The Way We Get By is almost certainly a marvelous movie, at least judging from Mike Riggs' review, which ran in our Silverdocs issue (6/12). The producers of the movie liked Riggs' review so much they excerpted it on their movie poster, an excerpt of which you can see above. Interesting thing about that review, though: Riggs never said "Absolutely stunning" in it (regardless, I am absolutely stunned I didn't kill such wildly gushing copy when I had the chance).

To find that part of this quote, you have to turn to Riggs' morning roundup from Thursday, June 11. He wrote then:

As for me, I got pretty choked up watching The Way We Get By, and can’t think of a single friend, family member, or down-on-his-luck stranger to whom I would not recommend this film. Absolutely stunning. And Trimpin opened my eyes to the joys of reviewing movies while high sound installations.

I had to ask. He says "I had smoked a little bit before I watched" The Way We Get By, but swears he was stone-cold sober when he wrote that ringing endorsement.

First up is The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), a 2008 Silverdocs selection.  It's the story of Thavi Phrasavath, a Laotian refugee who struggles to support his family and himself after they leave their native country following the US bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War.  Director Ellen Kuras met Phrasavath in 1986, when she was seeking language lesson and their relationship culminated in the production of this documentary.  Kuras followed Thavi for the next 23 years, through gang wars and death threats, and captures the ultimate betrayals within and outside the family.

Two of the short films from the 2009 festival and one from 2008 will air in an evening of award-winning short documentaries.  Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall focuses on a new mall built in China's Guangzhou province that is supposed to lure visitors to the rural area but instead remains a ghost town.  Nutkin's Last Stand tells the story of a group of squirrel enthusiasts in Britain who want to protect the diminishing population of red squirrels, so they resort to killing the American gray squirrels who have been descimating the population.  And City of Cranes focuses on a group of crane operators in London, who narrate the documentary while the cranes appear as a graceful addition to the city.

Later in the summer, This Way Up, the story of residents at a Catholic-run nursing home in East Jerusalem.  A wall of concrete slabs run past the door of the nursing home, dividing the city.  Unfortunately for the Palestinian residents of the home, they become separated from their families when the wall that zig-zags through the West Bank places the nursing home on the Israeli side.  Told from the point of view of Jad, one of the male residents, the documentary shows the variety of ways the residents learn to cope with their new separation.

Finally, sometime in September is the TV premiere of Bronx Princess, the story of Rocky Otoo, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who grew up in the Bronx.  Chronicalling her last months before beginning college, the film shows Rocky breaking free of her parents' traditions while trying to define her values.  The crew follows her from graduation to her father's village in Ghana to her new home at Dickinson College and all the while, Rocky provides her own commentary about her life, and nobody else's.

Air times vary depending on which PBS station you watch, so check listings before tuning in.

Set in Bangor, Maine, the film follows three elderly individuals - Bill, Jerry and Gaudet's mother Joan – who go to a small airport every day to greet the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite facing failing health, depression and mounting debt, the three are committed to greeting the troops as they first step back on American soil, even if it's as early as three in the morning.

I had the opportunity to chat with Director Aron Gaudet. Here's what he had to say:

Q. What was the impetus for making the film? How did you come upon these characters?

Gita and I both worked in local television news around the country and when we met I think we both agreed that there were so many great stories that got passed up in local news just because it would take more than a day to tell the story. And it was really frustrating to us. We'd see all these great personal stories go by and we'd say: we don't have time for that, let's go to the town hall meeting. It wasn't very fulfilling. I had always wanted to make documentaries and when I met Gita and I told her about that, she took the ball and ran with it. She was like, we'll start a company and we'll find a subject. When I went home that Christmas and got her to meet my mom, we saw that flight come in and we said: this could be at least a great short documentary. And then we went home with Bill that first time and saw his living conditions and we had already known that he had been battling prostate cancer and saw how he was living and he told us about his wife dying. We just realized this guy is going through a lot and he's out there all the time. He's a compelling character for a movie. It all kind of started with him and then we met Jerry.

Q. What was your biggest challenge in making the film?

We were first time filmmakers and I think we went in thinking this would be easy. I shoot everyday, I edit every day. We'll just get the equipment and we'll do it. We weren't thinking of fundraising and getting the money and all that. This was our film school. Over the four years we made the movie, we learned so much. We didn't start fundraising until we were almost done shooting three years into it. It got to the point where it was like: if we don't get money, we won't finish this. It was at that point that we got funding from ITVS. We got it just when we needed it.

