Since its beginning, T/F has served as a font of ideas, with most of them bubbling up on screen. But now non-filmmakers inject new ideas into the festival’s bloodstream and attempt to rearrange our worldviews. Rather than sequester these big thinkers to the fringes, we place them front and center, and sometimes invite them to jump on a soapbox for pre-film rants.
Field Sessions
The festival panel is a tired tradition, and T/F is doing its part to jettison it once and for all with our intimate Field Sessions. These close encounters between artists provide an unsurpassed intimacy that can’t be achieved in a multi person panel. Each session is a deep dive into the ideas that shape nonfiction filmmaking in 2020 and will be live-recorded for the “True/False Podcast.” All Field Sessions are held in the Little Chapel @ The Picturehouse and are free and open to the public.
Oscillation
Ursula Liang & Khalik Allah
Ursula Liang (Down a Dark Stairwell) and Khalik Allah (IWOW: I Walk on Water) freely alternate between journalism, photography, and cinema as they approach their subjects. The two artists will discuss their investment in exploring intersubjectivities and reshaping documentary grammar.
Friday, Mar 6, 1:30pm-2:30pm
Immersion
Marnie Ellen Hertzler & Mitch McCabe
Marnie Ellen Hertzler (Crestone) and Mitch McCabe (Civil War Surveillance Poems Part 1) both draw from apocalyptic themes as they interrogate rustic communities. From thorny ethical questions to their creative processes, the directors will excavate personal meaning from their complex films.
Friday, Mar 6, 3pm-4pm
Interrogation
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz & Basir Mahmood
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz (The Viewing Booth) and Basir Mahmood (Good Ended Happily) have created provocative films with embedded social and historical commentary. Together, they will examine their curiosities and the nuances of perspective.
Saturday, Mar 7, 1pm-2pm
Dimensions
Steve James & Meredith Zielke
Directors Steve James (City So Real) and Meredith Zielke (A Machine to Live In) situate their films in eclectic cities real and imagined. Join them as they consider things they have in common, challenges and rewards in navigating complex cityscapes, and their holistic approaches.
Saturday, Mar 7, 3pm-4pm
Events
HYPERALLERGIC
Willy Wilson @ Ragtag Saturday, Mar 7 / 11:45am
Join online arts magazine, Hyperallergic, editors Dessane Lopez Cassell (reviews) and Dan Schindel (documentary) for a panel discussion with leading critics, makers, and programmers on the challenges and quirks of writing about documentary in the current era. How do we navigate considerations of form, storytelling, audience expectations, and ever-evolving methods of distribution and access? These and many other questions will serve as a jumping-off point for some lively discourse.
Panelists will include Monica Castillo (New York Times, Remezcla, and Hyperallergic, among others), Jon-Sesrie Goff (The Flaherty/multidisciplinary artist), and Beatrice Loayza (MUBI, Remezcla, and Hyperallergic, among others).
THE RAMBLE
Box Office // Saturday, Mar 7 / 12pm-12:30pm Box Office // Saturday, Mar 7 / 3:30pm-4pm Box Office // Sunday, Mar 8 / 12pm-12:30pm Box Office // Sunday, Mar 8 / 3:30pm-4pm
Is it T/F’s best-kept secret or its worst-publicized temporary installation? (Our sources say both…or perhaps neither.) Those with the foresight to set aside time for The Ramble, a collective poetic improvisation masquerading as a conventional downtown walking tour, will surely be rewarded. Under the guidance of longtime chaperone Gabriel Williams, this unclassifiable experience seeks to explore new ways of seeing, rewiring our appreciation for the built environment, and uniting the future with the past, while scrambling traditional ideas about performance, intention, and divination. Free and open to the public.
TAVIA STANZA ARTIST TALK
Bingham Gallery // Saturday, Mar 7 / 2pm
Fiber artist Tavia Sanza discusses Growth, installed in the rotunda at Jesse Hall, among other pieces. This artist talk provides an opportunity to learn more about her work, process and the progression of her installation as it continues to evolve.
28 N 9th Street // Mar 5 – 8 / Thursday 5:30pm-8pm / Friday 11am-8pm / Saturday 11am-8pm / Sunday 11am-8pm
A meditative four-channel film and art installation that reflects on health and wellness as part and parcel of the American black experience from cradle to grave. Back and Song considers the labor and care provided by generations of black healers—doctors, nurses, midwives, morticians, therapists, and health aides—and their histories of contribution to, and resistance of, the flawed and discriminatory structures of Western medicine.
