Twenty-five years ago, Liz Garbus pulled out her Cover Girl compact at the Oscars just before the winner of best documentary was announced. The Manhattan-raised filmmaker didn’t think her 1998 doc, The Farm: Angola, USA, which she co-directed with Jonathan Stack, would win, but wanted to be prepared. The caked powder spilled all over her gown. “As soon as they did not call us, I thought, ‘Phew, I don’t need to go up there with powder all over my dress,'” she says of the fleeting moment when losing felt like a blessing. “And then being like, ‘Wait, no,'” she recalls of the disappointment settling in.
Netflix vp original documentary features and series Adam Del Deo — then just an aspiring doc producer — kept close track of Garbus’ prolific career after seeing The Farm at the Sundance Film Festival. He was blown away by her deep curiosity and ability...
Netflix vp original documentary features and series Adam Del Deo — then just an aspiring doc producer — kept close track of Garbus’ prolific career after seeing The Farm at the Sundance Film Festival. He was blown away by her deep curiosity and ability...
- 3/17/2023
- by Pamela McClintock
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: Principal photography is underway in the Algarve, Portugal, on writer-director Tim Lewiston’s (The Hot Potato) feature drama There’s Always Hope.
Colm Meaney (Hell On Wheels), Kate Ashfield (Shaun Of The Dead) and newcomer Hannah Chinn star in the feature about a successful author named Jonathan Stack (Meaney), who has been so obsessed with trying to pen his magnum opus that he’s let his marriage to Samantha (Ashfield), who is also his agent and editor, break down to the point where she announces she’s leaving him for her business partner.
Devastated, he abandons the elegant family home in leafy Stratford Upon Avon and drives his ancient Jaguar to the family villa in Portugal where their young daughter Hope (Chinn) and her her half-sister Amelia (Brenda Meaney) try to help sort things out.
Producers are Harriet Hammond, Victor Glynn (Staged) and Alan Latham (Waiting For Anya...
Colm Meaney (Hell On Wheels), Kate Ashfield (Shaun Of The Dead) and newcomer Hannah Chinn star in the feature about a successful author named Jonathan Stack (Meaney), who has been so obsessed with trying to pen his magnum opus that he’s let his marriage to Samantha (Ashfield), who is also his agent and editor, break down to the point where she announces she’s leaving him for her business partner.
Devastated, he abandons the elegant family home in leafy Stratford Upon Avon and drives his ancient Jaguar to the family villa in Portugal where their young daughter Hope (Chinn) and her her half-sister Amelia (Brenda Meaney) try to help sort things out.
Producers are Harriet Hammond, Victor Glynn (Staged) and Alan Latham (Waiting For Anya...
- 10/20/2020
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Leonardo DiCaprio and Appian Way Productions are to executive produce Silas, a documentary about a Liberian environmental activist debuting at the Toronto Film Festival.
Anjali Nayar and Hawa Essuman direct the profile of Silas Siakor, who crusades against illegal logging in Liberia. It will have its world premiere at Tiff on Sept. 11. Appian Way's DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson join Oscar-winning Edward Zwick and Jonathan Stack (The Farm: Angola, USA) as executive producers on the Canada-South Africa co-production.
The Oscar-winning actor has been a strong advocate of fighting climate change and preserving wildlife, and his documentary, Before the Flood, directed...
Anjali Nayar and Hawa Essuman direct the profile of Silas Siakor, who crusades against illegal logging in Liberia. It will have its world premiere at Tiff on Sept. 11. Appian Way's DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson join Oscar-winning Edward Zwick and Jonathan Stack (The Farm: Angola, USA) as executive producers on the Canada-South Africa co-production.
The Oscar-winning actor has been a strong advocate of fighting climate change and preserving wildlife, and his documentary, Before the Flood, directed...
- 9/1/2017
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Catherine Pearson Feb 22, 2017
Documentary fans are well served by these 11 great documentary series and features, currently available on Netflix UK...
In recent years, even months, Netflix has upped its game. No longer just a site to instantly stream an old title you might have once picked up in Blockbuster, it's become a hub of quality new and original film and television and this is by no means limited to its vast selection of fiction.
See related The world of the Peaky Blinders
With the scope of possibility in visual effects and the boundlessness of imagination there are very few places we cannot explore in fiction nowadays… that is unless we explore stories that are stranger than fiction. There is a tangible thirst for the real; the overwhelming response to recent Netflix documentary Making A Murderer in the news and social media, as just one example, exposes the desire for and...
Documentary fans are well served by these 11 great documentary series and features, currently available on Netflix UK...
In recent years, even months, Netflix has upped its game. No longer just a site to instantly stream an old title you might have once picked up in Blockbuster, it's become a hub of quality new and original film and television and this is by no means limited to its vast selection of fiction.
See related The world of the Peaky Blinders
With the scope of possibility in visual effects and the boundlessness of imagination there are very few places we cannot explore in fiction nowadays… that is unless we explore stories that are stranger than fiction. There is a tangible thirst for the real; the overwhelming response to recent Netflix documentary Making A Murderer in the news and social media, as just one example, exposes the desire for and...
- 2/19/2017
- Den of Geek
The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at Tiff, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at Tiff was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as...
- 8/7/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It’s been a surprisingly interesting month of moving and shaking in terms of doc development. Just a month after making his first public funding pitch at Toronto’s Hot Docs Forum, legendary doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman took to Kickstarter to help cover the remaining expenses for his 40th feature film In Jackson Heights (see the film’s first trailer below). Unrelentingly rigorous in his determination to capture the American institutional landscape on film, his latest continues down this thematic rabbit hole, taking on the immensely diverse New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights as his latest subject. According to the Kickstarter page, Wiseman is currently editing the 120 hours of rushes he shot with hopes of having the film ready for a fall festival premiere (my guess would be Tiff, where both National Gallery and At Berkeley made their North American debut), though he’s currently quite a ways away from his $75,000 goal.
- 7/6/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.
- 6/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It should come as no surprise that Cannes Film Festival will play host to Kent Jones’s doc on the touchstone of filmmaking interview tomes, Hitchcock/Truffaut (see photo above). The film has been floating near the top of this list since it was announced last year as in development, while Jones himself has a history with the festival, having co-written both Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. and Martin Scorsese’s My Voyage To Italy, both of which premiered in Cannes. The film is scheduled to screen as part of the Cannes Classics sidebar alongside the likes of Stig Björkman’s Ingrid Bergman, in Her Own Words, which will play as part of the festival’s tribute to the late starlet, and Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna’s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (see trailer below). As someone who grew up watching road races with my dad in Watkins Glen,...
- 5/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Now that the busy winter fest schedule of Sundance, Rotterdam and the Berlinale has concluded, we’ve now got our eyes on the likes of True/False and SXSW. While, True/False does not specialize in attention grabbing world premieres, it does provide a late winter haven for cream of the crop non-fiction fare from all the previously mentioned fests and a selection of overlooked genre blending films presented in a down home setting. This year will mark my first trip to the Columbia, Missouri based fest, where I hope to catch a little of everything, from their hush-hush secret screenings, to selections from their Neither/Nor series, this year featuring chimeric Polish cinema of decades past, to a spotlight of Adam Curtis’s incisive oeuvre. But truth be told, it is SXSW, with its slew of high profile world premieres being announced, such as Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs...
- 2/27/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Turkey or no turkey, these next couple of days lucky filmmakers who’ve been selected to screen as part of the Sundance Film Festival will get the invitation notice straight from John Cooper and the Park City programming team, and thus, those that we’re betting have made the cut have also inched up the list a bit. One of those that seem an obvious choice to premiere at the fest is director Steve Hoover and producer Danny Yourd’s Crocodile Gennadiy. Following up their Grand Jury Prize winning Blood Brother with incredible turnaround time, our new most anticipated film tracks the delicate operations of Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a Ukrainian activist, orphanage manager and savior of countless children whose addict parents favor injected cold medicine and alcohol over them. Part heartwrenching domestic drama, part sleuth thriller, the film looks to use the Ukrainian uprising as a backdrop to highlight its protagonist...
