The list of the 122 films that screened during Silverdocs week. I need some sleep…

Having just finished reading Spy: The Funny Years, I was perhaps primed to make this connection. Also, I kept running into John Hanshaw, founder of the Washington Film Institute and Guerilla Film Festival. That’s John on the left and Cat Ladies director Christie Callan-Jones on the right. I swear, in person the resemblance is quite pronounced.

Well, almost a wrap. I still haven’t posted my notes on the Distribution panel, but will soon. Also coming is shocking video of the brutal beard contest following the screening of Splitting Hairs, as well as an arty video farewell. But here’s some semi-final thoughts.

WHAT I LOVED: Loved the Hub. The Music Master Class was fabulous, as was Sam Pollard’s editing seminar. Also, Cat Ladies, Winnebago Man, Best Worst Movie, though I didn’t get around to writing about it, Splitting Hairs, Carmen Meets Borat, and of course, the best movie ever made, Supermen of Malegaon.

And the opening night party was pretty drinktacular, what I remember.

WHAT I DIDN’T LOVE: The Future of Public Media panel was a bit too clever for its own good.

WHAT I DIDN’T GET: I stopped by Third Coast International Audio Festival late and caught the end of a This American Life piece that I’d already heard and the begining of another that I think I’d already heard. So, any criticism is likely half-baked. But one reason I left early was that after several days at an event with so much dazzling eyeball stimulation, I wasn’t in a mood to sit in the dark and just — listen. For one thing, the experience just seemed too…dark. Strange, I know. But as much as I love audio and radio, I’m not sure this feature fits that well with a film festival. But I’m prepared to be proven wrong next year.

A perhaps too-late nod to other coverage of Silverdocs. David Wilson at indieWire offered 9 Great Silverdocs Moments, after gushing about Artistic Director Sky Sitney, writing that “any additional responsibilities seem only to have spurred Sitney to greater triumphs, as the fest put forth what was arguably its strongest lineup of films ever, and further cemented its position as one of the most important gathering spots for the US documentary industry.”

Well, OK. Wilson also referred to downtown Silver Spring as a “bizarro downtown mall,” which we’re not entirely clear on. But he agreed with us about Supermen of Malegaon, calling it “sublime.”

Cineuropa says that “for European documentaries, the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival is a springboard for recognition.”

Other blogs of note with Silverdocs mentions (and worth following in general): AJ Schnack’s All These Wonderful Things. Schnack, of course, is the director of Convention, which featured prominently at this year’s event.

Also, check out Pamela Cohn’s Still In Motion blog, as well as Filmmaker Magazine’s blog, to which she contributes.

Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film is full of provocation and insight. Hope is the producer of the recent indie darling, Adventureland. Most recent posts include the timely Preparing for a Film Festival and Festival Goals.

And, of course, Scott Kirsner’s CinemaTech blog is indespensible.

Following up on Mercedes Stalenhoef’s Carmen Meets Borat here’s Jeff Schaffer, a writer on Borat and now the already-controversial Bruno, explaining, somewhat, the thought process behind creating Sacha Baron Cohen’s style of confrontational comedy.

Ick. “Doccie”? Scratch that. Maybe Silverdocs doesn’t need a catchy award nickname. The doc crowd is far too earnest for such Hollywood-style hokum, anyway. Perhaps. But anything to spread the word about some of these films would be a good thing. Especially in this economy, awards can be a critical factor in whether a film gets a theatrical release, or even a DVD distribution deal. Even a producer of a sure-fire crowd-pleaser was fretting to me about the current distribution climate.

A frustration for the audience is where to find many of these intriguing films after Silverdocs. Outside of piracy, it’s unclear. I offer links to film Web sites, where available.

Anyway, Silverdocs announced its award winners for the 2009 festival. Here are some highlights from Saturday’s presentation; the full list is below.

The top award was given to a film that hadn’t even screened yet. October Country took the Sterling US Feature Award. Co-director Michael Palmieri looked stunned, or perhaps just jet-lagged, as he exclaimed, “We just got off the plane!” He then raised the award statuette overhead and cried, “Sno-Globe!” (It does look like a sno-globe.) “And a check!” ($10,000, in fact.) Palmieri thanked Sky Sitney for putting on a great event, noting that “there’s no science to running a festival, you just do it.” He added “how good it feels to be with filmmakers” (applause), then ceded the podium to filmmaking partner Donal Mosher, whose family is the film’s subject. Mosher was visibly moved as he accepted the globe.

