by the viewer from what they see in the film than they are actively explored by the film proper.

For over 40 years, Joe Paterno was head coach of Pennsylvania State University’s football team. He pushed his players to both athletic and academic excellence, and made Penn State a titan of college football. He was revered nationwide, but in Penn State and the surrounding area he was all but a god.

The Grateful Dead formed in 1965, which means we are fast approaching the 50th anniversary of the storied jam band. To celebrate the occasion, Martin Scorsese will executive produce a Grateful Dead documentary directed by Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story). Scorsese explained the appeal of the project and the unique stature of the band: “The Grateful Dead were more than just a band. They were their own planet, populated by millions of devoted fans. I’m very happy that this picture is being made and proud to be involved." Hit the jump for the press release with all the details. Grateful Dead Announce Official Documentary In Celebration Of 50th Anniversary Executive Producer Martin Scorsese And Director Amir Bar-Lev To Offer A Never Before Seen Look At One Of Rock ‘N’ Roll’s Most Fascinating And Enduring Bands Los Angeles – The Grateful Dead are proud to announce their first official career-spanning documentary...

Get ready, Deadheads. The Grateful Dead turn 50 next year and to celebrate, they're getting a new documentary from executive producer Martin Scorsese and director Amir Bar-Lev (Happy Valley). The still-untitled doc will feature never-before-seen footage from various performances, archived interviews and behind-the-scene moments as well as new talks with surviving members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir. It'll also feature the eccentric characters from the "Dead universe." Band archivist David Lemieux will serve as the music supervisor. Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Bar-Lev noted that he'd first set out to make a film about the Grateful Dead 10 years ago.

The Grateful Dead are proud to announce their first official career-spanning documentary to coincide with the band's 50th anniversary celebration. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev ("Happy Valley," "The Tillman Story") will direct the as yet untitled documentary. Alex Blavatnik is financing through his Aoma Sunshine Films. Eric Eisner ("Hamlet 2"), Nicholas Koskoff, and Justin Kreutzmann will serve as producers.&#160 Executive Producers are Martin Scorsese, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Andrew Heller, Sanford Heller, and Rick Yorn. Longtime The Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux will serve as the film's music supervisor.

This monumental documentary will meld a cornucopia of never before seen performance footage, vintage interviews, and other candid moments unearthed from The Grateful Dead's vast vaults along with newly captured conversations with surviving members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir, as well as many other characters and pranksters from the Dead universe.

Said surviving members Hart, Kreutzmann, Lesh,...

I followed the Penn State scandal pretty closely, but no news report can match the intensity of this new trailer for Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary, Happy Valley. The film debuted at Sundance and chronicles what happened when Joe Paterno’s assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse, devastating Penn State’s legendary football program. Happy Valley will begin its run at the Village East Cinema in New York City on November 19th after which it’ll make its way to Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Columbus respectively. Hit the jump to catch the new Happy Valley trailer. Via Music Box Films. Here’s the official synopsis for Happy Valley: Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary Happy Valley takes an unflinching look at an iconic American institution in the wake of unthinkable scandal. Nestled in the idyllic area known as Happy Valley lies the town of State...

The Penn State football team is off to a 4-2 start this season, and more than 100,000 fans will file into Beaver Stadium next week when their beloved Nittany Lions take on their rivals from Ohio State. James Franklin is Penn State's first-year head coach—but he still operates in the shadow of the late, legendary Joe Paterno, who raised Penn State to national prominence during his 62 years with the university's football program. Paterno infamously was forced out in 2011 after a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of sexually abusing children. Questions remain whether Paterno could or should have done...

Güeros, 10,000 Km and Happy Valley will screen at the festival as top brass announced programming in three sections.

The New Auteurs and shorts sections showcase filmmakers from around the world. Both strands are juried and selections are eligible for grand jury awards.

New Auteurs selections include Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Güeros (Mexico, pictured) and the North American premiere of Bas Devos’ Violet (Netherlands-Belgium).

There are Us premieres for Park Jungbum’s Alive (Sanda, South Korea) and Nguyen Hoang Diep’s Flapping In The Middle Of Nowhere (Ðap Cánh Giua Không Trung, Vietnam-France-Norway-Germany.)

Screen International critic Tim Grierson is on the jury alongside Alonso Duralde, Tim Grierson, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson.

Shorts include 130919 • A Portrait Of Marina Abramović by Matthu Placek and Scott Cummings’ Buffalo Juggalos.

The shorts jurors are Kahlil Joseph, Sara Murphy, Mike Ott, Matthew Takata and Brian Udovich.

The American Independents section features the programmers’ picks of the best of the year’s independent films, including...

Exclusive: Music Box Films has acquired U.S. rights to Happy Valley, the A&E IndieFilms-funded documentary about the aftermath of the conviction of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for molesting young boys — some of which was perpetrated in the locker room where Sandusky brought the kids after hours under the guise of his charity.

The film was directed by Amir Bar-Lev, who helmed the superb The Tillman Story, about the military cover-up of the friendly-fire killing of football star-turned-Army Ranger. Happy Valley is produced by Passion Pictures’ John Battsek, Asylum Entertainment’s Jonathan Koch and Steve Michaels, along with Ken Dornstein, and was executive produced by A&E IndieFilms’ Molly Thompson, Bob DeBitetto and David McKillop. The film premiered in Sundance and has played several festivals. It will be released in November in day-and-date fashion.

For those who’ve followed from afar the shocking firing of legendary...

AFI Docs has released its complete line-up of films for this year's festival, which will take place June 18-22 in Washington, D.C. and Silver Springs, MD. As previously announced, "Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey" and "Life Itself" will open and close the festival, respectively. In addition to screening 84 films from 28 different countries, AFI Docs will honor Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney at its annual Charles Guggenheim Symposium. Excerpts from his films will be screened at the ceremony. The festival's roster of Catalyst Screenings -- which feature post-screening panel discussions with filmmakers, field experts and policymakers -- includes Andrew Rossi's higher education critique "Ivory Tower" and Brian Knappenberger's contemplative piece about the web, entitled "The Internet's Own Boy." Rory Kennedy's "Last Days In Vietnam" and Amir Bar-Lev's "Happy Valley" -- the latter of which explores the circumstances surrounding the charges of sex abuse levied against...

The 2014 Sarasota Film Festival wrapped over the weekend in Florida with Pawel Pawlikowski's black-and-white drama "Ida" taking home top honors in the Narrative section, and Amir Bar-Lev's "Happy Valley" winning the respective honor in the Documentary competition. Josephine Decker's "Thou Wast Mild and Lovely" meanwhile won the Independent Visions Award, which includes a distribution offer from Factory 25, and Tangerine Entertainment’s Juice Award. Read More: Berlinale Breakout -- Josephine Decker On Her Much Discussed Festival Double Feature In addition to the main awards, three special jury prizes were awarded: in the Narrative category, Lukas Moodysson's "We Are the Best!" was rewarded with a Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting; in the Documentary section, Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo's "Rich Hill" won a Special Jury Prize for Direction; and in the Visions competition, the jury gave a special Outstanding Performance Award to Tallie Medel from "Joy Kevin,...

Above: The Apple

The celebratory attitude at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, speaks to the healthy state of nonfiction filmmaking at present. True to its name, the festival spotlights new films that incorporate elements of both fiction and documentary (and sometimes blur the line between the two), yet even the selections that resemble more traditional investigative reporting uphold a certain standard of artfulness. More impressively, the festival organizers make a point of incorporating the Columbia community into the celebration. Somewhere between 700 and 900 residents of the town and surrounding areas volunteered at the fest this year, and many businesses I encountered seemed happy to get in on the act too. (“Don’t be fooled by False advertising,” read my favorite sandwich board. “Try our True Thai cuisine!”) Roughly half of the screenings took place in locations not usually reserved for movies—a rock venue, a couple of churches,...

2014 is now in full swing, the Sundance Film Festival has closed its doors, and film festivals like South by Southwest and Tribeca are generating more buzz for the year’s noteworthy indie narratives and documentaries. In recent years, documentaries such as Restrepo, Gasland, and Searching For Sugarman went on to become heavyweights. This year’s contenders include topics taken from popular memoirs and biographies, along with subject matter pertaining to youths and youth culture. Below, you’ll find a comprehensive list of Sundance and non-Sundance documentaries to keep an eye out for this year, equipped with official synopsis and trailer when available. 2014 is shaping out to a versatile year in the documentary world, ranging from heavy-handed family dramas such as Tracy Droz Tragos’ and Andrew Droz Palermo’s Rich Hill, to baseball biographies such as Chapman and Maclain Way’s The Battered Bastards of Baseball and Jeff Radice’s No No A Dockumentary,...

Sundance 2014 is officially in the books, and while there wasn’t any kind of big $10 million distribution deal, films like Boyhood, Whiplash, and Frank had receptions warmer than the bizarre Utah weather over the past 10 days, guaranteeing we’ll be talking about them through the rest of the year.

