Sara Dosa's "Fire of Love." Courtesy of True/False Film Fest
The 2022 True/False Film Fest will take over Columbia, Missouri, from March 3-6, showcasing an array of exciting and interesting nonfiction films, independent music, and art installations. In advance of this year’s festivities, we caught up with Eric Allen Hatch, a new addition to the True/False team who serves as both Director of Music and Film Programmer, to talk about joining the programming team and what to expect from this year’s slate of films and music.
What has it been like coming on as a new member of the True/False team?
It's been really interesting, because I was a fan of the festival and an attendee before joining the staff. I started attending about five years ago while I was director of programming at Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore. They brought me in for some events that year, and it was my first taste of just how special this festival is. I left Maryland a couple of years ago and had sort of been looking for a good fit since, and this just seemed like it. This festival has such a unique programmatic focus, not even just by focusing on documentaries, but by focusing on the art of documentary film. And then beyond that, the energy of it, combining film screenings with musical events and all of the multimedia stuff, the art you find around the festival campus. It just seemed really exciting to be a part of it.
What was it specifically that made you want to work for this fest?
I've been a film programmer for about 20 years, and you can develop a little bit of a jaded sense of audiences wanting crowd-pleasing films and red carpets and film festivals being kind of a hype machine for films that don't need the hype. And then you find a special festival like this that has such a specific focus, and True/False executes its artistic focus so well. You have full houses for these really experimental, exploratory, cutting-edge documentaries, and it's just exciting to see the way people respond to such adventurous programming.
In your dual role as both a film programmer and a music programmer you work with two impressive lineups at the fest. How do music and film interplay with one another at True/False?
At every single screening, musicians serve as essentially an opening act for the film. So, much like at a concert or a live-music setting, where there's the headliner and there's a musician playing as people file in and orient themselves, True/False does that with film. So whether it's a solo jazz bassist or a loud, rockin’ band in the Missouri Theatre, as you as you take your seat for a film, there's music that's been programmed to also say something about where independent music is right now and has also been scheduled with some consideration of the size of the venue and the type of film that's coming afterwards. In the past, it was generally pretty distinct teams working on the film and the music. Not that they were entirely siloed, but being a member of both teams obviously allows for an even richer dialogue between what music is paired with what film. I would be remiss not to mention also that many of those artists have their own devoted more traditional musical showcases. For instance, there's a Spanish experimental musician named Alex Silva who's coming to town, and he'll play his loud, danceable, electronic pop set at his musical showcase. But then he's also composing some original ambient songs to play for some of these opening credits before movies. So musicians often get excited to express a different side of themselves in these opening act situations.
The music at True/False sort of runs the gamut. You’ve had Dan Deacon, Soccer Mommy, Open Mike Eagle, bands from different genres–what specifically excites you about this year’s lineup?
Well, being new to working behind the scenes at True/False, it was an opportunity for me to kind of have my worlds collide. So I've booked a couple of Baltimore artists that I know are ringers that maybe haven't made a splash in Columbia before. There's a woman who's coming, Susan Alcorn, who is one of the world's foremost pedal steel guitar players, and she's well-known in certain experimental music circles and well-known in Baltimore. But to give audiences the opportunity to experience her music before a film here, when they have never encountered anything like it before, that's really cool. There's two other people co-curating the music with me, Wil Reeves, is one who's been on the team in past years, and I've certainly been looking to him quite a bit for institutional knowledge and continuity. And then there's Lily Moore, who has worked for the festival before, but is new in terms of music curation. She's based in Chicago, so we all have sort of regional flavors, things we've experienced that we're dialoguing and bringing to town. You'll see a lot of Missouri music, a lot of Chicago music, and a lot of Baltimore music, as well as some awesome touring artists that the timing worked out to bring them to town.
It was especially interesting to see Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy's sons, Sammy and Spencer Tweedy, on the list as well.
Yeah, and they will be doing some of the opening slots in various configurations. They'll also be part of what's called the Sanctuary Showcase, which is in the First Presbyterian Church next to Ragtag Theater. It’s literally in the sanctuary, and it's not a religious event, but it's a, for lack of a better word, “spiritual” event, where maybe people have had a heavy weekend, or their eyes are tired, or they just saw a particularly challenging or intriguing film and they want to meditate on it in that Sanctuary Showcase. There's a place to sit in the pew and have sort of a meditative experience.
Are there any specific themes that have presented themselves to you and the programming team as you put together this year's slate of films?
