DocFest awards Jamie Meltzer the Non-Fiction Vanguard Award
Non-Fiction Vanguard Award: Jamie Meltzer
The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival is pleased to announce today that acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jamie Meltzer will be the recipient of the 2017 Non-Fiction Vanguard Award. Meltzer will be presented with the award during the 16th edition of the festival, which returns to San Francisco May 31st to June 15th.
Coming off its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Meltzer’s latest film, TRUE CONVICTION, takes a look at a new detective agency in Dallas, Texas, started by a group of exonerated men with decades in prison served between them who look to free innocent people behind bars. The film will screen as part of the award presentation on Saturday, June 3rd at 7pm at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco followed by a moderated discussion between Meltzer and film critic Michael Fox and a post-screening hosted reception next door at Mission B.A.G. (Bad Art Gallery) at 518 Valencia Street.
Meltzer’s documentary films have been broadcast nationally on PBS and have screened at numerous film festivals worldwide. His past films include: INFORMANT (2012), about a revolutionary activist turned FBI informant, which was released in theaters in the US and Canada in Fall 2013 by Music Box Films and KinoSmith; OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG-POEM STORY (Independent Lens, 2003), about the shadowy world of song-poems; WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD (PBS Broadcast, 2007), an investigation into the wildly successful Nigerian movie industry; and LA CAMINATA (2009), a short film about a small town in Mexico that runs a simulated border crossing as a tourist attraction. Meltzer currently teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford.
With the ongoing documentary renaissance, SF DocFest prides itself on recognizing those unconventional, creative risk-taking filmmakers that are redefining the nonfiction cinematic form and are someone to watch. Jamie Meltzer is the latest filmmaker the festival has recognized. Past honorees include Sean Dunne (2016), Robert Greene (2014) and Melody Gilbert (2008).
SF DocFest will also present a retrospective screening of Meltzer’s first feature documentary OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG-POEM STORY (2003) which is a fascinating, at times unsettling, film that exposes the strange underworld of the song-poem industry. Following the screening Meltzer will join film critic Michael Fox to discuss his career in a moderated discussion.
