Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
New Podcast: Penny Lane on subjective documentaries and Confessions of a Good Samaritan
Hello Reader,
In today's episode, Penny Lane discusses her new documentary film, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, about her journey to becoming an anonymous kidney donor and its emotional repercussions. While educating us on the kidney donation process and why it's important, the film is, above all, a portrait of the filmmaker in crisis. It is equally a film about making a film about donating a kidney.
Lane uses many different techniques to get us inside her stressed and complicated brain: inviting us onto her desktop, showing us interviews with herself, documenting the donation process with cameras, and even curating archival footage and interviews to reflect the state of mind of the 'character of Penny Lane' as she develops through the film.
Penny Lane has been experimenting with film form throughout her career, from the archival footage film Our Nixon, to the animated documentary NUTS!, to the tongue-in-cheek look at the Satanic Temple in Hail Satan? through seemingly conventional talking head interviews, to found footage in The Pain of Others, and beyond. Lane weaves almost all of these techniques (and a few more!) into Confessions of a Good Samaritan, offering a thoughtful, educational, and funny look at the complicated feelings that come with doing good in the world.
The fifth and final episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season is now available
Click here to read the show notes (where you can also listen!)
Catch up with the whole season
Listen to our brand new 5-episode series on Creative nonfiction filmmaking.
Creative nonfiction films, known as hybrid or experimental documentaries, push the boundaries of how we traditionally conceive of documentaries.
This season, we’ll introduce you to some of the best creative nonfiction filmmakers working today through discussions with them on their latest films and their approach to nonfiction filmmaking.
Listen to Ep 1: An Introduction to the season and creative nonfiction
Listen to Ep 2: Sophie Fiennes on Four Quartets and documenting theatre on screen
Listen to Ep 4: Sam Green on 32 Sounds and live documentaries
Don't miss a single. Subscribe to the podcast today.
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Join the conversation about Creative Nonfiction this month
This is the first episode in a podcast season that we're running to spotlight creative and innovative approaches to nonfiction filmmaking — films that push the boundaries of what a documentary can be.
Help us boost that conversation by listening and sharing the episode and the season.
| Listen to Episode #5 |
| Share a tweet about the series |
Want to learn more about Creative Nonfiction film?
The best quick introduction to Creative Nonfiction is our masterclass with filmmakers Carol Nguyen (No Crying at the Dinner Table) and Penny Lane (NUTS!, Hail Satan, Listening to Kenny G)
Watch our masterclass on Creative Nonfiction with Carol Nguyen and Penny Lane
If you want to delve deeper into how different filmmakers define and approach creative nonfiction films, and how this leads to unique storytelling approaches, get our ebook Subjective Realities.
Get Seventh Row's ebook on Creative Nonfiction Film
Discover how ‘creative nonfiction’ documentaries, otherwise known as hybrid or experimental documentaries, push the boundaries of what we traditionally conceive of documentary to be.
Subjective realities is a six part ebook composed of interviews and essays. Discover the myriad forms of nonfiction filmmaking, from animation to archival and beyond, and find out what funding structures exist to make them possible.
Subjective realities focuses on how the past ten years have changed the course of nonfiction filmmaking. Creative approaches to the medium have become more mainstream; for example, animated documentaries (e.g., Flee) and personal documentaries (e.g., Dick Johnson is Dead) are increasingly being programmed alongside more traditional documentaries and receiving wider releases.
Whether you’re a nonfiction fanatic, or a skeptic who’s tired of watching boring info dump docs, Subjective realities will be an eye-opening read.
This is our second book on nonfiction filmmaking; the first is In their own words: Documentary Masters.
| Get your copy of Subjective Realities today! |
Best,
Alex Heeney
Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row
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Seventh Row
Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
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