'Our Nixon' premieres in theaters August 30 through Cinedigm.
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American journalism education has changed considerably since the days of Tom Paine, John Peter Zenger and Isaiah Thomas, when a would-be reporter like Thomas could learn to read by setting type after being apprenticed to a printer at the age of six. Professional training arrived in the United States when the first journalism school was established at the University of Missouri in 1908, and the debate on where journalists should be educated—in the newsroom or on the university campus—has continued ever since. Of course, even in journalism schools there's no universal agreement on just what
As director of the Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program and Fund (DFP), Cara Mertes oversaw the organization's largest initiative, and worked tirelessly to expand its funding sources and reach. In September, she joins the Ford Foundation as director of its JustFilms program. During her seven-year tenure at Sundance, she expanded and strengthened the DFP's partnerships, linking up with the Skoll Foundation, Good Pitch/Channel Four/BRITDOC Foundation, TED, the Hilton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. Additionally, she focused on international
"This is a place where you can breathe deeply," advised Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund, during the opening dinner of her final turn overseeing a Sundance Institute Creative Documentary Lab, after seven years at the helm. The Creative Producing Lab, held in late July, brought together seven documentary producers (referred to as fellows) with four expert advisors for an exceptionally intensive week of give-and-take. The producers' respective projects were discussed at length and rough cuts were screened, with the intent of clarifying any story
With the popularity of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me, it would be understandable for documentarians to think that in order to have a successful, hard-hitting film, they need a compelling on-screen personality. But with Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Robert Greenwald has shown that it is possible to make a powerful and popular film the more traditional way—investing thousands of hours monitoring a subject, obtaining leaked documents, finding and interviewing whistle-blowers and, perhaps most noticeably these days, staying behind the camera. Meticulously monitoring Fox News
I first saw The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter in the early 1980s. Much like The Atomic Café (Kevin Rafferty, Jane Loader, Pierce Rafferty, prods/dirs.), which was released about the same time, it made extensive use of rarely seen government propaganda films, but reinterpreted them in a post-modern context—perhaps as an agitprop response to the early days of the Reagan Administration. However, the principle difference between the two films was in director Connie Field's choice of women's voices to guide that reinterpretation. As in her subsequent work, Freedom on My Mind, Field uses oral
The following letter was emailed from the IDA to John Baird, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of detained documentary filmmaker John Greyson this morning. He is being held in Cairo, Egypt, where civil unrest and protests are rampant. Greyson has been held since Friday, August 16. --- Dear Minister Baird, The International Documentary Association (IDA) represents over 1,800 filmmakers in North America and around the world. We are dedicated to defending the rights and freedoms of documentary artists, activists, and storytellers, which is why we are reaching out to you today. We
While the network news divisions pared down their coverage of the Democrat and Republican Conventions this year, over 50 documentary filmmakers received credentials to cover the events. How many of the films that result from this coverage will be seen by a wide audience is debatable, but right now political documentaries are hot and are capturing attention from the media and audiences alike. Fueling their popularity is Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. "There was never that big of an audience for political documentaries, but Michael Moore made them cool," says Alexandra Pelosi, a former
Courtesy by Mark Lipson I was a freshman in college when a friend asked me one night if I was interested in seeing a documentary film. "The director will be there," he said. "A guy named Errol Morris." The screening was in a lecture hall, but when the lights dimmed, I immediately felt transported to another world. An electric blue line shot through the screen during the title sequence, and I remember thinking, I have no idea what this blue line is all about, but I'm drawn to it. I spent the rest of the film in a state of hypnosis. The first lines, like so much of the interview material in The
Outfest Los Angeles ran from July 11 - 21 in Los Angeles.