Q. Were you working on other projects in the meantime?

We were working full time jobs for the first three years of it. At first we were still working in Michigan and we would drive to Chicago, fly to Boston, drive Bangor. Or, if we didn't have money to do that we would drive from Michigan to Maine which was like a 19 hour drive, stay there a couple of days and drive back. Eventually we said we've got to do something to be closer, so we moved to Boston, so it was a four hour drive. So that made it a lot easier. And having my mom call and say, the 500,000th troop should be coming in on a flight tomorrow, we could drive up and be there. We would start at my mom's house and when she got a call, we'd go in with her at the airport. And then at the airport, we'd pick Bill or Jerry and follow them.

Q. What has the response been to the film?

We premiered at South By Southwest and in the last three months, we played at over 20 film festivals and the response has been great everywhere. When we had a chance to have one of the subjects there with us, the response has been even greater. By the time I was done editing the movie, I didn't know what we had. I walked out of the editing room and I remember saying to Gita, I don't know what this is. It's because you're so close. And it wasn't until we saw it with audiences and saw them respond that we knew what we had. People would always come up after and say l loved the movie and then launch into this personal story, like my dad had prostate cancer. It always became how it related to them personally. One woman was saying that it had a lot of universal themes and that's what we're starting to take away from it. Everybody is connecting to it on a really personal level. It's been really overwhelming.

Q. Bill says in the movie that he feels like he's outgrown his usefulness. Has the film changed that feeling for him?

The best thing out of everything so far to me has been watching him when we are able to bring him to a screening and then watching people come up and talk to him because of what he says in the film. To see these people come up to him and say what he's doing means to them. The most fun of all of it has been to experience the film through him.

The portrayal is particularly intimate in that it follows Mosher's own family.  He is the eldest of three to a mother who admits to forfeiting her dreams to motherhood at an early age and having a knack for picking bad men.  The same trait seemed to pass to her daughter Daneal, now the single and unemployed mother of a beautiful toddler named Ruby. Littlest is Desi, a sharp-minded but devastatingly sweet girl who despite being privy to child and domestic abuse and teen pregnancy, shows promise for breaking out of her family's cycle.

I had the opportunity to meet with Palmieri and Mosher this weekend. Here's what they had to say:

Q.  When did you start the film?  And what was your creative approach?

MP: We went back and visited Donal's family in October 2006.  Before we started making it, we thought it would be interesting to frame it from a Halloween perspective, from one Halloween to the next. Thought it would be interesting to explore the ghosts that haunt every day lives. We also thought it would be best to contain it inside one year, so knowing that we went back seasonally for six or seven days.  Donal's family is very open so they just immediately let us dive in.

Q. Why Halloween?

MP: Halloween is the best framework for examining the idea of every family has their ghosts. Everybody has ghosts in the closet that keep rattling around and keep people in these cycles they can't get out of.

DM: And also visually... all the stuff that's seething under the surface of American life gets celebrated in Halloween, so its a perfect setting. The seasonal metaphors are out in the open; people are doing it for you. And people reveal something inner about themselves.  Its a perfect way of negotiating identity.

Q. I noticed a vivid representation of American symbols.  Can you explain that creative choice?

MP: At heart, I think the film is about a working class family that no one would really ever consider turning a camera on and this is the hidden majority of our country.

DM:  It's just that region. A lot of rural America, there's this huge pageantry.  Everyone is wearing flags and patriotism.  To me that's a kind of Halloween. That's the mask that America puts on. And so we thought we'd juxtapose that with Halloween imagery.

Q. The film does not follow a traditional three-act structure in which there is a built-in beginning and ending. What were some of the challenges in this more layered approach?

MP: The challenge in making a film like this is you are trying to tell multiple stories at the same time. But I think people actually like when there aren't all the answers there; that people have to think a little bit. There is closure but the closure is that there isn't closure in our lives.   And that's why we capped it off at the year because we could have kept going on forever.  The drama keeps going and going. It's more about what are the cycles inside of those dramas that keep it going.

Q. Did you have any ethical concerns, Donal, about going into your family and revealing their secrets to the world?

DM: There's a serious issue in the film: child molestation. We had no idea that had been going on.  So we were kind of stunned by that.  But the family themselves don't really hide it; they aren't really shameful.  The hardest part was talking to Desi about how she felt about this being shown to people. And she said: well, when my sister said these things were happening to her, nobody believed her but now they will because it's in a film. To negotiate all the personal information, we just had to have a constant dialogue with the family.

