Editing for Documentaries Boot Camp

Whether you’re a filmmaker, or just a film lover who appreciates documentaries, you might wonder how editors and editing can make a good story into a great film. In this day-long bootcamp from IFC Center and DOC NYC, we’ll hear from five documentary editors one-on-one with a moderator, sharing stories, clips, and examples from films they’ve worked on. Ticket price also includes admission to and a free drink at a post-workshop happy hour networking session! The boot camp will take place on Tuesday, February 26th at the IFC Center from 10am – 5pm.

Tickets are on sale for $99 for the full day (or $80 for IFC Center members – please enter your member code to redeem on the ticketing purchase page). Seating is limited.

Editing for Documentaries Boot Camp Schedule

10am – 11am Inventive Approaches
Editor Karen Sim (An Ordinary Crime, The Fourth Estate) will discuss two disparate and fascinating aspects of her Emmy Award-winning documentary career: working with graphics and animation, and social justice. Moderated by editor Colin Nusbaum. Co-presented by The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship.

11am – 12pm Collaboration in Editing
Collaboration is key. Emmy-nominated Erin Casper (Roll Red Roll) will explain how collaborating with her directors has evolved over her career, and how it’s an integral part of the creative process. Moderated by editor Stella Quinn (The Edit Center). Co-presented by The Edit Center.

12pm – 1pm Building Character
Emmy-winning editor Maya Mumma (O.J.: Made in America) will speak about the process of developing characters and character arcs in interview-driven films (as opposed to cinema vérité). Moderated by editor Leigh Johnson. Co-presented by The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship.

1pm – 2pm Break

2pm – 3pm Case Study: Free Solo
Award-winning editor Bob Eisenhardt has edited over 60 films, including this year’s Academy Award nominee Free Solo. This panel will explore Bob’s approach to editing, with a particular focus on Free Solo. Moderated by filmmaker Vanessa Gould.

3pm – 4pm Style and Substance
Award-winning editor Francisco Bello will discuss how to transform a seemingly intimidating range of too many options into a cohesive story, using flourishes and texture through a range of different styles.

4pm – 5pm Networking Happy Hour
Join fellow attendees and our industry guests for a free drink on the house at a nearby bar and talk about everything you’ve learned!

Police Story 2

New 4K digital restoration!

Jackie Chan followed up the massive success of Police Story with an even bigger box-office hit. Having been demoted to a lowly traffic cop for his, ahem, unorthodox policing methods, Chan’s go-it-alone officer Ka-Kui quits the force in protest. But it isn’t long before he’s back in action, racing the clock to stop a band of serial bombers and win back his much-put-upon girlfriend May (the phenomenal Maggie Cheung, reprising her star-making role). Boasting epic explosions, an awesomely 1980s electro soundtrack, and a showstopping finale—which turns an abandoned warehouse into a life-size pinball machine of cascading oil drums, collapsing scaffolds, and shooting fireworks—POLICE STORY 2 confirmed Chan’s status as a performer of unparalleled grace and daring.

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

Four years in the making, ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH is a visually arresting cinematic rumination on humanity’s recent, rapacious technological transformations of the Earth. This multiple award-winning documentary elaborates upon the ideas of the Anthropocene Working Group, international scientists who argue that since the mid-twentieth century, the world has entered the ‘Anthropocene Epoch,’ a new, uncharted historical era that is the result of humanity’s massive, invasive, environmentally dangerous impact on the planet.

Crossing the globe from Siberia to Kenya, Chile to Argentina, Canada to Germany, China to the United States, the filmmakers observe gargantuan open-pit mining, deforestation, chemical pollution, species extinction, and the already evident effects of climate change.

Meditative, occasionally humorous and, yes, hopeful, ANTHROPOCENE is both timely and urgent. It will change the way you see the world: what you see here cannot be ‘unseen.’ Narrated by Alicia Vikander, this breathtakingly immersive film is a clarion call to rethink our relationship to our planet.

Rogers Best Canadian Film 2018, Toronto Film Critics Association; Canada’s Top Ten 2018; Official Selection, Toronto Int’l Film Festival; Vancouver Int’l Film Festival; Festival du nouveau cinema de Montreal; Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival; Sundance Film Festival; Berlin Int’l Film Festival

Co-directors Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier are Toronto-based filmmakers whose critically acclaimed films include Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Watermark (2013), and Long Time Running (2017). Internationally renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky has worked with Baichwal and de Pencier on several films.

Screening as part of the official line-up for Canada Now 2019.

The Wind

An unseen evil haunts the homestead in this chilling, folkloric tale of madness, paranoia, and otherworldly terror. Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard) is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the 19th-century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, an overwhelming dread that her husband (Ashley Zukerman) dismisses as superstition. When a newlywed couple arrives on a nearby homestead, their presence amplifies Lizzy’s fears, setting into motion a shocking chain of events. Masterfully blending haunting visuals with pulse-pounding sound design, director Emma Tammi evokes a godforsaken world in which the forces of nature come alive with quivering menace.

Red Joan

Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is a widow living out a quiet retirement in the suburbs when, shockingly, the British Secret Service places her under arrest. The charge: providing classified scientific information – including details on the building of the atomic bomb – to the Soviet government for decades. As she is interrogated, Joan relives the dramatic events that shaped her life and beliefs: her student days at Cambridge, where she excelled at physics while challenging deep-seated sexism; her tumultuous love affair with a dashing political radical (Tom Hughes); and the devastation of World War II, which inspired her to risk everything in pursuit of peace.

Based on a sensational true story, RED JOAN vividly brings to life the conflicts – between patriotism and idealism, love and duty, courage and betrayal – of a woman who spent a lifetime being underestimated while quietly changing the course of history. Sophie Cookson costars.