But that’s the narrative side of things. When it comes to documentaries, Sundance is traditionally one of the most fruitful film festivals in the world. Here are ten of the most interesting and best received non-fiction titles to keep an eye on in 2014:

Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory

The subtitle says it all for this year’s U.S. Documentary Audience Award winner. In Alive Inside, a social worker brings iPods to elderly men and women suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and the sounds of their youth actually “awaken” them. As one might expect,...

The passion for college football in certain parts of our country almost resembles a cult in its intensity. And perhaps no team had a more devoted following than Joe Paterno’s Penn State program, which proudly won “the right way” on and off the field ever since he became head coach in 1966. His reputation was nonpareil in the sports world — until former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted in Nov. 2011 for molesting young boys on the Penn State campus. Paterno, then 85 years old, was fired, along with three other top University administrators, rocking the Penn State community, a.k.a.

No stranger to movies about scandal, documentarian Amir Bar-Lev has explored the fallout of private misdeeds made public in "My Kid Could Paint That" and "The Tillman Story." With "Happy Valley," Bar-Lev turns his camera on the outcome of disgraced Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky in the wake of his incarceration on sexual abuse charges. But this time, the project indicates few attempts at revealing new information. Instead, "Happy Valley" magnifies the impact of Sandusky's downfall on the various members of the Penn State community, aiming less to extend the public narrative than to broaden its scope. The result is a frequently riveting, if fairly straightforward, portrait of a university town grappling with its disgraced reputation. Rather than detailing Sandusky's extensive sins, "Happy Valley" opens with the former coach's 2012 conviction and explores the ripple effect of his downfall. Among the many talking heads, none are more intriguing than the grown children of the.

Amir Bar-Lev's "Happy Valley," a documentary premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, is not a film about the sex scandal that rocked Penn State University in late 2011,    Make no mistake, you won't come away with any ambiguity regarding the allegations against Jerry Sandusky or the crimes for which he was convicted and sentenced to what amounts to a life sentence.   But this is not a documentary about interviewing witnesses, investigating timelines or attempting to get to the root of Sandusky's criminal behavior.  The accepted supposition is that Sandusky did what he was accused of doing and, with one...

Park City — Matt Sandusky, the adopted son of convicted pedophile and former football coach Jerry Sandusky, spoke in public for the first time about the saga and his own abuse at the premiere of Happy Valley, the new documentary from Amir Bar-Lev that screened Sunday at the Marc Theater during the Sundance Film Festival. Jerry Sandusky is the former member of the Penn State coaching staff convicted in 2012 of 45 counts of molesting young boys. The film explores how the scandal split the community and the university, while also focusing on certain subjects, including the wife and

read more...

It’s that time again. The biggest American film festival is upon us, and this year the Ioncinema crew will be descending on Park City with eight feet on the ground and eight eyes on Park City’s various and plentiful screens. Eric Lavallee, Nicholas Bell, Caitlin Coder and I will be covering just about every inch of this year’s festival here at Ioncinema.com, as well as on that ever increasingly vibrant instanews network – Twitter. Be sure to follow @ioncinema and, as stated above, my personal handle @Rectangular_Eye, as we’ll be tweeting throughout the festival with breaking news, reviews, and sightings, all the while trying to keep up with the massive amount of content sure to be coming from this year’s Sundance filmmakers themselves, most of which have their own Twitter accounts and are listed at length below (minus the world & short programs). Whether you...

With part three of our Sundance Twitterverse series, we see the biggest names in non-fiction commenting outside the realms of their films. For the many subjects of We Are The Giant (@WeAreTheGiant_), Twitter has served as much more than just a place to find breaking news, but as a weapon wielded in the name of freedom. Many of these brave souls are represented below.

Documentary Premieres

The Battered Bastards of Baseball – @MavsDoc

Finding Fela

Director/Producer Alex Gibney – @alexgibneyfilm

Editor Lindy Jankura – @lindyjank

Composer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti – @felakuti

Freedom Summer – @FreedomSummer64

Writer/Director Stanley Nelson – @StanleyNelson1

Happy Valley

Director Amir Bar-Lev – @amirbarlev

Producer John Battsek – @DiegoisGod

Lambert & Stamp

Music: The Who – @TheWho

Last Days in Vietnam – @LDVFilm

Screenwriter Keven McAlester – @KevenMcAlester

Life Itself – @EbertMovie

Subject Roger Ebert – @ebertchicago

Producer Zak Piper – @ZakPiper

Mitt

Director/Producer/Cinematographer/Editor Greg Whiteley – @greggor10

This May Be the Last Time

Director/Producer Sterlin Harjo – @SterlinHarjo...

