Documentary

Motherhood can't seem to escape controversy, even on the weekend meant to honor them. Yet three filmmaking moms are quietly figuring out what it means to parent, work a day job, and manage a passion project, and have generously shared their perspectives with The Independent.

As one of the first to embrace what Neil Kendricks calls the "immersive technology" of 3D, and with no fellow directors to consult, Wim Wenders morphs landscape into stage with his friend Pina Bausch's choreography as the centerpiece in Pina.

Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley's documentary Battle for Brooklyn has made many stops this year. Galinsky sends his thoughts from the Salem Film Fest, after it wrapped year five as the region's largest doc-only festival.

"The cumulative effect of both [5 Broken Cameras and ½ Revolution] makes you feel like you are there vicariously experiencing the events from the filmmakers’ subjective vantage points," writes Neil Kendricks about two standout features from Sundance 2012. He recaps fest highs and lows, including Grand Jury Prize winner, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Voice-over or not? When to animate? And where to leave your viewers? Two IDFA docs, Four Horsemen and Surviving Progress tackle the consequences of progress by making different stylistic choices.

"I think every doc director is an activist, their army is visual images," says director Seung-Jun Yi. His film, Planet of Snail, about the blind and deaf poet Young-Chan, just won the best feature-length documentary award at IDFA. Seung-Jun Yi has made documentaries for Korean television and is among a growing movement of filmmakers to break out and expand the form.

Even though funding and distributing your doc can feel like a confusing quagmire, to some it's the new sexy. IDFA panelists have their say on the evergreen questions, including an announcement of a new source for financial support: BRITDOC.

The premise sounds like either a miracle or a gimmick: thousands of hours of visual and audio footage off a cell phone turned into a meaningful personal documentary. Yet Bosnian filmmaker Nedžad Begović's Mobitel (A Cell Phone Movie) manages to make cell phones ring like they're centuries old.

Normally literature is what moves fiction writer Peggy Rambach. Then she met Buck Brannaman through the documentary portrait of his life. Rambach's is part of a series of personal essays inspired by a particular film experience.

If you thought the electric car died a slow, tragic death, you're right. And if you're like filmmaker Chris Paine, who helped document its demise in Who Killed the Electric Car? or the inventors and advocates in his new film, Revenge of the Electric Car then you believe, beyond a shadow of the doubt, electric can and will power vehicles of the future. Read what Paine told the The Independent's Katherine Brodsky after his film premiered.