What I Learned at the Toronto International Film Festival 2009

The first weekend of TIFF, one of the biggest gathering of film wheeler-dealers in the year, was as always too full of activity; films competed with press conferences, which competed with parties and the first-ever documentary conference, hosted by documentary programmer Thom Powers. Here were some of my takeaways:

You can find treasures at a festival: How to Fold a Flag, by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein (you remember them from Gunner Palace, The Prisoner: Or, How I Conspired to Kill Tony Blair, and Bulletproof Salesman), is one of my favorite documentary films in recent memory. The story of how four Iraq vets pick up the lives they left in an America at war with itself is both moving and provocative. Here's a film that picks up the hardest topics—entrenched poverty, racism, corruption in politics, white working-class alienation— as their characters experience them. No preaching, no raised eyebrows, and surely no Michael Moore-ish grandstanding. (We got that from the source, since Capitalism: A Love Story debuted here, to mixed reviews and general consensus that it was vintage Moore in style, complete with the part where Moore wraps the site of Goldman Sachs in crime-scene tape.) How to Fold a Flag is anti-grandstanding. It's four guys with four different senses of humor and four different sets of challenges. There's the African-American orphan in the South, balancing the pork processing plant job with community college. There's the white convenience store clerk with gun fantasies, a band, and an amazing beard. There's the cage-fighting dad of four who struggles every day with his killing of a little Iraqi girl. And there's the officer, who's running for office on an anti-war platform. It's a mini-series in the making. It's the kind of movie you want to drag your friends to, and sit down with them, and watch again. I hope we get to see it soon, and on public television, in every community in the nation. There's a killer hospital-bed moment in it that could ignite a real health-care discussion. Tucker and Epperlein have promised to sit down with me and chat, so look for an interview on the site soon.

Sure, a film doesn't change the world, but sometimes it does: The documentary Presumed Guilty, by Australian/British filmmaker Geoffrey Smith and Mexican lawyer Roberto Hernandez, features an unjustly imprisoned man caught in the meshes of Mexican judicial system, where he is guilty until proven innocent. The filmmakers' attention had a profound effect on his case, giving him the chance to appeal. Furthermore, the attention to this case, and to the problem behind it, by the lawyer/filmmaker team, was highly influential in changing Mexican law, so that accused are innocent until proven guilty.

You can make a gripping thriller about a story where people already know the ending: The Art of the Steal, by Don Argott, tells a story well-known in the art community, about how the private Barnes art museum was hijacked by Philadelphia's wealthy and powerful. This version of the tale, suitable for viewing by insiders and newbies alike, shows how artwork becomes a football in games among the powerful, and how it acts as a leverage for tourism.

The changing distribution model is still news or off-limits to a lot of documentarians: At the documentary conference, producer's rep Peter Broderick, who has been preaching the gospel of DIY distribution to indies for a long time, came with what has become his standard message. This time he issued ten principles of hybrid distribution: design a customized distribution strategy; split your distribution rights; choose effective distribution partners; circumscribe the rights; craft win-win deals; retain direct sales rights; assemble a distribution team; partner with nonprofits and online communities; maximize direct revenues; and grow and nurture audiences. Many in the packed room found much of this novel. Furthermore, several filmmakers with films in the documentary lineup found all of it new, and it's not about age. For instance, the makers of Cleanflix, a doc about Mormon makers of edited Hollywood films, all young people who work in the entertainment business, had heard only vague rumors and hoped that showing the film at festivals would give it a nice first life. Meanwhile, Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlich have an elaborate nontheatrical strategy for their film The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. It certainly is related to financing deals; the sharp young team that made the irresistibly watchable Colony, about the mysterious plague killing off honeybees, is bound to agreements made with the Irish Film Board.