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Jon Alpert is a nine-time Emmy® Award-winning independent producer, remembered by many as a contributing correspondent to NBC's Today Show for more than a decade. His skills as a video camera-toting investigative journalist, coupled with his relentless and single-minded determination, have gotten him into perilous world hot spots well ahead of the formidable network news divisions. Between 1974 and 1979, Alpert co-produced five one-hour documentaries for public television. The earliest, Cuba: The People, presented the first American television coverage inside Cuba in ten years. In 1976, he won

The 44th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, like those proceeding it, was neither a film festival nor a film conference, although it mixed essential aspects of both into its own unique week-long schedule of screenings and discussions for its ninety three participants. Its August 7-13 setting was the secluded and bucolic campus of Wells College, which fronts Cayuga Lake in the upstate village of Aurora, New York. In the August heat, the College's swimming pier was the frequent venue for continuing discussions and cooling off. The Flaherty Seminar's uniqueness is a mixture of elements: participants

Activist and critic, teacher and mentor, producer of more than 50 films and videos, George C. Stoney has made invaluable contributions to the documentary's impact on our society since the 1930s. After graduating from college, he joined FDR's New Deal as Southeast Regional Information Director for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), in 1940, where he focused his efforts on building public support for programs to assist sharecroppers and tenant farmers. His work included hundreds of lectures at churches, union halls and Rotary clubs, where he screened The River, the classic documentary by

HUMAN REMAINSCo-produced by Locomotion Films and The Danish Film Institute WorkshopCreative Consultant: Jennifer FrameScript and Editing Consultants: Ellen Bruno, Caveh Zahedi and Harvey Schwartz Associate Producer, Optical Printing and Assistant Editing by John TurkWritten, Directed, Edited, Photographed and Produced by Jay Rosenblatt Human Remains illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of history's most infamous dictators: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. A dark poetry pervades the film as the intimate and

At an event such as Visible Evidence VI, what's immediately clear is just how hopelessly inadequate the term "documentary " has become. This predominantly academic confer­ence is held annually, this year at San Francisco State University (August 13- 16). The announced aim of the event was to "encompass issues of ethnography, journal ism, medical imaging, visible evidence and the law, advocacy, biogra­phy/autobiography, and the art of social representation, " inviting research and presentations from "fields such as anthro­pology, architecture, art history, ethnic studies, gay and lesbian

Tortured though the Russian economy may be, the show must go on. Perhaps Mischa Litvyakov and his colleagues at the Petersburg International Film Festival could give the Yeltsin government lessons in financial brinksmanship and survival. Litvyakov, a founder and continuing director of the Festival, "Message to Man ," confessed to an opening evening audience at Petersburg's "Dom Kino" (House of Film) last July that until half an hour before his introductory remarks he wasn't sure the Festival would make it. Perhaps Litvyakov exaggerated a bit for dramatic effect, but it sounded plausible, given

1995 America and Lewis HineProduced by Daniel Y. Allentuck and Nina Rosenblum;Directed by Nina Rosenblum George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey Written, produced and directed by George Stevens, Jr. Sixteen Days of GloryWritten, produced, and directed by Bud Greenspan The Times of Harvey MilkProduced by Richard Schmiechen;Co-produced/directed by Robert Epstein 1986 Jacques Cousteau: The First 75 YearsProduced by John Soh Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de MayoProduced and directed by Susana Munoz and Lourdes Portillo ShoahProduced and directed by Claude Lanzman Soldiers in HidingExecutive

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. From my youth in Minnesota, there's one particular Thanksgiving that I remember fondly—the one where the temperature actually broke 70° and we were able to enjoy one last gasp of summer before Winter entombed us in a frozen white capsule for six long months! Thanksgiving of 1998 is another one that I'll remember for many years: not for the weather, but for the bounty that has come to IDA during the year. At the beginning of 1998, IDA membership was at an historic high. People across the U .S. and around the world continue to discover us

FADING REINDEER BELL from China Central Television Produced by Zhao Yukui and Wang Jing Photography by Xia Zhifang Directed by Sun Zengtian 60 min. Fading Reindeer Bell is about a woman artist and her all-female household. They are from the small ethnic minority known as the Ewenkis, one of 50 ethnic groups in China today. The Ewenkis are scattered across the northern part of the country, near the Sino-Russian border. The film invites us to consider the survival of an indigenous people, striving to maintain cultural identity amidst issues of gender and the environment. NACH SAISON (OFF SEASON)

REGRET TO INFORM A Sun Fountain Production Produced by Janet Cole and Barbara Sonneborn Principal Photography by Emiko Omori Directed by Barbara Sonneborn 70 min. Twenty years after losing her husband Jeff in the Vietnam War, director Barbara Sonneborn realized that she had never gotten over it. Happily remarried for many years and with a very rich life, she decided to seek out other widows, to learn how they had come to terms with losing love ones to the Vietnam War. Scores of American and Vietnamese women are interviewed. With Vietnam widow Xaun Nguyen Evans, Sonneborn takes us on a journey