Dear Readers, Every four years, the American political system is put on bombastic display, in the sprawling epic known as the presidential election race. In the denouement of this year-long, image-morphing, issue-spewing pageant, the final two or three candidates rise above the fray and vie furiously from coast to coast for votes. One winner emerges, intoning giddy election-night promises of new beginnings, new hope and new horizons, and misty-eyed pledges of unity and harmony. What courses through this grand American tradition—and, some would argue, runs counterpoint to it—is an even grander
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Dear IDA Members, When I took the helm as IDA President three years ago, I eschewed "pompous pledges and misty projections" and promised to "keep my hand on the tiller as we pass through this period of great growth and unparalleled opportunity." Now that I am completing my tenure, though one might conjure up images of Prospero breaking his wand, I am not leaving the documentary stage. Indeed, with pundits across the country declaring 2003 to be "The Year of the Documentary," I am as excited as ever about the future of the art form and will continue to work on its behalf. Needless to say, I'm
Dear Readers, When one considers the film festival, one thinks of a happening, ranging in duration from a weekend to a month, in which towns, cities or whole communities are mobilized around the celebration of films and filmmakers. Depending on its scope and stature, a festival is enhanced with distributors, publicists, journalists and other festival directors—and audience members. And out of the sometimes 100 or more films that throttle the senses in a given festival, a few rise to the surface, garnering buzz, awards and accolades—and perhaps distribution or a free ride to next big festival
Dear IDA Members, It's the end of an active year of continued changes and growth for the IDA. Our biggest accomplishment was getting InFACT, formerly DOCtober, on the road and into theaters across the country—in Del Mar, Seattle, Little Rock and Austin. This was a great way to build relationships with the filmmakers, exhibitors and film-going communities of those cities. This has been a landmark year for documentaries at the box office, beginning with Bowling for Columbine and continuing with Winged Migration, Spellbound, Capturing the Friedmans, Step Into Liquid and Rivers and Tides. At press
Dear Readers, It's been a remarkable year for remarkable documentaries, and theater audiences have helped to keep the art form thriving. We close out 2003 by celebrating both those individuals who have helped to shape the documentary and the films that have exemplified artistic achievement. As a natural history documentarian, Sir David Attenborough, the Career Achievement Award honoree, has transformed the arcana of zoology, botany and biology into some of the most compelling and enriching stories about the world around us. Terry Tanner Clark, who, with husband Barry Clark, have made their own
Dear IDA Members: As we go to press, it looks like our comrades in the independent film movement are making some headway with the Motion Picture Association of America and its declared ban on "for your consideration" screeners. The documentary community has been watching this from a different perspective. There have always been some pretty tight rules about viewing all the documentaries in contention before voting for any of them. It takes a little extra work, but it sure levels the playing field. The documentary Oscar competition works like this: Documentaries are eligible if they run
Dear Readers, National Geographic's flagship program, Explorer, has gone through as many permutations as it has homes. Now part of MSNBC as Ultimate Explorer, the series has this year seen a few high-profile episodes related to the current war in Iraq. National Geographic was pressured to fire correspondent Peter Arnett for his critical remarks about the war. But the channel redeemed itself, through filmmaker Jason Williams, who, in the aftermath of the US invasion of Baghdad, documented the search for—and eventual discovery of—the lost treasure of the ancient civilization of Nimrud. Michael
Dear IDA Members, This fall IDA launched a four-city theatrical exhibition tour—to commercial theaters in Del Mar, California; Little Rock, Arkansas; Austin, Texas; and Seattle, Washington—in which we screened many of the films from the InFACT Theatrical Documentary Showcase that we presented in August. The primary impetus for this tour has been to demonstrate the theatrical drawing power of feature-length documentaries, and to prove that Bowling for Columbine, Winged Migration, Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, OT: Our Town and Step into Liquid are not flukes. This tour will also form the
Dear Readers, DVD—whether it stands for "digital video disc" or the more recent "digital versatile disc" to accommodate the uses of the medium beyond video—has, since its introduction to the consumer market in Japan in 1996 and the US in 1997, quickly staked out its frontier in the mediamaking universe. While the format's arguable precursors, laserdiscs and CD-ROMs, made a modest impact, at best, they laid the groundwork for what would be a veritable revolution in home entertainment, whether engaged on the TV monitor or the computer screen. For the documentary, the DVD has presented a range of
On September 2, 2003, a remarkable film made its way to HBO. The journey is worth retelling. In the spring of 2001, three Columbia University graduate students—Stefan Knerrich, Michael Rey and Amy Rubin—finished their senior project, a film called 3rd Reich to 3rd Generation. It was the story of Arthur Lederman, a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor who had never had a conversation with a German during his adult life. But when Dorot, a Jewish aid agency, sent German exchange student Christophe Erbsloeh to help Lederman with his daily life, a dialogue began that explored the Holocaust through the