CTRL+ALT+SHIFT
Located at Columbia Art League // Thursday, 5:30pm-8pm / Friday 11am-8pm / Saturday 11am-8pm / Sunday 11am-8pm
BOTTLED SONGS 1 + 2
Chloé Galibert-laîné & Kevin B. Lee; 2019; video installation; 19 min
Two researchers investigate the dissemination of propaganda created by the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State and contemplate the media’s role in spreading this message. Exchanging video letters recorded from their computer desktops, the researchers share their thoughts and fears as they each dissect pieces of media produced by ISIS in 2014 that are still available online today.
DENOISE
Giorgio Ferrero & Federico Biasin; 2017; VR; 13 min
Silence and noise dictate the rhythms of workers’ daily routines, whose solitary jobs thrust the industrial world forward. An oil field in Texas, the engine room of an ocean-going freighter, and an immense anechoic chamber in Switzerland are backdrops for their process of creation, transport, validation, and destruction.
THE LEAP: Inside Architect Dorte Mandrup's Mind
Ane Skak, Niels Bjørn; 2019; VR; 21 min
A stunning illustration of Danish architect Dorte Mandrup’s creative process, The Leap explores the intersection of living images, animation, and 3D modelling. This project documents Mandrup’s creation of the iconic Wadden Sea Centre by the west coast of Jutland, Denmark, and the majestic Ice Fjord Centre in Ilulissat, Greenland.
LIVING DISTANCE
Xin Liu; 2020; immersive; 10 min
It’s an old Chinese tradition that when a child loses a top tooth, they bury it in the ground. A displaced bottom tooth is tossed up to the ceiling. Inspired by this practice, artist and mechanical engineer Xin Liu launched her bottom wisdom tooth into space. Hitch a ride through the stratosphere on the celestial journey of this tiny, lifeless rock of flesh.
LUX SINE
Alex Suber; 2019; immersive; 12 min
Deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota lies the Wind Cave, also host to a subterranean Sanford Research Lab. This interactive piece unravels the cosmos through parallel explorations of darkness, at a former goldmine turned cutting-edge laboratory 4,850 feet below ground, and in a labyrinth of ancient passageways at the heart of the Lakota Sioux creation story.
TX-REVERSE 360°
Martin Reinhart & Virgil Widrich; 2019; VR; 5 min
This unsettling voyage of cinema-in-cinema flips time and space, exchanging the time (t) and space axis (x) in a film. Instead of the film frame representing a brief moment of time in space, the tx-transformation shows a tiny part of the space in time.
Since its beginning, T/F has served as a font of ideas, with most of them bubbling up on screen. But now non-filmmakers inject new ideas into the festival’s bloodstream and attempt to rearrange our worldviews. Rather than sequester these big thinkers to the fringes, we place them front and center, and sometimes invite them to jump on a soapbox for pre-film rants.
FIELD SESSIONS
The festival panel is a tired tradition and T/F is doing its part to jettison them once and for all with our intimate Field Sessions. These close encounters between two (or three!) artists provide an unsurpassed intimacy that can’t be achieved in a multi-person panel. Each session is a deep dive into the ideas that shape nonfiction filmmaking and will be live recorded for the True/False Podcast.
All Field Sessions take place in the Little Chapel at The Picturehouse, 204 S. Ninth St., and are free and open to the public.
Ernst Karel & Brett Story
I THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING
Artist, researcher, and sonic ethnographer Ernst Karel has done post-production sound work on landmark nonfiction films like Leviathan, Manakamana, and Milford Graves: Full Mantis. He recently collaborated with director Brett Story on her widely anticipated new feature, The Hottest August. Together, they will walk-through a significant scene from the film and share their theories and practices of sound design.
The fearless Anand Patwardhan (director, Reason) has been creating epic socio-political Indian documentaries for decades. Poh Lin Lee (star, Island of the Hungry Ghosts) is an Australian social worker who also runs a side practice of conducting narrative interviews with filmmakers. In this special encounter, Poh will engage in conversation with Anand, covering his latest film and his lifelong artistic oeuvre.
Directors Nanfu Wang (One Child Nation) and Petra Costa (Edge of Democracy) unveil their families’ political histories in their latest films, which both start small with the personal and explode with seismic implications. In this conversation the directors will bring light to the unique decisions in telling personal journeys of discovery and ruminate on their current relationship to their past.
Maíra Bühler & Rosine Mbakam
STEP INTO THE CHAMBER
Engaging in more-than-vérité filming, Maíra Bühler (Let It Burn) and Rosine Mbakam (Chez Jolie Coiffure) each gained incredibly intimate access to secret worlds in their second features. They will discuss the challenges of shooting in confined interior spaces and the transcendent potential of having limited parameters.
EVENTS
UN-FIELD SESSION: FUNDER’S FIRESIDE CHAT
We revert back to the panel format in this intimate chat with three documentary funders, but twist the power dynamics by inviting a filmmaker-moderator, Chase Whiteside (dir. América [T/F 2018]) to call the shots. At hand are catalytic open questions, such as “What are you waiting for?” Everyone is prepared to be honest and to finally lay it all out on the table. As such, no press, please. The panel discussion will be followed by a short period of time for mingling. Free and open to the public; space available.
TIM TALK
In 2011, Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington created On Cinema at the Cinema, an absurd and stinging riff on self-absorbed movie nerd culture; a burlesque of an archetypal entitled, right-leaning ignoramus; and a brilliant piece of sustained character development exploring a toxic, co-dependent relationship. In the years since, the On Cinema universe has blossomed, with a number of its projects conversing with the real world. In TIM Talk, True/False 2016 critic-in-residence and noted On Cinema scholar, Nick Pinkerton, facilitates a conversation with Heidecker, in which the two discuss the evolution of the project, and if we’re lucky, offer a taste of what’s to come. No recording allowed. Reserved ticket required; free via the Q.
RADIO ATLAS: THE NIGHT WATCHMAN
In her groundbreaking project Radio Atlas, Eleanor McDowall translates creative audio documentaries, granting English-language listeners access to inventive art we otherwise might not comprehend. In this program, McDowall premieres a translation for 1971’s The Night Watchman, a landmark work of psychological portraiture from the Detroit-born, Denmark-based Stephen Schwartz, the pioneer of the “Schwartz Technique,” a highly influential approach to interviewing. Reserved ticket required; general admission via the Q.
Plays with Charlotte Bienaimé’s “Colette’s Podcasts,” about an obsessive collector of radio documentaries, and “Fainting Spells” (Dir. Sky Hopinka; 2018; 11 min)
CHAUTAUQUA
Join our piquant Provocateurs, host Martina Castro, and some surprise guests for a variety show featuring provocations, music, and storytelling. Immediately following, the conversations continue in the Bingham Gallery (across the hall) with a high tea. Reserved ticket required; general admission via the Q.
ROOM H.264: COLUMBIA, MO, MARCH 2019
As the festival concludes, we’re thrilled to offer a free, casual screening of Room H.264, a film that will be shot and edited over the course of True/False weekend. Created by Eric Hynes, Jeff Reichert and Damon Smith, the project is an homage to Wim Wenders’ documentary Room 666. Over True/False weekend, a variety of True/False filmmakers will find themselves alone in a hotel room, facing a camera and a provocative prompt: “Is cinema a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?” No ticket required; free and open to the public.
PROVOCATIONS
The Provocations are a mini-Ideas Fest within True/False. After months of searching, our team located five people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, all with challenging ideas and provocative presentation styles. Paired with a feature film in our program, these folks stand ready to rearrange your worldview with the power of words.
Rashayla Marie Brown
Multihyphenate Rashayla maintains an active career as an artist, speaker, performer, and designer across many mediums, all the while poking holes in the art world establishment. Her project Reality is Not Good Enough turns our assumptions about reality TV starring and profiteering off of black women inside out.
Provocation before screenings of Segunda Vez.
ANDREA LONG CHU
Andrea’s explosive essays “On Liking Women” and “Bad TV” opened new frontiers in trans and feminist criticism. She is finishing her first book, Females: A Concern, on femaleness as political suicide, from Verso Books.
Provocation before screenings of Untitled Amazing Johnathan Documentary.
Ricardo Dominguez
In 2010, Glenn Beck reviewed Ricardo’s collaborative project Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab as a gesture that potentially “dissolved” the U.S.-Mexico border with its poetry. His art frequently utilizes hacktivist principles and electronic civil disobedience to redefine structures of power.
