The 31st annual Dallas VideoFest wrapped up its 2nd DocuFest, featuring all documentaries from teasers to features on October 14. This is the second year that VideoFest has broken up its Festival into 3 separate parts: DocuFest ran October 10-14; The Ernie Kovacs Award will be presented on Saturday, December 8; and AlternativeFiction (or AltFiction) featuring all narratives shorts and features as well as VideoFest’s Texas Show will take place in February 2019.
Documentaries have always been a crucial part of VideoFest for all of its 31 years. Bart Weiss, founder of Dallas VideoFest, separated the documentaries out from the narrative films in order to shine a spotlight on these important, in depth stories in DocuFest. Weiss expounded on the heightened popularity of documentaries at the multiplex box offices in a way that only he can:
“Docs are indeed booming. We are living in an age when the President calls the media fake news. His people talk about alternative facts and say the truth is not the truth.
“Indeed what time could be better for docs. Independent documentary filmmakers, spend lots of time and energy to get at the heart of a story that gives us more resonance then the 24-hour news cycle can and does. In a time when the world is crazy, it is the documentary filmmaker who can set the story straight. They are doing well at the box off and online, they are just, doing well. I expect that as long as making give us a good reason to enter the theater and see truth exposed, the box office receipts for documentaries will do well.”
DALLAS VIDEOFEST 31 Juried Award Winning Documentaries:
Documentary Feature Winner
Winner: YOURS IN SISTERHOOD by Irene Lusztig
“YOURS IN SISTERHOOD’s staged readings of eloquent letters from the 1970s about inclusive feminism and intersectionality ties our past to our present in beautiful and though provoking ways.”
— Jurist, Summre Garber, Slamdance Programmer
YOURS IN SISTERHOOD
TRAILER:
YOURS IN SISTERHOOD | Women Make Movies | Trailer
Documentary Shorts Winner
Winner: BLACK SHEEP by Charlie Phillips
“BLACK SHEEP, with its moving story of overcoming racism-inflicted self-loathing, grips the viewer in a taut tale made all the more compelling through director Ed Perkins brilliant mix of a close-up interview and recreations of past events. Black Sheep pushes the boundaries of nonfiction filmmaking while remaining firmly grounded in the documentary tradition.”
— Jurist, Christopher Reed, Lead Film Critic, Hammer to Nail
BLACK SHEEP
TRAILER:
Meta Media Winner
Winner: MR. SOUL! by Sam Pollard & Melissa Haizlip
“Few TV series have been as radical and innovative as “Soul!”, which disrupted the educational airwaves 1968-’73. MR. SOUL! brings to vivid life an unsung hero of television Ellis Haizlip, whose series showed that cultural and political revolution *can* be televised.”
— Jurist, Ron Simon, Curator, The Paley Center for Media
MR. SOUL!
TRAILER:
