SILVER SPRING, Md. — Those devoted to documentary filmmaking say there was a time about eight years ago when the craft catapulted into the middle-American suburban theater.
They call it “the Michael Moore moment.”
People were going to regular multiplexes across the country to watch something that was actually true with “Bowling for Columbine.” Then came “Spellbound.” After that, the penguin movie and then the Al Gore environment movie.
And, for a few years anyway, filmmakers passionate about telling stories, true ones, held their collective breath and wondered whether they were going to push outside the exclusivity of the film-festival circuit and the Sundance or Discovery Channel into the mainstream movie-watching world. Perhaps people across the nation would weigh whether to see the new Will Smith movie or a documentary on, say, the people who fought Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring.
It didn’t quite happen. Momentum slowed. People grew tired of politics.YouTube and reality television made real people too common. At SilverDocs, one of the few national film festivals devoted entirely to documentaries, filmmakers and producers say true movies are eking out a comeback. Even this summer, people can go to a Westminster theater and choose between “Hangover” or “Food, Inc.,” a doc probing America’s food-production processes.
“I’m hopeful we’re getting past it, but we won’t return to where we were,” said Sky Sitney, SilverDocs artistic director. “The nature of the business is both exasperating and inspiring.”
Since its start seven years ago, the small festival has certainly grown more elite, but it is purposefully not gigantic. In this hastily erected suburb of Washington, almost 2,000 films were submitted for screening, and just 100 showed for an audience of about 25,000 people.
They want to keep it that way.
The nonglitzy locale keeps it intimate. Filmgoers are more apt to stay for the after-talk and the panel discussions because there isn’t some hot bar crooning blues music next door or an expired parking meter weighing on their shoulders. If people schlep the 35 minutes by train from D.C., they’re likely to make a night of it.
“I wouldn’t want to lose that kind of intimacy,” Sitney said.
SilverDocs staffers chose this summer a blend of contemporary stories about prominent figures and pieces devoted to international political statements.
“More Than a Game” brought the biggest celebrity sighting, with Cleveland basketball great LeBron James strolling the red carpet. “Facing Ali” deftly probes the lives of the boxers who faced off in the ring with the famous athlete and tells a deeper story about a boxing life off-camera.
There were a number of pieces about African politics and how they affect the people living there, including “Mrs. Groundo’s Daughter,” which tells the story of a 22-year-old Malian immigrant seeking asylum in the United States so she can prevent her American-born daughter from undergoing genital mutilation.
After a screening of the resurrected “Salesman,” the seminal 1969 documentary about four Irish-Catholic door-to-door Bible salesmen, co-director Albert Maysles talked about the medium’s role in current American life.
Done well, Maysles says, docs are one of the remaining institutions that can accessibly illuminate a world we may see every day. The more everyone knows about the people sitting next to them, Maysles says, the better off we all are.
“It would have been much more difficult to go to war with Iraq if we had just one documentary about an Iraqi family,” he said. “You need to open your heart . . .. and listen . . . then something really great happens.”
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
