From Jerome Hill's Film Portrait It's the 1960s and I'm sitting in Professor Haig Manoogian's advanced film production class at NYU. We're awaiting guest lecturer Jerome Hill. I'm excited because Haig has told us that Hill won an Oscar for his documentary on Albert Schweitzer and also made an innovative film about the painter Grandma Moses. Unlike my fellow classmate, Marty Scorsese, I'm not dreaming of going to Hollywood. I'm hoping to become a documentary filmmaker. Cinema vérité is just beginning to rattle the aesthetic of documentaries, and I'm all for shaky hand-held camerawork and
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Over the next couple of weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work will be represented in the DocuWeek TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, August 18-24. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far. So, to continue this series of conversations, here is James Longley, director/producer of Iraq in Fragments. Synopsis: Iraq in Fragments illuminates post-war Iraq in three acts, building a vivid picture of a country pulled in
We welcome Homegirl Café as caterers of this year's IDA Documentary Awards.
The Redemption of General Butt Naked has been nominated in the Best Feature category at this year's IDA Documentary Awards.
Attention media makers addressing aging and elder rights!
The chopping sound of helicopter blades hovers over a black screen, feeling less like an entrance than a continuous perpetual drone, a cloud that does not lift. The soldiers of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment are launching the largest helicopter offensive since Vietnam: 4,000 Marines countering the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. A group of soldiers kneels low in loose sand, their weapons in hand; they resemble a football squad posing for a yearbook photo. A young soldier smokes a cigarette, the background blurred out of focus in shallow depth-of-field: It is a quiet
'These Amazing Shadows' premieres December 29 on PBS' 'Independent Lens.'
Like almost all of the subjects he has explored in his sublime, handcrafted works over six decades of filmmaking, Les Blank is a master of an art that one must go off the beaten path to find. Even while he has been honored with retrospectives at lofty locales like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he still hawks his wares--DVDs, t-shirts, posters and pins--that he totes in a well-traveled suitcase. Burden of Dreams, which he made with longtime collaborator Maureen Gosling, is perhaps the greatest film about filmmaking--or even the creative process--ever made. And yet, it's more than that
Editor's Note: Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway's Better This World has been nominated in the Best Feature category at this year's IDA Documentary Awards, to be held at the Directors Guild in Los Angeles on Friday, December 2. Below is an interview we conducted with Richardson last August. Synopsis: How did two boyhood friends from Midland, Texas wind up arrested on terrorism charges at the 2008 Republican National Convention? Better This World follows the journey of David McKay (22) and Bradley Crowder (23) from political neophytes to accused domestic terrorists, with a particular
It all started with a lie. It was perpetuated in the post-9/11 cauldron, when, after the shock, devastation and grief, the conspiracy theories began to emerge. One night in New York City, filmmaker Marc Levin got into a cab, and the driver started talking about how no Jews died in the destruction of the World Trade Center, and then referenced The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the sensationalist tract circulated in the early 20th century about a so-called Jewish master plan to rule the world; in the wake of 9/11, the book was being peddled among certain communities as gospel. The driver, it