Dear IDA Members, As reported in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, a new media phenomenon has come into being-Video News Releases (VNRs). It's very interesting how these play on national and local channels. Catching up on the day's news, you could watch a 90-second report that passes itself off as a normal in-house story. One problem, though: The reporter's name is fictitious and the entire piece was created by a public relations firm that was hired by the White House-and paid for by the US taxpayers. According to NPR, 30 government agencies are in full swing financing the
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Dear IDA Members, In the world of nonfiction filmmaking, January and February brought NATPE, the Sundance Film Festival and the RealScreen Summit, all within three weeks of each other, with IDA representation at all three events. I attended the RealScreen Summit in Washington, DC, which attracted nearly 1,100 people for three days of seminars and discussions about the creativity and business of the nonfiction form. While the seminars went on downstairs, the business of selling went on upstairs in the lobby. I saw a great number of buyers outlining their programming needs in 30-minute sessions
Dear Readers, While the past few years have a yielded a bumper crop of box-office successes, the prospects of a brave new utopia for documentarians may not be quite as bright as previously bruited. There are only so many theaters and channels to go around, and while the combination of cost-effective technology and a more doc-friendly world has encouraged a new wave of storytellers, a troubling number of good documentaries still go homeless. What's needed beyond the artistry and craft is a dose of marketing savvy and chutzpah. We recruited a few seasoned veterans to share their sage counsel
Dear IDA Members, As this organization continues to grow, so does our need for more help. You may not be aware that we accomplish our programs and events with a small staff. The IDA depends on our working board of directors to initiate and direct the many activities you read about in these pages. While most of our board is composed of filmmakers, we also need professionals from law, fundraising, multimedia, accounting, publishing, etc. This year we had 27 talented and experienced applicants vying for seven slots on the board. The seven newly elected board members I am pleased to introduce to
Dear Readers, When we were planning an issue devoted to women in documentary, we were prompted first by an article that appeared in the January 2004 issue—an editors roundtable, courtesy of Editors Guild magazine, that consisted entirely of men. We received our share of calls for a counterpart. Then, filmmaker/educator Nina Gilden Seavey sent us an unsolicited article about her personal experiences regarding motherhood and documentary filmmaking. The seeds were planted. The documentary community is one of the few in the entire media arts spectrum in which women play a prominent role both
Dear Readers, Making documentaries, as we all know, is a difficult profession, one with more psychic, spiritual and artistic rewards than monetary ones. The realities of paying the bills, supporting families and surviving prompt the need to cast one's net wider, expand one's portfolio, cast about for between-documentary, or even during-documentary, opportunities. And some of these opportunities have actually served to enhance one's documentary-making sensibilities. In this issue, we look at a few crossovers and sidelights that have kept documentary makers reasonably solvent, and have inspired
Dear IDA Members: Most of us involved in the nonfiction world must travel to accomplish our goals of production, research or sales. Travel today is easier in some ways than ever before. Yes, we all groan at the thought of long security lines and crowded airports, but being away from home is a lot easier than it used to be. Now when I check into a hotel room in France or Washington, I am provided with wireless Internet service; no more odd modem connections. E-mails are a snap—no more trudging down into the dungeon "business-office." Telephone service also has surprisingly improved for long
Dear Readers, A few weeks from now, the furious spate of political documentaries that has dominated the big and small screens will come to a crescendo with the latest "most important election of our lifetime." Or will it? The D-Word Community recently devoted a week to the subject of political documentaries, with Jehane Noujaim ( The Control Room; Startup.com) and Pamela Yates ( When the Mountains Tremble; Witness to War) leading the discussion, under the always capable stewardship of D-Word founder Doug Block. The panel inspired debates about the difference between social issue docs and
The quest for freedom and the restraints of race are opposing themes that resonate in almost all of Ken Burns' films, from The Civil War to Baseball to Jazz. But in his newest work, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a two-part documentary about the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, these forces define a man who not only challenged the status quo, but was ahead of his time in demanding to live his life without any limitations, racial or otherwise. "Jack Johnson wished to live his life nothing short of a free man," says Burns. "And that was a