Last night was “closing night” for Silverdocs, and the awards were handed out yesterday afternoon, but that doesn’t mean the festival’s over. Indeed, today and tomorrow are packed with final screenings of films that played this week, including some of the most high-profile titles and award winners.
The major Sterling awards yesterday afternoon were handed out to Our School in the U.S. competition (DCist’s Alyse Kraus reviewed it on Wednesday), Family Instinct in the World competition (I wrote that one up over at Washingtonian), and Guanape Sur in the shorts competition. Special awards were handed out to a number of other films, as well. That just leaves the audience awards, which will be announced after the final screenings today and tomorrow.
Highlights of today’s screenings:
- Project Nim, the latest from Man on Wire director James Marsh, about the subject of an experiment to teach chimpanzee sign language, which had lots of positive buzz coming out of yesterday’s first screening.
- Life in a Day, an unusual experiment from director Kevin MacDonald and producers Tony and Ridley Scott, in which they put out a call for people all over the world to document their own lives for one particular day and put the video on YouTube; the movie is culled from over 4,500 hours of submitted footage.
- Age of Champions, a heartwarming documentary about senior athletes, including octogenarian twins, both formidable swimmers, from right here in D.C.
- Films we reviewed earlier this week screening today: The Learning, Never Make it Home, The Swell Season, Sound it Out, Better than Something: Jay Reatard, and one we’re reviewing today, Revenge of the Electric Car (see below).
All of the major award winners will screen again on Monday evening as well. Check the schedule for complete listings for the next two days.
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Revenge of the Electric Car, Silverdocs’ closing night film, is a piece with a great deal of polish and pizazz. Director Chris Paine takes his audience through monster car companies like GM and Nissan, through startups like Tesla, and even through no names, such as Greg “Gadget” Abbott, who will convert your boring old sedan into an electric car. “We’ll reach a lot more people (this way) than doing it as an environmental diatribe,” Paine said in a discussion after last night’s screening.
Right he was. In avoiding the realm of pure “issue” films and focusing, as Paine stated, more on character, Revenge engages without preaching. With Tim Robbins as narrator, this refreshing approach follows competitors through their ups and downs instead of beating an audience to death with factoids (though it does open with a speech from Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Neil about his conversion from gas to electric).
GM, Nissan, Tesla and Abbott each face big challenges and tough decisions, some of their own making as they attempt to keep up with the green times. Nissan gambles big on electric to keep up with the other companies, though CEO Carlos Ghosn never seems to think it a gamble. Abbott dreams big, but faces hard luck. Tesla founder Elon Musk spends a fortune (his, mind you), only to find that all those columnists might have been right — it takes more money than anyone could imagine to keep a car company afloat. We all know what happened to GM.
These ups and downs bring to light the impossibility of introducing something new (and green) to the stubborn American market, and keeping a company alive in the first place. Paine’s film offers hope in the case of the electric car. But there might be a simple solution here: “The test drive is the sell,” Abbott said Saturday night, to a nearly packed theater. Just have enough people test drive electric cars, and the grid will be clean in no time.
View the trailer.
Screens today at 4:15 p.m. in AFI Silver Theater 1.
