Editor’s Note: For Richard Roe, who made the award-winning Pop & Me with his son Chris,, selling a documentary to the media takes more than a little luck, pluck and virtue. He explains how he turned a globe-trotting father-son bonding expedition into a cinematic enterprise. You are the best salesman for your project—not your agent, manager, publicist or distributor, if you’re lucky enough to have any of this help. You must discover your niche, be super-aggressive, get publicity and exploit it to the nth degree. Pop & Me is a 92-minute feature documentary film about father-and-son relationships
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(Adapted from A Breadcrumb Trail Through The PBS Jungle: The Independent Producer's Survival Guide ) I'd never seen her before, not even a picture, but there was no doubt that the petite woman moving with swift, determined steps through the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel lounge was the person I had come to meet. I checked my watch. Her PR people had called to offer a generous 90 minutes for this conversation. Then they dropped the startling news that she was still on her honeymoon... One year ago Pat Mitchell slid into the driver's seat of the nation's Public Broadcasting Service and slammed
Public television's commitment to documentary programming is best expressed by its highly acclaimed weekly series NOVA, Frontline and The American Experience. Each has reached impressive milestones in its respective fields (science, public affairs and history), both in terms of longevity and critical accolades. All three are produced from PBS' Boston affiliate, WGBH, and enjoy a devoted viewership that has come to expect a level of quality unmatched in television. But for all of their praise, these programs raise striking questions in their respective presentations. Do they go far enough? Have
While it may not have been producer Carol Fleisher’s lifelong ambition to make a film about El Niño for NOVA , Chasing El Niño certainly was the experience of a lifetime, considering the challenges. But with a lifeline to a program and broadcast venue, she couldn’t have been happier working with the esteemed program. Fleischer was attending the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in 1997 when she and her co-producer Mark Hoover sat down with Beth Hoppe, an executive of WGBH, and pitched 26 ideas they thought would be suitable for NOVA. “Predictions were coming about El Niño and we wanted to
On January 27, Elizabeth Meyer Lorentz died at age 87, in hospital at Mt. Kisco, New York, following a long illness. The New York Times ran an obituary calling her "a movie scriptwriter and author of a book on networking." To anyone who cares about documentary film, Elizabeth was much more important than that brief description implies. In our community, she was the wife of filmmaker Pare Lorentz Sr. Known as "FDR’s moviemaker," Pare was responsible for the classic American documentaries The River, The Plow That Broke The Plains, Nuremberg and others, including the film on which he and
The first-ever Irish documentary film festival, dubbed Doclands, was launched with a flair, appropriately honoring one of the living legends of documentary, Albert Maysles, with a retrospective of several of his most acclaimed films. Maysles also graced the event with a directors workshop. The three-day film marathon and market took place October 24-26 at the Irish Film Center in Dublin. The reputation of the Irish warmth and hospitality is not exaggerated, particularly with Jameson’s being one of the sponsors of the event; the whisky was flowing, indeed, and that’s no blarney. May The Road
When I was a college student in the early ‘60s and first discovering feature films, documentaries meant next to nothing to me. I connected them with the stodgy industrial films I saw in grade school—the ones about plastic or progress, the booming voice of the narrator intoning, “Since the Dawn of Civilization…” Then I saw Primary. That a documentary could have such immediacy and raw energy dazzled me. I haven't seen Primary in over 30 years, but I can imagine (if memory serves me right) Senator Kennedy making his way to a speaker's platform, the camera tracking from behind held high above his
Dear IDA Members: IDA 2001 is up and running. In January and February we held our annual seminar series, Documentaries from A to Z: Putting It All Together, at Eastman Kodak in Hollywood. Many thanks to our good friends at Kodak, and particularly Board member Lawrence Cate, for hosting this invaluable program. And thanks also to Board members Barbara Leigh Gregson, Carol Munday Lawrence, Dianne Estelle Vicari, as well as former Board member Steve Roche and Lance Webster and IDA’s Programs & Festivals Administrator Melissa Simon Disharoon for putting it all together. They all performed a yeoman
Dear Readers, Please allow me to introduce myself. While I have produced five issues of International Documentary as Acting Editor, and I had served for four years as Associate Editor, this is my inaugural issue as Editor. And while I will surely miss the archly hip, post-mod, post-deconstructionist, post-semiotic resonance of “Acting” Editor (my quotes), I can certainly acclimate myself to the ponderous actuality of Editor (my italics). I’ve always made my editorial presence felt over the years through feature articles and reports, but I’ve reserved my commentary and observations, up to now
Editor’s Note: In the world of fiction, places like Yoknapatawpha County and Dublin have afforded a rich mother lode of stories and compelling characters for their respective authors, William Faulkner and James Joyce, to return to over and over again. For filmmaker Jonathan Stack, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is that sort of strangely mystical place that has inspired him to produce no fewer than seven documentaries. Mr. Stack talks about the power of place and time in creating his oeuvre. I have often said that in the real world of documentary filmmaking, stories rarely end, just