Dear IDA Members: It is always tempting to take a look back at the year just completed and bask in the glow of whatever successes can be conjured up. For IDA, there have been many successes over the past year, but many opportunities remain ahead in the coming year. And they are huge. We will be calling on your active participation in a variety of areas this coming year. The Documentary Credit Coalition's Scrap with Scripps The Scripps Networks owns and operates The Food Network, Homes & Garden Television, Fine Living and DIY Network. They do not give credits on the shows they commission. The
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Dear Readers, Documentary filmmaking takes us to strange places, foreboding places, wondrous places. In the name of the truth we venture behind enemy lines, down rough-hewn, saturnine streets, and scariest of all—to some—into the stygian recesses of our own pasts. Nature, wildlife and science documentary-making carries a special badge of honor. Imagine plumbing the depths of the ocean, deeper than any deep sea diver—let alone documentary filmmaker—has ever delved, with hundreds of pounds of equipment and just 12 minutes of film in the magazine, and significant vulnerability to severe
Remember CNN when it was born? The networks called it the "Chicken Noodle Network." But it was a revolution that changed news forever. Back then, the idea was a network that would make the world a smaller place, providing storytelling and context that would facilitate understanding. But news doesn't really work that way. It tends to be instantaneous, fact-driven and fairly black-and-white. Documentaries are a different matter; the world is a very complex place, and global conflicts are fueled by prejudice, misunderstanding and ignorance. Black-and-white news doesn't always clarify the story
Preservation & Scholarship Award: Imperial War Museum
The Toronto International Film Festival has become a mighty machine, comparable to Cannes in its power to focus publicity, lend legitimacy and attract business. Its popularity has led to an umbrella strategy, in which the festival is actually a set of well-run mini-festivals, each of them attracting more interest than there are theater seats or time, and featuring press conferences, sidebars and other events for its own demographic. Documentary has become one of those niche festivals. This year the festival showcased 32 doc features and 13 shorts, with 22 of them highlighted in the Real to
Opening with a visit to a shocking crime scene, then following three murder trials, Two Towns of Jasper examines American race relations from two lenses: one black and one white. Late one night in June 1998 in east Texas, James Byrd, a black man, was beaten and dragged to his death behind a pick-up truck. The accused: three white ex-cons, all affiliated with the white supremacist group the Aryan Circle. Two New York-based filmmakers, Whitney Dow and Marco Williams, were drawn to the story, initially as a conversation among friends, then committed to the subject via a three-year odyssey of
When Renée Tajima-Pena showed up in Detroit in 1983, looking to make Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988), the award-winning documentary about racial hate crime, she and associate producer Nancy Tong met with a number of indignities, such as being robbed of all of their research notes and equipment at gunpoint. Luckily, Tajima-Pena encountered some supportive friends at the Detroit public TV station, WTVS. "They had a terrific executive producer, Juanita Anderson, and head of the station, Bob Larson," Tajima-Pena recalls. "They thought that this was a Detroit story and they understood how to work
IDA Career Achievement Award: Ken Burns
When Lance Loud asked veteran filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond to make a "final episode" of An American Family, they paused to take in the significance of the request. Loud, the star and cultural icon from the 1973 PBS series An American Family, had been living with HIV for many years and was now diagnosed with a terminal HIV/Hepatitis C co-infection. To make one last episode was Lance's dying wish; he passed away on December 22, 2001. In 1971, the Raymonds spent seven months filming the Loud family in Santa Barbara, California. Shot in cinéma vérité style, An American Family became a
Dear IDA Members: The holiday season and the IDA Awards Gala Benefit, on December 13, seem to have a synonymous ring. Wrapping up the year and kicking off the awards season by saluting the best of 2002 makes the best sense. Our 20th anniversary year has been cause to celebrate, with a promising new partnership with the Sundance Channel; new trustees from ITN Archive and American Masters; two new staff members—Sarah Jo Marks and Megan Moroney—who have contributed immeasurably to the growth of the organization; an overhauled set of by-laws; successful gatherings in New York, Cannes and Singapore