The IRS could very well be the death of the freelance video and film professional this year. The tax police are arming for what promises to be the biggest assault this industry has ever seen. And if you've ever hired a freelance grip, gaffer, camera operator, or production assistant for even half a day, if you consider yourself an independent contractor, or both of the above, you could be in big tax trouble. If you're not scared yet, you should be. Under new federal guidelines taking effect this month, what you thought was an independent could be reclassified as an employee. That relationship
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One of the most daunting tasks facing small documentarians with big ideas is getting access to the large enterprises—Fortune 500 businesses, state governments and federal bureaucracies, nongovernmental agencies, and the like—that dominate American society. The scope of these concerns makes their problems and weaknesses of fundamental interest and import to the society's well-being. Unfortunately, their bureaucratic and protective natures makes them obscure and, sometimes purposefully, impenetrable. "We can't just get [audiences] to feel guilty or sad or outraged about certain situations," says
As the IDA Board of Directors plots the course of the coming year and conjures new ways to spread shrinking funds over continuing and new programs, we'd like to hear from our membership. What do you see as the most pressing needs of the documentary community, and how can the IDA address them? We will give you a forum for these questions and many more when we mail you a member survey along with your membership renewal this month. Please take the time to read and answer the survey. Let us know if we are on target in serving your needs and how we can do a better job. The IDA's mission statement
First and above all, the motion picture camera is a recording device. It shows what's in front of it. Even a blue screen. Even computer generated images. When Godard said that cinema was truth at 24 frames per second, he meant it literally, not portentously. How we perceive, interpret, and react to those images means nothing to the camera. So every movie is at least in some sense a documentary, to the extent that it shows us what it sees is there. It's poignant now to watch Chaplin's first film, Kid Auto Race at Venice (1914). Mack Sennett's crew went to Venice, California, to shoot a real
It's fulfilling to step back at some remove and acknowledge just how extensive a contribution documentary has made to the art of film. It's not a marginal enterprise: documentary has always been critical to the development of cinema aesthetics. Many other titles belong here; the first draft of this list was comfortably twice as long and could easily have hit 250 titles without lowering standards. Enjoy the richness of the list rather than carping over the omissions. Dates and titles are from U.S. release. Notice that the list is almost entirely American, with Joris Ivens and some Frenchmen
In today's computer age it is not an overstatement to say that much of the information you will ever need, in your entire life or career, is accessible right now simply by the placement of a local telephone call. The Internet has fundamentally transformed the way that information and ideas are exchanged. It's an exciting time to own a modem. If you view the Internet as the Information Superhighway, then the World Wide Web (WWW) is its biggest exit-the New York City of the online world. The Web, a subset of the Internet, is a place that utilizes a programming language called Hypertext Markup
It is with honor that I greet you as the new president of the IDA Board of Directors. It will be difficult to follow in Mel Stuart's footsteps, but I hope to help guide the IDA through a productive thirteenth year. I want to bid farewell and thanks to our outgoing board members Henry Breitrose, Ann Hassett, Lee Lew-Lee, Marilyn Ryan, Mel Stuart, and Carmen Vega. We will miss each of them and are grateful for their contributions to the IDA. I wish them all the best on their future endeavors. And I'd like to welcome new board members Carol L. Fleisher, Lyn Goldfarb, David Haugland, Carol Munday
Some film festivals have a simple goal: to showcase worthy films to as large an audience as possible. But the organizers of the Rio Cinema Festival are slightly more ambitious: they want nothing less than to make the Brazilian (and Latin American) film and television industries significant players in the world media markets. To this end, the 11th International Rio Cine Festival of Cinema, TV, and Video, held July 24-31, 1995, in Rio de Janeiro, was densely packed with many strands of programming and multiple networking opportunities. There were screenings of international independent feature
Preceded by the "In and Out of the Cold" documentary screening series, the 2nd International Documentary Congress, and the 11th Annual IDA Awards Gala, an exciting month celebrating the documentary came to an end with IDA's DocuFest, the annual all-day showcase of the five IDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award winning films and the IDA David L. Wolper Student Award winner. Presented by the IDA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at LACMA's Leo S. Bing Theater on October 28, DocuFest featured public screenings of all the documentaries honored at the IDA Awards Gala at Paramount
To paraphrase Prospero from The Tempest, "My revels now are ended." After two years, I am stepping down as president of the IDA. A commitment to produce a group of television documentaries will require my full attention. I found my duties as president a very fulfilling experience. Among other things, I was able to meet a wide cross-section of documentary filmmakers, assist others in obtaining funds for projects, and, best of all, help to establish a permanent documentary archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. During these years, however, I noticed a further deterioration