Some know Rosie Perez best for her distinctive, award-nominated performances in such films as Fearless and The 24-Hour Woman ; others will forever associate her with the "Fly Girls" from the 1990s TV series In Living Color . With the film Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'que Tu Lo Sepas! (I'm Boricua, Just So You Know!) the multi-talented actress/producer/choreographer takes on a new role: feature documentary director. With a mix of personal storytelling and historical research, the film delves into the roots of Puerto Rican identity. Despite her celebrity status, Perez faced the challenges familiar to most
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While the biopic has always been part of Hollywood filmmaking, with the recent successes of Capote , Good Night and Good Luck and Walk the Line , the genre is more popular than ever. That's great news to Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of PBS' American Masters , the award-winning and critically acclaimed biography series celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. "Those films provide an opportunity for new and future generations to find out about these amazing people and their contributions," says Lacy. "That's what we've been doing at American Masters, too, but we're way beyond
From Lauren Greenfield's Thin. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival There was more complaining than I could remember at the 2006 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. Along with a general malaise, audiences had a pretty bad attitude about the films this year. And to be honest, there wasn't that much stuff that rocked this writer's world. But here are a few things that did. Waking up at 7:00 in the morning to get to an 8:30 screening on the first day of the festival is becoming a tradition for me. This year it was for the Documentary Shorts program, the highlight of the bunch being the shortest
Making User Generated Content work for you.
A look at the distribution market, circa 2006.
From Patricia Foulkrod's The Ground Truth: After the Killing Fields, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Associated Press The Sundance Institute kicked off its 25th anniversary celebration with its annual post-Christmas, pre-Oscars Mecca in the Mountains, the Sundance Film Festival. As a perennial second-halfer, I missed the docu-centric parties that dominated the first half. And what a bevy of nonfiction soirees to have missedITVS' 15th anniversary bash, Pat Mitchell's valedictory address at the PBS fete, the Sundance Channel party (the channel turns ten this year) and a
The sit-down strike of 27 prisoners at the Presidio Army Stockade following the killing of a prisioner by a guard. From Zeiger's Sir! No Sir!. Courtesy of National Archives In the swirl of debate and acrimony surrounding the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's (AMPAS) ever-evolving rules for qualification for Academy Award consideration in the Documentary Feature category, my experience with the feature documentary Sir! No Sir! is, I believe, particularly illuminating. Let me say up front that I am not comfortable in the role of complainer. In truth, I have no quarrel with the stated
On Jeff Feurzeig's 'The Devil and Daniel Johnston.'
Doc-makers weigh on on where reality TV might be heading.
Checking out the 2005 AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival.