CPH:DOX’s 2025 edition opened with Facing War, a documentary presenting the Russo-Ukrainian war through the final year of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure. Though some critics found the film overly cautious in its presentation of political lobbying, its premiere proved unexpectedly well-timed amid Trump’s return to power and anxieties surrounding European alliances.  For CPH:DOX today, as one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, the familiar impulse to pair aesthetic ambition with political mediation feels ever more crucial as wars expand and multiply. Continuing the festival’s Ukraine-focused opening-film tradition, Pieter-Jan De Pue’s Mariinka is exactly the kind of work that […]

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Moving across the landscapes of American society, Wiseman captures people at work, study, and play with his patient, unobtrusive style revealing moments both ordinary and extraordinary inviting us not just to observe, but to reflect and be moved. Our collection of eight films “Frederick Wiseman: American Lives” is Now Streaming.

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The electric guitar has been the most iconic instrument of musical inspiration and social change for almost one hundred years. Today, Yaron Deutsch is the world’s leading electric guitarist who bridges classical and contemporary music. This documentary is a portrait of the artist, and an exploration of the guitar’s evolution in music and electricity. Combining interview, master class, concert, and movie clips, the film asks what it means to interpret a composer’s work, and how legacy thrives in shadows of greatness.

Directed by H. Paul Moon

Produced by Thomas Fichter

Music composed by Fausto Romitelli, Pierluigi Billone, Rebecca Saunders & Klaus Lang

Music performed by @YaronDeutsch & @taleaensemble

Cameras and editing by H. Paul Moon

Additional camera by Kyabell Glass

Concert lighting design by Abigail Hoke-Brady

Concert recording and mix by Caley Monahon-Ward

Additional recording by Nico Osborne

Produced with the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust, and the @TIMESPANSFestival

For more information, visit: https://zenviolence.com/shadowaxe

When asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Stephen King sometimes answers, “Utica.”

It’s a good joke1 because every artist knows great ideas don’t just exist out there, waiting to be purchased like batteries or discovered like a patch of land.

Really, ideas are cheap. We all have them all day long.
The coin of the realm is really the concept.

An idea arises spontaneously, just like any other thought. On the other hand, a concept is built deliberately through a series of choices and constraints. The concept ultimately contains many ideas, from the form and structure to the audience(s) being served. The concept is the organizing principle that harnesses an idea and turns it into a work of art.

The conceptualization phase — in doc filmmaking we call this “development,” which is fitting, as we develop an idea into a concept — is the most important part of the filmmaking process.

It’s also the stage where most of us, and most of our films, fail.

Winning films have winning concepts

I really enjoyed this Sonny Bunch interview with Kevin Goetz, author of Audience-ology and How to Score in Hollywood. Goetz is a researcher and data analyst who runs one of the companies that do test screenings. I was intrigued to learn they also do concept testing. It’s Goetz’s contention — and I tend to agree — that 90% of films fail at the concept stage.

Of course, we all test our concepts all the time. We do it every time we answer the question, “What are you working on?” or “What’s your film about?” We test our concepts when we crowdfund, or apply for a grant, or pitch an exec.

But I doubt most of us are any good at actually learning from these experiences, in part because the feedback we get tends to be blunted by social niceties or obscured by an anonymous process, but also because it’s all so emotional we fail to actually collect the data.

In nonfiction, sometimes we want to rush past the conceptualization phase because we think — correctly! — that when dealing with reality, a lot of this will probably get sorted out in production and in the edit. (I’ll come back to this later.) But in a tight market, I think we can all see, more than ever, the importance of a winning concept. If you’ve been pitching lately, you’ll have heard the word “bulletproof” a lot. As in: your pitch has to be literally without flaws. A pretty high bar!!!

I was thinking about all of this at SXSW, where I saw two documentaries — Cookie Queens and #Skyking — that made me mutter jealously to myself, “Damn it to hell, I wish I’d had that idea.” But of course, saying that is no better than wishing I’d gone to the ideas store in Utica. Really, what I was responding to was how each of these films successfully developed their good ideas into brilliant concepts.

