Karina on SpoutBlog

The Sheffield DocFest has put out a preview of their 2008 lineup. The festival launched a number of sidebars last year based on theme––Green, Sports, Music, etc––and this year, they’re adding two more: Kinky Docs, described as “a celebration of sex and its representation in documentary”; and “Regime Change,” timed to capitalize on the US presidential election, which will have just ended the day before Sheffield begins (assuming there’s no need for a recount). Familiar titles on the latter sidebar include Full Battle Battle, Bulletproof Salesman and the recently-acquired Front Runners. Highlights from the preview after the jump.

This Kinky Docs premiere sounds amazing:

WorldRevolution (dir. Klaus Hundsbichler) UK Premiere
WorldRevolution is the story of Stefan Weber and his cult Viennese rock band Drahdiwarbel, their rise to fame, Austrian politics and Stefan’s pet chicken.

The Green panel will showcase Sundance hit Flow: For the Love of Water, as well as Paul Devlin’s Blast!, in which the filmmaker’s brother “leads an international team of astrophysicists from the Arctic to the Antarctic to launch a revolutionary telescope on a NASA high-altitude balloon. No less than the origins of the Universe are at stake on this risky scientific adventure that seeks to answer humankind’s most basic question ‘how did we get here?’”

And on the Anti-Doc strand––dedicated to supporting “‘documentaries with bite’ that challenge the form of traditional documentary filmmaking and deliver messages through unconventional modes”––Sheffield will screen Peace With Seals. The synopsis:

The central question, “Why did the seal disappear from the Mediterranean?” is an interesting one, but helmer Miloslav Novak and scribe Ferdinand Pitrosu aren’t interested so much in answering it as they are in following around an affable Italian filmmaker named Emanuele Coppola. This indulgent and fanciful film follows the trio as they blunder from Sardinia to Turkey using seal Trojan horses and night vision cameras.