Shoestring budgets, borrowed equipment, deferred pay, intermittent and interminable production schedules—these have become the required ingredients in a formula all too familiar to documentary filmmakers. Despite their comparatively small budgets, documentaries are still notoriously difficult to finance. So it's particularly ironic that in recent years many documentarians have ventured into the world of commercials and music videos, lending their talents to projects that, in terms of dollars per second of finished product, are lavish by comparison. This temporary migration has become an
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The IDA Awards were created in 1984, as part of our organization's intense desire to improve the recognition of documentaries and the filmmakers who made them. This was an era before the existence of multitudinous awards ceremonies. IDA was just two years old and had only a few hundred members. Many doc makers, particularly those in Los Angeles, felt that documentaries had been treated for too long as stepchildren of the motion picture industry. For years there had been growing dissatisfaction with the selections given out by the few institutions that honored nonfiction films. As hands-on
It's hard to discuss the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival without weighing in with superlatives. This is an event that just grows and grows, absolutely dominating the cultural landscape of Toronto for the first half of its 11-day run (from April 25 through May 5 this year) and maintaining a strong interest throughout—rather like Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) does every September. Toronto's TV news shows, magazines and newspapers, both mainstream—the Globe and Mail and Star—and alternative— NOW and The Grid—follow the lead of an early Hot Docs convert, the CBC
The Tribeca Film Festival, which concluded April 28, features so many docs that it's almost as big and broad as many standalone documentary festivals. While I wasn't able to see all of the films at the festival, a number of interesting trends emerged as I made my way through them. New camera technologies help the vérité films sing visually, but some of the most powerful docs relied heavily, if not exclusively, on archival footage—a de facto reaction, it seems, to the powerful impact of today's "media of immediacy." Just as time heals wounds, it gives us the distance that we often need to make
'La Camioneta' opens May 31 at New York's ReRun Theater.
Alex Gibney's 'We Steal Secrets' opens in theaters May 24 through Focus World.
Documentaries about musicians, families and artists provided some of the most captivating moments at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. Anyone who's gotten chills listening to a woman's voice screaming "rape...murder...it's just a shot away" on the Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter" will want to see Twenty Feet from Stardom, Morgan Neville's wonderfully entertaining film about rock and soul background singers, to hear Merry Clayton's lively account of the recording session that produced that masterpiece. Clayton—one of the few background singers who briefly broke out of
'Stories We Tell' opens May 17 in LA and select cities through Roadside Attractions.
By Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini In Harvest of Shame, the powerful television documentary that brought the plight of migrant workers to Americans' Thanksgiving tables in 1960, Edward R. Murrow smokes. He smokes incessantly. He smokes in awkward, stand-up shots, unashamed of his crooked teeth or stooped posture. The cigarette smoke, like the film's portentous narration, the heavy-handed use of the Aaron Copland score and the bulky equipment, all distance us as vérité-indoctrinated, MTV-consuming filmmakers. They can even cause us to feel smug in our "advances" in technique, technology
The International Documentary Association has moved offices in Los Angeles. Please update your fundraising materials, both print and online, and make sure your donors have our new address. New Address: 3470 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 980 Los Angeles, CA 90010 New Phone: 213 232-1660 Amy Halpin's extension: 209Lisa Hasko's extension: 210 New Fax: 213 232-1669