Beatles documentary to star at film fest

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A film about The Beatles’ collaboration with Cirque du Soleil will kick off this year’s Silverdocs documentary festival which features a greater number of movies about China.

Organizers of the festival, sponsored by the Discovery Channel and American Film Institute, said they chose from about 2,000 films for the 108 selections at the June 16-23 event.

Held in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, the festival is in its sixth year and has become one of the industry’s leading documentary showcases, this year including six world premieres.

"There’s a lot of films that celebrate life, and yet they’re really thoughtful," said Silverdocs director Patricia Finneran.

The festival will include discussions by filmmakers and newsmakers, including director Spike Lee and Nobel Peace Prize winner James Orbinski of medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres).

It will also have performances by musicians including Bela Fleck, whose African quest for the roots of the banjo is the subject of a featured documentary.

"All Together Now" opens the festival. It looks behind the scenes at Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s widow Olivia working with Cirque du Soleil to produce "LOVE," the Las Vegas stage .....continued below

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Silverdocs has several films invoking the spirit of social turbulence of the late 1960s including "Gonzo," about renegade journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and all 12 hours of "An American Family," a TV series seen as a forerunner of reality TV.

The Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter," a 1970 documentary which featured the lethal violence at the Altamont rock festival, will also play. Co-director Albert Maysles is scheduled to speak.

Sky Sitney, who selected the films for Silverdocs, said China has been an emerging theme "in a collective subconsciousness of filmmakers" as reflected in a greater number of China films

"The Red Race" will be one of the world premieres, depicting the intense training of young Chinese gymnasts.

Other films featuring China include "Up the Yangtze," which follows a family displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, and "Birds Nest," looking at the creation of the Beijing Olympics stadium.

Other world premieres include "Four Seasons Lodge," about a dwindling group of Holocaust survivors who meet each year in New York state, and "Herb and Dorothy," about a New York postal clerk and his wife who amassed a billion-dollar modern art collection.

The festival closes with another behind-the-scenes look with "Theatre of War" featuring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline putting on a Bertolt Brecht play in New York’s Central Park.

Reuters/Nielsen