If 16mm film production once seemed threatened to near extinction by small format video (and in news gathering, at least, this is indeed a fait accompli), three technical innovations promise to take the small format film robustly into the '90s. How does this sound for your next documentary: an inexpensive, well implemented film stock suitable for high-definition distribution, with machine readable code for easier posting, and digital stereo optical track? Like 16mm in the 1990's, perhaps. Not with standing already accomplished advances in 16mm film production—including Kodak 's tabular grain
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by David Ehrenstein and Bill Reed The opening of Roger & Me was a few days away when we sat down to talk with its maker (his detractors might say perpetrator), Michael Moore. We were the last of 14 interviews Moore had held that day, but the filmmaker wasn't winded. For by this time, such pressure was par for the course with what had begun as a film and become a phenomenon. Picked by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association as the Best Documentary of 1989, this mordantly funny piece of investigative journalism centers on the the near-total economic collapse of Moore's hometown Flint, Michigan
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, best known as the man who first revealed the beauty and extraordinary life of the undersea world, is also a pioneering documentary filmmaker, inventor, innovator and environmentalist. Co-inventor of the aqua lung, he and his teams began the science of undersea archeology, made the first ocean floor search for petroleum, created the first small submarine for scientific work, carried out the first successful experiments in living under the sea, and invented the first underwater television system. Cousteau's love of film came early. At sixteen he was directing fast paced
The fifth annual IDA Awards presentation was held last November 17th in Los Angeles. The awards were handed out at luncheon ceremonies to honor personal achievement and outstanding documentary productions. Jacques-Yves Cousteau was presented with the 1989 IDA Career Achievement Award. Cousteau, the noted French ocean explorer, environmentalist and inventor, has produced more than 100 theatrical films and television programs, which have been seen by hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. The award to Cousteau was presented by David L. Wolper, last year's recipient, who called
Jean-Pierre Gorin believes that "there is only one thing to do with the sophist, and that is to beat the shit out of him." Those who know Jean—Pierre Gorin have come to delight in the occasional oratorical drubbings of the pious and sophistic which he executes with characteristic style—funny, splenetic, passionate, excremental and Gallic. However, Gorin's importance for contemporary filmmakers is not because he coins bon mots in the cut and thrust of debate about films, politics and a variety of other things, but because his two American documentaries, Poto and Cabengo (1979) and Routine
In his 1958 film Lettre de Siberie Chris Marker announced "I write to you from a far-off country" and in his films since then the inveterate wanderer has written from Cuba in Cuba Si (1961), from Paris in Le Joli Mai (1965) and La Jetee (1964), from America in the photo-essay L'Amerique Reve (1969) and in the remarkable film San Soleil (1982) from everywhere and nowhere in a flood of images and sounds. His films are about travelling and the traveller, and, like a relentless stream of postcards from abroad, they provoke questions about the distance between the reader and the writer, the writer
American Chronicles, David Lynch and Mark Frost's new half-hour documentary series on the Fox Network begins and ends with a huge unblinking grey eyeball. It's a memorable logo, perfectly suited to the Lynch-Frost Productions' concept that this show is about thirty minutes of non-judgmental videotape, about the alternative to investigative television journalism's quest to expose rather than record. Lynch and Frost have even come up with a term to define the form American Chronicles will be attempting. They call it "docu-poetry.'' The pilot, Farewell to the Flesh, is written and directed by
Several years back, Lee Grant, Barbara Kopple and Claudia Weill were guest speakers at a dinner meeting of the New York chapter of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. After their lively talks and answers to questions, one member of the audience rose and thanked them for a wonderful evening and saluted them for being "real pioneers." Considering their impressive backgrounds in so many aspects of film work (acting, editing, writing, camera and sound), and the major award-winning full length and short documentaries they had produced and/or directed, I would have called the three
“It would appear that in the entire history of Soviet art, no sector has made such a phenomenal leap in quality as the documentary cinema," wrote critic Alla Bossart in a 1989 issue of the Soviet journal Smena. Is this another example of Soviet hype? Perhaps not, when you consider that because of its transparent propaganda this genre has been one of the most discredited in the USSR. And yet, continuity with the pre-glasnost era can be seen. Soviet documentaries are still generally agitational works, though the policies they advocate in the Gorbachev era are very different. Often, they warn
Every year, when the Oscar nominations for Best Documentary are announced, the groans begin. How could they have nominated that? How could they leave out that one, the one the critics loved so much? lately the groans have been getting louder, and are being heard by the Academy itself. That doesn't mean that the Academy, or the members of the Documentary Committee, agree with all the complaints. But, for all its supposed faults, a case could be made that the Academy often ends up taking the longer, harder look. Admittedly, the Academy has never been known for honing the cutting edge of the