Provocation before screenings of Celebration.
Jenn Takahashi
Founder of the satirical Twitter account Best of Nextdoor, Jenn trawls the depths of the online community board Nextdoor to unearth the most absurd, funny, and heartwarming examples of neighbors helping—or not helping—each other out. The CEO of Nextdoor does not approve of her work.
Provocation before screenings of Treasure Island.
Kate Wagner
Kate runs McMansion Hell, a blog that, besides taking down the proliferation of consumerist excess in American housing stock, was recently selected by the Library of Congress for permanent archiving as a culturally important website. Kate writes critical analysis of architecture and design that spans topics from restaurant acoustics to home renovation reality shows.
Provocation before screenings of Mike Wallace is Here.
TRANSMEDIA
We’re delving more deeply into the frontiers of interactive media, showcasing artists and storytellers who’ve jumped the fences of traditional platforms. On display within the glow of the Transmedia Arcade located in downtown, visitors are welcome to stop in between films for a rupture of reality.
Located at Columbia Art League
DESSERT DISASTER
Alison Nguyen; 2019; video installation
Reimagined as an immersive installation, this rendition of the short film explores our consumption of disaster news and its cinematic parallels to advertising through found footage.
DINNER PARTY
Charlotte Stoudt, Laura Wexler, Angel Manuel Soto; 2018; VR
In 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by aliens while driving to their home in Rural New Hampshire. Haunting audio recordings from their hypnotic regression therapy sessions illuminate Betty and Barney’s very different experiences of the same event.
HOMESTAY
Paisley Smith, Jam3, NFB; 2018; immersive
Foreign exchange programs promise the opportunity for students to share their culture while immersing themselves in another. This personal story of a family’s experience with loss and grief is folded into delicate paper illustrations.
THE REAL THING
Benoit Felici; 2018; VR
This virtual tour explores authenticity and imitation through three of China’s surreal neighborhoods, each designed as stunning, elaborate replicas of Venice, Paris, and London
SELYATAĞI (FLOODPLAIN)
Deniz Tortum; 2018; VR
A mysterious tree watches over a forest while humans traverse its paths, planning construction zones and searching for a lost person. As civilization slowly unravels, quiet new dynamics emerge.
SANCTUARIES OF SILENCE
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Adam Loften; 2017; VR
As natural silence verges on extinction, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton journeys to one of the quietest places on earth, the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. Defining silence as the absence of modern noise, he asserts that “silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything”.
Since its beginning, T/F has served as a font of ideas, with most of them bubbling up on screen. But now non-filmmakers inject new ideas into the festival’s bloodstream and attempt to rearrange our worldviews. Rather than sequester these big thinkers to the fringes, we place them front and center, and sometimes invite them to jump on a soapbox for pre-film rants. We are re-inventing the idea of panels as more intimate conversations and playful show and tells. We’re also delving more deeply into the frontiers of interactive transmedia, showcasing artists and storytellers who’ve jumped the fences of traditional platforms.
FIELD SESSIONS
The festival panel is a tired tradition and T/F is doing its part to jettison them once and for all with our intimate Field Sessions. These close encounters between two (or three!) artists provide an unsurpassed intimacy that can’t be achieved in a multi-person panel. Each session is a deep dive into the ideas that shape nonfiction filmmaking in 2018 and will be live recorded for the True/False Podcast.
All Field Sessions take place in the Little Chapel at The Picturehouse, 204 S. Ninth St., and are free and open to the public.
Rebirth
Friday / 1:30pm
With Dorottya Zurbó, Arun Bhattarai and Alissa Wilkinson
Dorottya Zurbó and Arun Bhattarai embedded within a Bhutanese monastery run by the same family for 11 centuries in their tender first feature, The Next Guardian. Alissa Wilkinson is now a staff writer and film critic at Vox, after her previous post as a critic-at-large for Christianity Today. Together, they will examine the resonances of creating contemplative work at odds with fast-paced modern life.
Reconstruct
Friday / 3:30pm
With Fellipe Barbosa and Matt Holzman
Fellipe Barbosa (Gabriel and the Mountain) built his latest film around the remnants of his friend Gabriel Buchmann’s life, from his photographs to excerpts of his diary. Matt Holzman’s podcast, KCRW’s The Document, extracts new audio stories from the footage of documentary films. Fellipe and Matt share how they sift fresh work out of unfiltered raw material.