Q. Do you think the family trusted Michael more because of Donal's presence?

MP: I don't think the film would have been the film it is without the triangulation of access.  One filmmaker is simply a member of the family so you have that immediate sort of trust in place. As an outsider, there's a certain thing that happens where the person is willing to confide more.  A lot of times Donal would be out of the room and his family would tell me things that I don't think they would normally ever say to him because he's already a part of the history of the family; he knows their stories. They have to articulate the entire story to me.

DM: Especially Daneal, because she knows I have loyalties to her mother. If she was angered or felt alienated by the family, she would talk to Michael.

Q. What was it like co-directing and co-editing a film?

MP: I've directed a lot of stuff before this and I've always directed on my own. This is the first time I've ever engaged in a co-directing process on this sort of level. And from my experience, I think it makes me a better filmmaker because we have such shared ground but then we have such a difference.  Donal has such a tremendous history in film theory and criticism and photography and I have my own strengths elsewhere and it just makes us a better single person. Sometimes in the editing process, its easier for me to instead of trying to explain what it is I am thinking, I need to show it in the imagery.  It's easer for me to just make it and say, here, this is what I mean. Whereas Donal is capable of articulating that verbally.

Q. What was your visual approach?

MP: One of the key ways the film is shot is drawn from visual photographs. Donal shot his stuff on a T4 camera with a flash (point and shoot) that had a certain kind of flash photography look that I wanted to try and recreate in a simple way with the camera. At night time, the way that light is very white and hot in the center of the frame. In terms of the rest, its more about looking for what is a appropriate for a given scene in a situation. But when you are making a film, when all you are doing is looking for how to articulate this idea of ghosts and hauntings, things naturally arise. The image of the smoking... to me that looks very ghostly.

Director Marshall Curry certainly bet well when casting three tween race kart drivers for his latest doc, Racing Dreams, which picked up the award for Best Documentary at Tribeca and screened this past week at Silverdocs.   Annabeth (11), Josh (12) and Brandon (13) “popped out” in screen testing, said Curry, who sensitively documented  their earnest, sometimes sad, and often humorous childhood travails all the while competing in the year-long World Karting Association Championship.

Curry last swept the festival circuit with his first documentary, Street Fight, which picked up an Oscar nomination in 2005.  His latest features sharper production values but no less compassion.

I was able to meet up with Curry after his screening at the AFI Theater in Silver Spring on Saturday. Here's what he had to say:

Q: How did you select the characters for the film?

I read an article about the World Karting Association and found it to be interesting and thought, well I'll go and see it. So I took a camera and went to a couple of races and just started asking people: “who do you think I should talk to?”  A couple of people said you should really talk to Josh Hobson.  So we went to the Grand National Race a year before we started shooting and I finally found Josh as he was pulling off the track and he had just won his fourth Grand National Race over the weekend.  I talked to him for twenty minutes and I just thought, wow, if there are other kids out there like this, then we have one hell of a movie. And so I took the footage home and I edited a trailer and showed it to Bristol Baughn, who was working at one of the finance companies for the project.  She saw it and said, great, let's do it. So we went to that year's karting convention award ceremony and just started fanning out and talking to about 75 kids.  There we met Annabeth and Brandon.  We met a lot of kids there that we really really liked, but those three kinda popped out. So we took a chance with those three, and all three turned out to be great.

Q. Would you consider documenting these kids again, say, five years down the road?

One of the things that attracted me so much to this age was that its such a pivotal age and its an age that a lot of people really don't pay that much attention to.  Amazingly, you see Annabeth at the beginning of the movie and at the end of the movie and in one year she's a young woman. I'm sure we will do a short followup as a DVD extra or something like that.

Q. How did you achieve such a level of intimacy with your characters?

Intimacy is something that is super super important to me. We really wanted to shoot the movie HI Def, with great cameras and give that sense of pageantry of racing.   But at the same time I didn't want to roll in there with the big camera and the lights because I just know how that freezes people up. And to me, I would always prefer and intimate slightly less high production value scene than a slick hollow moment.

Q. How was making your second film different than making your first?

My first film was really film school for me. I had never shot or edited before so it was an incredibly slow long process for me.  I basically read the manual of the camera before I went on my first shoot and shot you know, 200 hours and the first 50 are lot worse than the last 50.  And then editing took me two years.  I edited everything myself, logged everything myself, transcribed everything myself.  There were no interns or anything like that. This time we had really good shooters that were working with us and I had another editor I worked with full time and another editor we brought in three quarters of the way through. So definitely that made it a lot easier. But it was also a challenge because with Street Fight, if I saw something that I thought we should be shooting, I would get it. And when somebody else is holding the camera it is harder to do that.  But then again, I'm working with people who have been shooting for 20 years and they are never having to find the aperture on the camera in an important moment.

Q. Were there any ethical dilemmas that you faced, especially with the more sensitive elements of some of the characters' lives?

There's nothing worse than pointing a camera at a person in a painful situation and treating them like a subject, when all you really want to do is put the camera down and hug them. That's the part of my job that I hate the most - to see somebody you care about suffering and to be thinking about whether you've got it in focus. But I also know that if you want to make movies, that's what you've got to do. So I would talk to them beforehand and say: during the course of this movie, there are going to be some uncomfortable times and your kid is going to lose a race and be crying and I'm going to shoot it. And its not that I'm a vulture, but that's part of the story, and I feel like they all pretty much understood that. After we screened the film to the families, Brandon's grandmother turned to me - and she'd been crying throughout the movie - and she she said: It's really hard to watch and its completely true and I wouldn't change a thing. And I think that they realized the value of telling their story.

Q. Why documentary?

I guess I'm just curious about things and it gives you an opportunity to go around and poke in other people's lives. I like just the craft of it too. I like just the serendipity of it. You'd shoot a fiction film, and everything was put there. And then you shoot a documentary, and all of a sudden the kid picks up the phone and starts calling and this whole thing happens and you're like, gee, I hope the battery doesn't run out. And I'm not a fisherman or a hunter, but I'd imagine its similar to that. You go out and you spend all day on the water and somedays you don't catch anything.  But once in a while, you get a big one and it's so thrilling.

Q. What are you working on next?

I have a film that I've shot and I'm going to start editing that is about a radical environmentalist who burned a couple of timber facilities in Oregon and is now in prison.

Nutty's got the video.

Here are some of today's highlights:

Carmen Meets Borat, which profiles a 17-year-old who tells what it was like when her village was accosted by Sacha Baron Cohen. 4:15 p.m.

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo, a look at Oklahoma’s rodeo-as-rehabilitation program. 4:30 p.m.

Sacred Places, which digs into the dearth of African cinema. 7 p.m.

The September Issue, R.J. Cutler's sneak peek into Anna Wintour's den as she and her staff prepare Vogue's biggest issue of the year. 7:15 p.m.

Best Worst Movie, Michael Stephenson's documentation of the phenomenon of the terrifically bad Troll 2, a B movie in which he starred that's now reached cult status. 8:45 p.m.; a screening of Troll 2 follows.

21 Below, Samantha Buck's intimate profile of a Buffalo, N.Y., family dealing with issues of illness, teen pregnancy, and race. 9 p.m.

Soul Power, footage of the three-day concert that preceded Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's famed 1974 Rumble in the Jungle, featuring James Brown, Bill Withers, B.B. King, and the Spinners. 9:45 p.m.

Locations and plot descriptions after the jump!

NoMa Summer Screen - "Music in Pictures"

Date and Time: Tonight, June 17th, from 7 to 11 p.m.

Playing This Week: Buena Vista Social Club, the documentary about aging Cuban musicians brought together to record a CD with Ry Cooder, who traveled to Havana to meet them.  The group tours around the world performing the music of pre-Castro Cuba and reflecting on their earlier musical careers.

Location: L Street, between 2nd and 3rd, NE.  New York Avenue station on Metro's Red Line.

Frequency: Every Wednesday between now and July 29th.

SilverDocs Outdoor Screening

Date and Time: Friday, June 19, at 9 p.m.

Playing: For All Mankind, a documentary about the Apollo 11 crew that coincides with the 40th anniversary of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.  Current interviews with the 24 crew members are combined with archival footage to capture the scope and emotion of the experience.

Location: Silver Plaza, on Ellsworth Drive between Georgia Avenue and Fenton Street, Silver Spring.  Silver Spring station on Metro's Red Line.

