Former Vice President Al Gore, from An Inconvenient Truth, a project of Participant Productions. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival Editor's Note: On October 21 at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Los Angeles, IDA will present Davis Guggenheim in conversation with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz. The two will explore his wide-ranging body of work that includes culturally significant and brilliantly crafted films. Learn more and purchase tickets. Did you know there are thousands of orphaned children living in Rwanda? Or that quadriplegic rugby players compete all over the world in
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There's a moment in Marco Williams' 1992 film, In Search of Our Fathers, that changed my life. I was a photographer when I saw the film. I had just finished a series on Latino and Asian immigrants in the South and was hesitantly toying with the idea of turning it into a film. Here's the scene: Williams, who was raised by his mother and aunt, had been trying for months to get his mother to talk about his father, whom he had never met and knew nothing about. Having finally relented, she allowed him to come to Paris, where she was living, and film an interview. In the scene, you see her sit down
From the musical Grey Gardens, based on the documentary by Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, the musical had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in New York. Photo: Joan Marcus One of the biggest trends in the theater world over the past few years has been "the movical," the creation of stage musicals based on previously existing films. Spamalot found its inspiration in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast began life as animated Disney films, and the musical version of The Wedding Singer will hit theaters in May 2006. This past
Election Night 2005, Antonio Villaraigosa celebrates winning the election to become the first Latino Mayor of Los Angeles in more than 130 years. From Lyn Goldfarb's The New Los Angeles, an episode from the four-part series California and the American Dream that airs on PBS California is a state of dichotomies. Home to the world's tallest trees, it's also where logging efforts perpetually threaten to cut them down. The state has both the highest and lowest elevation points in the 48 contiguous states. California has more land under irrigation than any other state, but it's also been voted the
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 film in the collection (five minutes): Undressing My Mother by Ken
Dear IDA Members, Times are changing again. Next up: television on an iPod. Where will this new technology go now? Most people are not going to sit around and watch a small screen for any length of time. There is another level of the business of entertainment that is coming forward with this new technology, and it also applies to the nonfiction world. We are all familiar with pay-per-view (PPV) and on-demand programming, but what Apple has done with its iPod was quite interesting. Click and purchase, and everything is easily accomplished in this transaction for its end use. This simplicity is
On birthing--the metaphor and the experience.
On Hurricane Katrina, reporting and docmaking.
On DocuWeek 2005...