The lineup for South By South West 2010 was announced today and it’s incredible. Scrolling through their mammoth programme I began to get more and more miserable that I wont be going. For those of you that are, you’re guaranteed to have an amazing time with this group of films.

I’ve added the full list of documentaries after the break. When you consider this list doubles when features are taken into account you have to give a huge amount of credit to the festival’s programmers, they’ve done an amazing job.

Just to pull out a few highlights of those I’ve seen, and those I’d give my right arm to see, The Documentary Feature category sees a new film from legendary director Steve James with No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson, James Franco’s SNL behind the scenes documentary SATURDAY NIGHT and War Don Don by Rebecca Richman Cohen, all of which look great. I’d suggest keeping an eye out for Geoffrey Smith’s Presumed Guilty (see The Documentary Blog’s review here) and David Bond’s Erasing David in the SX Global category.

The Festival Favourites category is a documentary fan’s version of heaven with Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart, Mads Brügger’s The Red Chapel (and recent Sundance World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner – Doc Blog review here), Laura Poitras’ powerful The Oath (review here) , Jason Spingarn-Koff’s Life 2.0, Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home (review here), Tamra Davis’ Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Ken Wardrop’s His & Hers and Zippi Brand Frank’s Google Baby. It also includes two films I am itching to see – How to Fold A Flag by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein and And Everything Is Going Fine by Steven Soderbergh.

The Emerging Visions category is equally as enticing and I’m incredibly intruiged by Jeff Deutchman’s 11/4/08. One film that I can’t wait to feast my eyes on is World’s Largest by Amy C. Elliott and Elizabeth Donius who visited 58 sites in the US claiming to have the “world’s largest” particular thing. I have a bizarre love for this weird aspect of US culture – have you seen the “world’s largest” doctor’s bag, as equally wonderful as it is crazy (link).

The icing on the cake is the first public showing of Hubble 3D by Toni Myers (trailer here). If you haven’t watched the trailer yet, stop everything and do, now.

So who’s going, what do you think of the lineup and can I fit in your suitcase?

Documentary Feature Competition

Beijing Taxi
Director: Miao Wang
Through a humanistic lens, Beijing Taxi vividly portrays China undergoing a profound transformational arch in an era of Olympic transitions. The intimate lives of three cabbies connect a morphing cityscape and a lyrical journey through fragments of a society riding the bumpy roads to modernization. (World Premiere)

Camp Victory, Afghanistan
Director: Carol Dysinger
Using almost 300 hours of footage shot over the course of three years, Camp Victory, Afghanistan tells the story of the Afghan officers charged with building a new Afghan National Army and the U.S. National Guardsmen sent to mentor them. (World Premiere)

The Canal Street Madam
Director: Cameron Yates
An FBI raid on Jeanette Maier’s infamous family-run brothel in New Orleans destroyed her livelihood. Stigmatized by felony, fearing recrimination from powerful clients and determined to protect her children, Jeanette sets out to re-invent herself. (World Premiere)

Dirty Pictures
Director: Etienne Sauret
Dirty Pictures is an intimate portrait of the life and work of Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, one of the world’s most renowned chemists who is considered by many to be the “Godfather of Psychedelics.” (World Premiere)

For Once In My Life
Directors: Jim Bigham and Mark Moormann
The film takes an inspiring journey with a unique band of musicians with the common goal of making and performing music. Their story tells of the fine balancing act of taking on new challenges while living day-to-day with disabilities. This documentary shows what people can do when given a chance. (World Premiere)

Marwencol
Director: Jeff Malmberg
After a vicious attack leaves him brain damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in “Marwencol,” a 1/6th-scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard. (World Premiere)

Pelada
Directors: Luke Boughen, Rebekah Fergusson, Gwendolyn Oxenham and Ryan White
Away from the bright lights and manicured fields, there’s another side of soccer. (World Premiere)

War Don Don
Director: Rebecca Richman Cohen
Prosecutors say Issa Sesay is a war criminal, guilty of crimes against humanity. His defenders say he is a reluctant fighter who protected civilians and played a crucial role in bringing peace. In Sierra Leone, the war is over, but a sensational trial begins. (World Premiere)
Spotlight Premieres

