In case you hadn’t noticed, SILVERDOCS is in full swing now, and it’s been occupying all of our film-going attention this week. While D.C. has no shortage of film festivals throughout the year, there is none as good as SILVERDOCS, so we have trouble thinking of movies in any other terms while the festival is occupying Silver Spring. It’s also an endurance test just trying to see all the films one wants to in the one week festival window. We’ve found ourselves in crowded theaters writing reviews or watching screeners on our laptops while in between films. We’ve made the Sophie’s Choice between seeing a movie we’ve really been looking forward to and actually going home to get some sleep. We’ve also experienced the lonely harsh flourescents of the post-midnight S2 bus back into D.C. Amid growing fatigue from all the movie watching, wondered what any quasi-journalist in an event setting would: WWHTD? (What would Hunter S. Thompson do?) And, faced with the obvious answer, we’ve lamented the lack of a ready source for mescaline on the streets of downtown Silver Spring.

So you’ll have to excuse us if we abandon our usual format this week out of a pleasant festival-induced delirium. Our blanket recommendation is that you stay away from any non-SILVERDOCS theater for the remainder of the festival (which is only half over as of the end of tonight’s programs, with lots of excellent material during the busy weekend schedule). What were you going to see otherwise? The Incredible Hulk? It manages the unbelievable feat of being even worse than the failed Ang Lee attempt at the material and makes us sorry we recommended checking it out last week. The Happening? Do we really need to give studios an excuse to continue giving M. Night Shyamalan money to make more films?

No, your best bet is SILVERDOCS, where everything we’ve seen so far has been of at least good quality, most pushing towards the “excellent” end of the scale. Highlights (that only barely scratch the surface) for films still coming up:

• Bulletproof Salesman, a look at the violence in Iraq through the eyes of a car salesman with a rather special option on the autos he’s selling. Friday and Saturday night.
• Trouble the Water; an account of the Katrina aftermath as seen by a resident who lived through it. New Orleans resident Kimberly Roberts captures the horror of her and her family being trapped in her own house as the floodwaters rose. Friday night.
• Kassim the Dream, a profile of the boxing champion Kassim Ouma, whose unlikely path to boxing excellence began with a stint as a kidnapped child soldier in Uganda, and a time spent training at the local Arlington Boxing Club. Friday night and Sunday evening.
• American Teen, a year in the life of a group of high school seniors gives insight into what’s changed, and what hasn’t, about being a teen in the 21st century. Saturday night.
• Lost Holiday; not one of the marquee titles of the festival, but a hilarious little Czech documentary that may be our favorite film that we’ve seen so far. Twenty-two rolls of undeveloped film are found in a suitcase discarded in a Swedish dumpster, that when developed reveal a group of six Asian men traveling throughout Scandinavia. Can the filmmakers track down the men using just the photographs? Friday night.