The True/False Podcast

In this archived edition of the True False podcast, we revisit a conversation with film-maker Deborah Stratman about the power of voice in her film "The Illinois Parables."

A chat with True/False Film Festival programmers' about the newly announced slate of films for this year's festival.

In this episode of the True/False Podcast: a conversation from last year's festival between filmmakers Ursula Liang and Khalik Allah. Both were at True/False to show their latest features. Liang's film Down a Dark Stairwell documents the effects of a police shooting of an unarmed Black man. Allah's film I Walk on Water pushes the boundaries of the filmmakers' relationship with those they document.

This week, we’re continuing our dispatches from True/False 2020 with a conversation between artist and filmmaker Rikkí Wright and programmer Jeanelle Augustin. Wright’s work is often deeply personal and offers commentary on how she interacts with and understands the world around her. “A Song About Love,” Wright's latest short film, showed ahead of The Giverny Document, and is a dreamy mix of vibrant, colorful images and archival material. As she told Jeanelle, Wright’s work started as a way to engage with her own family and document her life.

Many things about this year's True/False Film Festival have changed, but one that hasn't is our annual programmer preview. This year, programmers Angela Catalano and Amir George join the podcast to preview some of the films coming to this year's outdoor fest, which starts May 5. Angela and Amir preview Questlove's directorial debut Summer of Soul, Pete Nicks's Homeroom, and a number of other films and events fest-goers can look forward to.

We continue our dispatches from last year's festival with the final True/False Podcast episode recorded in-studio during 2020. The guests were filmmaker David France and Maxim Lapunov, who was imprisoned and tortured as part of the Chechen government's persecution of its LGBTQ community. Lapunov and the subjects of France's 2020 film, Welcome to Chechnya were the recipients of the True Life Fund, the festival's philanthropic effort which provides monetary support to those documented in the select film. Welcome to Chechnya co-producer Igor Myakotin provided translation.

Every year during the festival, True/False organizes field sessions: conversations between filmmakers about their films, experiences, and anything else that interests them. In this week's episode of the True/False Podcast, we’ll be listening in on one such conversation between filmmakers Meredith Zielke and Steve James. Zielke is an award-winning filmmaker and editor who co-directed A Machine To Live In, an impressionistic exploration of Brazil’s peculiar capital city that showed at True/False 2020. James, best known for directing academy-award-nominated films Hoop Dreams and Abacus: Small Enough To Jail, premiered four episodes of his new series “A City So Real” at the festival.

Nonfiction filmmakers often end up with a lot more material than they could ever use. That's something Elegance Bratton ran into making his debut feature, Pier Kids. The film portrays life in New York for gay and transgender youth living on the Christopher Street Pier. Producing the film involved capturing all kinds of people’s stories over the course of many years in order to portray Bratton’s own experiences with homelessness. Bratton spoke with True/False programmer Amir George.

The 2021 True/False Film Festival will look completely different from any previous fest. In the interest of social distancing and safety, all of the films will screen outdoors, at Stephens Lake Park in the fest's hometown of Columbia, Missouri. The True/False Podcast spoke with fest organizers to explain what festival-goers can expect at the new venue, and how it's tried to keep some vestiges of normalcy from festivals past.

It's been a long break, but the True/False Podcast is coming back, and soon! Before the new season starts in earnest on March 17, though, we wanted to preview True/False's online film retrospective called Hindsight. The series runs over eight weeks leading up to this year's festival, and it features films from True/False's past. Virtual attendees can buy passes and tickets to the series on the True/False website to gain access to the films, as well as discussion questions and prompts to accompany them. Ted Rogers, the programmer at Ragtag Cinema, selected the films, and sat down with the podcast to explain what festival-goers can look forward to.

Hi all — as you're probably aware, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. What that means for us at KBIA is all our time is taken up covering what that looks like on the ground here. In light of that, this week's episode is being postponed. We'll be back next week with filmmaker and journalist David France, director of "Welcome to Chechnya," and Maxim Lapunov, one of the subjects of that film. Thank you for your patience, and stay safe: wash your hands, self-isolate as much as possible, and we'll see you next week.

In this week’s episode, True/False Programmer Jeanelle Augustin talks with filmmaker Lance Oppenheim about his latest documentary, “Some Kind of Heaven." In the film, Oppenheim tells the story of residents at The Villages, in Florida - the country’s largest retirement community. The Villages — singular — is home to more than 100,000 retirees, and boasts 12 golf courses, three libraries, and no residents under 55. The rows of houses and town squares are designed to evoke an American yesteryear that can be disconcerting and disorienting, making it rich material for a Oppenheim, a filmmaker habitually drawn to weird places.

Climate change is an issue so broad and pervasive it is easy to abstract. It looms large over so many aspects of life it can feel less like a subject to explore, and more like a mood or a feeling, a doom permeating aspects of every story told in the 20th century. But instead of approaching it from a distance, or preparing a sanitized lecture, in her newest film The Hottest August, filmmaker and True/False alum Brett Story looks for the climate crisis’s many intersections, with labor, with capitalism, and the human psyche. Story is a geographer, and both Hottest August and her previous feature The Prison in Twelve Landscapes explore their subject matter through place, and people’s relationships with the places they inhabit.

A film can never exactly capture how we experience a moment, or time passing, but it can evoke those sensations through its structure or editing or cinematography. In this week’s episode, we talk with a filmmaker whose films reflect that conflict — True/False alum Sophy Romvari. She’s a Toronto-based filmmaker who has primarily worked in the world of non-fiction shorts, including “Pumpkin Movie,” which screened at True/False 2018.

On this week's episode, we're previewing some of the films coming to True/False this year, with festival programmers Jeanelle Augustin, Chris Boeckmann and Amir George. The line-up includes a whopping 38 feature films, 26 shorts and multiple repertory programs. Jeanelle, Chris and Amir talk us through some of this year's world premieres, potential crowd-pleasers and can't miss screenings.

Having your work rejected is part and parcel of being a filmmaker, be it when submitting to festivals, applying for funding, trying to sell a film or get distribution. But it can be hard to separate self worth from work, or to reconcile the reality of the industry with personal beliefs and values. These are all issues filmmaker and artist Zia Anger touches on in her multi-media performance "My First Film." Anger sat down with us to talk about how the show, which traces the production of a "failed" feature film she directed, has helped her to reflect on her work, and has provided a different kind of catharsis.

In the world of nonfiction filmmaking, the idea of "engagement" is often raised as a key part of the process. How does a film engage the audience, or with its subjects, what conversations does it start, or augment? For Robert Greene, whose film "Bisbee '17" screened at the 2018 True/False Film Festival, engagement offers an opportunity to counter the exploitative aspect of documentary filmmaking. And in the case of "Bisbee '17" it meant going back to the eponymous town year after year to continue the conversation.

The next season of the True/False Podcast doesn't start up for a few more months still, but we thought it was a good time to re-feature an episode from last season. The Edge of Democracy, which screened at this year's festival, is now streaming on Netflix, so we're bringing back our episode with the film's director, Petra Costa.

Bumpers are the short films that play before screenings at festivals. True/False has different bumpers for each day of the festival, each related to that year's theme. For this episode of the True/False Podcast, Allison Coffelt sat down with Chelsea Myers, of Tiny Attic Productions, which produced the bumpers for this year's festival.