Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2009

Comic Book Confidential is a feature-length documentary that profiles twenty-two of the most significant artists and writers working in comic books, graphic novels and strip-art in North America today. In an entertaining and informative combination of interviews, historical footage and state-of-the-art animation techniques, Comic Book Confidential provides a positive answer to that burning existential question of the late twentieth century first posed by Zippy the Pinhead: "Are we having fun yet?"

"Coney Island's for the Birds" takes us to the quirky underground world of pigeon racing, spotlighting Anthony and Larry Martire, a father and son pigeon racing team. From training to the actual races, through wins and losses, we witness the Martire's ups and downs and get an intimate glimpse into a special relationship bonded by their shared love of the amazing rooftop creatures."

They do things a bit differently in Coober Pedy. A stick of dynamite is a device for conflict resolution, the locals live in underground homes, and until they paved the roads back in 1988, you could break your ankle just by crossing the main street. Once a month this desert town comes to life for a night of dirt, noise and metal at the local speedway track, a remnant of the opal mining community's former wealth. This Saturday night a small group of working-bee heroes will get out their Toranas and fire up the pie warmer as they try to keep alive the last remaining bastion of their wild wild west. This is speedway racing Coober-style.

Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking as it examines a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

The heartland is in the process of transplanting itself, and the new heart is pumping oil. Welcome to Stanley, North Dakota, sitting atop the largest oil discovery in the history of the North American continent. Through revealing interviews and breathtaking imagery of the northern plains, Crude Independence is a rumination on the future of small town America—a tale of change at the hands of the global energy market and America's unyielding thirst for oil.

"A Day Late in Oakland" tells the story of slain California journalist Chauncey Bailey and the evolution of Your Black Muslim Bakery, the organization implicated in his killing. Mixing interviews with a variety of archival materials, the film follows their paths from their common roots to their troubling intersection.

“Dead Lonesome” is a non-narrative cinematic experience that explores the sights, sounds, and surreal atmosphere of the America West. It is a journey that explores nature, history, and the realm of the infinite. The film develops a theme then shapes it like a dream. The photography in “Dead Lonesome” was captured through non-traditional cinematic techniques with sequences filmed at night, using moon and starlight as the only source of illumination.

Delta Rising is a fascinating film that documents the history of the blues, and more specifically, the birthplace of the blues, Clarksdale, Mississippi. The film not only delves deeply into the historical signposts of who, where and what came first, but more interestingly why in Clarksdale? The simple answer is this: the poor residents of the region in the 1920s and 1930s could generally earn more money playing the blues and making moonshine than picking cotton. If they couldn't, playing the blues in the club was more enjoyable than picking cotton in the sun all day long. With its abundance of blues clubs and blues museums, Clarksdale makes a legitimate claim for being the birthplace of the blues, a claim that is supported by the testimony of several blues heavyweights. Featuring new interviews with, and performance footage of, Morgan Freeman (owner of one of the most well-known blues clubs in Mississippi), Willie Nelson, Pinetop Perkins, Charlie Musselwhite, Mose Allison, Ruby Wilson and others.

East meets West in the Deep South. An overcrowded maximum-security prison - the end of the line in Alabama's correctional system - is forever changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program.