Rejoice
Saturday / 1:00pm
With RaMell Ross and Leilah Weinraub
Over years of editing, both Leilah Weinraub (SHAKEDOWN) and RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) found themselves migrating away from conventional cinematic languages. In this conversation they discuss how they are seeking to reshape documentary grammar and expand the way films view black bodies.
Reflect
Saturday / 3:00pm
With Kim Hopkins, Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside
Directors Kim Hopkins (Voices of the Sea), Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside (América) spent significant time with their subjects, close-knit families in Cuba and Mexico, respectively. Join these three as they consider the many things they have in common, from their Spanish-language immersions to their experiences at True/False and Catapult Film Fund’s Rough Cut Retreat.
PROVOCATIONS
The Provocations are a mini-Ideas Fest within True/False. After months of searching, our team located five people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, all with challenging ideas and provocative presentation styles. Paired with a feature film in our program, these folks stand ready to rearrange your worldview with the power of words.
Aja Romano: Drawing upon her background in fandom, Aja writes about internet culture for Vox. Her reporting provides insights into geek culture from written fanfiction to the dark recesses of Reddit. Provocation before screenings of The Next Guardian.
Danny Giles: After graduating from Hickman High School, Danny moved to Chicago where he works as an interdisciplinary artist and educator. His performances at distinguished museums and galleries question the power dynamics of systems. Provocation before screenings of La Flor de la Vida.
Miko Revereza: Since relocating from Manila as a child, Miko has lived undocumented in the United States for almost 25 years. His films, writing and art practice are all influenced by his ongoing problems with documentation and the exclusion it imposes. Provocation before screenings of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?.
Nicole He: Nicole uses technology to make art about technology. She playfully transforms both digital mediums and physical objects to explore the relationship between humans and computers. Provocation before screenings of Secret Screening Zephyr.
Paul Bloom: A prominent psychologist, Paul’s latest book is Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. His groundbreaking work convincingly makes counterintuitive arguments about morality, religion, art, and how we understand the world. Provocation before screenings of Love Means Zero.
CHAUTAUQUA
Sunday, Mar 4 / 9:30am - 11:00am / Rhynsburger Theatre and Bingham Gallery
Join our piquant Provocateurs, host Logan Hill, and some surprise guests for a variety show featuring provocations, music, and storytelling. Immediately following, the conversations continue in the Bingham Gallery (right across the hall) with a high tea.
PODCAST
Now in its second season, the True/False Podcast features a conversation between a Fest curator and a filmmaker. The podcast is in collaboration with KBIA, Columbia’s NPR affiliate station, and students at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Conversation center on an aspect of nonfiction storytelling – such as building character, the subject/filmmaker relationship, gaining access – and offers insider insight into the making of today’s most cutting-edge nonfiction films. Recent interviews include Sandi Tan (Shirkers), Pete Nicks (The Force), Kitty Green (Casting JonBenet), Chico Pereira (Donkeyote), and more.
You can find the True/False podcast on kbia.org, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.
TRANSMEDIA
Located at Columbia Art League // Thursday, 5:30pm - 8pm / Friday, 11am - 8pm / Saturday, 11:30am - 9pm / Sunday, 11am - 8pm
Presented in partnership with Scenic VR and Gravity
It Must Have Been Dark by Then (Duncan Speakman; 2017; Interactive)
Equipped with a mobile phone and a paper book, this walking tour guides participants with evocative music, narration and field recordings. Close your eyes and let the streets of Columbia give way to the swamplands of Louisiana, empty Latvian villages and the edge of the Tunisian Sahara. These stories and sounds will lead your way in constructing a personal map.
Bloodless (Gina Kim; 2017; VR)
This 360 film, shot on location in a Korean “camp town” — lawless zones located adjacent to US military bases — follows a real-life sex worker in the hours leading up to her brutal murder by a US soldier at the Dongducheon Camptown in South Korea in 1992.
Indian Giver (Sydney Pursel; 2011; claw machine)
Reclaiming the offensive term in a playful way, Pursel’s Indian Giver gives stereotypical representations of Native Americans back to mass society.
Friend of a Friend (Kate Gorman; 2018; Interactive)
A fictional memoir about unsteady remembrances of the past and the challenges of reconnection. In this unique augmented reality (AR) experience, you can piece together the story of a college friendship through emails, photos, and audio recordings via a smartphone app as you navigate downtown Columbia.