Cookie Queens: A good idea, a genius concept

Director is known for serious social issue documentaries. She had the idea to make a film about Girl Scout cookies after her young daughters asked her to make a movie they would actually enjoy watching. This is a key part of a good concept: a sense of the audience and their needs. Alysa wanted to make something family-friendly, a film she would enjoy as much as her daughters. A lot of decisions flow from there: for example, keeping the film character-driven, as opposed to doing an exposé or history lesson on the Girl Scouts organization.

So anyway, a documentary about Girl Scout cookies. It’s a good idea!!! Everyone knows about Girl Scout cookies, for one thing, and kids are cute.

But the concept of Cookie Queens is even better: the film follows four Girl Scouts through “cookie season” — a six-week period where they sell boxes of cookies to support the organization.

Even better: each Scout has to set a specific goal for how many boxes they want to sell during cookie season. The family needs to buy that many boxes, the cost of which they are on the hook for if the Scout fails to reach their goal. So many documentaries — including some of mine, I freely admit! — lack a clear sense of stakes. Not so in Cookie Queens.

With that structure, with these stakes, we’re off. Week 1: how many cookies sold, Week 2: how many cookies sold, etc. You would have to be a pretty cold-hearted person to not root for these adorable children (and their families) once you are inside the logic of this film.

It’s a brilliant concept — I suspect it would test well, and I think it did, based on the long list of funders who supported it — but Alysa and her team also executed it brilliantly, from excellent casting to exuberant score. I’m not at all surprised it won the audience award at SXSW. Roadside Attractions is releasing it into theaters this year, and if there is any justice in this world, it should be a giant hit.

#Skyking: A good idea, a thrilling concept

Also at SXSW, I caught the world premiere of ’s #Skyking. This film is about Richard “Beebo” Russell, a 29-year-old Horizon Air ground agent who stole a plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on August 10, 2018 and takes it for a tragic joyride.

This was a huge, viral news story — or so I learned; I’d personally never heard of this episode. I went to see it based on the strength of the logline, and because Patricia is a friend. I recommend going in with little knowledge if you can, because my experience in that theater was pretty fun!!! It’ll be on Hulu soon, so you can experience it for yourself.

Anyway, the idea: make a film about this viral news event. A good idea — it’s an intriguing story, with a proven audience already invested in trying to understand why Beebo did what he did.

The concept: tell the story as a high-octane action film using air traffic control audio, and alternate these action sequences with Beebo’s backstory shared by the people closest to him and to the events, all of them asking, why did he do this?

It’s a gripping psychological mystery, with great world-building, and exhilarating action sequences that had me screaming. I literally could not believe what I was seeing.

There’s also a “ticking clock” narrative device in #Skyking that rivals anything by Tom Clancy: once the plane is in the air (a few minutes into the film), we learn that Beebo has only a certain amount of fuel, which means the plane can only be in the air for a certain amount of time before it will fall from the sky. I mean… goddamn, that’s good.

#Skyking is not at all like Cookie Queens, but in both cases, the concept is strong in part because there is no question about the stakes, and the timeline of the story is crystal clear. They both have that undeniable narrative propulsion we, the audience, live for. Yes, we want to learn stuff and be challenged and be edified. We also want to be entertained and get lost in a story.

A side note: #Skyking reminded me a lot of this insanely delicious New Yorker story I happened to be reading at the same time, “The Man Who Broke Into Jail.” Both are about totally baffling crimes, and why they were committed. I absolutely loved the way that story unspools, and the psychological mystery is incredibly deep and compelling. This article reads like a movie, so surely someone optioned it already. If that person is reading this: please hire me to direct?!!! I would kill for that story!!!

Documentary conceptualization: yes ,it is challenging!

In both of these films, I’d be curious to know how much of the concept was present in development and how much evolved throughout production and post production. As I mentioned earlier, documentary is tough. Much of the concept can’t just be written on a blank page, as it might be in a novel. Instead it must be shaped by the vagaries of reality: who will give you access, how do real people react with cameras around, what actually happens, etc. This is why “development” can sometimes take years!

Two objections I have myself lodged against the primacy of concept (when I am pointlessly whining, aka my favorite hobby):

“But how can I write a concept when I don’t know will happen???”
+
“But everyone knows in documentary the real writing happens in the edit!!!”

Fair enough, true enough, etc. But I simply don’t know how you’ll get to the point of shooting and editing without a “bulletproof” concept — unless you are lucky enough to to be able to fund your movie yourself. Even in that case, you may find self-funding to be a double-edged sword; I firmly believe not having to test your ideas is its own curse.

Again: Kevin Goetz says 90% of films fails at the concept stage. I think he’s right. It’s like building a house on a faulty foundation, or planting an expensive rose bush in the wrong-ass soil, or pick your favorite analogy.

Finally: obviously even a genius concept can be ruined by poor execution. But that is a topic for another day!

Comings, Goings & News

Finally settling back home, after a few weeks of running around. Most of my crocus bulbs rotted, it’s still cold, but I still believe in, um, the promise of spring?

Audiences are really responding to Manhood — SXSW scheduled an extra “buzz” screening, which sold out like all the other screenings. I went to SXSW for the premiere because I am one of the film’s EPs, alongside verifiable legends like Sheila Nevins (Citizen Four, also Real Sex!!) and World of Wonder’s Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, also RuPaul’s Drag Race!!). Getting to see the film in its final form, with an enthusiastic crowd — that was a dream come true for me. I am biased, but I think what people are responding positively to is how the film is about a surprising topic (penis enlargement) and then it still goes places they are not expecting. The element of surprise is a powerful tool!

I love being surprised; I assume most people do?? I guess I have no idea. A Netflix exec told me (when turning down my pitch for Hail Satan?) “Netflix audiences don’t like to be surprised.” I doubt that’s true, but also, what do I know? Maybe I am unusually interested in being surprised.

My live chat with was rescheduled for Wednesday 1pm ET. I really enjoyed the format I did with Matt Wolf, wherein we discussed both his first film and his most recent, so I’m going to do the same with Gary. So, if you’ve never seen Helvetica (2007), now is a good time to do so.

Some topics I want to discuss with Gary:

• How Helvetica becamse his directorial debut, after running the hugely successful and influential distributor Plexifilm

• How he went from “a documentary about Brian Eno” (a good idea!) to the brilliant concept for Eno: a film that remakes itself anew each time it’s watched

• How he’s mastered the art of audience development, content (and merch) creation, and self distribution, and how his Substack ties into all of that — okay, that’s a very big topic, I promise I’ll narrow it down before Wednesday! 🙂

When asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Stephen King sometimes answers, “Utica.”

It’s a good joke1 because every artist knows great ideas don’t just exist out there, waiting to be purchased like batteries or discovered like a patch of land.

Really, ideas are cheap. We all have them all day long.
The coin of the realm is really the concept.

An idea arises spontaneously, just like any other thought. On the other hand, a concept is built deliberately through a series of choices and constraints. The concept ultimately contains many ideas, from the form and structure to the audience(s) being served. The concept is the organizing principle that harnesses an idea and turns it into a work of art.

The conceptualization phase — in doc filmmaking we call this “development,” which is fitting, as we develop an idea into a concept — is the most important part of the filmmaking process.

It’s also the stage where most of us, and most of our films, fail.

Winning films have winning concepts

I really enjoyed this Sonny Bunch interview with Kevin Goetz, author of Audience-ology and How to Score in Hollywood. Goetz is a researcher and data analyst who runs one of the companies that do test screenings. I was intrigued to learn they also do concept testing. It’s Goetz’s contention — and I tend to agree — that 90% of films fail at the concept stage.

