White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

AFI DOCS Announce 2013 Slate, Washington Locations

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Among a name and sponsor change, AFI DOCS (formerly SILVERDOCS) announced their 2013 slate today. The local Washington-area documentary film festival, now held all across the Washington area, released the complete line-up for their ‘first’ (or tenth) festival line-up since changing their name in April.

In true Washington fashion, three of their high profile films tackle the GOP, Jackie O and immigration–an issue that came ahead after last night’s overhaul by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Selections include the Opening Night Gala Premiere of “Letters to Jackie,” which examines Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis‘ life after JFK along with letters from the public now read by actors like Jessica Chastain,Zooey Deschanel, Anne Hathaway, Mark Ruffalo, Channing Tatum and Betty White; the East Coast Premiere of Acadamy Award winners Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine‘s “Life According to Sam” and “Documented,” from director Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist who outed himself in 2011 as an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times Magazine piece. The Closing Night slot belongs to AJ Schnack‘s “Caucus,” which follows the 2012 Iowa cacus and brings us back to the glory days of last year’s campaign craziness.
From the press release:

“AFI DOCS presented by Audi (formerly Silverdocs) today announced the full schedule of films that will premiere in its 11th edition June 19-23, 2013 at iconic venues on the National Mall, the Penn Quarter and at the American Film Institute’s AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. The festival will present 53 films selected from 1,929 submissions representing 30 countries with 3 World, 2 North American, 1 U.S. and 6 East Coast premieres. The festival opens with the theatrical premiere of LETTERS TO JACKIE (DIR Bill Couturié) and celebrates with HERBLOCK: THE BLACK & THE WHITE (DIR Michael Stevens) along with the world premiere Centerpiece Screening of DOCUMENTED (DIR Jose Antonio Vargas). The festival closes with the U.S. premiere of CAUCUS (DIR AJ Schnack). Errol Morris will be honored at the festival’s Charles Guggenheim Symposium for his contributions to the documentary genre.

Other notable filmmakers presenting their work include Patrick Creadon (IF YOU BUILD IT), Sean and Andrea Nix Fine (LIFE ACCORDING TO SAM), Barbara Kopple (RUNNING FROM CRAZY) and Lucy Walker (THE CRASH REEL).

The festival’s new all-day forum for thought leaders, filmmakers and audience members, the AFI Catalyst Sessions: The Art of Moving Reality, will focus on immigration, education, intellectual property and humor in politics.

‘2013 is a year filled with dynamic changes: After ten years, the festival previously known as Silverdocs is now AFI DOCS presented by Audi’ said Sky Sitney, Festival Director. ‘AFI DOCS reflects that we have expanded to a new environment in downtown Washington, DC which will be easily accessible to audiences eager to discover this year’s most compelling documentaries. At the same time, we are continuing a full slate of programming at our longstanding venue, the AFI Silver Theatre & Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD. At AFI DOCS, America’s premier showcase for documentary film, we present the most provocative, challenging and compelling investigations of reality that filmmakers from America and around the world have conjured over the last year.'”

AFI DOCS runs June 19-23 The rest of their line-up can be found here.

Media Insider Round-Up: Jobs, Jobs and JOBS

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It’s been an interesting day so far as jobs continue to be a issue while Rep. Lamar Alexander claims video games are worse than guns despite not ever being proven so! What else is going on that’s worth a read?

  • Bloomberg News confirms that Time is cutting 500 jobs.
  • YouTube is going to bring out premium pay channels ranging from $1-$5:
    “It’s not clear which channels will be part of the first paid-subscription rollout, but it is believed that YouTube will lean on the media companies that have already shown the ability to develop large followings on the video platform, including networks like Machinima, Maker Studios and Fullscreen. YouTube is also looking outside its current roster of partners for candidates.”

  • Washington Post unveils Truth Teller:
    “For the prototype, we focused on the looming debate over tax reform, both because of timing and its import for the country. The tax debate will play out over several months and naturally lends itself to deceit and deception — even moreso than many policy discussions. We hope that our application will help direct the conversation toward the truth as it is happening so that Americans get a fair shot at deciding this critical issue.”

  • Buzzfeed: Al Jazeera America received more than 8,000 job applications for 160 jobs. Don’t be upset if you don’t hear from them until 2014.
  • Ashton Kutcher, star of the new Steve Jobs biopic “jOBS,” got slammed at Sundance. But guess what make-up can do for claiming he looks nothing like the Apple co-founder?
  • Research in Motion is dead! Long live the Blackberry! RWW explains:
    “Heins said that Research In Motion is BlackBerry. All employees are working on BlackBerry and the brand is indentifiable only with BlackBerry. Hence, RIM, a company that has been in existence since the early 1980s, is no more.”

    Need more of an explanation? Buzzfeed points us toward the announcement video for Blackberry’s newest operating, the Blackberry 10:

    It’s cool now for companies to leap off things to promote their product. There was once a time in the District when you couldn’t walk ten feet on Capitol Hill without someone bumping into you due to their “crackberry” problem. IT guys would swear up and down that the iPhone or Apple couldn’t break into the Senate.

    • Hillary Clinton Returns to "Rodham" and Helmets

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    A new year means a new beginning for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, even if she is on the way out and into a much needed vacation. The New York Times looks at secretary Clinton’s return today as an overall description of her non-stop work schedule:

    “Over the past four years, she was on the road for 401 days and spent the equivalent of 87 full days on a plane, according to the State Department’s Web site.In one 48-hour marathon in 2009 that her aides still talk about, she traveled from talks with Palestinian leaders in Abu Dhabi to a midnight meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, then boarded a plane for Morocco, staying up all night to work on other issues, before going straight to a meeting of Arab leaders the next morning.“

    [Read more…]

    How Classified Is Zero Dark Thirty Anyway?

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    Just how talkative are the secret special ops squad behind Seal Team Six? They were profiled and consulted for Medal of Honor: Warfighter, a video game released last month; “No Easy Day” wasn’t vetted by the Pentagon and the author claims it wasn’t a political book. And now the first reviews of Kathryn Bigelow, celebrating her 61st birthday today, and her upcoming film Zero Dark Thirty are hitting the trades.

    When the film was put into production earlier this year and when the infamous “4 to 5 inch stack” of documents from the CIA were uncovered that could’ve possibly influenced the script and revealed classified operations according to Politico.

    But what about the White House hitting back with the claim she used classified information in her latest film?  Scripted by Mark Boal, who also wrote her previous film The Hurt Locker and the story for In The Valley of Elah, the semi-accurate story follows the days leading up to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden as told through intelligence agencies and the Seal Team. Speaking last night on Nightline, via Deadline, Boal said about the attention his script received:

    “I certainly did a lot of homework, but I never asked for classified materials; to my knowledge, I never received any. And I think as far as the controversy goes, you know, how can I put this — it was an election year. It was surreal and bizarre to have … I mean there were major players in the Republican Party characterizing the script and the movie before I had written a word, and I found that just really baffling.”

    Criticwire collected the early reviews and they all sound promising for the film coming out later this month. But we’ll know if the film has an Argo effect on the Beltway on December 19th.

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    4600 Hours So Far for A Life In A Day

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    Like cribbing a line from RENT, it turns out there’s 276,000 minutes in A Life In A Day.

    The crowdsourced documentary experiment from executive producer Ridley Scott and director Kevin Macdonald is a partnership between LG, YouTube and the Sundance Institute to document one day (July 24th 2010) around the world. According to a press release from yesterday, the great culling of digital ‘celluoid’ has begun under Macdonald and 20 other editors.

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