In 2000, I was a young filmmaker on my way to my first Sundance Film Festival. If I didn't already know everything there was to know about filmmaking, I was at least well on my way. And then I wandered into a screening of a film called Well-Founded Fear. I didn't have high hopes; it was described, un-promisingly, as "an inside look at the Immigration and Naturalization Service." Ninety minutes later, I walked out of the theater inspired and humbled. The film opens in a drab waiting room, not unlike the DMV. On one side of glass partitions are the asylum seekers, sitting nervously in small
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Archival images often form part of our collective memories. Whether it be Leni Riefenstahl's footage of the Nuremberg Rallies, Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the Tank Man at Tiananmen Square, the 2001 terrorist attacks or the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, how history is remembered is partly shaped by how it was captured. The greater the event and the impact, the more iconic the image, the more ingrained it becomes as a touchstone for collective reference. But archive doesn't have to index a global event to be important. As the human propensity to capture moving images has
Matthew White was a founder, first president, and is currently executive director of the Association of Commercial Stock Image Libraries (ACSIL), a nonprofit trade association that represents the interests of the stock footage community. He ran his own stock footage library, the White Production Archives (WPA), from 1987 to 2000. His latest venture, Sutton Hoo Studios was, as White describes it, "built to create films from distressed archives." But in between those two endeavors, he served as executive director of the American Archive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and before
Over the past few years, the documentary form has seen a creative sea change in depictions of history: how it's rendered, what it represents and how it changes our perceptions of time. Films like What Happened Miss Simone?, I Am Not Your Negro, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and LA 92 are just a few examples of documentaries that have transformed how we engage the past and how we consider history, history-makers and icons. With a plethora of archival and stock footage available to license, archivists play a crucial role in the documentary production process. Like seasoned miners panning for gold
To create a portrait of an individual—movie producer Robert Evans, say, or musician Kurt Cobain—director Brett Morgen abides by an austere tenet. "I don't start working on a film until we have collected every single piece of media in existence on a subject," Morgen reveals. "That's when I know it's time for me to go to work." The approach may sound tortuous, but it can make the difference between a good film and a definitive one, as in the case of Morgen's 2015 documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. "When we got ahold of [previously unknown] footage of Kurt and Courtney for Cobain, we knew
By Steven Beer, Jake Levy and Neil Rosini Archive agreements have much in common with every other legally-binding license. They must identify the subject matter—the clip, image or other material being licensed—and the details of the license, such as term, territory, cost and, if applicable, exclusivity. These agreements are subject to negotiation, but only to the degree allowed by the party with greater leverage (which, in the case of archive licenses, is usually the archive). They will contain a set of rights and obligations for both parties, the full meaning of which may not always be
Dear Readers, The image on the cover of this issue—from Bill Morrison's IDA Award-winning Dawson City: Frozen Time—tells a fascinating story. It's a story of archaeology and excavation, and what is revealed about a turn-of-the-century Canadian Gold Rush town through an accidentally unearthed trove of silent films and newsreels. Archival and stock footage constitute the raw material for so much great nonfiction storytelling. In the right hands, through artfully deployed recontextualization, the best documentaries have prompted us to reconsider how we think about and engage history, culture and
Since American Experience debuted in October 1988, a guiding principle of the PBS series has been a belief that history matters. History can help us understand not only where we've been as a nation, but also where we're headed. As Executive Producer Mark Samels explains, "By looking at the past through the lens of the present, we can draw lessons from it—not to justify anyone’s actions but to more fully understand the thoughts, decisions and actions of the people that came before us." In the nearly 30 years that American Experience has been gracing audiences with historical documentaries, the
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering tonight, Monday, January 8 on HBO is Francis Whately's David Bowie: The Last Five Years. In the last years of his life, David Bowie ended nearly a decade of silence to engage in an extraordinary burst of activity, producing two groundbreaking albums and a musical. This new documentary explores this unexpected end to a remarkable career. Premiering tonight, Monday, January 8, on Independent Lens (and then streaming on Netflix) is Jennifer Brea's Unrest, a powerful
I think that it's safe to say that most of us love working in documentary film because the work we produce does something to make the world a better place. Shining a light on injustice is noble work. Celebrating an artist or another culture lifts all of us up and creates joy and a connection to a better world around us. The fact of the matter is, most of us are dedicated to social justice, diversity and inclusion in our lives and in our work. Over the years, we've seen the emergence of filmmakers from underrepresented communities, which has brought nuance and authenticity to documentary films