American filmmakers and journalists have relatively free rein with what stories we tell and how we tell them. For all of our country's faults, our dedication to the principle of free speech generally prevails, whether or not the government supports what is being said. Still, I was surprised when approached by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US State Department to participate in a new program called the American Documentary Showcase. The program, going on the road during this first year of President Obama’s administration, supports an international film series that
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Plus--a list of ten more seminal docs about politics.
The 19th edition of Toronto's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival wrapped on Sunday, May 6, to unprecedented audience attendees estimated at 165,000--but those numbers couldn't dissipate an atmosphere of discontent in the Canadian documentary production community. The festival is hardly to blame for the problems that beset the Canadian industry and led to approximately 75 documentarians and friends staging an energetic rally on May 4 against the federal government's 10 percent cuts to the National Film Board (NFB) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and a 50
Read the entire issue from 1988 focusing on PBS's future.
'The Weight of the Nation' airs May 14 and 15 on HBO.
In North America, conversations about Brazil might center, depending upon one's particular bent, on the beauty of the beaches and the jungles of the Amazon; the merits of the national cocktail, the Caipirinha, and the bacchanal of Carnival; or the poverty in the big city favelas and the environmental destruction caused by gold mining and logging. These images are all true of Brazil, but there is more. This is a very large nation that encompasses a teeming diversity, much of which is unknown outside its borders. Included among the treasures of Brazil is one of the liveliest contemporary
Apply now through May 25 for consideration in IFP's Project Forum.
Central among the 106 films screened at the 15th edition of the Durham, North Carolina-based Full Frame Documentary Film Festival were films addressing socio-political problems. Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, from Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke, was the best of them. It is a balanced but penetrating analysis that illuminates the wrong-headedness of our present system, posing the question, Has health care in the US become a disease management system, rather than a system that treats not just symptoms but the underlying causes of disease? Paying physicians for the
There was plenty to look forward to at the 11th Tribeca Film Festival. More than 30 documentaries played in competition and non-competition sections, many making their North American, International or World Premieres. Amidst the discoveries were films continuing their successful festival runs-including Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man from Sundance and Chris Kenneally's Side by Side from Berlinale. Anticipation on high, I was disappointed to find that I'd have to stream most of these films at home. Perhaps it was because of the festival's increasing popularity that access to
PBS series on Latinos highlights the conference.