The Summation of Force (Narelle Autio, Trent Parke, Matthew Bate; 2018; VR)
With a nod to Eadweard Muybridge and the early days of photographic motion capture, this eerie black-and-white collage inhabits a virtual space to illuminate the physical and psychological components of the game of cricket.
This participatory experience explores the ways in which the Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998) constructed their groundbreaking experimental non-linear feature films and tape-slide installations. The Materialities Montage Mixer invites viewers to re-work and re-appropriate archival and found material in a participative process which characterised the Collective’s interest in 1980s British politics and art.
Bethlehem (Jesse Epstein, Andrea Rollefson; 2018; VR)
Once a booming steel mill in which workers fabricated the materials for the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge, the sprawling Bethlehem Plant has since been converted into a casino. This poetic exploration of a changing city confronts the past and future of the American workforce.
Since its beginning, T/F has served as a font of ideas, with most of them bubbling up on screen. But now non-filmmakers inject new ideas into the festival’s bloodstream and attempt to rearrange our worldviews. Rather than sequester these big thinkers to the fringes, we place them front and center, and sometimes invite them to jump on a soapbox for pre-film rants. We are re-inventing the idea of panels as more intimate conversations and playful show and tells. We’re also delving more deeply into the frontiers of interactive transmedia, showcasing artists and storytellers who’ve jumped the fences of traditional platforms.
FIELD SESSIONS
All Field Sessions take place in the Little Chapel @ The Picturehouse, 204 S. Ninth St., and are free and open to the public.
Field Session: Expanded Cinema
Friday, Mar 3 / 1:30pm / Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
With Gary Hustwit, Jessica Edwards, and Josh Begley
Data artist Josh Begley (“Best of Luck with the Wall”) sources his images from Google Earth and Google Street View. Gary Hustwit (“This Is What the Future Looked Like”) runs Scenic, a VR content studio, that partners with nonfiction filmmakers like Jessica Edwards. These two visions of the future of interactive media collide in fission or fusion.
Field Session: Ask Me a Question
Friday, Mar 3 / 3pm / Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
With Lindy Lou Isonhood and Florent Vassault
Borrowing liberally from The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, this show brings together Lindy Lou (the star) and Florent Vassault (the director) of Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2 to see how well they actually know each other. Each will take turns answering questions about the other. Brace yourself as these close collaborators take us on a surprising ride.
Field Session: Eye to Eye
Saturday, Mar 4 / 10:30am / Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
With Shevaun Mizrahi and Jeff Unay
Shevaun Mizrahi (Distant Constellation) and Jeff Unay (The Cage Fighter) subvert documentary dogma with their special effects, whether lo-fi or high-tech. From the creative process to thorny ethical questions, the directors reveal their wizardly tricks and bravely reconsider the notion of truth.
Field Session: Blood is Thicker Than Water
Saturday, Mar 4 / 12pm / Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
With Yance Ford and Travis Wilkerson
Directors Yance Ford (Strong Island) and Travis Wilkerson (Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?) both scrutinize the unjustified murder of a black man in films pulled from their family histories. In this conversation, they excavate deeply personal meaning from these still-reverberating acts of violence and come to terms with their parallel works.
Field Session: Casting Light
Saturday, Mar 4 / 1:30pm / Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
With Mette Carla Albrechtsen
Witness two filmmakers at the top of their game interview audience members. Mette Carla Albrechtsen (Venus) and a surprise guest filmmaker will first orient us to the process of interviewing subjects before embarking on a live “casting” session. One lucky interviewee will be selected to win a special basket of T/F merch. Sign up at the door to participate!
Field Session: A Labor of Love
Saturday, Mar 4 / 3pm / Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
With Alma Har’el, Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini
Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles, the directors of Dina, plucked their titular subject out of suburban Philadelphia and made her the star of her own rom- com. Alma Har’el is known for her genre-bending filmmaking — her newest, LoveTrue, is a lush psychodrama of young love. Together, they rose to the prickly challenge of telling someone else’s love story. Here they share their innovative strategies.
+ Podcast Therapy
Friday, Mar 3 / 1:30pm to 4pm // Saturday, Mar 4 / 12pm to 4pm /Little Chapel @ Picturehouse
Just opposite the doors to the Little Chapel @ Picturehouse you’ll find this kiosk run by Chicago’s Third Coast International Audio Festival. Share an episode from your life, and they will pluck a relevant excerpt from their vast audio archive.
