Don't you just love archival footage? At its best, it's a window into the past and a revelation about a period in time. A scene of kids hula-hooping in the Soviet Union, for example, can make a film look and feel more authentic and honest, and can touch the emotional core of audiences. Fun as it may be to work with archival footage, tracking it down comes with many challenges: Where do you go to find it? How do you access archives? How do you license and pay for it? These are all concerns for the documentary filmmaker. Now, thanks to online archives, access to archival footage has become more
Latest Posts
Agnes Varda's The Beaches of Agnes. Courtesy of The Cinema Guild Sometimes a documentary not only inspires you, but also gives you courage. I was inspired when legendary filmmaker Agnès Varda stepped in front of the camera to tell her own story. At the time, I was having a crisis in the editing room, where I realized I needed to take the film that I was working on, Connected, in a completely different direction-a personal direction, which scared the hell out of me. In order to get to the root of our strong desire for connection, technologically and otherwise, I had to explore what connection
Film School is a new documentary series that recently aired on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). This 10-part, five-hour series, created and executive produced by Nanette Burstein ( The Kid Stays in the Picture; On the Ropes) and produced by Jordan Roberts, documents the efforts of four New York University graduate film students to make their second- and third-year films. The film credits Tamas Bojtor, Rebecca Cammisa, Sybil Dessau and Gregory Orselli as directors and cinematographers and Thomas Haneke, Mary Manhardt and Charles Marquardt as editors. Both Burstein and Roberts are graduates
Women Make Movies (WMM) is losing its enviable, mile-long view of New York City's SoHo. Across the street from WMM's floor-to-ceiling windows, construction workers ignore the warm rain as they build the infrastructure to what will be a spanking new and obnoxiously high 16-story building. But Women Make Movies is still in an enviable position that Executive Director Debra Zimmerman would never have imagined over 30 years ago, when she first began working as an intern. "I made $50 a week and 25 of that was deferred," Zimmerman recalls . Women Make Movies is a multi-cultural, multi-racial
You come to SXSW for the synergy. The sprawling, raucous festival in Austin, Texas overlaps three creative communities: filmmakers, interactive designers and musicians. SXSW could keep Austin weird all by itself. This year I heard rumors of Austin streets occupied by a tiny house on wheels (demo-ing for the winsome documentary Tiny), a rolling bed filled with people reading poetry (for the documentary Big Joy), and artist-activists reading a legal brief defending the copyright doctrine of fair use. I didn't see any of them, because I was caught in traffic jams created by other spectacles, but
As a light snow fell, the 10th annual True/False Film Fest officially kicked off on March 1 with its "March March" documentary film parade. Hundreds of watchers and participants took to Ninth Street in downtown Columbia, including the Marching Mizzou drumline, representing the University of Missouri, an anchor of the college town that's home to the festival. The March March, a staple of the True/False Film Fest. Photo: Taylor Glascock Only a few days prior to the festival's film screenings, which began on February 28, volunteers were out shoveling the snow from two winter storms that had
'Free Angela and All Political Prisoners' opens in theaters April 5 through Codeblack Films.
A review of 'Ferocious Reality: Documentary According to Werner Herzog'
'Kind Hearted Woman airs April 1 and 2 on PBS' 'Frontline' and 'Independent Lens.'
'Room 237' opens March 29 in New York through IFC Midnight.