Nineteen seventy-seven was a watershed year: Anita Bryant launched the nation's first widespread offensive against gays rights legislation; Harvey Milk was elected into office; San Francisco's gay film festival was inaugurated; and I was gay-bashed. It was also the year Word is Out hit the screens. From its first frame, audiences were challenged: a pensive Latina sits on the edge of her bed looking out into the distance in prolonged silence, a silence finally broken by an off-screen voice asking tentatively, "Were you always gay?" She turns to the camera and without abandonment tells us,
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HAPPY NEW YEAR! And what an exciting 12 months it is going to be for IDA. By this time next year, the new Executive Director will be well ensconced, the staff will have filled out and we will look back on this transition period as the grand opportunity that it is. David Haugland leaves the presidency after an exemplary four years. He has overseen a period of remarkable growth for IDA. We also bid farewell to those whose time is over on the board of directors: Lisa Leeman has served nine years, including one year as President. Fortunately, she has promised to stay involved in IDA affairs. Steve
The Internet is defined and perpetuated by communities of interest, rather than by regional communities. Whereas broadcast stations reach audiences in a geographical area, Web sites cater to specific topics like health, social justice, etc. Documentary films, born out of a passion for a particular subject matter, are ideal vehicles for these communities of interest. What better place is there to present your documentary than to a community of the like-minded? So what if that community is only virtual? Today streaming technologies have made it possible to reach your audience within these
Film school offers students a bundle of resources, including a learned faculty, access to a wide variety of movies, shared camaraderie with fellow students and the free flow of ideas and opinions about a common passion: film. Recently in New York, filmmakers were given another dose of these resources during a week of screenings, seminars and chance encounters at the Independent Feature Project Market (IFM). Running from September 15 to 22, this was the IFP's 22nd annual market, and by all accounts it was a great success. "After film school there isn't a venue for sharing information or seeing
Editor’s note—It seems so many moons ago—but it was only last year—when filmmaker Doug Block took that one giant leap for filmkind and launched his doc Home Page on the Web as well as in the theaters. He reflects on the experience here. Home Page has been acclaimed as a groundbreaking landmark movie, but, truth be told, that's the last thing I set out for it to be. When it first premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, all I wanted was what every filmmaker dreams about—a fat distribution deal. Sure, I knew there were elements that were, well, different. The film is a first-person doc that
After a week of endless meetings, screenings, seminars, lunches, cocktails, dinners, late night drinks and non-stop schmoozing, the 11,000+ buyers and sellers of programs for TV, video, cable, satellite and the Internet decamped from the semi-annual market in Cannes, France, called MIPCOM and headed home to begin the tedious task of following up. Responding to the surge of interest in new media, convention organizers erected a temporary structure to house the almost 500 Internet companies that wanted booths. This onslaught of Web companies stimulated a hunger for information about how their
“We spend 12 years in school learning the language of the written word, but no time on the language of the visual image,” filmmaker Jennifer Fox noted in her recent Documentary Master Class, held at New York’s New School and co-sponsored by IDA, Film/Video Arts and Women Make Movies. “We’re just expected to ‘get’ it.” Fox seems to have “gotten” it for herself while building a reputation as a powerful chronicler of private lives. Her first film, Beirut: The Last Home Movie, took top honors at Sundance in 1988, while An American Love Story, her 10-part series about an interracial family, aired
Editor's Note: What are you doing New Year's Eve? Well, if you're Daniel Kaven, you do the sensible thing: Contact, via e-mail, seven filmmakers from around the world, arm them with DV cameras and have them record a day in the life of their respective cities. Then bring the filmmakers and subjects together a year later for a big filmmaking bosh in Las Vegas. The result? The Glass Pool Incident . My eyes hardened into an unfamiliar daze. Across from me, a middle-aged Japanese karaoke music video producer, with a severe case of bad breath and gingivitis, reflected on his last 70 trips to
It’s that time of year again when an envelope arrives reminding us that this magazine is going to disappear from our mailboxes if we don’t renew our IDA membership. Should you need a reason, let me give you two: Charles Guggenheim and Martin Scorsese. Martin Scorsese took time out from shooting his current feature in Rome to film a message for IDA members that was delivered on the big screen during this year’s IDA Awards on October 27. Eloquent as ever, Mr. Scorsese commented that IDA’s recognition of The Film Foundation’s work in preservation was especially significant as it was recognition
Editor's Note: Welcome to "Playback," a new feature in which we invite a documentary filmmaker to reflect on one documentary that had special meaning to him or her. The criteria of selection are wide-open. The film could be a "Desert Island Doc"—the documentary for which one would stake career, livelihood and life to see over and over again. It could be a favorite doc, or what one feels is the most important documentary to the evolution of the genre, or the most influential to one's career as a filmmaker. To help launch Playback, we asked veteran documentarian Michael Apted to share his