Thought of the Week

The amusing thing about documentary filmmakers? In a field that's always dogged by the perception of being boring, they're generally certain that you'll find their work captivating. In fact, I'm starting to realize that's a prerequisite for making docs -- the ability to convince yourself that whatever topic you are dealing with is fascinating.

The reason I'm thinking about this?

Well, in 2007 and 2008 we participated in the International Documentary Challenge and made it into the finals. This year, unfortunately, our film didn't make it. It was a tiny bit of a shock -- after all, we thought it was a very good film. Of course, having been through a lot of judging, and occasionally serving as a judge, I know that this sort of thing is just bananas -- there are many many many reasons why a person scores one film higher than another, and that's just the way it goes. We had two lucky breaks, and one unlucky one. Fine.

But I laughed out loud when I received a note from the event organizer. Apparently, so many of the non-finalists were emailing him that he just had to respond.

What were they writing? They were sure their films must have been disqualified somehow, and they wanted to know why. Because otherwise, of course, their film would have won. Obviously.