12 Notes Down which documents a 14-year old choir performer whose voice is changing, won both the Audience Award and the Sterling Short Award. Filmmaker Andreas Koefoed, himself a former choirboy, explained that he only graduated from Danish film school last week. He quietly wondered if this would help him earn a living in documentaries.

Perhaps he should talk with Lucy Bailey, whose Mugabe and the White African took the Sterling World Feature Award. “The film has drained us financially and emotionally, and continues to do so,” she said.

Brendan Canty and Peter Gabriel’s daughter were among the judges who voted Riseup the best music documentary. Luciano Blotta’s film is about Jamaica’s electric underground reggae scene. Blotta is another of the many first-time directors this year. He had gone to Jamaica to visit a friend and — again like many others — stumbled upon his subject. A veteran of fiction films, Blotta called docs “the best medium to be working in,” adding “nothing is more gratifying and harder than documentaries.” He then declared that he will “never work in narrative again.” Big cheers from the crowd on that.

Finally, Blotta offered a dismissal to Hollywood and a rallying cry for all documentarians: “The best stories and best characters are already out there. We just have to find them.”

• Sterling US Feature Award: October Country
• Sterling World Feature Award: Mugabe and the White African
• Sterling Short Award: 12 Notes Down
• Special Jury Mention: Salt
• Music Documentary Award: Riseup
• Special Jury Mention: Soul Power (”Best James Brown footage,” said Canty.)
• Cinematic Vision Award: Old Partner
• The WITNESS Award: Good Fortune
• Writers Guild of America Documentary Screenplay Award: Off and Running
• ACE Grant Winner: Cinema Chimp
• Feature Audience Award: The Cove (I’ve been told this is coming to E Street Cinemas later this year.)
• Short Audience Award: 12 Notes Down

So, how many did you see? Do you agree? And what’s Luciano Blotta gonna do with that shiny red Gibson guitar that he also won?

As we all know, Hollywood destroys America every week. But one movie also wreaked havoc in the tiny, obscure Romanian town of Glod. Sacha Baron Cohen used the place (whose name aptly translates as “mud”) as a stand-in for Kazakhstan in Borat: Cultural Learnings, etc., etc., and notably depicted its residents as whores, thieves, and rapists.

By chance, filmmaker Mercedes Stalenhoef was on holiday in Romania before the Borat crew arrived, and had been documenting the life of a charismatic 17-year-old girl with dreams of escaping to the good life in Spain. When Stalenhoef returned, post-Borat, it was to a pissed-off town, about to be pissed on again — this time by unbelievably insufferable American lawyers, who dangled empty promises of fortunes to be had by suing 20th Century Fox.

Carmen Meets Borat is both a fascinating portrait of Gypsy (or Roma, if you prefer) life on the edges and also manages to turn the image of comedian Cohen in his Borat costume into a villainous figure, up there with Lex Luthor and Montgomery Burns.

I sat down with Stalenhoef at her hotel for a chat about her film and how chance is the documentarian’s constant companion.

Thanks to Jeff Krulik for alerting me to Brian Lui’s video of Marion Barry getting down to the go-go at the after-party at Jackie’s following the premier of The Nine Lives of Marion Barry. (Can I get more bold-faced in one sentence?)

The Music Master Class organized by Silverdocs’ founding director (and my new best Facebook Friend) Nina Seavey was truly an eye- and ear-opening event. The premise: bring three different composers together, ask them to score the same piece of footage, examine the results.

The composers represented a broad mix of disciplines. John Califra is classically trained and specializes in full orchestral scores. DJ Ion Furjanic (Jesus Camp) is a computer-based sample jockey. And Brendan Canty was the drummer in Fugazi. (And, of course, created the wonderful Pancake Mountain theme, in addition to other TV work.)

The footage each was given came from Mick Angus‘ hipnotic short Salt, which Seavey called “the most visually arresting” entry into this year’s fest. (NOTE: Her assessment proved correct; Salt received an Honorable Mention award in the short film competition.)

Salt is a portrait of Australian photo-artist, Murray Fredericks, who each year spends several weeks in the desolate salt lake region of southern Australia. The scenes used for the class involved lightning storms, torrential rain, mud, and gloriously bizarre, empty landscapes. Califra said that when he first viewed it he thought it was “video of another planet.”

