Putting the Focus on Documentaries

By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 12, 2009

Nina Gilden Seavey remembers the reactions she received six years ago whenever she told anyone she was directing an effort to launch a film festival: "People said, 'Well, why do we need another film festival? Much less a documentary film festival.' It was such a seemingly fruitless exercise."

But for eight days starting on Monday, that seemingly fruitless exercise -- called Silverdocs -- will draw tens of thousands of people to downtown Silver Spring, turning Washington into the temporary center of the cinematic universe.

And Seavey didn't even have to wait six years for that kind of gratification.

When the curtain was about to rise in 2003 even she was wondering, " 'Will people really come to these films?' Then all of sudden we started seeing lines around the corner, down Georgia Avenue and down Colesville Road. We realized we tapped into a sort of zeitgeist that hadn't made itself readily evident."

That first year 10,000 people showed up; by last year it was more than 25,000, making Silverdocs the largest documentary film festival in the nation. "It's hard to describe how quickly it's mushroomed," Seavey says.

The festival, sponsored by the American Film Institute in conjunction with the Discovery Channel, has both bolstered and capitalized on Washington's reputation as "Docuwood," a city that churns out more nonfiction films than anywhere else in the United States and that has an audience that's hyper-engaged and hungry for smart cinema.

"We show films that matter to an audience that can make a difference," says Sky Sitney, who took over as the festival's artistic director this year after serving as programming director since 2006. "We can show political films in a way that no other festival can."

Which is not to say Silverdocs is a movie week for wonks. To the contrary, Sitney and her staff go out of their way to ensure that the roster includes films covering a huge range of subjects. This year's 122 films tackle topics such as poverty in middle America, the mind of musical geniuses and the drug war in Rio de Janeiro. There's even one that attempts to tell the untold truth about "cat ladies." ("Cat Ladies" plays Tuesday at 9:45 p.m. and June 19 at 11:30 p.m.)

They are simply looking, Sitney says, for the best films available. Over the past nine months, Sitney and a team of volunteer reviewers watched nearly 2,000 documentaries submitted for consideration to the festival.

"We want to make sure there's diversity thematically and also in terms of who's behind the camera," she says. And although there's never a specific theme for Silverdocs, festival directors are looking for trends and common subjects to emerge among the contenders. "You have to ride that fine balance between leading and responding. But we can't only be following -- we have to take chances and take risks."

This year's festival kicks off with "More Than a Game," a film that follows LeBron James and his friends through their high school basketball careers in Akron, Ohio. (Monday at 7 p.m. and June 21 at 8:30 p.m.). As with most Silverdocs screenings, the filmmaker will participate in a post-show discussion. Sitney, who makes the rounds to most major film festivals throughout the year, says there's no place like Washington for provocative audience questions. Also likely to attract buzz this year is "The September Issue," a behind-the-scenes look at the construction of an issue of Vogue Magazine under the direction of storied editrix Anna Wintour. (June 19 at 7:15 p.m.) Boxing fans will want to catch "Facing Ali," a film that watches as 10 brave men prepare to face Muhammad Ali in the ring. Ali himself is expected to attend the 7 p.m. Tuesday screening.

One of Washington's own legendary figures is chronicled in "The Nine Lives of Marion Barry." (June 20 at 6:30 p.m.) Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer's film explores how the former mayor rose and fell -- and rose and fell and rose and fell once more.

The beauty of these films and all the documentaries shown at Silverdocs, says Sitney, the daughter of avant-garde cinema historian P. Adams Sitney, is their relevance in the larger world.

"Something's at stake in documentaries," she says. "The fact that these are real-life stories motivates a desire to respond in people. You always learn something from them, which is not always true for features."