The ITVS Indie Roundup

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval. 

Can’t let go of election excitement? Here are 12 movies about elections that deserve a close rewatching, including The Manchurian Candidate (1962, 2004) and Milk (2008)/The Times of Harvey Milk (1984). 

What a week for festivals! New York’s DOC NYC, an all-nonfiction fest Nov. 8-15, has an especially strong slate of films, including Oma & Bella, a documentary about two octogenarian survivors of the Holocaust in Berlin who cook childhood meals that conjure up vivid memories. 

Another intriguing doc premiering at DOC NYC: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek tours through the history of cinema with a hilarious and insightful eye turned toward our unconscious urges. 

Here’s an interview with director Sophie Fiennes. For those on the West Coast, the Napa Valley Film Festival will offer cinema with a side of wine and delicious food Nov. 7-11. 

You might know The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a doc that follows hardcore arcade players trying to hit the world’s highest score on Donkey Kong. It’s not the only fabulous nonfiction film about oddballs. Here are nine others, including Independent Lens’s own Beauty is Embarrassing.

A new widget on the POV blog allows you to vote for the greatest documentaries of all time. Currently, Stranger with a Camera is in the lead, followed by Hoop Dreams. The poll closes Nov. 29, so vote now! Asian American filmmakers: Apply to the CAAM Fellowship Program by Nov. 30! The fellowship is open to both fiction and nonfiction filmmakers “to nurture a community of makers and professional mentors from within the Asian American media microcosm.”