ELEMENTAL
ELEMENTAL HAS BEEN CANCELLED. STAY TUNED FOR ADDITIONAL UPDATES.
Elemental is an immersive gaming experience in which teams of eight people must collaborate to understand new worlds. With no language, numbers, or traditional locks, this is a unique escape room that delivers as much joy and wonder as puzzle-solving satisfaction.
Thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation, this year we’ve built a mini-Ideas Fest within True/False. After months of searching, our team located five people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, all with challenging ideas and provocative presentation styles. Paired with a feature film in our program, these folks stand ready to rearrange your worldview with the power of words.
Destiny Watford:
Now a university student, this unstoppable force won last year’s 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for leading the successful opposition to the nation’s largest trash-burning incinerator, proposed for her Baltimore neighborhood. Provocation before screenings of the feature Communion.
Linda Tirado:
A self-described “completely average American,” Linda Tirado, author of Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, writes about poverty, media, and politics. She has reported on militant movements such as Ammon Bundy’s armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Provocation before screenings of the feature The Challenge.
Sarah Jeong:
Trained as an attorney, Sarah is a contributing editor at Vice Motherboard, where she writes about technology, policy, and law. Her book The Internet of Garbage considers online harassment. Provocation before screenings of the feature Rat Film.
Sarah Kendzior:
This St. Louis-based journalist and Twitter legend covers politics, media, and the economy. For the last decade, she has researched authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union, an increasingly relevant topic. Provocation before screenings of the feature Stranger in Paradise.
Stacy Kranitz:
Born in Kentucky, Stacy’s photographs document those outside mainstream American culture. In her celebrated photographs of Appalachia, she is demystifying some well-entrenched stereotypes. Provocation before screenings of the feature The Road Movie.
CHAUTAUQUA
Sunday, Mar 5 / 9:30am / Rhynsburger Theatre and Bingham Gallery
Join our five piquant provocateurs, host Avi Lewis, and some surprise guests for a variety show featuring provocations, music, and storytelling. Immediately following, the conversations continue in the Bingham Gallery (right across the hall) with elevenses.
Presented in partnership with the Ford Foundation
TRANSMEDIA
Located at Columbia Art League // Thursday, 5:30pm – 8pm / Friday 10:30am – 8pm / Saturday 9am – 7pm / Sunday 10am – 8pm
This Is What the Future Looked Like (Sam Green, Gary Hustwit; 2017; VR) A 360-degree tour of geodesic domes (some spectacular, others less so) dovetails with a history of their inventor, Buckminster Fuller.
Underworld (Francesca Panetta; 2016; VR) Breaking new ground for nonfiction virtual reality, this gamified immersive documentary ratchets up the tension as you go urban exploring in the sewers of London.
Bear 71 (Leanne Allison, Jeremy Mendes, Jam3; 2016; VR) Updating the groundbreaking interactive project Bear 71 (2012), this VR version allows users to experience life as a bear in Canada’s Banff National Park. Through fixed cameras and other electronic data-gathering tools, lines between wild and wired become blurred.
Quickdraw (Jonas Jongejan, Henry Rowley, Takashi Kawashima, Jongmin Kim, Nick Fox-Gieg, with friends at Google Creative Lab and Data Arts Team; 2016; interactive) A simple drawing game played against a neural network. With every game, the AI becomes smarter…
Presented in partnership with Good Wizard, Gravity, and Scenic
PODCAST
This year, True/False is launching a podcast about the art and craft of nonfiction storytelling. The podcast is in collaboration with KBIA, Columbia’s NPR affiliate station, and students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Each episode features a True/False curator conversing with a noteworthy filmmaker or film critic. Conversation centers on an aspect of storytelling — such as building character, creating an immersive experience, gaining access — and offers insider insight into the making of today’s most cutting-edge nonfiction films.
The first two episodes feature Building Character with Keith Fulton & Lou Pepe (The Bad Kids) and Immersion with Bill & Turner Ross (Contemporary Color). The True/False podcast will launch on March 2 on www.truefalse.org, www.kbia.org, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.
Synapses
The 2023 lineup will be announced in early February. Visit our archives for previous year’s programming:
