DC Film Society: Adam's Rib June 2021 (AFI Docs)

AFI DOCS 2021: The Golden Age

Like the rest of the world, AFI DOCS is slowly coming back to the physical realm. America’s preeminent documentary festival was entirely online last year, but this year is working in some select in-person screenings. The 19th edition, running from June 22-27, features 77 films from 23 countries and 4 World Premieres. The festival continues to value representation, with 52% of the films directed by women, 40% by black, indigenous and people of color directors and 18% by LGBTQ directors. Tickets are available here.

Sarah Harris, AFI Festivals Director of Programming, recently talked with me about this year’s changes and highlights:

Adam Spector: AFI DOCS is having a hybrid this year between virtual screenings and in-person screenings. What would be the most important thing for viewers to know about this new format?
Sarah Harris: We’re excited to be able to include our theatrical screenings again. Right now we’re only at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland. There’s some select feature films that will be screening there, but the bulk of the festival remains online as part of our virtual festival. That’s where the majority of the films are, including our short films and our series and our special presentations. Everyone can engage with that part and if you’re able to go to the AFI Silver for a particular screening, then we’re just very excited to be able to provide that. You’ll have the same Q&A and intro as you would on the virtual but you'll be able to see it on the big screen.

AS: You’re also starting the festival a day (on a Tuesday rather than Wednesday) earlier than in prior years. What was behind that decision?
SH: That was a decision we made in 2020 not knowing what this year would look like. After our experience with doing a virtual festival, we realized that the way that people interact with the festival is different than our pre-COVID festival days. That (the earlier start) allows a little bit more breathing room to engage with films, given the fact that it’s at home and not in a theater. At the time, that’s what we were looking for. We weren’t sure what we would be able to do it (in-person screenings).

So far I think it’s been working really well. It allows us to expand our offerings as well so we can have a little bit more robust festival in the virtual sense knowing what we were able to do with an extra day.

AS: It’s always amazed me how timely AFI DOCS is even when films are planned well in advance. Your opening film is Naomi Osaka. She has been in the news lately for the decisions she made to withdraw from the French Open and Wimbledon. Even though the film doesn’t cover that specifically do you think that it would shed light on her personality in a way that people might understand her and her decisions better?
SH: The film was something that we were looking at before the French Open. We had announced the film the night before (Osaka’s withdrawal). The film is a beautiful portrait of a young woman and her very quick rise to a global spotlight. And what that does to someone, how someone reacts to it and the pressures of athletics in general. One kind of pressure being your career, but then the spotlight as well. [The film] does a wonderful job of allowing Naomi to speak her truth, and it’s very reflective as well and I think that audiences will see someone who’s reflecting on their choices and their life and how they want to be, which I think everyone can relate to, especially given the last year, and all of the personal reflection we’ve had on our choices and how we live our lives. So this is just one example of that. A remarkable young woman.

AS: Calling 2020 a tough year for everyone would be a huge understatement. AFI DOCS has this new series, Spotlight on the Hindsight, but it focuses specifically on the impact of 2020 on black, indigenous and people of color. Can you walk us through the decision to focus on the impact on those groups?
SH: This is a really special program that we’re doing in partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This project was grown as a collaboration with Firelight Media, and Reel South and the Center for Asian American Media. 2020 is a very special year with all of the different issues that our country was going through in these communities. This particular project, it’s exciting because these short films, they’re these moments of what was happening with these cultural shifts in communities and the conversations that we’re creating. Bringing some personal storytelling to this moment in time.

We have an Industry Forum panel that goes into detail about how each project was made and why this was such a collaborative project for CPB. It should be really interesting and the screening of the shorts are free as well, so it’s a great opportunity to have more conversations about the past year.

AS: Your Centerpiece film is Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain from Morgan Neville (who previously directed 20 Feet From Stardom and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?). From an outsider’s perspective Anthony Bourdain seemed to have a charmed life. I’m sure many people thought, “I’d love to get paid for traveling around the world and eating and drinking.” But he’s battling these demons that in the end led him to take his own life. Are we going get a better sense of who this man was?
SH: I think so. Roadrunner is a really beautiful film, in that it shows the complexity of Anthony. It’s told through a lot of his friends and the people that worked very closely with him and [addresses] the legacy that he’s left behind, how he has kind of affected food culture because of the impact of what he was doing. He was definitely the first in that genre to make it international and to bring that kind of humanity to the landscape so to speak. I think that there’s definitely some insight to it. There’s no answers and that’s okay. It’s showing a very complex person, and without giving too much away, it’s just a really remarkable film, one of my favorites.

AS: What struck you about Cusp to the degree that you decided to make it the closing night film?
SH: This film is a debut feature from Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt, two filmmakers that will be going somewhere. This film, which premiered at Sundance, this will be the second screening of it, is a really striking portrait of young womanhood. This time in lives, as young women learn about consent and social expectations, it’s this unspoken passage. I don’t want to say rite of passage but it shouldn’t be. But it’s something that young women go through, and it’s cyclical and it’s toxic, at times, and I think the film shows a lot of hope. It’s complicated. These young women, they have the whole world ahead of them and they know that and they’re just trying to navigate this really awkward and difficult time of adolescence. I think often times it gets covered up and not really discussed so honestly.

AS: Your Guggenheim symposium honoree this year is Dawn Porter , and she doesn’t have the long filmography that a lot of your prior honorees have. She’s only been making films since 2013. What about her films struck a chord so much that the decision was made to go with her, notwithstanding her relatively short career?
SH: Dawn is a really remarkable filmmaker in that she is busy. She may not have the length of the career but in the short amount of time she’s made a lot of interesting and dynamic documentaries and portraits about people, and issues that I think are inspiring and really encouraged the audience to be involved, take action, to be engaged with your community, to be engaged with politics. She just has a very strong voice that I think comes out in her work. You know last year she had two films come out, John Lewis: Good Trouble and The Way I See It and both were remarkable portraits of these people that have led very interesting lives in politics, but in different ways. I think that just speaks to her ability to engage with people, and to be able to tell these stories really well. The fact that she came into filmmaking later in life. She didn't go to film school, she didn’t go to the natural path a lot of filmmakers did. She’s a lawyer, she comes at this with a very different perspective and she’s a hard worker and I think those are all qualities that make her amazing and worth celebrating as well.

AS: One other film that jumped out for me and likely to any fans of “The Wire” is The Slow Hustle, by Sonja Sohn, Detective Greggs on that show. This seems to be life imitating art. Was it the connection to “The Wire” that drove you to the film, or was it something else?
SH: This is her second feature documentary. She has a really strong passion for Baltimore. She did a previous documentary called Baltimore Rising. For this one, The Slow Hustle, she returns to the community in Baltimore, and she's looking at a tragedy where a police detective from the Baltimore Police Department was killed in line of duty. And then this scandal with the Baltimore Police Department, which is internationally known for corruption. The scandal surrounding the death starts to unravel. Last year, obviously, the strain between communities and law enforcement really came to a head. She’s capturing the Baltimore area in a really unique way, where there’s corruption, and how you trust law enforcement on top of all the racial justice issues going on as well. It’s a really interesting tale and Sonja just had the love for this city in a way that’s very unique to her and very special and that comes out in the film.

AS: Another documentary I need to ask about is “9/11: One Day in America”. Of course we're coming up on 20 years since that awful day. This is the first three episodes of the series. Is it more reflective or is it more investigative in examining those tragic events?
SH: This series, another highlight of the festival program for me and an entire programming team, this is the more personal side of that day. This is the stories of the survivors, and it’s made in official partnership with the 9/11 Memorial Museum. We contextualize that day from the people who experienced this. I think that as we approach this 20th anniversary a lot of people have maybe seen certain footage, but we’ve lost the context and why it comes back to the humanity that we were all experiencing during that time. This film really does show the resilience of people, and how we all came together. I think that sometimes that gets lost in how it’s portrayed in media and how we think about that day. In this series, it really reminds you of why this was such a huge moment in time for America and the people that experienced it are still thinking about it in a way that brings hope. Because these stories of people and strangers helping each other is remarkable. It’s a very difficult watch, it’s very gripping and contextualizes it in a way that I think otherwise could be lost in time.

AS: We’re getting near the end so, before I ask you the last question, are there any other films that we haven’t discussed that you’d like to highlight?
SH: It’s a tough question, but there are a couple of other specific films with ties to DC that I want to mention. One of them is The First Step, which is directed by Brandon Kramer and produced by Lance Kramer, these brothers who are DC filmmakers. We are really excited to supporting them. This new film, which is following CNN commentator Van Jones after the election of President Trump, and how Van directly engages with the new administration, and that journey of how you become an advocate for prison reform in this unlikely relationship with an administration. Given what it’s about and who Van Jones is and the [Congressional] Black Caucus support and all the layers with it. Just how to bring a bill and get the maneuvers through Congress. An intriguing nuanced documentary about that process and at what point you make compromises and things like that.

And then we also have a short that will be worth hearing called R.I.P. T-Shirts. And this is just a lovely little short film that’s centered in Washington DC, about a small custom T-shirt shop that makes R.I.P. T-shirts, and what this business owner is reflecting on. Obviously business is booming and what does that mean for our generation of black youth and gun violence? And how gun violence is affecting this generation and how is he teaching his son? He’s trying to support his family through something that’s affecting obviously his community and the next generation. It’s personal, it’s different, that’s not something he wants. The fact that his shop is successful, that’s not OK for him. It’s definitely something to check out.

AS: In one of the press releases about AFI DOCS, you said that we’re living in a “golden age” of documentaries. Why do you think that is?
SH: I think there’s a lot of access to storytelling in a way that we haven’t seen in the past, but there’s also a lot of great stories that have not been told. People are finally kind of widening, a larger broadening of storytelling and what stories are able to say. What’s come out of the program is that we are seeing portraits of people who have often been overlooked in history as part of movements or part of humanity. This is a time where we’re able to capture more of that, and I think that the filmmakers in the program this year have done a great job. I’m excited to see more of that within the filmmaking out there.

You can learn more about AFI DOCS here.

Adam Spector
June 21, 2021