From Richard E. Robbins’ Girl Rising, which premieres in theaters through CNN Films In 2012, CNN became another player in the documentary field—a very desirable new broadcast player-when the cable channel launched CNN Films. Headed by Amy Entelis, senior vice president of talent and content development for CNN Worldwide, and Vinnie Malhotra, senior vice president of development and acquisitions for CNN Worldwide, CNN Films will acquire and/or fully fund at least four documentaries per year. Following a potential theatrical run, the selected docs will make their broadcast premiere on CNN and in
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The IDA is happy to announce the launch of the IDA Documentary Screening Series, invitation-only screenings of fifteen documentary features to take place annually between September and January. The new series will replace our DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase, a program designed to help filmmakers qualify their works for Oscar® consideration. We are making these changes in response to both the evolving needs of documentary filmmakers and recent changes in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' (AMPAS) qualifying rules for documentary features and shorts. Over the last year
As the San Francisco-based organization Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) enters its 33rd year, it has transformed its flagship event, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Sporting the clipped moniker CAAMFest, the 31-year-old film festival, the largest and one of the oldest of its kind, has staged music and food presentations into greater prominence next to its film fare. While applauding the festival's attempts to broaden its brand and influence by incorporating more Asian-American culture, this film purist focuses on the documentaries, many of which were funded
From Godfrey Reggio’s 1983 film Koyannisqatsi. Courtesy of The Criterion Collection It's so familiar now, but at the time there had been nothing like Koyaanisqatsi. This is affirmed by Ron Fricke, cinematographer on the film, in a new interview featured in the Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray sets of The Qatsi Trilogy. He particularly means the time-lapse footage that it's most famous for, but there are other aspects that were new to audiences 30 years ago, additional reasons it is recognized by the Library of Congress as a landmark of American cinema. Philip Glass had never scored a movie
Les Blank, whose scintillating portraits of Americana defined a six-decade career, died April 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif., of complications of bladder cancer. He was 77. He leaves behind a trove of poetic explorations into the lives of legends and unknowns alike—Lightinin' Hopkins and Leon Russell, as well as gap-toothed women, garlic and tea aficionados and Mardi Gras revelers. Legendary folklorist Alan Lomax mined this territory too, but Blank opened it up further and deeper, beyond the conventions of ethnographic filmmaking to a more resonant kind of poetry. (For more on Blank's canon
The World at Warby Taylor DowningPalgrave Macmillan, 2012180 pages with black-and-white and color photographs$23.96 Are there reasons why a reader should spend time with a small book containing a detailed examination of a documentary series produced in England in the 1970s? The answer is yes, when the film at hand is The World at War. This remarkable work is a landmark in documentary, not only for its groundbreaking filmmaking and its insistence on authenticity, but for the lasting impact it continues to have on understanding the history and production of historical documentaries. To watch
"I went into documentaries because I wanted to make socially responsible movies. It was a way to use cinematography to make a statement about the human condition. They were also the only opportunity available to women." —Ellen Kuras, ASC The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) was founded in Los Angeles in 1919 as a peer group, much like the International Documentary Association (IDA). The first 15 members were exploring the frontier of a new art form. The purpose of the organization was to provide a forum for sharing ideas and advocating advances in technology. It was a man's world
From S.R. Bindler's Hands on a Hardbody. Courtesy of S.R. Bindler by Ayn Carrillo-Gailey and S.W. Gailey In 1992, S.R. Bindler was in Longview, Texas, and stumbled upon a real-life scene that would launch his career as a film and commercial director. "I was home on break from NYU, hanging out at a bar," he recalls. "At 3:00 a.m., the place closed up and I stepped out into the night. Across the street, I saw a car lot lit up. I was drawn to it like a moth." When Bindler approached the lot, he was met with a tableau vivant made up of five nearly motionless strangers standing around a Nissan
Artwork for Marc Levitz' I Survived BTK, Courtesy of Marc D. Levitz In a 2006 article about the Emmy Awards that appeared in Documentary magazine, the author, Andrea Van Hook, wrote, "So now that you've made your film, shepherded it through the festival circuit, had a feature release and successfully inked a television distribution deal, it's time to think Emmy...all you've got to do is produce an outstanding documentary film. How hard can that be?" Actually, really hard, as I came to find out. I Survived BTK, my high-concept, micro-budget, true-crime debut attempt at documentary filmmaking, a
From Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl. Courtesy of Historic Adobe Museum It is a well-worn cliché that "a picture is worth a thousand words." Often, there is validity to such maxims, especially in documentary filmmaking. Finding the right still or seeking out the archival footage that can change a story or drive it forward is one of the holy grails of production. But just how do filmmakers produce compelling programs with old or grainy images? The different schools of thought are almost as numerous as all the images sources available today. "I look at footage as a main character," says Emmy and