Tap Water to the Rescue

There have been handfuls of films released in the past couple years addressing environmental issues--from Food, Inc. to Gasland to King Corn to An Inconvenient Truth--but none of them have tackled the issue of water as aggressively, as honestly and as artistically as Stephanie Soechtig and Jason Lindsey did in 2009's Tapped.


Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity to be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? This feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water. This timely documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water. Using interviews, quirky graphics and honest imagery, Tapped is made someone who really, truly, genuinely cares about this issue.

This fast-paced, well-narrated, and highly educational film looks at the illegal bottling practices of Nestle, cancer-causing factories and the overall state of the country's tap water. Tapped is definitely a flick that will leave viewers dying to learn more.

2010 Festival Winners Announced!

The judges of the seventh annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival have selected this year’s award winning films in the four competitive categories: Best Feature, Big Sky Award, Best Short Film and Best Mini Doc (under 15 minutes). The awards were announced Thursday evening at the awards ceremy at the Loft in downtown Missoula.


2010 FESTIVAL WINNERS

Best Feature: Lixin Fan's Last Train Home
Artistic Vision for Best Feature: Josh Fox's Gasland

Big Sky Award: Joseph Aguirre's Next Year Country
Artistic Vision for Big Sky Award: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash's Sweetgrass

Best Short Film: Charlene Music's Danza Del Viejo Inmigrante
Artistic Vision for Best Short: Kelly Anderson's Never Enough

Mini-Doc (under 15 minutes) Award: Paramita Nath's Found
Artistic Vision for Mini-Doc: Tony Donoghue's A Film About My Parish-6 Farms

There were also four Programmer’s Choice Awards, awarded by the Big Sky
programming staff. Michael Angus’s Salt and Robert Drew’s The Sun Ship Game both
received awards for Excellence in Cinematography. Rainer Komer’s Milltown, Montana
received an award for Excellence in Editing. And Briar March’s There Once Was An
Island was awarded the Natural Facts Award for its artistic rendering of a vital
environmental issue (climate change) and its effect of human life.

The Best Feature and Big Sky Award films will receive a guaranteed broadcast deal from
Free Speech TV. Both shorts categories will receive a broadcast guarantee and generous
licensing fee from The Documentary Channel.
Several of the award winning films will play again at the Wilma Theatre over the closing
weekend of the festival. The schedule is as follows:

Friday, February 19 at 7:30
Danza Del Viejo Inmigrante
Never Enough
Found
A Film About My Parish – 6 Farms
Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers*
Anonymous Rebellion*
(* Rescreened due to technically difficulties)

Saturday February 20 at 7:30
Next Year Country
Milltown, Montana
Salt

Sunday February 21 at 8:00
Last Train Home
Sweetgrass


This year's jury: Jeanie Finlay, Cliff Froehlich, Tim Huffman, Thomas Phillipson, Doug Pray, Rick Prelinger, Gordon Quinn, Shirley K. Sneve, Richard Saiz

Doug Pray Plays the Hits

Documentary filmmaker Doug Pray has made movies about surfers, truck drivers, graffiti artists, hip hop DJ's, grunge rockers and advertising gurus. But while his maverick subjects vary in profession, Pray says they all play roles as "fiercely independent individuals" in search of the certain rush that comes with defying the status quo.

"They're all celebrating what is meaningful," he says, "but they're working in different ways.

To continue Big Sky's annual tradition of showcasing a collection of work by a distinguished documentary filmmaker, Pray's retrospective kicks off today with his most recent work, Art & Copy. The 2009 film deals with the creative minds behind some of the most famous advertising campaigns ever. Lee Clow of Apple, Dan Wieden of Nike and George Lois of Tommy Hilfiger, among others, discuss their work and how they approached the task of successfully selling a product to an entire society.

What this film ISN'T, says Pray, is a look at the 98% of what he calls bad, manipulative mediocre and demeaning advertising that exists today. Nor is it a social critique or an attack on advertising companies. What it IS, however, is a "celebration of that rare 2% of really good advertising that can actually inspire people."

The dozen or so artists interviewed in the film were all given one arduous task: to create a reason for people to buy a certain product. This movie explores their passions, methodologies and reasons behind working like they did. The question here is: "When you are given a job, how can you do it in a way that's better and more interesting?"

"Advertising isn't going away," says Pray. So why not do it well?

The subjects of Pray's work may at first glance seem divergent. But through his observant lens, the films explore the known (and unknown) boundaries of their respective subcultures and feature the top tier of practitioners with the group, those that have stepped fully into the fold and aren't afraid to look back.

These inspiring portraits of artists, revealed in films like Hype! (about the grunge scene in Seattle in the late 80's, early 90's), Scratch (about Hip-Hop Dj's), Veer (about 6 Londonites), Feel Your Heart Race (about NASCAR nation), Surfwise (about a family of surfers), Big Rig (a look at America through the eyes of truck drivers), Infamy (a look at graffiti artists) and Art & Copy, will all be screened starting today at the Wilma. SCHEDULE HERE.

Sweetgrass Gets Monster Turnout

Whether it's ranchers or farmers, locals or urbanites, the crowd here tonight at the Wilma is KILLER. And it's all for a little film by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor called Sweetgrass. The theatre is packed and the energy is high, all in anticipation of one of the festival's major draws.
Don't you wish you were here?

Sweetgrass and Let Your Feet Do the Talkin' Deliver Tonight!

The 6th day of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival delivers the most talked about film of the festival: Sweetgrass. The film mercilessly follows the cowboys of the American West on their annual trip into the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains with their sheep. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed. Heralded as being "majestic," "breathtaking," "bracing" and "astounding," and reviewed by such publications as the New York Times, Variety and Slate, this film will make its Montana premiere in the historic Wilma Theatre on Wednesday at 7.30pm.

Stewart Copeland's newest short film will show with today's Shorts Program, "Some Dreamers."

Copeland won for Best Mini-Doc for his film "Jennifer" at the 2009 festival, and his films are proven to be some of the festival faves.

Check out "Let Your Feet Do the Talkin,'" a short film about Buck dancing in the South, at the Wilma Theatre on Wednesday at the 5.45 Shorts Program.