A few years ago, in an attempt to escape the onslaught of "reality" and other tawdry genres taking over much of the documentary world, I decided to look into teaching. I had the good fortune to land a class at the International Film & Television School in Rockport, Maine. I've greatly enjoyed teaching there; it's hard work and long hours, but always a welcome respite from the trials of freelance producing/directing. Over the winter a friend and fellow teacher from Maine couldn't teach a one-week documentary class he was scheduled to conduct in Switzerland. He asked if I could substitute for
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Documentarians and other filmmakers who rely on images from libraries and archives to tell their stories are being helped by long-promised advances in technology that make it quicker and easier to locate and acquire the right content. Following are some examples. Independent Television News (ITN) Archive At Independent Television News (ITN) Archive in central London, a database is available online at www.itnarchive.com. There is no cost for visiting the site and using it as a resource. Like most of the larger archives, ITN also employs a team of researchers to assist in searches. ITN maintains
In Spring 2002, news headlines announced that PBS would add four new episodes to its venerable documentary series Frontline with a new format examining international affairs. What the news didn't mention was that these four episodes, under the rubric Frontline/World (co-produced by WGBH Boston and KQED San Francisco), hinted at Frontline's origins 25 years earlier. Frontline was launched in January 1983, having evolved from WGBH'S 1977 international public affairs documentary series, World. The series was produced under the leadership of Peter McGhee, who then ran public affairs programming at
Editor's Note: This is a condensed, revised and updated version of an article on documentary production training that appeared in the November 2001 issue of International Documentary . This article focuses on opportunities on the adult/continuing education arena. If you want to be a documentary/nonfiction filmmaker—and your current career doesn't necessarily support that aspiration-making a portfolio film will demonstrate to funders that your work should be supported and your career can begin (the term "film" refers to "film and/or video and/or digital moving image media" throughout this
Veteran documentarian DA Pennebaker is fond of drawing analogies between film and video. In the 1930s, he recalls, filmmakers told their stories with amateur Kodak Cine Special film cameras, and today they do the same with consumer video cameras—cheap cameras designed more for shooting kids' birthday parties than making films. Filmmakers often transcend design in service of story: Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker's longtime collaborator, and her co-director Jehane Noujaim shot much of their acclaimed Startup.com (2001) on consumer video equipment. This year JVC offers filmmakers another shot at this
When it comes to the important things in life, there's a "first time" only once. I wish I could say I recall the first film I ever saw, but that event has long since faded into the blur of childhood. Now that I'm old enough to keep track of such things, I've sadly come to realize that most films I see are strictly one-night stands. The "first" time is usually the "only" time. Fortunately, there is an eclectic group of films that deserve a special place in my pantheon of first times—films that mark important moments in my evolution as a filmmaker. Of all my first times, there'll always be my
One of the great things about watching documentaries is that that they can take you places that you've never been, and expose you to worlds that you've never experienced before. I'm not talking about making documentaries and traveling the world, but about the evolving area of docu-travel—the idea that we can take some time off and go to a really cool place and see amazing films. Just consider these vacation destinations: Durham, North Carolina; Toronto, Canada; Tribeca (lower Manhattan), New York City. While festivals are often the domain of filmmakers who screen their films and look for
Dear IDA members, March is Oscars month. For IDA, the annual Oscars Reception for the nominees in the documentary categories takes place March 19 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. We'll be screening all the nominated films, from 10:00 a.m. to midnight on DocuDay, Saturday, March 22, at the Writers Guild of America's theatre, just blocks away from the Academy. The reception and DocuDay are IDA's longest running events, both spurred by a desire to raise the profile for documentaries and celebrate the groundbreaking films that documentary makers offer us year
Dear Readers: Let's say the subject of your documentary has a past that is indelibly connected to American history. Such is the case with Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco's Daughter from Danang, which tells the story of Heidi Bub, the daughter of an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, and her unsettling re-discovery of her Vietnamese roots. What gives Daughter from Danang its proper context in the beginning is the footage—from the Vietnam War and from Operation Boatlift, the Ford Administration program that re-patriated Amerasian children like Bub. This is the time in which Bub was born and
"Diverse. Innovative. Smart." These are the three words Independent Television Service (ITVS) executive director Sally Jo Fifer uses to describe the programming that can be seen on the new, revamped Independent Lens. Beginning this month, the yearly 10-week fall series that premiered on PBS in 1999 will expand to 29 primetime episodes a year and will be curated by ITVS and PBS. Presented on Tuesday nights at 10:00 p.m., the series will complement P.O.V., PBS's award-winning 14-week showcase for personal documentary. Together, the two series will establish a consistent time slot for