The Sundance Documentary Premieres: “Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting ongoing commitment to documentaries. Each film is a world premiere.”

Roger Ebert’s life is chronicled in “Life Itself”

Life Itself

Directed by Steve James

On the heels of the death of critic Roger Ebert comes a documentary based on his autobiography, released in 2012. Life Itself delves into Ebert’s cinephilia, alcoholism, battle with cancer, and epic rivalry with fellow critic Gene Siskel. His passionate opinions were widely applauded, as he provoked the public into discussions about movies for the better. Directed by Steve James, whose acclaimed documentary Hoop Dreams premiered at Sundance 20 years ago, Life Itself is poised to present Ebert as a man besieged by difficulties who forged a way for film criticism on television and helped ingrain it in the public’s conscious.

The charismatic George Takei presides over a faithful fandom...

The line-up of films premiering at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival has been released, and there are a lot of good movies, one of which includes The Raid 2, which I am incredibly excited to see! It's easily my most anticipated film at the festival.

The Sundance Film Festival takes place from January 16th to the 26th in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance, Utah. From the press release:

John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “The Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival feature new work from many established independent filmmakers who began their careers at our Festival years ago, which allows us to reflect on the impact, legacy and growth of the independent film movement over the past 30 years.”

Trevor Groth, Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival, said, “In many of the films selected for our 2014 Sundance Film Festival, we see fascinating characters and subjects throughout.

2014 is turning out to be a damn fine year for docus in Park City and we’re not even mentioning the Competition line-up here. Amir Bar-Lev, Alex Gibney, Joe Berlinger, Stanley Nelson, Greg Barker and Steve James (pays the ultimate homage to the critic who launched Hoop Dreams into the stratosphere with a docu on Roger Ebert called Life Itself) all have their latest films landing at the festival.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball / U.S.A. (Directors: Chapman Way, Maclain Way) — Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.

Finding Fela / U.S.A. (Director: Alex Gibney) — Fela Anikulapo Kuti created the musical movement Afrobeat and used it as a political forum to oppose the Nigerian dictatorship and advocate for the rights of oppressed people. This is the story of his life,...

Sundance Institute announced today the films selected to screen in the out-of-competition Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. In case you missed it, here is our post about the films selected for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions as well as the out-of-competition sections Next, Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and Sundance Kids of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Sundance Institute, Sundance, Film Festival, 2014, Out-of-Competition, Premieres, Park City, Utah, Smells Like Screen Spirit, Don Simpson, Calvary, John Michael McDonagh, Frank, Lenny Abrahamson, Hits, David Cross, I Origins, Mike Cahill, Laggies, Lynn Shelton, Little Accidents, Sara Colangelo, Love is Strange, Ira Sachs, A Most Wanted Man, Anton Corbijn, Nick Offerman: American Ham, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, The One I Love, Charlie McDowell, The Raid 2, Gareth Evans, Rudderless, William H. Macy, They Came Together,...

The Sundance Film Festival announced the titles selected to screen in its out-of-competition Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections. Last year, the movies that were launched in these categories — which typically highlight filmmakers who’ve appeared at Sundance before — included Before Midnight, Don Jon, and The Way Way Back; this year appears to be just as promising. In Lynn Shelton’s Laggies, a young woman stuck in arrested-development (Keira Knightley) has her life upended by an unexpected marriage proposal. In David Wain’s They Came Together — surely, a naughty pun, yes? — Wet Hot American Summer alums Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd...

Festival top brass announced on December 9 the Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections.

Gareth Evans returns with The Raid 2, Anton Corbijn makes his first appearance at Sundance with the John Le Carré adaptation A Most Wanted Man, while Michael Winterbottom brings his comedy sequel The Trip To Italy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (pictured).

The line-up includes I Origins, Mike Cahill’s follow-up to Sundance 2011 prize winner Another Earth, as well as new work from Park City perennials Lynn Shelton with Laggies and Ira Sachs with Love Is Strange.

Marjane Satrapi will attend Park City with The Voices and William H Macy showcases his feature directorial debut Rudderless, the festival’s closing night film.

Documentary Premieres include the indefatigable Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, Happy Valley from Amir Bar-Lev, the Roger Ebert portrait Life Itself from Steve James, the George Takei film To Be Takei and Joe Berlinger’s hot-off-the-press Whitey: United States Of America v. James...

