"The idea was simple and big. Capturing drama in real life could allow viewers to experience other worlds with their own senses. Carrying out that idea is taking more than a lifetime." This reflection from documentary pioneer Robert Drew kicks off a 48-page booklet that accompanies the release of a 10-DVD boxed set of the work of his filmmaking conglomerate, Drew Associates, from 1960 to 2008. The collection, Robert Drew: Ten Masterworks of American Cinema Vérité, is of excellent quality, having been digitally mastered from the original films preserved at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts
Latest Posts
Who owns the images of our world? Where do ideas end and images begin? How can we both defend the freedoms and rights of filmmakers and encourage the fostering of the evolution of film? This may seem like too "heady" a thought for those of us in the trenches, trying to slog out a living in the world of indie film. But if we don't care, who will? Let's make the philosophical practical for a second. I made a film about New York after 9/11 called 7 Days in September. I wanted to create a work that would be enduring. Now the film is about to be released on DVD, and I'm trying to think about how I
Film History, An International Journal Volume 16, Number 1, 2004 Editor-in-Chief: Richard Kozarski Indiana University Press and John Libbey Publishing Single copies: $17.95 ISBN 0-253-11710-0 An exemplary journal of motion picture scholarship, the current issue of Film History is dedicated to early British cinema and is edited by Stephen Bottomore. One essay in this issue, "Panoramas, Parades and the Picturesque: The Aesthetics of British Actuality Films, 1895-1901" by Gerry Turvey, is of particular interest to students of documentary film. Many students of documentary will be familiar with
Filmmakers Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright talk about the slow process of building trust with the Ugandan LGBT community.
Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who is usually working on a handful of documentary projects at any given moment, doesn’t have much time to respond to questions. But seeing how the IDA just honored him with the Career Achievement Award at the 29th annual IDA Documentary Awards, he spared us a few minutes of his time to email back some short quips. Luckily, since Gibney has been in the field for so long, we can also draw from a wealth of other articles about and by the man himself. We invite you to read a few words, both new and from the archives, from this year’s IDA Career Achievement Award honoree
Joan Churchill Honored for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking
A baby upstart festival dedicated to including every possible type of documentary when CPH:DOX sprang up in 2003, the annual festival in Denmark is now so sure of itself that this year it had an overall theme: the role of the artist, the documentarian-journalist, even the viewer, in reacting to political and economic realities. Perhaps some added oomph came from the fact that last year's CPH: DOX winner for best film, the genre-exploding The Act of Killing, is currently on many end-of-the year critics and documentary awards lists. And festival director Tine Fischer hasn't changed a whit in her
Peter Wintonick, who passed away from cancer a week before the International Documentary Festival at Amsterdam (IDFA) began this year, was ever-present at the festival. The larger-than-life filmmaker, programmer and all-around doc booster, who had become a festival fixture, was celebrated at daily afternoon gatherings and at the opening of the Forum (the granddaddy of pitching events), and was remembered in many conversations. Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen, head of IDFA's industry programming, pointed out that Peter always seemed as eager to learn from the people he was mentoring as he was to teach
Tell Me Something: Documentary Filmmakers Edited by Jessica EdwardsPublished by Film First Co.Designed by Philipp Hubert, Visiotypen128 pages$40 Most of the books about documentary film and filmmakers that I've reviewed for this publication have provided their share of varying degrees of useful information, but I have often lamented the surprising lack of concern for the visuals, the actual design of the books themselves, separate from the content. The New York-based publisher Film First Co., with the assistance afforded by a successful Kickstarter campaign, have addressed this aesthetic void
Winners were announced at the Directors Guild of America on Friday, December 6.