Not bad, not bad. This list often causes some consternation in the doc community as great films are ignored in favor of the obviously not so great but this year’s list includes some really strong films. I, like many others, am disappointed that Margaret Brown’s assured and intelligent The Order of Myths is not on this list but I am really thrilled to see Jeremiah Zagar’s In A Dream on there. I saw In A Dream at the Woodstock Film Festival in October and was mesmerized and moved by it. I have a British allergy to anything overly earnest but this film managed to be honest and funny and full of the warp and weft of genuinely raw emotion without making me squirm once. I love beautifully made films that tell very personal stories about ordinary people and include all the yukkiness and beauty of life as it is lived. It is hard to pull this off and I think this is a film that succeeds.

You can watch the trailer here:

In A Dream Trailer from Herzliya Films on Vimeo.

Here’s the list:

At the Death House Door
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
Encounters at the End of the World
Fuel
The Garden
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
I.O.U.S.A.
In a Dream
Made in America
Man on Wire
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Standard Operating Procedure
They Killed Sister Dorothy
Trouble the Water

Congrats to everyone involved! And New Yorkers: The Betrayal opens at the IFC Center on Friday, November 21st. This is a tour de force collaboration between Ellen Kuras, cinematographer for directors like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, and Laotian-American activist Thavisouk Phrasavath and it took an incredible 20 years to make. Don’t miss this opportunity to see it on a big screen.

On November 22nd, Shooting People turns 10. Whoo hoo! Filmmakers Cath Le Couteur and Jess Search set up Shooting People in 1998 after making their first short film and it has grown from 60 members to 37,000 over the past 10 years. I am hugely proud to work for an organization that fights so hard to create a vibrant independent filmmaking community that is all about collaboration and innovation. As Mike Figgis says:

“Congratulations to Shooting People! Shooting People continue to be at the forefront of filmmaking and technology. I believe their next ten years will be even more transformational and I want to be along for the ride. Viva independent film!”

Here are 10 things you may not know about us:

1.    The Shooting People official anagram is Pigeonhole Post.

2.    It took filmmakers Cath Le Couteur and Jess Search all day to think of the name Shooting People in a messy bedroom in 1998 when they launched the network with 60 filmmaker friends signed up to help each other make films.

3.    Shooting People shares its birthday with 349 of its Members on 22 November. That makes Shooting People Sagittarius. Sagittarians are sometimes distracted, but this is only because they are so forward thinking that they forget about the present.

4.    Director Shane Meadows (‘Room for Romeo Brass’, ‘This Is England’) was the first guest to speak at a Shooting People event – in 1999. He had to sit on the bar with a microphone because there was no stage. Cheers, Shane.

5.    Someone once posted in asking for a flea-training expert. They got one.

6.    1.3m people have watched Shooting People’s Watch Film facility since its launch last December.

7.    Shooting People has crewed up over 50,000 films in the last 10 years– fiction, animation, documentary, music video every week.

8.    As far as we know NO ONE has ever got married because of Shooting People. Sorry.

9.    Shooting People sends out 7,500,000 packed email bulletins to Members a year. That’s a lot of envelopes to lick.

10.    Shooting People is celebrating its tenth birthday this year, just like Google. Shooting People thinks Google is a slightly bigger brand and wishes them all the best.

This has been such a rollercoaster week. Purple prose aside, I really do feel like I have witnessed something momentous. I’m not an American citizen but I live in this country and, in any case, I think Obama’s victory is something that the whole world has a stake in.

To cut a long story short, I am very, very happy and very, very hopeful.

Here are some photos from the night. I started out at Rockefeller Center before the polls closed in New York and then moved to a friend’s house to watch the results unfold. After the speeches (and much weeping and jumping up and down) we took it to the streets and joined the jubilant crowds at Union Square. I hugged a lot of strangers.

Rockefeller Center lit up and ready for action

Tense and hopeful at our election party

Celebrations at Union Square (I was clearly too excited to hold my camera still!)

Yup!

It ain’t a party without saucepan music!

Happy voting everyone. May the force be with you.

Banksy is at it again - you may have noticed a bunch of really big rats on buildings in downtown NYC. Here are two of them.

UPDATE: And another one!

I just saw this on Matt Dentler’s blog and I feel compelled to post it here too because Charles is so wonderful and his words are so stirring.

You’re supposed to send this video to 5 friends so I’ll put it here for the 5 people who read my blog! It’s an odd mix of earnest and somewhat funny but hey, it’s all for a good cause: VOTE!

Remember those Budweiser ads that were funny and then kinda annoying? Well director Charles Stone is back with the original cast to make a political point about the last 8 years and the change we need. True.

I can’t believe I’ve only just discovered Sarah Haskin’s Target: Women videos. If you ever watch ads marketed to women and you think “huh?” or “WTF?” or even “Please keep your cheesy marketing campaigns out of my living room you patronizing turds” then you will enjoy Haskin’s take on birth control, botox, chick flicks and yogurt!

P.S. Beware of gray hoodies: It’s that “I have a Masters but then I got married” look.

This is very, very cool: breathingearth.net

It is a real time simulation that displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates. Make sure you move your mouse over the countries to check out their stats.

I’ve always been obsessed with maps. That’s why I love books like You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination and I am really interested to see how people are using new technology to map events, people, places, and ideas in new ways. Thanks to Lina Srivastava for the heads up.