A review of 'Creative Filmmaking from the Inside Out: Five Keys to the Art of Making Inspired Movies and Television,' by Jed Dannenbaum, Carroll Hodge and Doe Mayer.
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International travel just as war is breaking out is never a good idea. The day before I was to leave for Cannes I found myself at the IDA's reception for the Oscar nominees. I found out the war was about to break out from Michael Moore, who had arrived late because he had been listening to President Bush declare war. Not that this was any surprise. About 10 days before, almost all the American broadcasters canceled their trips to Cannes for the 2003 MIPDOC (March 22 and 23) and MIP-TV (March 24 -28) markets. Polite emails were sent out to all the distributors from Discovery Channel, TLC
In 1999, I called up R.J. Cutler, and I puzzled when he answered the phone, saying, "Actual Reality," which is what he'd christened his production company. In reality, the company amounted to Cutler's rented Hollywood house and a handful of agreements with Fox Television. But that would change quickly. Cutler was already a well known documentary maker, one of the major forces behind the Oscar-nominated The War Room (1993), and director/producer of A Perfect Candidate (1997) . He'd gotten into television through MSNBC, creating and producing Edgewise, a weekly documentary program. But the Fox
Nothing epitomizes the challenges confronting a documentary at Cannes more than the contrast of festival screenings with the live-action distractions of the Croissette, the famed beachside promenade. Just around the corner from the theater where Argentinean director Rodrigo Vazquez's dense, political doc, Condor: The Axis of Evil, was screening, stood Arnold Schwarzenegger, hawking his mega-budget spectacular, Terminator 3. Amid such hype, along with the overwhelming attention given to narrative films and the nightly star turns on the red carpet, the 56th Cannes Film Festival would seem to be
Whether you think that INPUT is a festival for innovative television programs, a workshop for creative television programmers or an extended therapy session for People Who Care Too Much about Public TV probably depends on what you do. Or possibly on the day of the week during this annual, week-long, extraordinary event. Every year, for the last 26 years, people who treasure the notion that public television can serve the public in its widest sense gather in a different city to test the limits of that idea. Programmers, producers and administrators sit down together to, as the current
In 1998, when production began on Bonhoeffer ( www.Bonhoeffer.com), I felt confident that we had an intriguing historical documentary. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a young German theologian who challenged his state church to stand with the Jews in their time of need, and eventually moved from pacifist to participant in the plots to kill Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer wrote prolifically from a moral and religious perspective throughout the rise of National Socialism and his own resistance to it. Over the last decades many of his books— Cost of Discipleship, Life Together and Letters and Papers from Prison
Mark Moskowitz was in one of the last remaining independent bookstores in a mall, when he first came across International Documentary. He flipped through, not knowing much about the documentary world, and as he read about the festivals, grants and money available to filmmakers, he thought, "Well, I can do that." And he did. He is the writer, producer, director and now distributor of Stone Reader, a film about books, reading and the impact that an out-of-print novel, The Stones of Summer, had on him. It inspired a journey across the country to find out everything about the book, its creation
Los Angeles has never been much of a hockey town, so the convergence of the LA Kings’ Stanley Cup Championship match with the third day of the 20th Los Angeles Film Festival brought an unexpected flood to Downtown LA. My attempt to navigate from IDA’s offices in Koreatown on Friday the 13th to the Regal Cinemas at LA Live was fraught with traffic jams and last-minute parking changeups. So, I missed the 4:45 p.m. screening of The Great Museum, opting instead for the easier option: throwing up my hands in defeat and heading home. My colleague Thomas White was wiser than I in forgoing the Fest
'Getting Back to Abnormal' airs July 14 on 'POV.'
From June 23-26, Sunny Side of the Doc, France's international documentary marketplace nestled in the charming historic seaport on the Bay of Biscay called La Rochelle, festively celebrated 25 years since its 1989 Marseille launch. La Rochelle, France, the site of the 2014 Sunny Side of the Doc. Courtesy of Sunny Side of the Doc Over 2,000 professionals from 58 countries in Europe, Asia, South, Latin and North America, Australia and Africa attended, including 244 commissioning editors and buyers, and 468 companies exhibiting. A substantial Chinese delegation with daunting financial resources