True/False 2011: Truth Harder

This ain't Twilight. It's a friggin' documentary.

2011 was my third year in a row at the True/False Film Festival, and I can't imagine why I wouldn't go back again next year.

It's hard to describe just how great the vibe in the town is - thousands milling around and lining up around the blocks to watch documentaries.  When I miss a film at the festival - and it's impossible to see them all - and watch them months later at home, I regret not seeing them in the Missouri Theater with 1,000 others.  I missed WasteLand at last year's festival, and as the accolades and Oscar nomination have piled up, I haven't stopped kicking myself.

Probably my favorite film this year was Life in a Day - the doc culled from a day's worth of videos uploaded to YouTube.  Given that pedigree, I had some reservations, as director Kevin MacDonald said he did.  I'm a pretty hardcore cynic, but you'd have to be even more cynical than me to not be moved by the film MacDonald and crew put together.  Life in a Day has elements of narrative, but it's more a symphony of tone, framing the highs and lows of human experience.

Sure, you could call it a gimmick.  But it is a technical achievement that wouldn't even have been possible a few years ago.  If someone offers to show you what is going on around the entire world on a single day, how could you say no?

The quality of the curation goes even deeper.  The shorts program Landmarks & Monoliths featured five shorts which all revolved around the relationship between people and the environments they've built around them.  Minka, directed by Davina Pardo, very delicately explored the lives of two longtime male companions around the story of how they rebuilt an ancient Japanese farm house as their home.

Let's be honest, shorts programs always center around a theme.  But they rarely come together into much more than "here's a few films which kind of relate to each other."

To quote the Portlandia theme song, the spirit of the 90s is alive in (Columbia).  I finally got a chance to eat an truly amazing breakfast at Cafe Berlin.  Booches still dishes out the best hamburgers I've ever been served on wax paper.

I realize I come on like the Convention & Visitors Bureau, but such is my love for this festival and the people who put it on.  If you Googled your way to this post and have read this far, you owe it to yourself to check out True/False for yourself.