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Earlier this year Discovery Channel announced a self-proclaimed "historic" venture-"Discovery Docs," the first theatrical film series produced by a cable TV network. Co-produced with CameraPlanet, Discovery Docs will release from two to four titles a year to theaters, followed by a Discovery Channel airdate. Discovery says the first film in the series is slated to debut in early 2004, although until the ink dries on everyone's contracts, neither the filmmaker nor the topic will be announced. Discovery might have started a sensation, or at least furthered a growing trend. Since the announcement

The Independent Film Project (IFP) Market, held in New York City in September, has reinvented itself. Gone are the circus-like antics to recruit viewers into screenings. Absent is the excess of projects diluting the overall quality. Today's IFP Market has changed: it's streamlined, more focused. And it's a better place than ever to bring your documentary, at whatever stage you are in. Veteran market buyer Stephen Kral of Seventh Art Releasing notes the changes this way: "For years the market has been a good place to bring your doc; now it's an excellent place. Docs are getting better all the

A battle is brewing between victims and filmmakers over the use of crime stories for documentary films and reality television. Victims/survivors are outraged when they find that their victimizations have been exploited for commercial gain without their knowledge or participation. Some express distress over what they consider to be sordid re-enactments of the death or retrieval of the body. More importantly, they do not want the precious memories of their loved ones denigrated by victim-blaming or an emphasis on salacious aspects of the victimization. Some victims/survivors at the center of

Returning from the 82nd Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, New Mexico, in August 2002, with nine hours of DV-cam footage shot on my Sony PD150, I had the intent to return in August 2003 to complete a documentary of this oldest American Indian arts event in the world. With Indian dancing and rodeo held in an arena surrounded by the spectacular red sandstone cliffs of Red Rock State Park, and Indian artists selling their art in the main building and surrounding courtyard, Ceremonial––ls it is referred to by Indians and art collectors alike--is a visual extravaganza for those

A review of Michael Donaldson's 'Clearance & Copyright: Everything the Independent Filmmaker Needs to Know,' 2nd Edition

Author, educator and filmmaker Michael Rabiger sees a bright future for the documentary. "There has never been a better time to become a documentarian," he says. "I think there's an important shakeout coming in the way films will be made and shown. Once the Internet becomes capable of delivering films at decent quality, it will function as a huge library. There are so many stories, so many cultures that have not been touched yet by serious and accomplished filmmaking." Rabiger should know. He has been educating documentary filmmakers for more than three decades. Rabiger will receive the 2003

Editor's Note: This is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared in the March-April 2003 issue of Editors Guild Magazine . For the complete version, click here. The task of the documentary editor is not simply to tell a story, but more often to find that story, embedded in a enormous mass of material that initially seems to have no structure at all. Larry Silk, Tom Haneke, Jonathan Oppenheim and Bob Eisenhardt are among the most highly respected editors of long-form documentaries in America. Working out of New York, they've spent their lives informing audiences as much as

A review of 'Cine-Ethnography: Jean Rouch'

By Carina Rubin Asked to write a zeitgeist piece on documentary filmmaking in South Africa, I readily agreed. I am a South African citizen, born in Jamaica of Finnish parents. I worked in film in the United Kingdom for a year, then in the USA for 12 and finally returned home to Cape Town, where I started a production company, Åland Pictures. I had to travel the world to discover that everything I needed is in my own back yard. Together with South African directors Craig and Damon Foster I make documentary features and have a number of large-format films in development that all reflect a

Eccentric, heroic, tragic and charismatic characters are at the heart of some of the 57th San Francisco International Film Festival's most memorable documentaries. Winner of the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature was The Overnighters, about a compassionate Lutheran minister who provides shelter for impoverished job seekers in Williston, a small North Dakota community that has become a boomtown for fracking. Rents have skyrocketed, and many of the migrants, even those who find work, can't afford to live there. Director Jesse Moss spent two years in Williston, filming without a crew and