The line-up for the 2008 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL COMPETITION has been announced. Here are documentaries that should be on your radar.

Congratulations to all who were given a coveted slot on the festival slate.

Documentary Competition Contenders:

"An American Soldier," Director and Screenwriter: Edet Belzberg
Uncle Sam wants you! A compelling exploration of army recruitment in the United States told through the story of Louisiana Sergeant, First Class Clay Usie, one of the most successful recruiters in the history of the U.S. Army. World Premiere

"American Teen," Director and Screenwriter: Nanette Burstein
This irreverent cinema verite chronicles four seniors at an Indiana high school and yields a surprising snapshot of Midwestern life. World Premiere

"Bigger, Stronger, Faster*," Director: Christopher Bell, Screenwriters: Christopher Bell, Alexander Bruno, Tamsin Rawady
A filmmaker explores America's win-at-all-cost culture by examining his two brothers' steroids use...and his own. World Premiere

"Fields of Fuel," Director and Screenwriter: Josh Tickell
America is addicted to oil and it is time for an intervention. Enter Josh Tickell, a man with a plan and a Veggie Van, who is taking on big oil, big government, and big soy to find solutions in places few people have looked. World Premiere

"Flow: For Love of Water," Director: Irena Salina
Water is the very essence of life, sustaining every being on the planet. FLOW confronts the disturbing reality that our crucial resource is dwindling and greed just may be the cause. World Premiere

"Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," Director: Alex Gibney
Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance," goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity and a steel-eyed conviction for righting wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts. World Premiere

"The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," Director and Screenwriter: Lisa F. Jackson
Jackson travels to remote villages in the war zones of the Congo to meet rape survivors, providing a piercing, intimate look into the struggle of their lives. World Premiere

"I.O.U.S.A.," Director: Patrick Creadon
Few are aware that America may be on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. explores the country's shocking current fiscal condition and ways to avoid a national economic disaster. World Premiere

"Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)," Director: Ellen Kuras; Co-Director: Thavisouk Phrasavath; Screenwriters: Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Phrasavath
The epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Kuras has spent the last 23 years chronicling the family's extraordinary journey in this deeply personal, poetic, and emotional film. World Premiere

"The Order of Myths," Director: Margaret Brown
In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated...and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether. World Premiere

"Patti Smith: Dream of Life," Director: Steven Sebring
An intimate portrait of music icon Patti Smith that mirrors the essence of the artist herself. World Premiere

"Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," Director: Marina Zenovich; Screenwriters: Marina Zenovich, Joe Bini, P.G. Morgan
This film examines the public scandal and private tragedy which led to legendary director Roman Polanski's sudden flight from the United States. World Premiere

"Secrecy," Directors: Peter Galison, Robb Moss
Amidst the American hunger for instantaneous news and up-to-date "facts," this unflinching film uncovers the vast, invisible world of government secrecy. World Premiere

"Slingshot Hip Hop," Director: Jackie Reem Salloum
The voice of a new generation rocks and rhymes as Palestinian rappers form alternative voices of resistance within the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. World Premiere

"Traces of the Trade: A Story From The Deep North," Director: Katrina Browne; Co-Directors: Alla Kovgan, Jude Ray; Screenwriters: Katrina Browne, Alla Kovgan
History finally gets rewritten as descendants of the largest slave-trading family in early America face their past, and present, as they explore their violent heritage across oceans and continents. World Premiere

"Trouble the Water," Directors: Tia Lessin, Carl Deal
An aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, armed with a video camera, show what survival is all about when they are trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, and seize a chance for a new beginning. World Premiere

World Cinema Documentary Competition Contenders:

"Alone in Four Walls (Allein In Vier Wanden) / Germany, Director: Alexandra Westmeier
Adolescent boys struggle to grow up in a home for delinquents in rural Russia where life behind bars may be better than the release to freedom. North American Premiere

"The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins" / New Zealand, Director and Screenwriter: Pietra Brettkelly
Vanessa Beecroft is obsessively determined to adopt Sudanese twin orphans. Her consuming passion drives her marriage to a breaking point and fuels her controversial art, raising troubling questions about exploitation, culture clash, and the imposition of the West on Africa. World Premiere

