There’s a treat in store for documentary lovers with the launch of the Bermuda Documentary Film Festival next week.On offer? Ten documentaries including five award-winning films from the Sundance Film Festival, an Oscar-nominated film, and a film tipped as an Oscar contender for 2012. Below is a look at the line-up.The Black Power Mix Tape 1967 to 1975 (Rated R) Sunday, October 23 at 3pmThis is a Swedish film that documents the black power movement in the United States more than three decades ago. From 1967 to 1975, Swedish journalists travelled to the United States to document the black power movement. Now, director Göran Hugo Olsson has compiled their work into a powerful documentary that chronicles the movement’s strength and evolution with never before seen footage of leaders such as Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Huey P Newton, Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver. Woven into the film are insightful commentaries from modern-day artists and activists, Harry Belafonte, Sonia Sanchez, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, John Forte and Robin D G Kelley, telling stories of how the heroes of the black power movement inspired and touched their lives. Features a stunning soundtrack by The Roots, Michael Jackson and Erykah Badu. The film won an editing award in the world cinema documentary category in the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. It is in Swedish with English subtitles.Gasland (rated PG) Saturday, October 22 at 2pm‘Gasland’ is an award-winning documentary about a new drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” done by Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation. When filmmaker Josh Fox was approached by a gas company which wanted to lease his rural acreage in Pennsylvania in order to drill for natural gas, he set off on a countrywide voyage of discovery to find out about fracking.Mr Fox discovered that he wasn’t alone in being approached about granting a land lease. The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history swept across the United States because “fracking” unlocked what has been described as a “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” beneath the earth’s surface.Fracking is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. Horizontal hydro-fracking is a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling.Vertical hydro-fracking is used to extend the life of an existing well once its productivity starts to run out, sort of a last resort. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack. The water then becomes contaminated and must be cleaned and disposed of.In 2005, the George Bush/Dick Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act creating what became known as the “Halliburton loophole”. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during fracking. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job.‘Gasland’ won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award.The Interrupters (rated A) Friday, October 21 at 8pm.‘The Interrupters’ is an American film that should resonate deeply in the Bermuda community. This film is an intimate study of one year in the life of three ‘violence interrupters’ involved in a Chicago violence prevention programme called CeaseFire, as they try to protect their communities from the violence they once employed. CeaseFire has been considered by the Bermuda Government as a way of addressing gang violence on the Island.It was made by Academy Award-winning director Steve James who also made ‘Hoop Dreams’ in 1994. he collaborated on the project with Alex Kotlowitz, author of ‘There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in America’. After the film’s world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the film was quickly tipped as an early contender for the 2012 documentary Oscar. “We hope ‘The Interrupters’ challenges viewers on their assumptions about these communities, and encourages them to care,” said Mr James. “And maybe even to act.” He described making ‘The Interrupters’ as “a gift”.“I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to understand people and communities other than the ones I’ve lived in,” he said.“The best film experiences are akin to living inside a rich and surprising novel. Your own personal life and day-to-day worries tend to recede and pale in comparison as you bear witness to the lives and often profound struggles of others.”Warning: this is not a film for children. There are scenes of violence and lots of bad language. Violence interrupter Cobe Williams and the film’s co-producer, Zak Piper, will attend the film and take part in a question-and-answer session afterwards.Project Nim (rated PG13) Sunday, October 23 at 5pm.This is the latest film project by director James Marsh, whose ‘Man on Wire’ won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2008. ‘Project Nim’ won Mr Marsh the directing award at this year’s Sundance Film festival. The film profiles a baby chimpanzee, Nim, who was born in a cage at a primate research centre in Oklahoma. A few days later, his mother was hit with a tranquillizer dart. Her screaming baby was seized from her and placed into the waiting arms of his new human ‘mother’, a graduate student of psychology with three children of her own.Thus begins ‘Project Nim’, arguably the most radical experiment of its kind. It aimed to show that a chimpanzee could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Under the auspices of a psychology professor at Columbia University, the chimp would be taught the sign language of the deaf and it was hoped he would soon acquire enough words and grammar to tell us what he was thinking and feeling. If successful, the consequences would be profound, forever breaking down the barrier between man and his closest animal relative and fundamentally redefining what it is to be human.The paradox and heartbreak for the humans around Nim is that he can scratch and bite people whom he seems genuinely to like. The heartbreak for Nim is that he cannot be any other way and, as he gets stronger, this will guarantee his virtual imprisonment. As the research veterinarian, James Mahoney, later observes in the film: “Once you put them in a cage, it’s all downhill from then on …”Buck (rated PG) Friday, October 21 at 6pm.This warm and sweet-natured film won the Audience Choice award for American documentaries at Sundance this year. It tells the story of real-life American cowboy, Buck Brannaman, who was the model for Robert Redford’s character in ‘The Horse Whisperer’. Mr Brannaman teaches people how to communicate with horses through leadership and sensitivity, and not punishment. This crowd-pleasing film has won multiple awards on the film festival circuit, and is now in theatrical release. Filmmaker Cindy Meehl decided to make the film after meeting Mr Brannaman at one of his clinics eight years ago.“He made a profound impression on me,” said Ms Meehl. “Coming from a different discipline entirely, I didn’t think there was much I could learn from a cowboy. I was astounded to realise that no one had ever taught me as much about a horse as he did in those four days. However, there was also something even more compelling about him that was hard to explain. While his techniques are spectacular, it’s the life lessons he slips into his teachings that really seep into your soul.”Ms Meehl said one of Mr Brannaman’s big lessons is ‘if it’s not working, change it’. She said one of the challenges of making this film was making a film about a very specific subject that would be accessible to a wide audience. She credited producer Julie Goldman and co-executive producer and creative consultant, Andrea Meditch, with making her vision a reality. “They were very brave to go the distance with me knowing I had not made a film before,” Ms Meehl said. “The dedicated team that Julie and our line producer, Alice Henty, brought together was amazing. What I have found most surprising about my film ‘Buck’ is how it appears to affect people in so many different ways.”Rejoice and Shout (rated PG) Saturday, October 22 at 4.30pm.‘Rejoice and Shout’, honours and celebrates the history of gospel music. It features performances by a who’s who of gospel music, including Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Wards, James Cleveland, the Staple Singers and the Blind Boys of Alabama.One of the last great elder statesmen of gospel, The Dixie Hummingbirds’ Ira Tucker appears alongside his son, Ira Jr, and Willa Ward, of The Ward Singers and Marie Knight, another performer from the classic era. Together they offer the kind of perspective only those who lived through this history can provide.Offering a more contemporary perspective are rhythm and blues greats Smokey Robinson and Mavis Staples. Though known to secular audiences in the 1970s for R&B, Miss Staples, since her childhood, was, alongside her siblings and father part of The Staple Singers, well-known for their gospel music long before their days in the pop world. “I believe that if I ask the Lord for something, it is coming,” said Miss Staples in the film. “It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow. But when it comes, it’s gonna be right on time.” The film goes all the way back to the beginning of gospel music, back to the days when plantation-bound black slaves were introduced to European Christianity during the 1800s.Tabloid (rated R) Saturday, October 22 at 7pm.A funny film about the bizarre relationship between a former beauty queen and a Mormon missionary. The film is directed by Errol Morris, who also made ‘The Thin Blue Line’ and the Academy Award-winning film ‘The Fog of War’. Mr Morris examines the lies and constructions we tell about others and the various ways we delude ourselves. With his ninth feature-length film ‘Tabloid’, he once again sends audiences into a vortex of self-delusion and human frailty with a protagonist whose story shocks, titillates and mystifies us all at once. The film tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen with a 168 IQ who follows a Mormon missionary to England, and, according to the English tabloids of the time, kidnapped him and made him her ‘love slave’. The story became known as ‘The Case of the Manacled Mormon’. The producers tracked down Ms McKinney, who was eager to have her story told. After following the trail of the story through the years, the team realised they had assembled a motley crew of subjects who were equally willing to talk.