I was just in New York and caught the first night of MoMA's week-long presentation of Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki's Foreign Parts. It's a wonderful piece about the inhabitants of Willet's Point, a junkyard-filled industrial zone slated for demolition under New York's eminent domain rules.
I appreciated both the supreme craft - meticulously framed, confidently held shots and complex, subtle editing - and the humanity of this film. The filmmakers clearly developed strong relationships with their subjects ("many Corona beers," was J.P.'s answer to one audience member's question about this), and refrained from either sentimentality or judgement. The result is a film which truly puts us there, in the wet, muddy shoes of these folks who scrabble a creative existence from a pile of auto parts.
Congratulations Véréna and J.P.!