In the realm of documentary, the Internet as an alternative method of distribution has been used primarily to present and market completed documentaries. With Texas Legacy, (www.texaslegacy.org) a project of the nonprofit Conservation History Association of Texas (CHAT), we sought to use the Internet and the PC as the venue for visual oral history. By accessing an interactive database, users can search various topics, then download the collected wisdom, courage and humor of hundreds of pioneers who experienced the changes and challenges visited on the Texas environment throughout the 20th
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It sounds pretty good to American ears. In Portugal, if a documentary is funded by the national film institute, television is required to broadcast it. Thus, filmmakers are guaranteed an audience but aren’t constrained by broadcasting dictates. Such a policy has made for an auteur approach to doc-making that was very much in evidence in the first annual DocLisbon, which ran for eight days in June. Both the national and international prize-winning docs were epic, authored documentaries—the former, Regina Guimãraes’ four-hour film Dentro, about a re-working of Aesychlus’ Oresteia by Portuguese
The idea for a film on the Jim Crow years had been lying dormant in the back of my mind since 1990. As a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, I came to realize first-hand that the Jim Crow era was a time of terror and oppression. But whenever I thought about making a film about this mostly forgotten era, I was concerned that such a film would depict black people as victims. The era was indeed about the subordination and repression of black rights, but it was also about the hope and aspirations born in the heady years of Emancipation. How blacks survived, struggled and
The Eighth Annual IFP/West Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) emerged this year with a new look, a new name and more films than ever before. Boasting 153 films, including 23 documentaries from around the world, LAFF brought 35,000 people out to West Hollywood to enjoy a remarkably eclectic smattering of festival fare. In 1992 Robert Faust, a producer of the Independent Spirit Awards, decided to create a film festival in LA dedicated to showcasing indie films. The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival was born three years later. In its first six years, the festival established itself as a well
Editor’s note: With “Reality Check,” we launch a new column, penned by Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of CameraPlanet, in which he addresses issues about the art, craft and business of documentary making. When the mighty Cannes Film Festival honors a documentary—Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine—for the first time in 35 years, documentary filmmakers sit up and take notice. When distributor Bingham Ray and United Artists pick up that documentary for a reported $5 million, filmmakers think that docu-nirvana may be approaching. And when a film like The Kid Stays in the Picture bows to solid reviews and
Dear IDA Members: As we gain distance on the summer discussions between Discovery Channel and Documentary Credits Coalition, their import becomes clearer. By working with the coalition, Discovery came up with a creative, feasible and appropriate solution to the placement of credits. But the work of the coalition is not over. Both the National Geographic Channel and the Scripps family of cable channels—Better Homes and Gardens, the Food Network, Fine Living and Do It Yourself Channel—have been put on the DCC watch list. But the DCC cannot do it alone; the issue of credits is of concern to
Dear Readers, The next few months will see the releases of two landmark films that look in very different ways at two similar, tragic systems of government—Jim Crow segregation in America and Apartheid in South Africa. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, from filmmakers Richard Wormser, Bill Jersey and Sam Pollard, examines the period from just after the Civil War to the 1954 Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education. It is a period that effectively fills in the gap--in terms of major documentary programs that explore the history of race and race relations in America--between where Ken
Dear Readers, The next few months will see the releases of two landmark films that look in very different ways at two similar, tragic systems of government—Jim Crow segregation in America and Apartheid in South Africa. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, from filmmakers Richard Wormser, Bill Jersey and Sam Pollard, examines the period from just after the Civil War to the 1954 Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education. It is a period that effectively fills in the gap--in terms of major documentary programs that explore the history of race and race relations in America—between where Ken
Every time I watch The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein and produced by Richard Schmienchen, I am overcome with emotion. Call me a sentimentalist, but this film touches my heart, striking at the core of human emotion. The Times of Harvey Milk tells the story of the life and times of Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay person to hold political office. Much of the film’s emotional power derives from the simplicity of its storytelling, making effective use of the most basic of documentary cinematic tools: voiceover, stills, interviews and stock footage. There are so many elements
Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony, a film about music’s role in the long struggle for freedom in South Africa, melted the hearts of audiences at this year’s Sundance Festival. But the first screening almost turned into a meltdown. Leaving a grueling, sleepless, 36-hour crash-edit session, the film’s director, Lee Hirsch, grabbed a plane from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. The film’s producer, Sherry Simpson, followed on a later flight. When Simpson arrived she expected to say hello to Hirsch, find her room and finally be able to doze off. Instead of greeting her warmly, Hirsch was