“The subjects just started to perform,” producer Julie Bilson Ahlberg said. “They were fully there for us, totally engaged. Mr Morris simply lets people tell their story, so in a way this film played out like a performance piece. But Mr Morris also makes films like sculptures, he’s probably the most organic filmmaker working. He genuinely allows the thing to reveal itself.”For research, Mr Morris and For research Mr Morris and company combed through old newspapers, in particular the British tabloids that devoured Miss McKinney’s story in late 1977.“If we were stuck in the age of microfiche, we’d have been dead in the water with ‘Tabloid’,” co-producer Mark Lipson said. “But we’d found this fabulous archive in the United Kingdom. You slap down £40 and a nice package arrives a few weeks later with a bunch of beautiful tabloid newspapers in it. That’s when we really got going. ‘Tabloid’ really was the story that just kept giving.”You’ve Been Trumped (rated PG) Sunday, October 23 at 7pm.A David and Goliath story for the 21st century about a group of proud Scottish homeowners who take on celebrity tycoon, Donald Trump, when he tries to build a luxury home, hotel and golf course development on pristine coastal wilderness. At stake is one of Britain’s very last stretches of wilderness.The flamboyant billionaire just needs to buy out a few more locals to make his dream of a luxury home, hotel and golf course development come true. The proposal should be preposterous, this is a protected conservation area. But, after the Scottish government, desperate to bring jobs to the region, overturns its own environmental laws to give Mr Trump the green light, the stage is set for an extraordinary summer of discontent as the bulldozers spring into action. Funny, inspiring and heartbreaking in turns, the film is both an entertaining can’t-believe-it’s-true tale and an environmental parable for our celebrity driven times.Fire in Babylon (rated PG) Sunday, October 23 at 9pm.‘Fire in Babylon’ has been called a riveting and breathtaking account of the glory days of West Indian cricket. Directed by Steven Riley, it is the story of how the West Indies side of the 1970s and 1980s emerged to dominate cricket at the highest level. Fast and fierce bowling by stars such as Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner, combined with batting from such as captain Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge and the incomparable Viv Richards, made the team both feared and loved as their undisputed skill and fearless spirit elevated the entire Caribbean region.Packed with archival footage, interviews with the charismatic members of the team, and a superb reggae soundtrack by the likes of Bob Marley, Gregory Isaacs and Burning Spear, ‘Fire in Babylon’ is a joyous and uplifting account of one of the most gifted teams in sporting history.Senna (PG13) Saturday, October 22 at 9pm‘Senna’, directed by Asif Kapadia, is the remarkable story of the monumental life, and tragic death, of legendary world champion Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, widely regarded as the most talented driver of all time.Spanning the decade from his arrival in Formula One in 1984, the film follows his struggles on and off the track with his nemesis, French world champion, Alain Prost, and the politics that infest the sport. Sublime, spiritual, charismatic, and ruthless on the track, Mr Senna conquers the Formula One circuit to become a global superstar. The film makes full use of astounding footage, much of which is drawn from Formula One archives and is previously unseen.Made with the full cooperation of Mr Senna’s family and the Ayrton Senna Institute, the charitable foundation established after his death that provides educational opportunities for millions of deprived Brazilian children, ‘Senna’ is one of the highest-grossing British documentaries of all time.The film begins with Mr Senna’s arrival into Formula One during the 1984 season, briefly covering his time at Toleman and Lotus before concentrating on his career at McLaren. Following a brief overview of the seasons that followed and the technological domination of the Williams cars, the documentary reaches its finale as Mr Senna moves to the Grove-based team in 1994, before covering the events of that year’s San Marino Grand Prix, where Mr Senna lost his life.The festival will take place in the TradeWinds Auditorium of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. Tickets, $15, are on sale at www.bdatix.bm, All Wrapped Up-Washington Mall, Fabulous Fashions-Heron Bay Plaza, or by telephone, 232-2255.