On Monday, eleven federal judges took the bench in Pasadena, CA to hear a copyright case that could have deep and lasting implications for documentary filmmakers everywhere. At issue is whether anyone who appears in a film production and makes even the slightest creative contribution could have a separate copyright interest in their appearance in the film. Until recently, that question was fairly well-settled: the one who controls the film’s production is the author and owns the copyright in the entire film. But earlier this year, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit court of appeals held
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Autumn in Montreal invites cool, crisp evenings and a stunning rainbow of leaves on view in daylight. The season also offers two documentary-rich film festivals: the Festival du Nouveau Cinema (FNC) and the Montreal International Documentary Festival (Recontres Internationales du Documentarie de Montréal). The Festival du Nouveau Cinema, held this year between October 8 and 19, offered over 150 films, including over 40 documentaries. It also featured retrospectives of several documentarians this year, including the late Montreal-based Peter Wintonick ( Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and
Five feature-length documentary films have been selected to receive a total of $95,000 from the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund this year. The Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund was created with support from The New York Community Trust to honor the legacy of legendary American documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz. Grants are made to documentary projects that shed light on critical issues in the United States and focus on Pare Lorentz’s central concerns: the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all and the illumination of pressing social problems. This year the Fund received over 460
I had the fortune of attending the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF), which ran from October 9-19. The festival launched in 1998 as a biennial event whose host cities varied from year to year. This year’s edition marked a major shift, with Taipei henceforth serving as the permanent host city, and the recently launched Taiwan Film Institute designated as the permanent office for the festival. In addition, the festival will be held annually. These changes presented an opportunity for the TIDF team to truly catalyze its identity, vision and mission. Most of the programming and
Twenty minutes into Kim Longinotto's latest film, Dreamcatcher, which will have its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, a chilling scene takes place. The setting is an after-school club at a Chicago high school, where at-risk teenage girls are being counseled on how to say “No” to boys. As the teenagers munch through copious amounts of junk food, a girl confesses that she was raped at the age of 11 at a friend's house. Another girl interrupts to tell a story of long-term abuse by a family friend, then another story of abuse follows, each more harrowing than the one before it. It
If you’ve lived in the US or UK in the last 20 years, you’ve undoubtedly watched a World of Wonder show—most likely more than one, as their shows, besides being highly addictive and incredibly entertaining, are typically a window into a previously undocumented world, one formerly dismissed as marginal and unsuitable for TV. So it seems fitting that the 2014 IDA Pioneer Award is going to the powerhouse duo of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, founders of the highly prolific World of Wonder production company. In the past two decades they have produced over 220 original series on 41 different
The DMCA’s ban on breaking encryption is hurting our ability to make fair use. But you are helping us renew our exemption! The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to rip from DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and many other encrypted technologies. The law is blocking our ability to make fair use and could seriously harm documentary filmmaking. Why? Because even though fair use allows us to use copyrighted footage, the DMCA restricts our access to such material. Luckily, the law lets the Librarian of Congress grant exemptions that allow folks to access the works they need. In November
We are excited to announce today that Carol Leifer will host the 30th Annual IDA Documentary Awards, to be held on Friday, December 5, 2014 in the Paramount Theater at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. Carol Leifer has starred in five of her own comedy specials that have aired on HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central and has written for the Oscars® telecast seven times. She is a four-time Emmy®-award nominee for her writing on Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show and Saturday Night Live. She also received the prestigious Writers Guild Award for her work on the number one comedy, Modern Family. She is
This year’s recipient of IDA’s Preservation and Scholarship Award is Cambodian director Rithy Panh, 60, whose most recent autobiographical film, The Missing Picture, won top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as Cambodia’s submission. The Missing Picture blends clay figures, photographs and Khmer Rouge propaganda films into a devastating memoir of Panh’s family’s demise in the work camps of that murderous regime. The Preservation and Scholarship Award goes to Panh for co-founding, along
In 1996, I was working as a journalist and, in lieu of film school, living on a steady diet of documentaries. I was just finishing my first film, and still trying to figure out the mechanics of what makes a documentary work, when I saw When We Were Kings. Though I'd loved many documentaries, none surprised or excited me like this film. The first few minutes are like a magic trick. In flashes, interspersed with the credits, we get Muhammed Ali's early career, meet promoter Don King, understand the pending heavyweight bout, and are introduced to black pride, racism in America and post