A few months ago ( ID, July/August 1995), I explained why and how I made my first independent documentary. Using my own funds, I produced a half-hour video, Off the Wall!, dealing with the elimination of graffiti. It revolved around the activities of a charismatic activist named Joe Connolly. That was the fun part. Then came the hard part: getting the program distributed. How would I convey my antigraffiti message to millions of Americans? I knew that there was little chance of getting it on the broadcast networks. Obtaining a decision from any of the cable networks would require an enormous
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IDA member Peter Stuart is one of the few American nonfiction producers to have made a successful career in Europe. This article about Stuart was first published in the July 31, 1995, Issue of Forbes . London's Sun tabloid calls it "the rudest telly show ever," but Eurotrash is one of the highest-rated shows on Channel Four In Britain, watched every Friday night at 11 p.m. by some 3 million Brits. Eurotrash is aptly named. Its French hosts, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Antoine De Caunes, treat viewers to such items as a Berlin cleaning agency that for $50 an hour will have naked men clean your house
A young mother brings her newborn baby into the city from the countryside. With her last few dollars, she checks into a cheap hotel and asks the whereabouts of the district court. She's come to find the father of her illegitimate child and sue him for child support. The ensuing battle between the desperate mother and the recalcitrant father, in and out of court, has all the essential elements of a melodrama. Yet this is not a daytime soap. It's a real-life story that happened in Shanghai in 1993. And, thanks to Shanghai TV's progressive documentary unit, we have it on videotape in a
The distribution of audiovisual works to educational and individual users, unlike that of printed materials (books), has a relatively short history. Video buying by schools, libraries, and individuals is only about a 20-year-old business. Prior to the marketing of video, these buyers purchased 16mm prints. This market began its rapid growth as 16mm projectors declared surplus by the U.S. Armed Services at the end of World War II found their way or were sold to schools, libraries, churches, and other users for entertainment and education. Film became a great medium for teaching. To understand
For those of you who are unaware, our 2nd International Documentary Congress is scheduled in Los Angeles for this coming October: four weeks of screenings and special events, which will culminate in three days of seminars, panel discussions, and, finally, the IDA Awards celebration. Several years ago, the IDA, in conjunction with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, put on the first congress. It was a huge success. Credit must go to former IDA President Jon Wilkman and to Harrison Engle for their contributions to the event. Two years later the two organizations decided to stage an
It's 9:00 in the morning in the Miramar Palace in San Sebastian in the Basque country on the north coast of Spain. In each of the Miramar's three largest rooms are over 200 delegates from some 30 countries, and in each room they are about to screen a different TV program. In one there's March of the Living from Germany and the Ukraine. In another it's 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould from Canada. And in the session I'm attending, it's the unlikely sounding Portrait of a Serial Kisser. This entertaining documentary from Chaos Productions, Brazil, is about a man who claims to have kissed more
Despite hard times in the former Soviet Union, St. Petersburg in spring and summer is getting to be film festival city. This year, Russia's shimmering old capital hosted a week of Bulgarian, and Polish films; films of the European Union; an American Film Festival; and the 2nd Festival of Festivals (prize-winning feature films from everywhere). Scheduled for late September was, irreverently, a Funeral of the Cinema Festival—just how serious its sponsors were and who intended to show up with what I never did find out. The publicity flyer listed the following as qualifying: "dead film"; "death
Hundreds of documentarians from around the world are expected to convene in Los Angeles for the Second International Documentary Congress in October, a month that will also feature an intensive schedule of nonfiction screenings, and awards gala during which acclaimed filmmaker Marcel Ophuls will be presented by the IDA with a career achievement award, and an all-day marathon of new award-winning documentaries. "The International Documentary Congress will bring nonfiction filmmakers from at least 25 countries together to review documentaries and discuss how they helped shape beliefs and
During the past two years, one of my IDA responsibilities has been overseeing requests for fiscal sponsorship. I've been fascinated by the variety of subjects that a attract the concern of filmmakers. Among them you can find The Art of Making Horseshoes, The Story of Hemp, The History of the Flying Tigers in World War II, Today's American Expatriates in Hungary, and Recollections of Route 66. For a long time, I've had my own personal obsession to produce a documentary about eradicating graffiti. The sight of tags like VENT, JOKER, BF, ETB, DREX, or CBS ("Can't Be Stopped") on the walls of my
The first American women to make documentary films back in the 1910s and '20s, Osa Johnson and Frances Hubbard Flaherty, worked mainly as silent partners to their famous husbands, Martin Johnson and Robert Flaherty.Their highly successful films set standards in two different directions: commercial entertainment (as in the Johnsons' Baboona) and creative artistry (as in the Flaherty's' Man of Aran). In the late 1930s, the social and cultural documentary gave women the opportunity to function for the first time on their own (or nearly) in the non commercial arena that depended almost