Non-Fiction

Juliette Binoche and Guillame Canet reunite with acclaimed director Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper, Carlos) for this wry, slyly seductive tale of sex, lies, and literature. Set amidst the bohemian intelligentsia of the Parisian publishing world, NON-FICTION traces the romantic and emotional fallout that results when a controversial writer (Vincent Macaigne) begins blurring the line between fact and fiction, using his real-life love affairs—including a passionate fling with an actress (Binoche) who happens to be married to his editor (Canet)—as fodder for his explosive new novel. Balancing dry wit with keen observations on the tensions between art, commerce, and technology, NON-FICTION is a buoyant, breezy delight from a master director at his most effortlessly brilliant.

Official selection: New York Film Festival

Marshall Curry’s STREET FIGHT + A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN

IFC Center presents a special evening with documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry, including a screening of his Academy Award-nominated short A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN (2018) and his first Academy Award-nominated film, the feature STREET FIGHT (2005).

STREET FIGHT (2005, 83 min.) is a thrilling story of bare-knuckle politics. When a young unknown challenger named Cory Booker takes on the head of a powerful political machine, he discovers that sometimes elections are won and lost in the streets. Gritty, funny, and surprisingly inspirational, the film goes behind-the-scenes in a rough-and-tumble campaign in Newark, N.J. It offers an intimate, unvarnished view of Booker before he became a U.S. Senator and regular fixture on national political talk shows. STREET FIGHT also explores the complex politics of race in an election that pits Spike Lee and Cornel West against Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and features Bill Bradley and Chris Christie. Winner of the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, the critically acclaimed film was called “the best American political documentary since The War Room” by the Washington Post.

A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN (2018, 7 min.)

In 1939, New York’s Madison Square Garden was host to an enormous—and shocking—gathering of 22,000 Americans that has largely been forgotten from our history. Curry has assembled archival fragments from that night to show the casually violent fervor of a rally with chilling resonance in today’s political climate.

 

A Q&A with the filmmaker follows the screenings.

Writing for TV Boot Camp

Whether you’re a mid-career writer or just starting out, join IFC Center and Split Screens TV Festival for an exciting and informative day all about the ins and outs of writing for television, hosted and taught by industry professionals. Ticket price also includes admission to and a free drink at a post-workshop happy hour networking session!

10AM-11AM: WRITING FOR COMEDY
Sitcom writers Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen (High Maintenance, Mozart in the Jungle), Jon Kern (The Simpsons), and Leah Nanako Winkler (Ramy) share their tips for creating half-hour scripts that balance jokes with emotional stakes, and how to be a part of a comedy writers room. Moderated by Dani Faith Leonard (Big Vision Empty Wallet).

11AM-12PM: WRITING FOR LATE NIGHT AND VARIETY TV
From Saturday Night Live to Jimmy Kimmel, the art of late night and variety is alive and thriving. Meet some of the writers working in the field, including Katie Hartman (Paid Off with Michael Torpey), Brian McCann (Conan) and Alex Song (The Tonight Show), and hear how they broke in. Moderated by Kevin Laibson (former Artistic Director of The PIT).

12PM-1PM: WHAT AGENTS WANT
You wrote a script, now what? Hear from agents Beth Blickers (APA) and Vern Co (Gersh) on what they’re looking for in a writer, and how to get your script in front of them. Moderated by Ben Izzo (Abrams Artists).

1PM-2PM: BREAK

2PM-3PM: HOW TO ADAPT
IP is hot – or so you’ve heard. How do you take that material you love and adapt it for TV? Writer Ione Lloyd (The Sinner) will talk about her experience adapting for television. Moderated by Rebecca Scolnick (W Magazine).

3PM-4PM: WRITING FOR DRAMA
Television drama is hotter than ever. Hear from drama writers Matthew Lee Erlbach (Masters of Sex), Ashlin Halfnight (Bloodline), and Erica Saleh (Instinct) about this exploding genre and how the format is expanding and changing. Moderated by Dana Weissman (WGA East). Co-presented by WGA EAST.

4PM-5PM: NETWORKING HAPPY HOUR
Join fellow writers and our industry guests for a free drink on the house at local establishment and talk about everything you’ve learned!

Police Story

*Please note the late-night screenings on Fri Feb 15 – Sun Feb 17 begin at 12:25am, not 11:59pm!*

New 4K digital restoration!

The jaw-dropping set pieces fly fast and furious in Jackie Chan’s breathtakingly inventive martial-arts comedy, a smash hit that made him a worldwide icon of daredevil action spectacle. The director/star/one-man stunt machine plays Ka-Kui, a Hong Kong police inspector who goes rogue to bring down a drug kingpin and protect the case’s star witness (Chinese cinema legend Brigitte Lin) from retribution. Packed wall-to-wall with charmingly goofball slapstick and astoundingly acrobatic fight choreography—including an epic shopping-mall melee of flying fists and shattered glass—POLICE STORY set a new standard for rock-’em-sock-’em mayhem that would influence a generation of filmmakers from Hong Kong to Hollywood.

Oscar-Nominated Shorts 2019: Docs (Prog. B)

Program plays through the month of February; additional showtimes to be announced.

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS, PROGRAM B – 74 minutes

A Night at the Garden (dir. Marshall Curry, USA, 7 min.)
Lifeboat (dir. Skye Fitzgerald, USA, 40 min.)
PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. (dirs. Rayka Zehtabchi, India, 26 min.)

Film Synopses:

A Night at the Garden
In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. “A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN”, made entirely from archival footage filmed that night, transports audiences to this chilling gathering and shines a light on the power of demagoguery and anti-Semitism in the United States.