Variety’s Doc Dreams NYC event returned for its second year on November 10th and featured two panels with the year’s hottest documentary feature nominees.
Speakers on the first panel included Dan Farrar, director and producer of “The Age of Disclosure.” Petra Costa, writer, director, and producer of Tropical Apocalypse. Mark Obenhaus, director and producer of “Cover Up.” and Eugene Jarecki, director of The Six Billion Dollar Man.
While “The Age of Disclosure” seeks to establish a strong case for the existence of non-human intelligence by including testimony from 34 government officials with direct knowledge of the subject, Farrar acknowledges that it took time for subjects to voluntarily and legally disclose sensitive information on taboo topics for fear of imprisonment, career setbacks, and defamation.
Choosing to produce the film independently allowed him to maintain creative control and minimize the sensationalism of the information shared.
“People started buying into this plan that this is how real information would come out and be shared with the public,” he explained. “Everyone I met felt a heavy burden on their shoulders knowing something the average person didn’t know. Many of these people told me clearly how painful it was that they knew this information that affects us all, and the average person is completely ignorant.”
Farrar continued: “They felt it was their duty to find a way to get the virus out in a safe and comfortable way, and they felt comfortable arming themselves with senior military, government and intelligence committee members.”
Costa’s documentary “Tropical Apocalypse” reveals the rise and impact of Christian nationalism in Brazil, following the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and pastor Cyrus Malafaia.
The filmmaker recalled the backlash he received from Mr. Bolsonaro after the release of his previous documentary, “The Edge of Democracy,” which explored the unraveling of Brazil’s two presidencies in 2019.
“When[The Ends of Democracy]was nominated, the far right started attacking me really hard,” Costa said. “In his street speeches, Mr. Bolsonaro said that this movie was a piece of crap that would be eaten by vultures.” And he used his official Twitter account to attack me. He called me a traitor to the Brazilian state and I became a trending topic. I was very confused. It lasted several months, and I was constantly attacked by his digital militia, and one of his evangelical members called for my imprisonment under national security laws. ”
Obenhaus talked about how his friendship with Seymour Hersh played a big role in the production of “Cover Up,” which explores Hersh’s career as an investigative reporter. Obenhaus explained that despite their friendship, they couldn’t stop conflicting at one point during filming.
“At one point he quit, but he came back again,” he said. “I was used to that kind of attitude. It wasn’t foreign to me. And I had no doubt that he was committed to this movie and was going to stick with it. One of the things that I’m proud of is that it came through in the movie, and it never glossed over or masked his weaknesses in any way.”
Jarecki said he did not expect his film, The Six Billion Dollar Man, about the life of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, to reflect current issues, including threats to access to public information.
“While we were making this work, we never imagined that the world would plummet to fascism, especially information fascism, and that Assange would suddenly become like a real fortune teller and a canary in the coal mine,” Jarecki said.
Speakers on Doc Dreams NYC’s second panel included screenwriter and producer Alison McGourty and Becoming Led Zeppelin director, screenwriter and producer Bernard McMahon. Ryan White, director and producer of “Come See Me in the Good Light.” Sam Mirpoulyan, co-director, editor, and producer of “Saving Superman.” and Ben Stiller in “Stiller & Mela: Nothing Is Lost.”
Becoming Led Zeppelin explores the history and early formation of the rock band Led Zeppelin. McGourty and McMahon opened up about the difficulties they faced finding distribution for their film, revealing that it was a difficult project to sell until they signed a deal with Sony Pictures Classic.
“Making the film was incredibly difficult,” McGourty said. “There were some snippets of footage because this group wasn’t being filmed. If we encountered someone trying to film them at a concert, the manager would pull the film out of the camera, slam the camera, and kick the person out of the venue. All the pieces are all there is. It was tough to make. Then we had to go through a pandemic. When no one wanted to buy the movie, we didn’t know what to do.”
White talked about how the filming and editing process changed during the making of “Come See Me in the Good Light,” which follows spoken word poet Andrea Gibson and her partner Megan Farley as they overcome Gibson’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer. White went into the project with the assumption that Gibson would be with him until death, but explained how the premiere at Sundance changed the entire outcome of their film.
“At the end of my movie, I don’t know if they’re alive or dead,” White said. “Nobody knew at Sundance, especially at an industry screening with 600 people in attendance. It was emotional when the movie ended and Andrea walked in to do a Q&A with the audience. But it was one of those things where you have to be at the mercy of the story. You have to let the story tell you what it’s about and how it ends.”
Mirpoulian spoke about how he gained the trust of his subjects while co-directing the film Saving Superman with Adam Oppenheim, which tells the true story of Jonathan, a 57-year-old man with autism spectrum disorder known as Superman. When his home is threatened by a new property owner, the community and his best friend Julie set up a grassroots program to save him.
“Adam is Julie’s nephew, so there was a very sentimental element,” Milporian said. “Knowing that, he could trust her and know that he wasn’t going to exploit her in any way.”
Ben Stiller opened up about his mother’s struggle with alcoholism in Stiller & Meara: Nothing Lost, a documentary about his parents’ 60-year relationship. Director Stiller was comfortable incorporating his mother’s journey to sobriety into the film, but admitted he was concerned about his father’s reaction to adding that detail.
“The other part was trying to tell the story of their entire relationship over 60 years,” Stiller said. “I wanted to express something very personal in her life in the film and give it the right balance to give people a sense of what the overall feeling of their relationship was.”
Although Stiller’s debut film is a personal story, he is open to making more documentaries in the future.
