Ramona Diaz's 'Don't Stop Believin'' to Open Silverdocs Film Festival

Ramona Diaz’s Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, a documentary about Filipino singer Arnel Pineda, who got his start as the frontman for a Manila cover band performing songs by Journey, will serve as the opening night film at the AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival, which runs from June 18-24 at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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Celebrating its tenth edition, the fest will present 114 films, selected from 2,018 submissions, representing 44 countries with seven world, three North American, seven U.S. and eleven East Coast premieres, plus seven retrospective films and an outdoor screening.

The festival also will host a  five-day Documentary Conference, focusing on the art and business of documentary storytelling.

“This year, fittingly for a festival that has united art and insight for a decade, there are a substantial number of films focusing on the creative process,” festival director Sky Sitney said.

Filmmakers whose work will screen at the festival include Yung Chang (China Heavyweight); Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Detropia); Eugene Jarecki (The House I Live In); and Ross McElwee (Photographic Memory).

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, creators of the Paradise Lost trilogy of films, will be honored at the festival’s Charles Guggenheim Symposium for their collective and individual contributions to the documentary genre. Among those taking part will be recently freed West Memphis Three member Jason Baldwin. 

The festival’s centerpiece screening will be David France’s How to Survive a Plague, about how AIDS activist organizations ACT Up and the Treatment Action Group joined forces to fight the disease.

Emmett Malloy’s Big Easy Express, about three bands travelling from California to New Orleans, will be shown as the closing night film.