"Be Like Others" / United Kingdom, Director: Tanaz Eshaghian
An intimate and unflinching look at life in Iran, seen through the lens of those living at its fringes, "Others" is a provocative look at a generation of young Iranian men choosing to under go sex change surgery. World Premiere

"A Complete History of My Sexual Failures" / United Kingdom, Director: Chris Waitt; Screenwriters: Chris Waitt and Henry Trotter
Chris is a useless boyfriend. Determined to find out why, he consults his ex-girlfriends, medical practitioners, producers, and mother to find out how women really see him. Has this journey made him potential boyfriend material or is he staring a life of loneliness square in the face? World Premiere

"Derek" / United Kingdom, Director: Isaac Julien
A film involving two courageous and innovative artists: one the subject and one the filmmaker, provides a cinematic journey that illuminates the work and enduring importance of the late Derek Jarman. World Premiere

"Dinner With The President" / Pakistan, Directors and Screenwriters: Sabiha Sumar and Sachithanandam Sathananthan
From on-the-street interviews to audiences with religious leaders to dinner with the President of Pakistan, the film takes the temperature of a culture on issues from politics to women's rights. U.S. Premiere

"Durakovo: the Village of Fools" (Durakovo: Le Village Des Fous) / France, Director and Screenwriter: Nino Kirtadze
Russian nationalism percolates in a castle outside Moscow, where Mikhail Morozov rules autonomously over young initiates, laying the groundwork for a rapidly growing right-wing movement. North American Premiere

"In Prison My Whole Life" / United Kingdom, Director: Marc Evans; Screenwriters: Marc Evans, William Francome
A curious young filmmaker attempts to understand the true story behind award-winning journalist Mumia Abu Jamal's death row sentence, and comes to startling realizations about American history and its justice system. With William Francome, Noam Chomksy, Alice Walker, Mos Def, Smoof, Snoop Dogg, Angela Davis. North American Premiere

"Man on Wire" / United Kingdom, Director and Screenwriter: James Marsh
In 1974, Philippe Petit, a young Frenchman, dances on a wire suspended between New York's Twin Towers. Consequently, Philippe is arrested and thrown into jail for what would become known as "the artistic crime of the century." World Premiere

"pUUJEE" / Japan, Director and Screenwriter: Kazuya Yamada
Against the backdrop of a magnificent but harsh natural landscape, a Japanese photojournalist encounters Puujee, a young girl who tames wild horses on the Mongolian plains.

"Recycle" / Jordan, Director and Screenwriter: Al Massad
A Jordanian family man living in the hometown of Muslim leader Al-Zarqawi struggles to support his family and define his identity in a tense political climate. World Premiere

"Stranded: I've Come From A Plane That Crashed on the Mountains" / France, Director and Screenwriter: Gonzalo Arijon
For the first time ever, survivors of the famous 1974 Andes plane crash tell in their own words their harrowing story of survival. North American Premiere

"Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma" / Canada, Director: Patrick Reed
Acclaimed doctor James Orbinski, former head of Doctors Without Borders, returns to Africa to confront the harsh reality of conditions there and explores what it means to be a humanitarian. North American Premiere

"Up The Yangtze" / Canada, Director and Screenwriter: Yung Chang
At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China. U.S. Premiere

"The Women of Brukman" (Les Femmes de la Baukma) / Canada, Director and Screenwriter: Isaac Isitan
Amidst Argentina's financial collapse, workers take over a Buenos Aires men's clothing factory and continue producing clothing on a self-management model. As the formerly poor become business managers, their lives are changed forever. U.S. Premiere

"Yasukuni" / Japan, Director and Screenwriter: Li Ying
Controversy abounds as Japanese officials honor the deceased at the legendary Yasukuni shrine, where swords used to kills Chinese soldiers were famously forged. Few know about the shrine's eerie past and the mysterious sword inside. Cast: Kariya Naoji, Sugawara Ryuken, Gaojin Sumei. North American Premiere

Q&A with filmmaker Ken Burns on THE WAR

THE WAR, a co-production of Florentine Films and WETA, was produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and examines the myriad ways in which the Second World War touched the lives of the American people. Recently, filmmaker Ken Burns spoke about the production.

What led you to make this film at this time? And what was your approach, as a filmmaker, to this epic conflict?

