Erica here for the next installment in Docs In Progress coverage of the Silverdocs Film Festival.  Matthew already provided his perspective on the Documentary Conference and I have few thoughts to add since my work schedule made it difficult for me to attend much of the Conference. The one piece of the Conference I did attend was The Good Pitch which was its second year at Silverdocs. Having seen Docs In Progress alums Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer's project Out in the Silence flourish partially as a result of participating in last year's Good Pitch, I wanted to see how a new batch of documentary works in progress are likely to make a difference.

We are less than a month away from Silverdocs (or more properly AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival) when the documentary world converges on downtown Silver Spring. It€™s still one of our favorite documentary festivals and it€™s not just because it is only a stone€™s throw away from Docs In Progress. / Israel/Palestinian Territories/USA, 2009, 81 minutes (Director: Julia Bacha)-This rousing film about one Palestinian village and its unlikely hero-humble family man turned activist Ayed Morrar-reveals the power of ordinary people to peaceably fight for extraordinary change.

In this instant-gratification-60-character-status-update age, it may seem a little odd to be writing up my reflections on a film festival which ended three weeks ago.  But it has taken me that long to collect my thoughts and impressions of the 2009 SilverDocs Documentary Film Festival.  And, although I have attended the festival every year since it began in  2003, this year was a bit different.  For it was the first year where I would be attending as someone with a foot fully in the documentary world, not as a sideline project.   It might seem like attending this year as the full-time Executive Director of Docs In Progress would create a different set of expectations for me.  But in reality, I had few expectations.  Mostly because I had so little time to create them.