As True/False marks 20 years, festival vets look back on defining films
Hundreds upon hundreds of movies have followed a True/False Film Fest bumper to the big screen. Documentaries, fiction films made with documentary techniques, artful films that somehow mined the space between the two.
When the festival opens Thursday, it will turn 20, offering a natural moment to reflect back on what audiences have witnessed at True/False. The Tribune asked four festival veterans to identify films they hold close since the festival began.
These aren't necessarily their favorite festival films, but the ones which stayed near the mind's front-burner, which shaped their own work, which offer a satisfying answer to the question "What is the True/False project really about?"
Barbie Banks, Ragtag Film Society co-custodian
The festival films which stick with Banks aren't just a function of the films themselves, but greater moments that surrounded the act of viewing. "Experiences that don’t happen if you’re alone in the dark — it happens when there’s all these other people around you in the dark," she said.
Underlining this idea, she pointed to realizing "Troll Hunter" (T/F 2011), a complete fiction made with found-footage techniques, wasn't actually a documentary ("How could they do this to us?" she recalled thinking as an attendee); being moved by the post-film appearance of the subjects within "Bully" (T/F 2012); and watching a protest spring up around "After Tiller" (T/F 2013), set against the world of abortion clinics.
Director Kirsten Johnson's "Dick Johnson is Dead" (T/F 2020), an onscreen attempt to understand her own father's mortality, is one of the few festival films Banks still rewatches, she said.
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Chris Boeckmann, former Ragtag Film Society director of programming
Boeckmann, who played a key role in shaping festival programming for years, expressed a hope that every True/False selection presented a strong "case for documentary as art."
"The more exciting and challenging task was to locate work that broadened our understanding of what documentary is," Boeckmann said in an email.
Though challenging, this labor freed the festival to celebrate "artists who were making groundbreaking contributions to documentary aesthetics"; stake "a documentary claim on works of 'fiction'"; and sometimes "spotlighting projects that showed us new ways of using filmmaking to alter reality," he said.
Works that expanded the fest's sense of the documentary form, and Boeckmann's, include "Disorder" (T/F 2010); "La Bocca del Lupo" (T/F 2011); "Sleepless Nights" (T/F 2013); "Field Niggas" (T/F 2015); "The Woolworths Choir of 1979" (T/F 2015); "White Out, Black In" (T/F 2015); "Of Men and War" (T/F 2015); "Homeland (Iraq Year Zero)" (T/F 2016); "Finding Frances" (T/F 2019); and "Reason" (T/F 2019).
Robert Greene, filmmaker
Almost immediately, Greene, who has brought five features — and this year a short film — to the festival, gave up trying to sift the True/False films which have rubbed off on his own work ("Countless," he said). Then he singled out a film, but more as a symbol.
"Only the Young," from directors Elizabeth Mims and Jason Tippet, (T/F 2012) represents the reliability of the festival's programming, and specifically stands up for a golden hour Greene has long anticipated.
"Five o’clock. Thursday. Ragtag. And I knew for years ... that was the spot for me. ... I get emotional thinking about it," he said.
Festival films that played in that space, at that time, have so often changed the way he thinks about movies, he said.
"Alright, I’m about to see something that is going to deeply affect me," he said of his demeanor when settling into a Ragtag Cinema chair. "That is going to take my filmmaking into a new direction, is going to take my life into a new direction, is going to make me understand the world in a better way.”
Greene also cherishes moments when he's observed his films affecting other artists, who return to True/False with their work, restarting the cycle of influence all over again.
"It's more humbling than you could possibly imagine," he said.
Arin Liberman, Ragtag Film Society co-custodian
A film like Ra'anan Alexandrowicz's "The Viewing Booth," which played True/False 2020, encompasses so many of the qualities that make the festival tick, Liberman said.
In real-time, "The Viewing Booth" watches the watcher, a young Jewish-American woman, while she absorbs video footage of life in the West Bank. The film considers craft, Liberman said, as well as turning over socio-political issues from often untouched angles. And it's deeply personal.
In the collision of these factors, "The Viewing Booth" asks questions True/False has always sought to introduce and investigate.
“What am I seeing? How am I aware of what I’m seeing? Or not? And how does that challenge my own preconceived learning?" Liberman said. "It just taps into so many things — media literacy, the filmmaker’s involvement. It encapsulated a lot of different stuff that True/False films have done for me over the years."
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David Wilson, festival co-founder
Wilson traveled back in time to the first True/False and Kevin Macdonald's "Touching the Void," an establishing film for the young enterprise.
Macdonald's work found an analog a few years later with James Marsh's "Man on Wire" (T/F 2008); both felt significant for the festival and, especially in Marsh's case, spoke to much of what organizers were thinking and feeling about the fest at its moment, Wilson said.
Greene's first True/False feature, "Kati with an I" (T/F 2010), will "forever be associated" with the festival for Wilson, he said.
"That one felt really special at the time but has only grown as I’ve watched Robert’s art and practice and career grow. That’s still one of my favorite films of his," he said.
"Family Instinct" (T/F 2011), from director Andris Gauja, is a film Wilson loved more than nearly anyone else, he joked, before adding he hasn't stopped loving it.
Like Greene, Wilson mentioned "Only the Young" — as the fest enjoys a perpetual evolution, continuity exists between "Only the Young" and a film like "Hummingbirds," programmed this year by Chloe Trayner and her team, he said.
Directors Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras developed "Hummingbirds," in part, through the festival's Rough Cut Retreat.
"If people want to see a throughline of my programming taste and aesthetic and the kind of work that I love to champion, go see ‘Hummingbirds,'" he said.
Learn more about the fest, and find program archives from previous years, at https://truefalse.org/.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: As True/False turns 20, festival vets look back on its defining films