I think that the overwhelming deciding factor to create The War was the knowledge that we were losing 1,000 veterans each day in the -- this is a loss of tangible memory that I just couldn't countenance as a historical filmmaker. I also fear that we as a nation are losing our historical compass. Many Americans are not demonstrating a grasp of the nation's history and that was a motivating factor as well.

The Second World War has often been smothered over in bloodless gallant death as the "Good War," but of course it was in reality the worst war. Sixty million human beings lost their lives violently and it was very important to us, in making this film, to try to bear witness to what actually happened. Literally, the question that we asked was: "how did this happen and what was it like?" Our attempt was to give an overall sense of what happened in the war but to do so intimately from a bottom-up, human perspective. This is not an encyclopedic view of the Second World War, as the caveat at the beginning of each episode makes clear.

You and your colleagues have filmed all around the nation, interviewed hundreds of people and sifted through miles of archival film footage. What did it take to put this project together?

About six years. We say that the Second World War is the greatest cataclysm in human history in the first sentence of our formal introduction -- and it is. But we have limited this to just the perspective of individuals most of whom come from four geographically distributed American towns -- and in so doing we still ended up with an archival retrieval effort beyond anything that we've ever done before. We have drawn on material, both still and moving, from around the world. We have looked at hundreds if not thousand of hours of newsreel footage and used 5,000 segments in the film. We have scoured hundreds of archives and looked at countless documents and tens of thousands of photographs. We have chosen a handful of people to help tell our story; and we delved into the personal archives of those people and of the towns they are from and merged their stories with the more familiar public archive to create this intimate portrait of the experience of battle. What has taken so long is the digestion of that material.

You focus in the film on individuals from four American communities -- Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and the small town of Luverne, Minnesota for the film. Why?

They are sort of haphazardly chosen but with some method to our madness. There is a northeast town, there is a southern town, there is a western town and there is a Midwestern town. We chose Waterbury, Connecticut, a wonderful town known as "Brass City" since the 19^th century. A great manufacturing town, they made cocktail shakers, lipstick holders and alarm clocks and suddenly rearranged their molecules and just dedicated everything -- 24/7, 365 days a year -- to the war. There is a marvelous group of people in town that we meet.

We then read a memoir by a man named Eugene Sledge from Mobile, Alabama, that we loved and when we arrived in Mobile, he had just passed away. His family introduced us to his friends and we cast our net wider. We were able to engage the services of a great actor, Josh Lucas, to read Eugene Sledge's memoir and bring his story to life. Mobile became our southern city and there we found Sid Phillips and Katherine Phillips, who are featured prominently in the film.

We chose Sacramento, California which, like Waterbury and Mobile, was transformed overnight into a "war town" -- ending up with three military bases ringing the outskirts of town. There were compelling stories of people in Sacramento going off to war.

Then we needed a small town and had met a pilot that lived outside of Washington, D.C. whose story was amazing and he said he was from Luverne, Minnesota. We went there and in our first cursory look into the archive of the town found that the newspaper editor, Al McIntosh -- who had passed away as well in the '70s -- through his writing was one of the greatest historical gifts that we had ever come across. We got Tom Hanks to read his magnificent writings and bring the intimate warp and the weft of small town life to the story.

We understood that we couldn't be all things to all people. There were just so many stories, so many battles, so many campaigns, so many constituencies that could not be included, but were representative enough that we get a sense of the totality of human experience that goes into a war. The poet William Blake said that you could find the universe in a grain of sand. So we essentially were looking for an American universe in four small towns.

Many of the personal testimonies are compelling and, in fact, riveting. Was it difficult for veterans to speak about their experiences on film?

It's interesting -- many of the men who fought in World War II were 18, 19, 20 years old. They were asked to be professional killers. They saw horrible, horrible things. And when the war was over, it was as if society had said, "Okay, get on with the rest of your life." And most locked away their secrets. You can understand, but you can also honor, respect, and forgive the reticence of that generation. We were very privileged to be ushered into the lives of these people -- many of whom shared painful stories -- sometimes for the very first time. We just attempted to honor what they were saying.

Your films have often featured scholars interpreting historical events, but you chose not to in The War. Why?

There are some people who are considered scholars in our film but we haven't asked them any scholarly questions. Probably the most famous person in the film, for example, with the exception of Senator Daniel Inouye, is Paul Fussell, who has written extensively about war and was himself a soldier. We asked these participants in the film the same questions that we asked other veterans. Essentially, if you weren't in this war, or you weren't waiting for someone to come home from this war, you are not in our film. We wanted the experience of the Second World War unmediated by experts. We wanted it pure and undiluted to the extent that we could. Everybody here is personally invested.

At the beginning of your production The Civil War, you lead off with an Oliver Wendell Holmes quote about the "incommunicable experience of war." What were some of the greatest challenges of producing a film on this subject and about a conflict of this magnitude in the American consciousness?

We wanted to shed a lot of the unnecessary baggage that has clung to World War II studies and just asked the essential experiential question "What was it like?". Speaking of the Holmes quote in The Civil War, soldiers in that war said that once they had been in combat, they had "seen the elephant." I love that phrase. The thing that soldiers knew was that there was something profoundly life altering about being in a situation where your life is threatened -- everything is heightened. We knew this was true of all wars. And in making a film about the Second World War, we wanted to try to approximate what that was like.

One of the reasons I held off so long in working on a film about the Second World War is that I found working on the Civil War project so emotionally draining. We were dealing with still photographs that were removed from the actual experience of battle, which we tried to will to life with a complicated sound effects track and first- person commentary along with our narration and music. I knew when we were going into The War that we weren't going to be dealing with our great great grandfathers anymore. We were going to be dealing with our fathers -- and to have them alive and to narrate these stories and to have footage of the thing they are talking about would be very powerful. Of all the thousands and thousands of photographs of the Civil War, not one is of actual combat. And I can tell you that many of the photographs and a good deal of the footage in The War are not only of combat, but almost precisely of what people are describing and where they are describing it. We are approaching a kind of cinematic verisimilitude in moments that really is hypnotic -- and it pulls you in. That relates to the statement by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we still feel the passion of life at its top." At that moment when your life is most threatened, life is vivified -- and we were looking for the expression of that throughout the film.

What was the greatest revelation to you as a filmmaker and interpreter of history as you made this film?

You know, I think, it is not any one thing. It is the accumulated impressions that accrue imperceptibly like layers on a pearl over the course of many, many years that we work on a project. Sometimes it's a fact; sometimes its just essential humanity of somebody we've talked about; sometimes it's a transcendent power of a still photograph; sometimes it the immediacy of a piece of footage; sometimes it's the combination of a little bit of music with those images where suddenly one plus one don't equal two any more, but equal three. This is what you live for as a filmmaker. This is why I pinch myself everyday and think I am so lucky to have this job. Every day was a revelation, and in this film, every day was difficult, because we were dealing with human beings' ultimate sacrifice. I say "we" because this film represents the dedication of so many talented people -- editors, cinematographers, and writers, as well as producers -- who really worked day and night to give the best they could.

When people experience the film, what do you hope they will come away with?

I want them to come away with their own experience. We don't have a political ax to grind, we don't want to advocate anything -- except on behalf of the heroism of the soldiers who fought in that war. I am very excited about sharing the film with the country. Every time we have held screenings, the reaction is the same. They all say, because of the power of the experience conveyed, "This is terrible and wonderful at the same time." I want viewers to come away with a sense of what the war was like. If they say, in describing the experience conveyed and of the film itself that it was "terrible and wonderful," then I think we will have succeeded.

What's your next project after The War?

We are about a quarter of the way through editing a big series slated for 2009 -- a six-part, 12-hour film on the National Parks. Not a travelogue, not an inventory of the lodges you should stay at or even a nature or wildlife film, although it will have beautiful images and nature and wildlife in it. Instead, it is the story of what American historian and novelist Wallace Stegner said was "America's best idea" -- the notion that for the first time in human history land would be set aside not for the privileged but for everybody, for all time. We pursue the historical story of how these parks came into being by tracing the ideas and, most important, the individuals behind their creation, examining the changing idea of national parks over the nearly 150 years since we invented them.

Darryl Hunt was exonerated in court on February 6, 2004. On April 15, 2004, at the request of Hunt's attorneys and also the Forsyth County District Attorney, Darryl Hunt was granted a formal pardon of innocence by the Governor. That pardon entitles Hunt for financial compensation -- $20,000 a year for each of his 18 years behind bars or $360,000 in total. 21 states, the federal government and the District of Columbia have passed laws to compensate people who have been exonerated. 29 states have no exoneree compensation law.