Of course, we all test our concepts all the time. We do it every time we answer the question, “What are you working on?” or “What’s your film about?” We test our concepts when we crowdfund, or apply for a grant, or pitch an exec.

But I doubt most of us are any good at actually learning from these experiences, in part because the feedback we get tends to be blunted by social niceties or obscured by an anonymous process, but also because it’s all so emotional we fail to actually collect the data.

In nonfiction, sometimes we want to rush past the conceptualization phase because we think — correctly! — that when dealing with reality, a lot of this will probably get sorted out in production and in the edit. (I’ll come back to this later.) But in a tight market, I think we can all see, more than ever, the importance of a winning concept. If you’ve been pitching lately, you’ll have heard the word “bulletproof” a lot. As in: your pitch has to be literally without flaws. A pretty high bar!!!

I was thinking about all of this at SXSW, where I saw two documentaries — Cookie Queens and #Skyking — that made me mutter jealously to myself, “Damn it to hell, I wish I’d had that idea.” But of course, saying that is no better than wishing I’d gone to the ideas store in Utica. Really, what I was responding to was how each of these films successfully developed their good ideas into brilliant concepts.

Cookie Queens: A good idea, a genius concept

Director is known for serious social issue documentaries. She had the idea to make a film about Girl Scout cookies after her young daughters asked her to make a movie they would actually enjoy watching. This is a key part of a good concept: a sense of the audience and their needs. Alysa wanted to make something family-friendly, a film she would enjoy as much as her daughters. A lot of decisions flow from there: for example, keeping the film character-driven, as opposed to doing an exposé or history lesson on the Girl Scouts organization.

So anyway, a documentary about Girl Scout cookies. It’s a good idea!!! Everyone knows about Girl Scout cookies, for one thing, and kids are cute.

But the concept of Cookie Queens is even better: the film follows four Girl Scouts through “cookie season” — a six-week period where they sell boxes of cookies to support the organization.

Even better: each Scout has to set a specific goal for how many boxes they want to sell during cookie season. The family needs to buy that many boxes, the cost of which they are on the hook for if the Scout fails to reach their goal. So many documentaries — including some of mine, I freely admit! — lack a clear sense of stakes. Not so in Cookie Queens.

With that structure, with these stakes, we’re off. Week 1: how many cookies sold, Week 2: how many cookies sold, etc. You would have to be a pretty cold-hearted person to not root for these adorable children (and their families) once you are inside the logic of this film.

It’s a brilliant concept — I suspect it would test well, and I think it did, based on the long list of funders who supported it — but Alysa and her team also executed it brilliantly, from excellent casting to exuberant score. I’m not at all surprised it won the audience award at SXSW. Roadside Attractions is releasing it into theaters this year, and if there is any justice in this world, it should be a giant hit.

#Skyking: A good idea, a thrilling concept

Also at SXSW, I caught the world premiere of ’s #Skyking. This film is about Richard “Beebo” Russell, a 29-year-old Horizon Air ground agent who stole a plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on August 10, 2018 and takes it for a tragic joyride.

This was a huge, viral news story — or so I learned; I’d personally never heard of this episode. I went to see it based on the strength of the logline, and because Patricia is a friend. I recommend going in with little knowledge if you can, because my experience in that theater was pretty fun!!! It’ll be on Hulu soon, so you can experience it for yourself.

Anyway, the idea: make a film about this viral news event. A good idea — it’s an intriguing story, with a proven audience already invested in trying to understand why Beebo did what he did.

The concept: tell the story as a high-octane action film using air traffic control audio, and alternate these action sequences with Beebo’s backstory shared by the people closest to him and to the events, all of them asking, why did he do this?

It’s a gripping psychological mystery, with great world-building, and exhilarating action sequences that had me screaming. I literally could not believe what I was seeing.

