Film Festival Keeps Documentaries In Focus

Official Trailer - Greatest Radio Station in the World from Cob Carlson on Vimeo.

The broadcaster the New Yorker called ​“the greatest radio station in the world.” A musician who sounds like three musicians. The history of a certain bivalve in New Haven. The trial of a Black Panther. Climate change and air guitar. Films about all these and more will be finding their way to screens for 10 days this month as the New Haven Documentary Film Festival, now in its ninth year, returns to the Elm City from Oct. 13 to 23, screening feature films and shorts, hosting several musical performances, and featuring a student film competition — 116 films in all.

Oklahoma Breakdown Festival Trailer from Christopher Fitzpatrick on Vimeo.

The festival begins and ends at at Cafe Nine. The first evening, the club hosts a screening of Christopher Fitzpatrick’s full-length documentary Oklahoma Breakdown about ​“comedic one-man-band legend ” Mike Hosty, followed by a filmmaker Q&A and a live performance from Hosty himself. The final evening will be showing The Greatest Radio Station in the World, a feature-length film by Cob Carlson about Bridgeport’s beloved FM station WPKN, followed by a filmmaker Q&A and DJ sets from Alec Cumming, Rick Omonte (a.k.a. Shaki Presents) and Chris Frantz (from Talking Heads). 

American Justice on Trial (Trailer) from Open Eye Pictures on Vimeo.

In between are documentaries on topics ranging from tailoring and oystering, to legal fights against slumlords, to Lyme disease, to the East, which ​“built an independent Black nation in the heart of Central Brooklyn” starting in the late 1960s, to a fight in Vermont between the city of Burlington and anarchists over the rights of the unhoused. The films will be screened from Cafe Nine to the New Haven Free Public Library to The State House to Bow-Tie Criterion Cinema. And, after two years of virtual screenings thanks to Covid, this year is fully back in person.

“The filmmakers are anxious to get their films actually seen on a screen,” said filmmaker Gorman Bechard, executive director and programmer of NHDocs. ​“Even though we know what world we’re living in now with Netflix and so forth, it’s still nice to see it once or twice on a big screen. It is really different.” He noted that ​“we have more filmmakers coming this year than in any year prior,” from all over the country and as far away as Israel. Though many filmmakers are coming from just up the road, as NHDocs keeps to part of its mission of ​“highlighting local filmmakers” as well, like Steve Hamm and the aforementioned Carlson.

One Pint at a Time - Trailer (2021) from Aaron Hosé | 2Hands20Fingers on Vimeo.

Bechard found himself with other priorities as well. ​“After what we’ve been through in the past two years, I was very much looking for films that made me smile,” he said. Hence Oklahoma Breakdown; ​“I watched the documentary and at the end of it, I was annoyed that I hadn’t found the guy first so I could’ve made a film about him. That’s how great the story was,” Bechard. Perhaps the film that made him ​“smile the most,” he said, was Catching Air, ​“about the world-champion air guitar contest in Finland.… These people go all out.” That film, also screening at Cafe Nine, will be followed by an air guitar contest where the winner gets an electric guitar, so it’s a great opportunity for someone to ​“get up and make a fool of themselves,” Bechard said with a laugh. Another documentary — One Pint at a Time, about irrepressible New Haven-based entrepreneur Alisa Bowens-Mercado, who became the first Black female brewer in the state when she opened Rhythm Lager in 2018 — will be followed by a beer tasting.

Other documentaries, of course, tackle more serious subjects, from land disputes to animal rights. One documentary, Body Parts, is about ​“how a lot of women over the years have been coerced” into doing nude sex scenes in Hollywood movies, and ​“what you saw is not what they originally agreed to. It’s really well-made,” Bechard said. There are also films about global warming, particular To The End, about the women legislators leading the charge for the Green New Deal in Congress. The trends in documentaries, Bechard said, are reflections of ​“what’s happening in the world.… you don’t find many extremely conservative documentary filmmakers, or at least they don’t submit to us, maybe because we’re in New Haven — who knows? — but I think if you want to change the world,” some make a documentary about ​“what they’re seeing that’s wrong.“Other films get personal — like Jack Has a Plan, about ​“a guy who knows he’s dying and he decides, ​‘I’m going to decide how I’m dying,” Bechard said. ​“It’s a beautiful film. It’s kind of sweet even though it’s really sad.”

In addition, Bechard said, ​“our student competition this year is killer. We had great student films and we’re showing 12 of them, with an awards ceremony afterward.” That happens at the Criterion on the second Saturday so the filmmakers can have ​“the real film experience.”

In some ways the festival feels like a leap of faith; Bechard has attended other festivals this year as a filmmaker and has noticed their decreased attendance, which he chalks up entirely to (totally understandable) Covid nervousness. ​“I’m wondering what’s going to happen with festivals,” Bechard said. He feels the lineup this year at NHDocs may be the strongest yet, in its depth and its breadth. He’s grateful for his partners at Cafe Nine, Criterion, the Free Public Library, and the State House. ​“But will people come? I’ll know the night of the shows.”

But he also takes the long view. ​“We started in 2014 with just four films. We started it as something for local filmmakers to show their films.” He has seen the place of documentaries change over the years since he started making them himself. When he made 2011’s Color Me Obsessed, a Film about The Replacements, ​“people would ask me, ​‘this is great, but when are you going to go back to making real movies?’ I don’t get that any more.” Documentaries have risen to become a more reliable way of making movies than fiction-based feature films. With documentaries, ​“you’ve pretty much got a built-in audience, whether it be the fans of a band,” or ​“a certain subject” that ​“really plays well.” 

NHDocs itself has grown to attract films from all over the country, and ​“we’ve had some amazing crowds,” he said, from movie theaters to Cafe Nine. ​“The crazy thing about Cafe Nine is, once the movie starts, you can hear a pin drop. They are really watching the movie.” Through the festival he has made connections with filmmakers from all over the place. NHDocs has built relationships both in New Haven and online to make sure that films get seen and that the festival runs smoothly. 

“I work with people that I really like working with,” Bechard said. ​“We do this because we love it. We do it for the love of film.”

The New Haven Documentary Film Festival runs Oct. 13 to Oct. 23 at various places around downtown New Haven. Visit the festival’s website for the full schedule of films.