After each screening, the composers explained their choices and discussed how they work with directors, including the issue of working with people who cannot articulate a musical vocabulary. Califra said it came down to discussing two factors: style and emotion, with emotion the more important. Furjanic advised non-musicians to use descriptive words to get at what they want: “hot,” “pine needles.” He also prefers someone with a strong but not overwhelming vision of what the music should be.

All agreed with editor Sam Pollard, who said that temp scores are a bad idea, and that the soundtrack must serve the picture — not the other way around. “The picture shapes the form” of the score, said Califra, explaining how musical decisions he’s made to fit images would never have occurred to him in writing a concert piece. Scoring for film rather than performance “really did change my idea of how musical form can work,” he said. Canty declared that “a well-edited piece has an arc” to follow which informs his work. Bad editing, he said, “leads you rambling in the woods for days on end.”

Canty added a caution about using particular instruments as themes for a character. One can fall into the trap of supporting stereotypes. To that end, Furjanic talked about a project where he asked permission before using classical Iranian folk songs. Then it was “chop-chop-chop” to “get around any problem” of ethnomusical chauvenism.

The composers acknowledged that this stunt differed from their usual practice, where they prefer to be involved even before shooting or at least editing, to get a sense of what the film is about. What was so hard about this task said Furjanic, was “not being in the story.” “You’re trying to create an analog to the world the director has made,” explained Califra.

Canty represented the pop music genre well with a score of drums, bass, and guitar. He said he thought of Sigur Ros when composing. He also noted that guitar competes in the same sonic range as the human voice and should be avoided whenever someone is speaking. All agreed that dialog is, as Califra put it, like the “soloist” in the concerto that is the score. Furjanic added that people speak in rhythms, which can be a cue for the composer and which the score must support.

Califra’s piece was concieved for an orchestra, but obviously was done with synthesizer — which he doesn’t much care for. One “cannot emulate a symphony with samples,” he said. Real instruments offer a “depth and life that can’t be emulated by electronics.” His version took cues from the natural world: long lines or just a simple pulse, and dischordance.

In good-natured contrast, Furjanic joked about his ADD style, explaining that he works in “looped seconds,” compared to Califra’s live and lengthy performance-based work. He admonished other computer-based composers “Don’t do Kraftwerk over everything.”

It was fascinating to observe that all three scores basically worked, imbuing the same footage with subtly different moods. But if anyone thought they truly understood what they had heard, Furjanic blew the room away when he “showed his work.” He opened up Pro Tools and displayed the project files. His entire score was derived from one tiny sample of a loon chirping. A loon. That’s a bird.

From that single, odd, source, Furjanic created airy synth washes, high-pitched stinging sounds, deep thumping percussion. Chop-chop-chop, indeed.

This drew a deserved ovation.

But the surprises weren’t over. Angus took the stage to show the same clip as it appears in his film. He said he hopes for sound that captures the “Chewbacca moment,” that space between euphoria and despair: (Cue Wookie SFX: “Aaagh!”)

Musically, the actual Salt score fell somewhere between what Furjanic and Califra had come up with, symphonic yet electronic. But here’s the Irony Alert: There was no composer. Everything came from the CD of a band Angus happened to hear and like, Harmonic Spheres by Melbourne-based trio, Aajinta. The tracks were simply added to the timeline and, like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, everything synched.

One of the lessons I took away was that it’s hard to go wrong when the footage is good.

Listen to DJ Ion Furjanic demonstrate the many sounds he produced from a single bird call:

First of all, if you’re unfamiliar with Jack Rebney and the cult of The Angriest Man in the World, go here immediately.

Back? Wasn’t that amazing? OK.

During the Q&A for the wonderful film about Rebney’s status as a viral video superstar, Winnebago Man, director Ben Steinbauer thought it would be cool to give Jack a call and patched him into the PA at the Silver. There followed 10 minutes of Rebney responding to audience questions, pontificating about the horrors of Dick Cheney, and explaining the failure of the modern news business. After a woman complimented Rebney on his basso-profundo voice, Steinbauer goaded Rebney to explain his distaste for National Public Radio. Rebney calls it “No Penis Radio.”

After the laughter subsided, another audience member asked about the 80-year-old Rebney’s health and if he will see any proceeds from the film. That kind soul was NPR’s Bob Boilen, host of All Songs Considered.

I caught up with Bob, an old friend, and got his response to being so publicly abused. Herewith, the point-counterpoint:

Jack Rebney Bashes NPR

Bob Boilen Defends NPR