David Wolper, whose Wolper Organization was a pioneering force in documentary production during the first three decades of American television, passed away August 10 at his home in Beverly Hills. With almost all of the news and documentary work being produced in New York in the 1950s, Wolper set up shop in Los Angeles and lured filmmakers like Mel Stuart and Jack Haley Jr. to work with him. Over the next decades, the Wolper team produced such works as The Race for Space , D-Day , The Making of the President series, the Jacques Cousteau television specials and hundreds more. He and his team
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Andrew Berends, the recipient of the 2006 Courage Under Fire Award, traveled to Iraq in March 2004, intending to get a behind-the-scenes look at what was really happening in that war-torn country a year after the Unites States' invasion. He felt that traditional news media were mainly reporting on the numbers of people killed and wounded and where American soldiers were fighting. Berends called his friend James Longley, who was working on a made-in-Iraq documentary ( Iraq in Fragments). Longley advised him to fly to Amman, Jordan, take a taxi to Baghdad, and bring a passport to get across the
Reports of a film festival can lapse into a list of titles. For the Jihlava (Czech Republic) International Festival of Documentary Films ( www.dokument-festival.cz), which ran from October 24 to 29, 2006, a few snippets may give the flavor of the event: *A festival press release stating that one screening "was accompanied by a short discussion with the authors, and by a competition for a DVD containing the film, on which [sic] the audience participated much more than on the discussion." *Mária Ferenčuhová of the Slovak national film school summarizing the prospects for nonfiction movies in her
From Black Harvest By Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan We do many different types of projects and don't think of ourselves as having a single filmmaking style. But in our feature documentaries, we're drawn to stories with a personal connection and a political aspect, focusing on individual lives that illuminate universal truths. We're fascinated by the power of time as a narrative element, and we think humor is essential. For these reasons, Black Harvest, the third film made by Robin Anderson and Bob Connolly in the Highlands of Papua, New Guinea, is an inspiration. It's a model of brilliant
Editor’s Note: On October 1 at the Lakeside Theater in Oakland, IDA will present a special Bay Area edition of its Conversation Series, featuring The Black Panthers director Stanley Nelson talking with Orlando Bagwell, director of the Documentary Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Learn more and purchase tickets. In the beginning, there was Stanley Nelson and his production company, Half Nelson Productions. Nelson's focus has been documentary films about the African-American and minority experience, and his resume is peppered with accolades such as a MacArthur "Genius"
As we poise gingerly on the precipice of another year, we tend to look back longingly, one last time, at the year that brought us here. Fortunately, the Awards Season--which kicked off right after Thanksgiving with the IFP Gotham Awards, followed a week later by the IDA Awards, then by a spate of critics' picks, reflections and ruminations rumbles through the winter, reaching a crescendo at the brink of spring with the Academy Awards. So here is January, named for Janus, the god of doors, gates and beginnings, depicted always with two faces, looking forward and looking back. The infrastructure
Morgan Spurlock, from his 2004 film Super Size Me. Photo: Julie Soefer I know what you're thinking--what could possibly be funnier than a gaggle of documentary filmmakers discussing the use of humor in the nonfiction form? So, we set out to interview a variety of figures in the documentary production and exhibition arena about the ways in which filmmakers can use comedy and humor to reinforce their intended message to audiences. Perhaps we should begin with Mark Lewis, a documentary filmmaker who is particularly skilled at using anthropomorphism to imbue his otherwise incommunicative subjects