- 11/27/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
From the story of a teenage daughter of a parent undergoing gender transitioning to North Korea's first rom-com, our pick of the Adelaide film festival
It has been more than two and a half years since the last Adelaide film festival, a long stretch even for a city nurtured on (and thankfully leaving behind) the notion of only hosting major arts events biennially. But anguished cinema junkies can rejoice, with a fresh-look festival bringing joy to October away from the city's crowded "Mad March" calendar. If you're a little rusty and intimidated at the sight of the full package of features, shorts, seminars and parties, then here are 10 filmic delights not to miss.
52 Tuesdays
There is sizzling anticipation for this local production and it will be one of the most prized tickets of the festival. Shot once a week over a year, Sophie Hyde's drama charts the relationship between...
It has been more than two and a half years since the last Adelaide film festival, a long stretch even for a city nurtured on (and thankfully leaving behind) the notion of only hosting major arts events biennially. But anguished cinema junkies can rejoice, with a fresh-look festival bringing joy to October away from the city's crowded "Mad March" calendar. If you're a little rusty and intimidated at the sight of the full package of features, shorts, seminars and parties, then here are 10 filmic delights not to miss.
52 Tuesdays
There is sizzling anticipation for this local production and it will be one of the most prized tickets of the festival. Shot once a week over a year, Sophie Hyde's drama charts the relationship between...
- 10/10/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
More from the BBC Storyville Why Poverty? initiative, which includes shorts and feature films, that will explore why, in the 21st century, 1 billion people still live in poverty. Today, an heartwarming, inspiring short film titled, Colors In The Dust, from director Jonathan Stack, which asks the question, Can a boy paint his way out of poverty? 1.5 million Haitians were left homeless by the recent earthquake. 400,000 still live in temporary shelters. Ten year old Jouvens Latour survives Haiti's earthquake, but, amidst the suffering, turns poverty into possibility. "I'm rich in my work, for what I have in my head. But in the material sense I am...
- 11/2/2012
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
A three-part documentary series about the effects of the drug Ritalin on children who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder leads a list of four documentaries funded by Screen Australia.
Kids On Speed, produced by Essential Media and Entertainment for the ABC, looks at attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and the prescription of Ritalin and similar drugs. Directed by Max Bourke, the show will, with a team of clinicians and educators, attempt to improve the lives of six kids showing symptoms of Adhd without the use of the drugs.
Produced by Alan Erson and Sonja Armstrong, the funding comes to Essential Media and Entertainment through Screen Australia’s General Documentary Program.
The investment from the national screen agency is $1m with the expectation to trigger $2.8m in production.
Bourke will also direct Ten Bucks a Litre, a Smith & Nasht production, which will ask ‘What are Australia’s options as...
Kids On Speed, produced by Essential Media and Entertainment for the ABC, looks at attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and the prescription of Ritalin and similar drugs. Directed by Max Bourke, the show will, with a team of clinicians and educators, attempt to improve the lives of six kids showing symptoms of Adhd without the use of the drugs.
Produced by Alan Erson and Sonja Armstrong, the funding comes to Essential Media and Entertainment through Screen Australia’s General Documentary Program.
The investment from the national screen agency is $1m with the expectation to trigger $2.8m in production.
Bourke will also direct Ten Bucks a Litre, a Smith & Nasht production, which will ask ‘What are Australia’s options as...
- 10/3/2012
- by Colin Delaney
- Encore Magazine
Screen Australia will invest more than $1 million across three one-off documentaries and a series.
The Vasectomist follows a urologist from Florida who attempts to save the planet from overpopulation by spreading the "gospel of vasectomy". The documentary is directed by Jonathan Stack and produced by Simon Nasht and Ruth Cross for Sbs Television.
Kids on Speed is a three-part ABC series which will examine the current medical treatments for children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Ten Bucks a Litre, which follows well-known Australian Dick Smith as he explores Australia.s energy options given the radical changes coming down the pipeline, will also screen on the ABC.
The final documentary, Gisela Kaufmann's Shark Girl, will tell the story of a young Australian conservationist who has changed her life to protect sharks in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Park.
The $1 million in total investment will trigger more than $2.8 million in production,...
The Vasectomist follows a urologist from Florida who attempts to save the planet from overpopulation by spreading the "gospel of vasectomy". The documentary is directed by Jonathan Stack and produced by Simon Nasht and Ruth Cross for Sbs Television.
Kids on Speed is a three-part ABC series which will examine the current medical treatments for children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Ten Bucks a Litre, which follows well-known Australian Dick Smith as he explores Australia.s energy options given the radical changes coming down the pipeline, will also screen on the ABC.
The final documentary, Gisela Kaufmann's Shark Girl, will tell the story of a young Australian conservationist who has changed her life to protect sharks in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Park.
The $1 million in total investment will trigger more than $2.8 million in production,...
- 10/3/2012
- by Staff reporter
- IF.com.au
National Geographic Channel presents a long in the making documentary that profiles Angola prison and its inmates. This sequel to the Oscar-nominated Sundance Award winner "The Farm," NGC.S .A Decade Behind Bars: Return To The Farm. is a first-hand recounting of life inside Angola, a notorious American prison. "A Decade Behind Bars: Return to the Farm" premieres tonight, Tuesday, June 16, at 8 p.m. Et/Pt. In 1997, filmmaker Jonathan Stack and colleagues Liz Garbus and Wilbert Rideau released .The Farm: Life Inside Angola Prison,. an acclaimed film The New York Times called .a discreetly searing documentary,. which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature and the top honor, the Grand Jury Prize, at the Sundance Film Festival.
- 6/16/2009
- by April MacIntyre
- Monsters and Critics
- The old adage that two wrongs don't make a right is something that many correctional systems in the U.S. have yet to figure out. In just about every prison in the Americas, the system is designed to punish and humiliate rather than heal and retrain. There may be some exceptions. We've received an exclusive clip from the National Geographic Channel who tomorrow night are completing a three part series with the two-hour sequel to the 1997 Oscar nominated, Sundance winning documentary film. Today's Daily Recommendation is: A Decade Behind Bars: Return to the Farm which airs tomorrow at 8 p.m. Et/Pt. You can watch the original film here. In 1997, filmmaker Jonathan Stack and colleagues Liz Garbus and Wilbert Rideau teamed on “The Farm: Life Inside Angola Prison” and for the last 10 years, filmmaker Jonathan Stack has continued to chronicle life and the surprising changes inside Angola, which is
- 6/15/2009
- IONCINEMA.com
The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund has awarded a total of $395,000 in grants to help fund 11 feature-length documentaries. The fund, established in 2002 by a gift from the Open Society Institute, is dedicated to supporting U.S. and international documentary films and videos that focus on human rights issues, freedom of expression, social justice and civil liberties. The fund has three categories: work in progress, development and supplemental. The amount of each grant varies depending on the status of the project. The recipients for work-in-progress grants are: Anne Aghion, In Rwanda, We Say 'The Family That Does Not Speak Dies' (U.S./France); Shantha Bloemen and JoMarie Fecci, "Western Sahara, Africa's Last Colony" (U.S.); Julie Mallozzi, Monkey Dance (U.S.); Patrice O'Neill, The Fire Next Time (U.S.); Jed Riffe, Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine and the Law (U.S.); Susan Stern, The Self-Made Man (U.S.); Pamela Yates, Passage Through Fear (U.S.) The development grant recipient is Fibi Kraus, Marry Me Out (Italy) Receiving supplemental grants are: Simone Bitton, The Wall (Israel/France); Khalo Matabane, Story of a Beautiful Country (South Africa); Jonathan Stack, War Without End (U.S.). Since its inception at the institute, the fund has disbursed more than $2 million to 62 projects.
- 3/26/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Universal-owned cable network Trio has greenlighted an original documentary offering a critical examination of the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes: Hollywood's Dirty Little Secret, which will air as part of the network's Awards Mania programming block next month, probes how the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. has come to wield tremendous power in the entertainment industry. Secret is directed by Vikram Jayanti (When We Were Kings), who also executive produces with Jonathan Stack of Gabriel Films. " 'Secret' is designed to give viewers some insight into this powerful, highly sought-after yet somewhat mystifying Hollywood accolade," Trio president Lauren Zalaznick said in a statement.
- 11/4/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Co-winner of the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, "The Farm" is a powerful and moving look at Louisiana State Penitentiary, one of the largest penal institutions in the country.
Located on 18,000 acres along the Mississippi River and home to 5,000 prisoners and 1,800 workers (who live in an on-site town described as "the safest in America"), "The Farm", as the inmates call it, was founded as a slave plantation and turned into a state prison after the Civil War.
Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus' film is an illuminating portrait that should serve as a valuable reference tool for years. It is receiving its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York's Film Forum.
Shot on video, the documentary concentrates on six prisoners of varying ages and situations. They include Ashanti Witherspoon, serving a 75-year sentence for armed robbery, who has devoted himself to community service; the elderly "Bones" Theriot, who murdered his wife many years ago and who is now facing with equanimity his imminent death from cancer; and George Crawford, 22, serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, who says the menial work he does in the prison's fields is the first paid job he's ever had.
The film, which chronicles a year in the life of the prison, has no shortage of drama, including the pre-execution preparations of a condemned prisoner and various parole hearings in which several inmates, who have struggled for years to plead their case, are rebuffed within moments by the board.
"The Farm" is less an expose than a lyrical and meditative look at an institution with its own unique rhythms, values and customs. Although not without its dull spots, it is ultimately an illuminating and subtly philosophical work that treats its subjects with dignity and compassion.
THE FARM
Gabriel Films
Credits: Producer-directors: Jonathan Stack, Liz Garbus; Co-director: Wilbert Rideau; Editors: Mona Davis, Mary Manhardt; Cinematographers: Samuel Henriques, Bob Perrin; Music: Curtis Lundy; Sound: Ken Delbert; Narration: Bernard Addison. No MPAA rating. Running time -- 93 minutes. Color.
Located on 18,000 acres along the Mississippi River and home to 5,000 prisoners and 1,800 workers (who live in an on-site town described as "the safest in America"), "The Farm", as the inmates call it, was founded as a slave plantation and turned into a state prison after the Civil War.
Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus' film is an illuminating portrait that should serve as a valuable reference tool for years. It is receiving its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York's Film Forum.
Shot on video, the documentary concentrates on six prisoners of varying ages and situations. They include Ashanti Witherspoon, serving a 75-year sentence for armed robbery, who has devoted himself to community service; the elderly "Bones" Theriot, who murdered his wife many years ago and who is now facing with equanimity his imminent death from cancer; and George Crawford, 22, serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, who says the menial work he does in the prison's fields is the first paid job he's ever had.
The film, which chronicles a year in the life of the prison, has no shortage of drama, including the pre-execution preparations of a condemned prisoner and various parole hearings in which several inmates, who have struggled for years to plead their case, are rebuffed within moments by the board.
"The Farm" is less an expose than a lyrical and meditative look at an institution with its own unique rhythms, values and customs. Although not without its dull spots, it is ultimately an illuminating and subtly philosophical work that treats its subjects with dignity and compassion.
THE FARM
Gabriel Films
Credits: Producer-directors: Jonathan Stack, Liz Garbus; Co-director: Wilbert Rideau; Editors: Mona Davis, Mary Manhardt; Cinematographers: Samuel Henriques, Bob Perrin; Music: Curtis Lundy; Sound: Ken Delbert; Narration: Bernard Addison. No MPAA rating. Running time -- 93 minutes. Color.
- 6/16/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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