I am not a filmmaker. I don't even play one on TV. Last year, however, I did write direct and edit a three-minute film as part of a project called Funtown. Even better, I managed to talk ten friends into making films too. No restrictions on style or format. No budget. And a two-week time limit. We put the eclectic results on an enhanced CD with some music and released the package through a local record label. An amusing little experiment. At the end of March, I received an email letting me know Funtown would be shown as part of the Primer Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre (aka The first
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In the journey from idea to premiere screening or airing, a lot happens to both the filmmaker and the film. Regardless of the combination of talent, money, time or quality/importance of the documentary, some filmmakers weather the trek with grace, while some question its very worth. Others simply give up. As a story consultant, I am fascinated with this phenomenon. And it all comes down to a deceptively simple question: "Why do you want to make this documentary?" It may stem from a personal fascination for a subject; it may be out of a need to share an issue of urgency. Your answer may help
American Splendor, a feature film written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, is based on the award-winning autobiographical comic book of the same name by writer Harvey Pekar who, until his retirement in 2001, was a full-time file clerk at the Cleveland VA Hospital. Pekar's comic book, first published in 1976, was illustrated by many different artists, notably R. Crumb, and dealt with everyday scenes from Pekar's life. "Ordinary life," comments Pekar, "is pretty complex stuff." Producer Ted Hope, a big fan of Pekar's comic book, proposed a film to Berman and Pulcini, who
My brother Roko and I grew up on late-night dinner conversations with interesting guests, and summer trips to Eastern Europe to see family. But it was the television documentaries on PBS that allowed me to travel to the far-off corners of the world and had me home for school the next morning. Most of the documentaries I watched as a child told stories of adults and their usually formal perspective on the world. But one evening during my high-school years, all that changed. I watched the first segment of Ring of Fire, a four-part BBC series on PBS about a ten-year odyssey through the mostly
Documentary shorts (40 minutes or less) represent a gem of a genre, yet it is so difficult for them to find their place in the world of American theatrical distribution. Here's the conundrum: documentary shorts are popular with festivals and festival-goers alike, but for these films to travel from the friendly environment of a festival into theaters is, to say the least, a challenging endeavor. "Shorts are some of the best filmmaking," says Nancy Buirski, executive director of the Full Frame Film Festival in North Carolina ( www.fullframe.org). She explains that people tend to take more risks
Things are not always as they appear. And for documentary filmmakers, understanding the appetites and working styles of potential filmmaking partners is essential. Among the most storied and respected of all of the documentary strands on US television, American Masters has carved a niche and created a genre of films for both American and world television audiences. The series is the creation of Susan Lacy, who has served as its executive producer since its summer 1986 premiere on PBS. When Lacy tells me how her idea was received back in 1984, it comes as a bit of a shock: "If this was such a
In March 2003, as we began screening documentaries by filmmakers from rural Kentucky to audiences in southwest China, American missiles began raining down on Baghdad; Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as part of the most extensive leadership change in China since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976; and whispers about the burgeoning SARS epidemic started to circulate. It was a sobering reminder of the vast realities of the modest inquiry that had brought ten of us––nine from AppalShop, a media collective in Appalachia, and myself, a film curator from New York––into contact with our counterparts in
DVD sales are setting records above and beyond any set by VHS sales or even rentals. How does this phenomenon affect documentary film? As of yet, it's unclear if it has. According to the Video Business 2003 Mid-Year Report, only one nonfiction title made the Top 25 for highest sales— Jackass the Movie (yes, it is nonfiction). At press time Bowling for Columbine is about to be released and is sure to shake up the DVD sales charts. In the meantime International Documentary interviewed several prominent DVD distributors about the art and business of marketing documentaries in an age when docs
Today it seems hard to believe that it was less than ten years ago that Sony and Phillips launched a video version of their hugely successful Compact Disc (CD) digital audio format. The new heir apparent was originally known as the Digital Video Disc, and now Digital Versatile Disc, or DVD. It was designed along the lines of a compact disc, with an increased capacity allowing bfor the transfer and storage of an entire feature film in high-quality digital video. Today DVD appears to rule the feature motion picture delivery universe. For the consumer, DVD provides a viewing experience with
The year was 1978. The music was disco, the carpets were shag. Lycra was in fashion. Sony's Betamax technology was battling it out with an upstart videotape format called VHS. And Jonathan Miller and Ilan Ziv, two college friends from New York University, launched a modest film distribution enterprise called Icarus Films. "I can't for the life of me think we knew what we were doing," says Miller today. "What we thought we were doing was getting interesting films that weren't being shown in the US and getting them out to people, finding audiences for them. We didn't have bigger plans or goals