Los Angeles Film Festival 2008 - Documentary Films in Competition

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story

Lee Atwater is the cutthroat strategist who ran the successful Republican political campaigns for Richard Nixon and the Bushes. Using archival footage and interviews with Ed Rollins, Michael Dukakis, Tucker Eskew, Howard Fineman, Mary Matalin, Sam Donaldson and others, director Stafan Forbes shows how Atwater's tactics influenced America's current political scene.

Dirty Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe

In this intimate view of one man's personal journey, Harry Kim spends several years documenting developments in the life of his friend, the controversial LA-based artist David Choe, whose career is like a roller coaster ride that reaches the heights of commercial success and plumets to the depths of soul-searching depression.

Finishing Heaven

Director Mark Mann presents the story of Robert Feinberg who, as a young NYU student, started to shoot his first feature film in 1970 and now, 30-some years later, returns to that project, and readdresses personal issues that prevented him from finishing it in the first place.

'Largo'

Largo is a hip insider LA nightclub known for outstanding standup and music performances by the likes of Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, Sarah Silverman, Aimee Mann and others who appear in this film, which successfully captures the club's ambiance and establishes its importance to established and emerging entertainers. Directed by Andrew van Baal and Mark Flanagan, who is also Largo's owner.

Loot

Two World War II veterans hid treasure in the Austrian hills some 60 years ago and now they, with fading eyesight and failing memories, want to find it. Darius Marder's documentary tracks the man they enlist for the task, a used-car salesman from Utah, as he spends months searching various locations. In English and German with English subtitles

Must Read After My Death

Allis and Charley were independent thinkers raising a family of four in 1960s Hartford, Connecticut. But problems began to emerge in their marriage and family life, and their bold family experiment slowly and inexorably descended into a mire of confusion and turmoil, speeded along in its demise by a battalion of psychiatrists. Spun from a treasure trove of recorded audio diaries, Dictaphone letters, photographs and home movies amassed by Allis, Must Read After My Death is a vivid evocation of an era and a shattering portrait of the secret lives of one American family. USA/Spain. 73 min. Director/Writer/Producer Morgan Dews

'Paper or Plastic?'

The question you're asked everytime you check out of a supermarket serves as the title of Justine Jacob and Alex da Silva's documentary about eight grocery-bagging champions priming their skills--speed, weight distribution and 'curshability'--in preparation for the national showdown in Las Vegas.

'Pressure Cooker'

In this documentary, directors Jennifer Gausman and Mark Becker follow three inner city Philadelphia high schoolers whose future hopes hang on how well they can learn to prepare gourmet potatoes in Mrs. Stephenson's Culinary Arts class--which has an unusually high record of garnering scholarships for students to top culinary schools across the nation.

'Thing With No Name'

Writer/director Sarah Friedland reveals the harrow realities of South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic by following two Zulu women as they go through a course of antiretroviral drug therapy, always showing extraordinary determination, dignity and quiet humor as they battle the disease that's devastating themselves and their community. In Zulu with English subtitles

'Trinidad'

Since 1969, when Dr. Stanley Biber began performing gender-reassignment surgeries at the local hospital, the small all-American town of Trinidad, Colorado (pop. 9,000), has become the home of a growing number of transsexuals from across the nation. Directors PJ Raval and Jay Hodges focus on Marci Bowers, Laura Ellis and Sabrina Marcus to show the interactions between the homegrown apple pie community and imported population of transsexuals who've made Trinidad their home.