HEADLINES
 

The Espionage Act and a Growing Threat to Press Freedom
Jameel Jaffer contemplates the current state of freedom of the press in The New Yorker: “Safeguarding the public’s right to know requires protecting not just journalists and publishers but sources as well. In recent years, some press-freedom advocates have urged the courts to afford government insiders charged under the Espionage Act an opportunity to argue that the public’s interest in learning the information they disclosed outweighed the government’s interest in protecting it. In an era in which the President has trouble differentiating journalists from ‘enemies of the people,’ it may be up to the courts, and the people themselves, to insist on differentiating whistle-blowers from spies.”

Here’s How Movie Theaters Survive the Next 10 Years: Exhibitors Speak Out
IndieWire’s Eric Kohn responded to last week’s piece in The New York Times regarding the future of cinema by asking exhibitors how they are planning for the future: “Even as multiplexes face an existential threat, a 2018 Art House Convergence survey of some 22,500 moviegoers found that 65% of them considered their local art house theater valuable to their overall quality of life. That’s what the article failed to note: Of the 24 voices in the story, there were only four distributors that release non-studio films and all of them — Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, Netflix, and Amazon — are attached to much larger businesses. Absent was any representation of the exhibition community, people who make a living booking independent theaters around the country, or smaller distributors who program a range of films from around the world. We decided to give them some space to respond.”

The Top DGA Award Won’t Consider Day-and-Date Releases
Anne Thompson writes at IndieWire: “The Directors Guild of America has taken a dramatic stand to support theatrical releases via its awards-eligibility requirements. On June 22, the Directors Guild of America’s National Board unanimously approved a change to eligibility requirements for its top feature film award. According to a release, the decision was made ‘in recognition of the unique cultural importance of the theatrical experience to audiences and filmmakers alike.’ No more will day and date releases be eligible for the top DGA award, which will now honor ‘Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film.’”

Will Awards Voters Accept ROLLING THUNDER REVUE as a Documentary?
Steve Pond contemplates how Scorsese’s partly-fictionalized film might fit into awards season for The Wrap: “Netflix has decided to submit Martin Scorsese’s ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY for documentary awards including the Oscars, a spokesperson for the streaming service told TheWrap on Monday. And that decision, which came after Netflix and Scorsese spent some time figuring out how best to position the film, will likely pose at least a small conundrum for the Academy’s Documentary Branch and for other awards bodies devoted to nonfiction film. ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, after all, uses the documentary form to tell the story of Dylan’s 1975 concert tour in a way that is partly factual and partly fictional. “It seems like a stretch for the doc branch, despite enormous respect for Scorsese,” suggested one person close to the branch. But a branch official disagreed. ‘I would imagine we’d accept the submission and leave it up to the voting members to decide,’ the person said, cognizant of the Academy’s recent history with genre-bending films.”

ON THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT
 

Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper to Step Aside
“Sundance Institute announced today that John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, will move into a newly-created Emeritus Director role following the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. 2020 will mark his 30th Sundance Film Festival, and his 11th year as Festival Director. The new role will focus on special projects and overseeing the 40th anniversary of the Sundance Institute to be celebrated in 2021. The search for a new Director for the Sundance Film Festival will be led by the Institute’s CEO, Keri Putnam.”

Announcing AFI DOCS 2019 Award Winners
“The American Film Institute has announced the AFI DOCS 2019 Award Winners, concluding the five-day festival supported by Presenting Sponsor AT&T in Washington, DC, and Silver Spring, MD.  The festival’s Audience Award for Best Feature went to CHASING THE MOON, directed by Robert Stone.  The Audience Award for Best Short went to ST. LOUIS SUPERMAN, directed by Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan.”

Karlovy Vary 2019: Documentary Overview
At What (not) To Doc, Basil Tsiokos previewed the Karlovy Vary 2019 doc offerings: “Documentaries make up about a third of the new offerings of this A List event in the Czech Republic. The fest’s Documentary Films Competition includes eight world premieres out of 10 titles: Martin Mareček’s OVER THE HILLS, which follows a Czech father as he brings his son to Russia to visit his estranged wife and daughter; Ksenia Okhapkina’s IMMORTAL, an essay about life and control in a Russian industrial city; Yuriy Shylov’s PROJECTIONIST, a portrait of the projectionist at Kyiv’s oldest cinema; Laila Pakalniņa’s SPOON, a dialogue-free exploration of the plastic spoon; Yrsa Roca Fannberg’s THE LAST AUTUMN, a fable like look at an elderly couple in remote Iceland; Marc Schmidt’s IN THE ARMS OF MORPHEUS, an exploration of people with sleep disorders; Nazareno Manuel Nicoletti’s UP TO DOWN, about three marginalized people in Naples; and Liu Feifang’s THE FADING VILLAGE, an observational portrait of a Chinese mountain village.”