Barbershop Punk
Directors: Georgia Sugimura & Kristin Armfield (Co-Director). Screenwriter: Georgia Sugimura
Keeping the independent/punk spirit alive, barbershop quartet fan Robb Topolski takes on the nation’s largest cable company, only to find himself at the center of a federal investigation, inspiring a larger story of censorship, individual voice and access. Featuring interviews with Ian MacKaye, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Henry Rollins, Janeane Garofalo, John Perry Barlow among others. (World Premiere)

Greenlit
Director: Miranda Bailey
Greenlit chronicles the efforts of the indie film “The River Why” starring Zach Gilford as the filmmakers attempt to “go green.” Film producer Miranda Bailey decides to follow the process and learn more about why that is necessary, how much it costs and what going “green” means as an environmental consultant, is brought on to the film. Both entertaining and humorous, the film is filled with compelling and important facts about film making and sustainability and shows that Kermit was right- it ain’t easy bein’ green. (World Premiere)

Hood to Coast
Directors: Christoph Baaden and Marcie Hume (Co-Director)
Hood to Coast follows four unlikely teams on their epic journey to conquer the world’s largest relay race.  Winning isn’t everything in a documentary that takes a celebratory look at personal motivation and attempting the extraordinary. (World Premiere)

Lemmy
Director: Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski
This documentary delves into the personal and public lives of heavy metal icon and Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister. Nearly three years in the making, and featuring appearances by such friends/peers as Metallica, Dave Grohl, Billy Bob Thornton and pro wrestler Triple H, the film follows Kilmister from his Hollywood bedroom to the hockey arenas of Scandinavia and Russia. (World Premiere)

No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson
Director: Steve James
Steve James returns to his hometown of Hampton, Virginia to examine the 1993 bowling alley brawl that landed Allen Iverson, the nation’s top high-school basketball player, in jail and divided the community along racial lines. (World Premiere)

One Night in Vegas
Director: Reggie Rock Bythewood
On the evening of 9/7/96, Mike Tyson attempted to regain the WBA title in Vegas. Sitting ringside was his friend Tupac Shakur. This ESPN Films documentary tells not only the story of that infamous night but of their remarkable friendship. (World Premiere)

The People vs. George Lucas
Director: Alexandre O. Philippe
A no-holds-barred cultural examination of the conflicted dynamic between George Lucas and his fans over the past three decades. (World Premiere)

Richard Garriott – Man On A Mission
Director: Mike Woolf
Last year Richard Garriott became the first son of an astronaut to go to space, but this is no millionaire’s joy ride, he pioneered private space travel to make his dream come true: from his training in Russia to his launch in Kazahkstan to the dramatic, never before seen footage inside the capsule during fiery re-entry, this is a historic moment in human space travel. (World Premiere)

The Ride
Director: Meredith Danluck
A journey into the heart of America through the rough and tumble, rock and roll world of bull riding Cowboys. (World Premiere)

SATURDAY NIGHT
Director: James Franco
With unprecedented access to the behind the scenes process of the writers, actors and producers, Franco and his crew document what it takes to create one full episode of Saturday Night Live. (World Premiere)

The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights
Director: Emmett Malloy
A visual and emotional feature length film documenting The White Stripes making their way through Canada and culminating with their 10th anniversary show in Nova Scotia. The film documents the band playing shows all over Canada; from local bowling alleys, to city buses, and onward to the legendary Savoy Theater for the 10th Anniversary show.

Emerging Visions

11/4/08
Director: Jeff Deutchman
Weaving together footage recorded throughout the world on the day Obama was elected President, this vérité documentary explores how people choose to live through “history.” (World Premiere)

A Different Path
Director: Monteith McCollum
In an automobile dominated society, a cast of characters uses ingenuity and wit to forge a new way to commute. One by foot, one by bike, two by boat. (World Premiere)

American: The Bill Hicks Story (United Kingdom)
Directors: Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas
At last the true life story of the outlaw comic who tried to save the world. Three years in the making, using a stunning new animation technique, American: The Bill Hicks Story finally brings the amazing tale of one of modern culture’s most iconic heroes to the big screen. (North American Premiere)

Bear Nation (Canada)
Director: Malcolm Ingram
What if your biggest perceived flaw became you greatest asset? Bear Nation is a thorough and stylistic examination of the sub culture sweeping gay culture, the sexualization of fat and hair. From the director of small town gay bar and Exec Produced by honorary bear Kevin Smith. (World Premiere)

The Parking Lot Movie
Director: Meghan Eckman and Christopher Hlad (Assistant Director)
“It’s not just a parking lot, it’s a battle with humanity.”  The Parking Lot Movie is a documentary about a singular parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia. The film follows a select group of Parking Lot Attendants and their strange rite of passage. Something as simple as a parking lot becomes an emotional weigh station for the American Dream. (World Premiere)

We don’t care about music anyway… (France)
Directors: Cedric Dupire and Gaspard Kuentz
“We don’t care about music anyway”…In other words, “we make it and that’s all”. Beyond the music and beyond its performance, the future and mode of existence of a city, and society as a whole, are in motion. (North American Premiere)

World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements
Director: Chris Farina
World Peace and other 4th-Grade Achievements portrays John Hunter, a remarkable public-school teacher who has dedicated his life to teaching children the “work of peace.” (World Premiere)

World’s Largest
Directors: Amy C. Elliott and Elizabeth Donius
Desperate for tourism, hundreds of small towns across the U.S.A. claim the “world’s largest” something – from 15-foot fiberglass strawberries to 40-foot concrete pheasants.  World’s Largest visits 58 such sites and profiles Soap Lake, Washington’s five-year struggle to build the World’s Largest Lava Lamp.  By documenting these roadside attractions, World’s Largest captures the changing, perhaps even vanishing, culture of small-town America. (World Premiere)

Lone Star States

Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio
Director: Sam Wainwright Douglas
In Alabama, Samuel Mockbee’s radical design/build program brought architecture to the rural poor and a new set of ethics to architecture. His legacy has inspired a generation of architects dedicated to design for social good. (World Premiere)

Thunder Soul
Director: Mark Landsman
In the 1970’s, Kashmere High School band director Conrad Johnson turned his band into an international funk sensation. Now thirty years later, his students return to pay tribute to the man who changed their lives. (World Premiere)

When I Rise
Director: Mat Hames
When I Rise is a feature-length documentary about Barbara Smith Conrad, a gifted University of Texas music student who finds herself at the epicenter of racial controversy, struggling against the odds and ultimately ascending to the heights of international opera. (World Premiere)

 24 Beats per second

Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
Director: Jacob Hatley
In Ain’t In It For My Health Levon Helm finds himself thrust into the musical spotlight for the first time in a quarter century, but a Grammy nomination and ever-growing audiences force him to confront the dark times that have haunted him since The Band’s demise:  Throat cancer, bankruptcy, drug addiction and the tragic loss of bandmates Richard Manuel and Rick Danko.  Win or lose, Levon is an artist who will not go quietly into the night. (World Premiere)

REJOICE AND SHOUT
Director: Don McGlynn
A documentary that explores the power and long lasting influence of gospel music. (World Premiere)

RIDE, RISE, ROAR
Director: David Hillman Curtis
A David Byrne concert film that combines riveting onstage performances with documentary footage that explores the creative collaborations that make the music happen. (World Premiere)

Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields
Directors: Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara
Ten years in the making, Strange Powers is an intimate documentary portrait of songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band The Magnetic Fields. (World Premiere)

TAQWACORE (Canada)
Director: Omar Majeed
Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam follows a group of Muslim Punks as they travel across the U.S. and Pakistan, challenging Muslims and Non-Muslims with their punchy and provocative anthems. (U.S. Premiere)

The Weird World of Blowfly
Director: Jonathan Furmanski
The Weird World of Blowfly tells the provocative and revealing story of musician Clarence Reid and his alter ego Blowfly, the original dirty rapper. The film follows Blowfly as he tours the world, explores his 50-year career, and celebrates his influential and incendiary work as a music legend. (World Premiere)

SX Global

The DeVilles (Denmark)
Director: Nicole Nielsen Horanyi
The love between the American burlesque stripper Teri Lee Geary (aka Kitten DeVille) and her punk rock singer husband Shawn Geary is strong but rather complicated. They live in their own time bubble, hers from the 1950’s and his from the 1980’s. (U.S. Premiere)

Erasing David (United Kingdom)
Director: David Bond
Just how much of our personal information is floating around in government and corporate databases? Filmmaker David Bond decides to find out, by disappearing for a month and setting two of the world’s top private investigators the task of tracking him down, using only publicly available data. (North American Premiere)

The Erectionman (Netherlands)
Director: Michael Schaap
How one little pill changed the course of sexual evolution. (North American Premiere)

IDFA DocLab (Netherlands)
A curated program of new media and web documentary from the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam’s DocLab, bridging the gap between filmmakers and interactive storytellers.

Iron Crows (South Korea)
Director: Bong-Nam Park
Against a harsh environment of constant danger and toxic gases, workers here at the world’s largest ship breaking yard in Bangladesh, risk their lives to feed their family on barely 2USD per day. (North American Premiere)

Like a Pascha / Som en Pascha (Sweden)
Director: Svante Tidholm
Welcome to the biggest brothel in Europe, a clear blue eleven story high house in the middle of Cologne, Germany. Around 200 women from all over the world work here. If you ask them why, they will tell you it’s the way it’s always been. Svante Tidholm filmed at Pascha for more than three years, looking for an answer to the eternal question: why are men so obsessed with sex? (North American Premiere)

The Living Room of the Nation (Finland)
Director: Jukka Kärkkäinen
The Living Room of the Nation opens a portrait-like view into six Finnish living rooms. A collage of everyday events the film is a story of changes, loneliness, responsibilities and the unavoidable passing of time. (North American Premiere)

The Other Side of Life (Germany)
Directors: Stefanie Brockhaus and Andy Wolff
Being arrested for murder, two brothers exist between modern township life, gangsterism and ancient African culture.  (North American Premiere)

Phantom of Liberty II (Czech Republic, Germany)
Director: Karel Zalud
A documentary about time which explores its physical quantity as well as its crucial impact on our actions, behavior, perception, social rituals and our outlook on the world. (North American Premiere)

Presunto Culpable / Presumed Guilty (Mexico)
Director: Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith
The heart-wrenching story of a man who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Through his struggle to regain freedom, two lawyers document the system’s contradictions. (U.S. Premiere)

Reel Injun (Canada)
Director: Jeremy Simmons
Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through a century of cinema. (North American Premiere)

Festival Favourites

And Everything Is Going Fine
Director: Steven Soderbergh
And Everything Is Going Fine is an intimate portrait of master monologist Spalding Gray, as described by his most critical, irreverent and insightful biographer: Spalding Gray. The film pulls from some 90 hours of material to fashion a new narrative exploring, among other things, art-making, mental illness and the sometimes thin line between the two.

Google Baby (Israel)
Director: Zippi Brand Frank
In India, the latest form of outsourcing is surrogate mothers who carry embryos for couples who can’t have a child. Director Zippi Brand Frank follows an entrepreneur who proposes a new service – baby production for western customers. (U.S. Premiere)

His & Hers  (Ireland)
Director: Ken Wardrop
Seventy Irish women offer moving insights into the relationships between women and men.

How to Fold A Flag
Directors: Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein
We were asked to believe that the war was over. We laughed, for we were the war.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
Director: Tamra Davis
An intimate portrait of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and the downtown New York scene, as told by his friend filmmaker Tamra Davis.

Last Train Home (Canada)
Director: Lixin Fan
Getting a train ticket in China proves a towering ordeal as a migrant worker family embarks on a journey, along with 200 million other peasants, to reunite with their distant family.

Life 2.0
Director: Jason Spingarn-Koff
More than an examination of new technology, the film is foremost an intimate, character-based drama about people whose lives are dramatically transformed by the virtual world called Second Life.

The Oath
Director: Laura Poitras
Filmed in Yemen, The Oath tells the story of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Prison who is the first man to face the controversial military tribunals at Guantanamo.

The Red Chapel / Det Røde Kapel (Denmark)
Director: Mads Brügger
A journalist with no scruples, a self-proclaimed spastic, and a comedian travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange visit to challenge one of the world’s most notorious regimes.

The Thorn in the Heart
Director: Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry’s newest film, further propels his groundbreaking filmography into the realm of the unvisited with a personal look at the life of Gondry family matriarch, his aunt Suzette Gondry, and her relationship with her son, Jean-Yves. Michel examines Suzette’s years as a schoolteacher and her life in rural France.  During the course of filming the documentary, new family stories are unearthed and Michel uses his camera to explore them in a subtle and sensitive way.

Special Events

Hubble 3D
Director: Toni Myers
Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and through the power of IMAX® 3D, Hubble 3D will enable movie-goers to journey through distant galaxies to explore the grandeur and mysteries of our celestial surroundings, and accompany space-walking astronauts as they attempt the most difficult and important tasks in NASA’s history. (First Public Showing)