Last week saw the Sundance Film Festival reveal a slew of films playing at next year's event including the competition titles and Park City at Midnight entries. Today the festival unveiled the anticipated Premieres lineup. Among the narrative highlights: Lynn Shelton's Keira Knightley-fronted coming-of-age story "Laggies"; Ira Sachs' follow-up to "Keep the Lights On," "Love is Strange"; Anton Corbijn's starry adaptation of John le Carre's bestselling book "A Most Wanted Man"; the sequel to the Indonesian smash hit actioneer "The Raid"; Mike Cahill's second film following "Another Earth," "I Origins," again starring Brit Marling; and the Michael Fassbender vehicle "Frank." Over in the documentary section, notable selections include the latest from prolific documentarian Alex Gibney, "Finding Fela," Steve James' tribute to Roger Ebert "Life Itself," and "Happy Valley," the new film from Amir Bar-Lev ("The Tillman Story"). Below are the announced films. Check back tomorrow for.

The elusive “Golden Ticket”. Beginning next Wednesday (December 4th) in a wave of four announcements, is when the official word comes out. Plenty of filmmakers are already in the know, but some will find out over the course of this Thanksgiving weekend. Having covered the festival and fest circuit for some time now, we’re already aware that worthy films that were indeed submitted will be excluded from the ’14 edition. Thousands of filmmakers won’t get the phone call, and while it can bruise dreams, this is not a rejection of quality…but rather, a preference from a programmer/programming team which reflects a larger mandate. John Cooper, Trevor Groth et al. have a difficult job and the way I see it, it’s the equivalent to draft day for a major professional sport – where a team in a given turn doesn’t go for the consensus pick, but instead...

Not to be confused with the Pacino feature project of the same name and subject, Amir Bar-Lev who made a name for himself with Sundance preemed docs presented My Kid Could Paint That (2007) and The Tillman Story (2010), signed onto A&E IndieFilms’ documentary project in May of 2012. Besides contributing to the 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief docu, there hasn’t been much in terms of developments beyond a brief update by the filmmaker himself, but I’m thinking A&E IndieFilms will want to have this delivered while it’s still hot.

Gist: “Happy Valley” is a nicknamed used to describe the Pennsylvania State University area. This is about the drama that rocked the Penn State University community after it was learned school officials covered up allegations that former Nittany Lions assistant football coachallegedy abused a youth in the showers of the school locker room.

Production Co.

Exclusive: Passion Pictures, executive producer of Searching for Sugar Man and The Imposter, board documentary centred on recorded conversations of the boxing champion.

A theatrical documentary based around phone conversations made and received by boxing icon Muhammad Ali is in the works.

I Am Ali is the feature debut of Clare Lewins, who has previously directed episodes of British television series Countrywise, Perspectives andWho Do You Think You Are?.

For production details visit

I Am Ali

The documentary, which will feature interviews, archive and audio archive, is currently being edited for delivery at the end of 2013. Ali is aware of the project.

Financed by Universal Pictures, the film is made by Lewins’ Fisheye Productions and Passion Pictures, which has made hit documentaries such as One Day In September and Restrepo and executive produced award-winners Searching for Sugar Man and The Imposter.

Speaking to ScreenDaily, executive producer John Battsek said: “It’s a film built around phone conversations...

Exclusive: Passion Pictures, executive producer of Searching for Sugar Man and The Imposter, board documentary centred on recorded conversations of the boxing champion.

A theatrical documentary based around phone conversations made and received by boxing icon Muhammad Ali is in the works.

I Am Ali is the feature debut of Clare Lewins, who has previously directed episodes of British television series Countrywise, Perspectives andWho Do You Think You Are?.

For production details visit

I Am Ali

The documentary, which will feature interviews, archive and audio archive, is currently being edited for delivery at the end of 2013. Ali is aware of the project.

Financed by NBC Universal, the film is made by Lewins’ Fisheye Productions and Passion Pictures, which has made hit documentaries such as One Day In September and Restrepo and executive produced award-winners Searching for Sugar Man and The Imposter.

Speaking to ScreenDaily, executive producer John Battsek said: “It’s a film built around phone conversations...

Happy Valley teams filmmakers John Battsek and Amir Bar-Lev with A&E IndieFilms and Asylum Entertainment A&E Network's feature documentary production arm A&E IndieFilms has partnered with Asylum Entertainment (“The Kennedys") to produce Happy Valley. Directed by Amir Bar-Lev and produced by John Battsek of Passion Pictures, who collaborated on The Tillman Story, Happy Valley tells of the Penn State University community that was rocked in 2011 by charges of sexual abuse involving former Nittany Lions assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Production is set to start this month with Asylum Entertainment's Jonathan Koch and Steve Michaels producing while Bob DeBitetto, David McKillop and Molly Thompson are serving as executive producers for A&E IndieFilms...