We saw a lot of really strong work from Eastern Europe and Russia and the former Soviet Republic region. And two of my favorite films in the lineup are Where Are We Headed, which is this sort of immersive look at a year in the Moscow metro, and despite the limited setting, it's one of the most cinematic films we have, and it actually has a lot of great humor in it as well. The other, also set in Moscow, is called GES-2. Not the most dynamic name, but it's named after its central setting, which is a former energy plant right next to the Kremlin that is now being converted into a public art space. The film kind of gives you chapters that look at almost every strata of that process, whether it's architects and contractors, or the guy who works the elevator trying to find a wrench to fix something opening morning. It gives you sort of glimpses, you feel like you experience every different person's point of view in making something like that happen. And at the same time, there's a film called Mr. Landsbergis, which is about Lithuania leaving the Soviet Union. And that one is, a totally different perspective on Russia's influence, its sort of hegemony over another republic, and the leader of Lithuania kind of playing 3-D chess with Gorbachev to try to get out from under the Soviet Union. So, two Russian, very cutting-edge, contemporary films, and then one historical look at the end of the Soviet Union that I thought was also really mind-blowing. I will say, talking about Mr. Landsbergis, it is a four hour movie, and I think it's worth every minute, but I also want everyone to know going in that that's not a typo!
Sergei Loznitsa's "Mr. Landsbergis." Courtesy of True/False Film Fest.
With the current political climate in mind, what is it like sharing this slate of films from Russia and former Soviet republics?
I think it's a real opportunity for people to dig into history, because, while what's happening in a way feels unprecedented, everything was set in motion by everything that came before it. Particularly Mr. Landsbergis, which is the story of how Lithuania, chess move by chess move, removed itself from the Soviet Union. I mean, that's the process that, in reverse, in this gruesome way, Putin seems to be trying to implement here. To really zoom in on the backstory and look at the last peak of the USSR as a superpower, and then to meditate on where Russia is today and the power grab that's happening, I think could be really fruitful for people in understanding. I also think that both of the Russian films, GES-2, and particularly Where Are We Headed, which is embedded in the Moscow subway as we're seeing lots of images from Ukraine of people using subway stops as shelters, [can be helpful in] just remembering that the political actions of a leader like this are not always speaking for the people themselves. If anyone's feeling a lot of anger and confusion about how this could be happening and wants to kind of take a look at another side of contemporary Russian society, I think both of those films, and particularly Where Are We Headed, would be really intriguing.
So, in a sense, they’re films that could help audiences better make sense of what they're seeing on the news every day.
Yeah, whether you're following it closely or at a distance, you know, just seeing a story of warfare is very one-dimensional in helping you understand the human consequences and human dimensions to all this. It's easy to just doomscroll and feel powerless and just soak up information. And I think it can be–I don't want to say healing, because this is a situation that we can't heal–but I think that, as individuals, in terms of understanding, I think going to films like this can really add dimension and understanding.
If you had to recommend only two to three films for someone coming to the coming to True/False this year, what would those films be and why?
Let's see. I mean, I have a lifetime of patronizing and also working in video stores, and my answers are sort of thoughtful and deviate depending on who I'm talking to. So for an audience that maybe is new to this subset of documentaries, I might really encourage them to see Fire of Love, which is a film that's as visually spectacular as any narrative film, and has a central love story and drama to it that will really make you understand that documentary film can be every bit as cinematic and exciting as any narrative film you see. I might also recommend Riotsville, USA, which premiered at Sundance. I think Riotsville is a kind of essay film where, on a sort of cerebral level and artistic level, you see things that are going on in the documentary form that maybe we wouldn't see on Netflix or HBO docs and are really this whole other artistic approach to expanding documentary form.
How does your experience programming for True/False compare with your past programming jobs?
One of the reasons that I was excited to take the job, and one of the things that compares favorably to the past programming work I've done, is that it's a large organization. At Maryland Film Festival, I often felt like I was part of a one-man band, or, at best, a duo where we programmed the films, but we also generated all the web content and had to teach ourselves how to make a website and how to activate ticket sales and make fliers. It was such a small operation that if we didn't do it, it wasn't going to get done. Stepping into an organization that already had a really strong support network of a PR team and a fundraising team and a web team– it's the way it should be. And I'm really appreciating it at this moment, when the programming is done and we're starting to promote, that it's not just the beginning of a whole new overwhelming workload for me, but that there's a whole team watching these films and listening to these musicians and helping get other people excited about them.
You also have an army of volunteers coming in soon enough as well.
Any film festival couldn't happen without them, and I think the target this year is for 450 volunteers. I'm really excited that True/False has a staff of around 30 people as opposed to the more like three or four that I'm used to. But then you have a whole other massive wave of people come in who are bringing their own refreshed energy and their own excitement about the festival. I mean, that's when it really starts to pop off.
I know that True/False had to grow and change with the outdoor pandemic year festival in 2021, but it seems like people are really excited to get back into the venues this year.
Absolutely. It’s been a challenging couple of years for every festival all over the world. There have been some festivals that haven't survived this or have squeezed by but had two years where they were virtual or had canceled events. So, for True/False, having an outdoor festival last year and an almost back to normal festival this year, it's pretty special.