There’s also a “ticking clock” narrative device in #Skyking that rivals anything by Tom Clancy: once the plane is in the air (a few minutes into the film), we learn that Beebo has only a certain amount of fuel, which means the plane can only be in the air for a certain amount of time before it will fall from the sky. I mean… goddamn, that’s good.

#Skyking is not at all like Cookie Queens, but in both cases, the concept is strong in part because there is no question about the stakes, and the timeline of the story is crystal clear. They both have that undeniable narrative propulsion we, the audience, live for. Yes, we want to learn stuff and be challenged and be edified. We also want to be entertained and get lost in a story.

A side note: #Skyking reminded me a lot of this insanely delicious New Yorker story I happened to be reading at the same time, “The Man Who Broke Into Jail.” Both are about totally baffling crimes, and why they were committed. I absolutely loved the way that story unspools, and the psychological mystery is incredibly deep and compelling. This article reads like a movie, so surely someone optioned it already. If that person is reading this: please hire me to direct?!!! I would kill for that story!!!

Documentary conceptualization: yes ,it is challenging!

In both of these films, I’d be curious to know how much of the concept was present in development and how much evolved throughout production and post production. As I mentioned earlier, documentary is tough. Much of the concept can’t just be written on a blank page, as it might be in a novel. Instead it must be shaped by the vagaries of reality: who will give you access, how do real people react with cameras around, what actually happens, etc. This is why “development” can sometimes take years!

Two objections I have myself lodged against the primacy of concept (when I am pointlessly whining, aka my favorite hobby):

“But how can I write a concept when I don’t know will happen???”
+
“But everyone knows in documentary the real writing happens in the edit!!!”

Fair enough, true enough, etc. But I simply don’t know how you’ll get to the point of shooting and editing without a “bulletproof” concept — unless you are lucky enough to to be able to fund your movie yourself. Even in that case, you may find self-funding to be a double-edged sword; I firmly believe not having to test your ideas is its own curse.

Again: Kevin Goetz says 90% of films fails at the concept stage. I think he’s right. It’s like building a house on a faulty foundation, or planting an expensive rose bush in the wrong-ass soil, or pick your favorite analogy.

Finally: obviously even a genius concept can be ruined by poor execution. But that is a topic for another day!

Comings, Goings & News

Finally settling back home, after a few weeks of running around. Most of my crocus bulbs rotted, it’s still cold, but I still believe in, um, the promise of spring?

Audiences are really responding to Manhood — SXSW scheduled an extra “buzz” screening, which sold out like all the other screenings. I went to SXSW for the premiere because I am one of the film’s EPs, alongside verifiable legends like Sheila Nevins (Citizen Four, also Real Sex!!) and World of Wonder’s Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, also RuPaul’s Drag Race!!). Getting to see the film in its final form, with an enthusiastic crowd — that was a dream come true for me. I am biased, but I think what people are responding positively to is how the film is about a surprising topic (penis enlargement) and then it still goes places they are not expecting. The element of surprise is a powerful tool!

I love being surprised; I assume most people do?? I guess I have no idea. A Netflix exec told me (when turning down my pitch for Hail Satan?) “Netflix audiences don’t like to be surprised.” I doubt that’s true, but also, what do I know? Maybe I am unusually interested in being surprised.

My live chat with was rescheduled for Wednesday 1pm ET. I really enjoyed the format I did with Matt Wolf, wherein we discussed both his first film and his most recent, so I’m going to do the same with Gary. So, if you’ve never seen Helvetica (2007), now is a good time to do so.

Some topics I want to discuss with Gary:

• How Helvetica becamse his directorial debut, after running the hugely successful and influential distributor Plexifilm

• How he went from “a documentary about Brian Eno” (a good idea!) to the brilliant concept for Eno: a film that remakes itself anew each time it’s watched

• How he’s mastered the art of audience development, content (and merch) creation, and self distribution, and how his Substack ties into all of that — okay, that’s a very big topic, I promise I’ll narrow it down before Wednesday! 🙂

The first screening of “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” since the Cesar Chavez allegations have sparked discussion of how to separate a movement from its leader.