Stead Park Summer Movie Mania

Date and Time: Wednesday, June 24, at 8:30 p.m.

Playing This Week: Top Gun.  A pre-Scientology Tom Cruise and a pre-ER Anthony Edwards feel the need for speed as students at Top Gun Naval Flying School in this '80s classic.  Singing along to the power ballads is optional.

Location: Stead Park, on P Street between 16th and 17th.  Dupont Circle on Metro's Red Line.

Frequency: The last Wednesday of the month, through August 26.  Rain dates are July 2, August 5, and September 2.

Mmm...South Australian salt flats....

As ever, be sure to refer to our comprehensive, super-sweet, blah blah &c. guide to Silverdocs for all your documentary needs!

Opening tonight:

Act of God, in which people who've been struck by lightning proffer "anecdotes [that] may have you zoning out between crashes of thunder," Tricia Olszewski reports.

Intangible Asset No. 82, about a quest to find South Korea's greatest drummer. Justin Moyer calls it "a testament to the power of music and mysticism." Harrumph!

Ella Es El Matador, a film about female matadors that centers on the charsimatic Maripaz Vega. Sarah Godfrey says: "It’s impossible not to immerse yourself in the action."

Ma Bar, about 73-year-old Scottish power-lifter Bill McFayden. According to Justin Moyer, it "packs the primal emotional punch of a feature film."

Winnebago Man, about the angriest man in the world on the worst day of his life. Jule Banville calls it "a classic This American Life quest."

Voices from El-Sayed, about a community of deaf in the Negev desert...and the new technology that wants to change their way of life. The film, Chris Klimek says, "finds the right balance between narrative and atmosphere, giving us in 73 unhurried minutes a beautifully detailed portrait of a hidden place."

The Horse Boy, in which the parents of an autistic boy lead him on an equestrian trek across Mongolia in search of shamans. Hilary Crowe: "Through interviews with anthropologists and autism experts and unflinching footage of Rowan’s hectic healings, the filmmakers undermine not just Western medicine but also the conventional view that autism is a disability instead of a blessing."

RiP: A Remix Manifesto, in which Brett Gaylor makes copyright policy seem, according to Aaron Leitko, "vital, interesting, and surprisingly entertaining."

The Archive, about Paul Mawhinny, owner of the world's largest collection of vinyl LPs. Despite the film's apparent lack of irony, Jeff Winkler calls it "a hipster’s wet documentary."

Shorts Program 2: Lost & Found, in which we learn a great deal about Australian salt flats, Cuban prisons, Polish post offices, and...self-storage units.

Albert Maysles Shorts Program, Part I, a 68-minute collection of five short films from this year's Guggenheim Symposium honoree. 12:15 p.m.

Another Planet, a doc on child laborers that Aaron Leitko calls "powerful viewing." 12:30 p.m.

My Neighbor, My Killer, a look at Rwanda's Gacaca Tribunals that Steve Kolowich says is "too hard for tears." 3 p.m.

The Apprentice, the sometimes "too fortuitous" story of a 15-year-old French boy who's learning to farm. 4 p.m.

Off and Running, a look at the life of a black girl who was adopted by white Jewish lesbians in Brooklyn. 4:30 p.m.

Facing Ali, which was to be the night's big get until a press release yesterday advised that the Champ will no longer be attending. Still, should be worth a look. 7 p.m.

Afghan Star, or Central Asia's American Idol. Need we say more? 7:45 p.m.

RiseUp, which offers three "unique and compelling tales" on Jamaica's underground reggae scene. 8 p.m.

Sea Point Days, a "brilliant commentary on community" in the South African suburb of Cape Town. 8:45 p.m.

Only When I Dance, a peek into the lives of two Rio de Janeiro teens as they work toward becoming professional dancers. 9:45 p.m.

Forty Men for the Yukon, an "always earnest and at times wickedly funny" portrait of two 80-somethings who've spent their lives panning for gold. 9:45 p.m.

The film follows LeBron James and four other Akron, Ohio basketball players in their teen years, their talent and perseverance taking them from inner-city courts to championships and fame.

James will be in attendance along with former teammates Sian Cotton, Willie McGee, Little Dru Joyce III, Romeo Travis, and their coach, Dru Joyce II. A post-screening discussion with them and the doc's director, Kristopher Belman, will follow.

More good stuff slated for the rest of the week; check out our full Silverdocs coverage and clear your calenders.