With this year’s Oscars behind us, we are already looking ahead to the 100th Academy Awards in 2028. That milestone event is two years away, which will hopefully give us plenty of time to achieve our own feat: watching and reviewing every Oscar-winning documentary. Or, at least all the ones that are available. According to IMDb, 208 documentaries have won Academy Awards in some category or another, not just in the two that have recognized nonfiction films competitively since the early 1940s. With only around 100 weeks until our deadline, we may need to double up on some. We begin with this Documentary Classics column on With Byrd at the South Pole.

The very first documentary nominee was recognized at the very first Academy Awards. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1927 ethno-tainment film Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness became one of the inaugural contenders in the Unique and Artistic Picture category, which was immediately discontinued (the category was essentially the same as the other top award, Outstanding Picture, which went through a series of name changes before taking its current designation of Best Picture in 1962 — meaning Chang was basically the first and only documentary to come close to being nominated for the Academy’s highest honor).

Two ceremonies later, and more than a decade before the mode would receive its first exclusive category, With Byrd at the South Pole became the second documentary nominated for an Oscar. Less remembered today, the 1930 feature was then recognized in the Best Cinematography category, competing against four dramas that remain well-known nearly a century later: Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Love Parade, and the famous “Garbo Talks!” cinematic event, Anna Christie. At the 3rd Academy Awards held on November 5, 1930, the documentary won the Oscar, with cinematographers Joseph T. Rucker and Willard Van der Veer receiving statuettes.

Both men shot footage for the film while accompanying Richard E. Byrd on his first Antarctic expedition from 1928 to 1930, a trip that included the first flight over the South Pole. While I can’t confirm details of the production history, the release date credited to With Byrd at the South Pole is June 19, 1930, just one day after the expedition’s return to the U.S. (perhaps the film deserved a special Oscar for editor Emanuel Cohen for such a swift job?). While Rucker and Van der Veer’s visuals are noteworthy for how they were captured, through harsh conditions across land, sea, and air, many of their shots are also quite artistic. When possible, light, shadow, and framing are given serious consideration. This isn’t just plain documentation.

The most memorable moments of aesthetic intent bookend the film. Shadows of men seem to climb the sails of Byrd’s flagship, City of New York, in the opening sequence. In the end, Byrd and his dog, Igloo, sit on the ship in silhouette, finally at rest. Right before that conclusion, the documentary shows the City of New York ascending from a fog, initially looking like a ghostly mirage. I also really like the shots from Byrd’s plane as it’s flying over Antarctica, particularly those featuring propellers in motion on the edge of the screen. The framing might not have been a creative decision so much as a practical vantage, but the result either way underscores its significance.

With Byrd at the South Pole was hardly the first documentary film of an Antarctic expedition, nor even the first to be filmed on location on the continent. One of the first known feature-length documentaries, 1919’s In the Grip of the Polar Pack Ice (since retitled South: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic), was made by Frank Hurley as he traveled with Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Before that, short documentaries exhibited footage from expeditions led by Nobu Shirase and Douglas Mawson. Still, this feature’s mixing of cinema, airplane travel, and Antarctic exploration, all of which are peaking at this time after really coming into being around the turn of the century, is just so perfect.

As a record of events, With Byrd at the South Pole appears comprehensive. While it includes many intertitles telling the audience about the expedition, the film also shows everything. Rucker and Van der Veer captured the arrival, the building of Little America, travels by dogsled and plane, multiple blizzards, including the one that destroyed Byrd’s initial aircraft, incredible visits with penguins, whales, and seals, and plenty of scenes depicting the team’s daily work. We see a lot of manual labor tasks and little recreation. Even the scene of two men sitting down, enjoying a pipe and casual conversation, is not necessarily relaxing, as the topic of discussion is how much they miss their families, including a newborn baby not yet seen.

Read more

With this year’s Oscars behind us, we are already looking ahead to the 100th Academy Awards in 2028. That milestone event is two years away, which will hopefully give us plenty of time to achieve our own feat: watching and reviewing every Oscar-winning documentary. Or, at least all the ones that are available. According to IMDb, 208 documentaries have won Academy Awards in some category or another, not just in the two that have recognized nonfiction films competitively since the early 1940s. With only around 100 weeks until our deadline, we may need to double up on some. We begin with this Documentary Classics column on With Byrd at the South Pole.

The very first documentary nominee was recognized at the very first Academy Awards. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1927 ethno-tainment film Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness became one of the inaugural contenders in the Unique and Artistic Picture category, which was immediately discontinued (the category was essentially the same as the other top award, Outstanding Picture, which went through a series of name changes before taking its current designation of Best Picture in 1962 — meaning Chang was basically the first and only documentary to come close to being nominated for the Academy’s highest honor).

Two ceremonies later, and more than a decade before the mode would receive its first exclusive category, With Byrd at the South Pole became the second documentary nominated for an Oscar. Less remembered today, the 1930 feature was then recognized in the Best Cinematography category, competing against four dramas that remain well-known nearly a century later: Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Love Parade, and the famous “Garbo Talks!” cinematic event, Anna Christie. At the 3rd Academy Awards held on November 5, 1930, the documentary won the Oscar, with cinematographers Joseph T. Rucker and Willard Van der Veer receiving statuettes.

Both men shot footage for the film while accompanying Richard E. Byrd on his first Antarctic expedition from 1928 to 1930, a trip that included the first flight over the South Pole. While I can’t confirm details of the production history, the release date credited to With Byrd at the South Pole is June 19, 1930, just one day after the expedition’s return to the U.S. (perhaps the film deserved a special Oscar for editor Emanuel Cohen for such a swift job?). While Rucker and Van der Veer’s visuals are noteworthy for how they were captured, through harsh conditions across land, sea, and air, many of their shots are also quite artistic. When possible, light, shadow, and framing are given serious consideration. This isn’t just plain documentation.

The most memorable moments of aesthetic intent bookend the film. Shadows of men seem to climb the sails of Byrd’s flagship, City of New York, in the opening sequence. In the end, Byrd and his dog, Igloo, sit on the ship in silhouette, finally at rest. Right before that conclusion, the documentary shows the City of New York ascending from a fog, initially looking like a ghostly mirage. I also really like the shots from Byrd’s plane as it’s flying over Antarctica, particularly those featuring propellers in motion on the edge of the screen. The framing might not have been a creative decision so much as a practical vantage, but the result either way underscores its significance.

With Byrd at the South Pole was hardly the first documentary film of an Antarctic expedition, nor even the first to be filmed on location on the continent. One of the first known feature-length documentaries, 1919’s In the Grip of the Polar Pack Ice (since retitled South: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic), was made by Frank Hurley as he traveled with Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Before that, short documentaries exhibited footage from expeditions led by Nobu Shirase and Douglas Mawson. Still, this feature’s mixing of cinema, airplane travel, and Antarctic exploration, all of which are peaking at this time after really coming into being around the turn of the century, is just so perfect.

As a record of events, With Byrd at the South Pole appears comprehensive. While it includes many intertitles telling the audience about the expedition, the film also shows everything. Rucker and Van der Veer captured the arrival, the building of Little America, travels by dogsled and plane, multiple blizzards, including the one that destroyed Byrd’s initial aircraft, incredible visits with penguins, whales, and seals, and plenty of scenes depicting the team’s daily work. We see a lot of manual labor tasks and little recreation. Even the scene of two men sitting down, enjoying a pipe and casual conversation, is not necessarily relaxing, as the topic of discussion is how much they miss their families, including a newborn baby not yet seen.

Read more

For her debut doc, Coppola chronicles the work of her long-time friend and collaborator, avoiding hagiography in favor of something more elusive.