Today, a federal appeals judge in Manhattan ordered a June 8 hearing to consider a subpoena issued on May 6 by a federal district judge that ordered Crude filmmaker Joe Berlinger to turn over hundreds of hours of unused footage from his film.

Crude focuses on a lawsuit by Ecuadoreans against Chevron over pollution in the Amazon. Chevron is seeking 600 hours of footage from the film in an effort to shore up their case in the long-running lawsuit. Lawyers for Berlinger are arguing on First Amendment grounds that his material is protected by journalistic privilege.

After the subpoena was issued earlier this month, the documentary community spoke out in favor of Berlinger by writing an open letter spearheaded by Patrick Creadon and Doug Blush, supported by the IDA and signed by over 20 Academy Award winners and nominees and many others (see full letter here).

Since its release, hundreds more from the filmmaking community have added their support to the letter via websites such as documentary.org and AJ Schnack's blog (see comments sections for both articles to read additional signees).

Get the latest on Crude at the film's website, where you can find information about how to financially back the extraordinarily costly legal battle Berlinger is facing.

If your television viewing habits run the spectrum from grizzly bears that eat marshmallows and lowland gorillas struggling for survival, to relocated elephants and having a zoo in your own backyard, Nat Geo Wild may be just for you. Launched in the US on March 29, the channel becomes the second in the National Geographic domestic portfolio, and takes over the space occupied by the Fox Reality Channel. At last count, that now-defunct network reached about 50 million homes.

The new channel will be simulcast in both standard and high definition, and its core focus will be natural history on a global, yet intimate scale. The stories of explorers, scientists and filmmakers--with a good use of new technology--will be the core of the channel.

Since there are so few wildlife slots on the National Geographic Channel (NGC), says Bridget Whalen, vice president of development, "Wild is an opportunity to focus on a core genre." A spin-off of the National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo Wild also taps into one of the missions of the National Geographic Society--to inspire people to care about the planet--against a growing tide of worldwide challenges facing wildlife. Adds senior vice president Geoff Daniels, "It is unique and an extension of the Society. There are a million stories in the wild world, and we want to tell them."

Nat Geo Wild has been one of the fastest growing channels internationally for National Geographic. It has existed in 50 countries since 2006, when it premiered in Hong Kong. "We're going to take something proven and popular and give the viewers more of what they want," explains Daniels. "The programs know no borders. They have universal appeal."

Daniels, who has been with Nat Geo for more than a decade, is in charge of programming and anticipates that Nat Geo Wild will be one of the "largest launches in US cable history." He adds, much like in the natural world, "When the opportunity comes along, we have to grab it. The time is right. With all the challenges in the natural world--issues of sustainability, preserving wild places--there is a global zeitgeist; people want to make an impact."

The consistent success and growth of National Geographic Channel in the US has pushed the arrival of Nat Geo Wild, says Whalen. "Its ratings have grown for seven straight years--something no other channel can claim since its launch." The channel has also earned 24 Emmy nominations over the past two years. Wild, like the Channel, "is important to co-owners News Corporation and National Geographic Ventures," adds Whalen. It is hoped that revenue from the new channel can help fund some of the Society's science programs as well.

The Wild line-up during the first few months includes both series and one-offs. Shows can be hosted, or not. "We want real ambassadors to the brand," Daniels explains. "They would be doing this activity without the cameras around. They also should have an understanding of animals that no one else has."

Naturalist Casey Anderson is "a great example of the kind of person we're looking for," says Daniels. He and Whalen are both thrilled with the series Expedition Wild with Casey Anderson (Prod.: Grizzly Creek Films; Exec. Prods.: Leslie M. Gaines, Mailande Becker Holland, Thomas Winston), about Casey's life with Brutus, an 800-pound grizzly bear he's raised since Brutus was a cub. "Casey's amazing and has a unique connection to the wild," adds Daniels.

The idea for the pilot show, Expedition Wild, came to Whalen through a speed pitch at the Jackson Hole International Wildlife Film Festival by Grizzly Creek Films. "We are definitely open for business to producers, and want to let them express their vision," says Daniels. "We're producer-friendly and committed to original programming." Wild, like most channels, is open to commissions, co-productions and acquisitions. It also will air some shows previously seen on National Geographic Channel.

Another key series for Wild is My Life Is a Zoo (Prod.: JWM Productions; Dir.: Aziz Isham). "It's rare when someone pops off the screen," says Whalen. The show follows Bud DeYoung and Carrie Cramer, who oversee more than 400 animals-in their 80-acre Michigan backyard. Among the residents in the little zoo are endangered tigers, bears, wolves, pigs and reptiles. "The couple is accessible and entertaining, and provides us with access to issues related to the wild world," Whalen notes.

One-off Shark Island features National Geographic emerging explorer Enric Sala. The hour features his high-tech exploration of the massive shark populations found around tiny Cocos Island, located 300 miles off of Costa Rica. The film aired as part of an Earth Day Oceans Event on Wild. The film also features National Geographic explorer-in-residence Sylvia Earle. "This program really fulfills the mission of the Society, and it's great TV," Daniels maintains. "It also can do some good." In fact, after a screening of the film in Costa Rica, the government there is looking to protect more of its waters. 

Mystery Gorillas (Dir./Prod.: James Manfull) features another National Geographic Society emerging explorer, anthropologist Mireya Mayor, as she studies a previously unknown population of lowland gorillas deep in the forests of the Congo. Africa's Lost Eden looks at the mission to restock the wildlife after years of civil war in Mozambique, in an area known as the place "where Noah left his ark."

"Our shows must be commercially relevant but have a mission," Daniels explains. "We are absolutely committed to that 120-year-old unique brand and legacy that is National Geographic." Daniels thinks that legacy gives Wild an advantage over any competition. Rebel Monkeys (Dir.: Allison Bean; Prod.: Colin Collis) also fits right in with the brand, he says. The half-hour series about the rhesus macaques of Jaipur, India has no host, yet "captures something appealing and worked well previously internationally," according to Daniels. The series follows a rambunctious band of 60 primates as they struggle for survival in an urban setting.

Story pitches for Wild are handled by Whalen's team, the same people who develop content for National Geographic Channel. "That is a real strength and gives us a clear purpose," she maintains. That might help Wild not fall into the muddle that often occurs between the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, with separate development teams both pursuing animal programming.

The primetime demographic for Wild is the usual: 25-to-54-year-olds, skewing more towards males. But that's not the only audience Wild is interested in; "Being family-friendly is key," adds Daniels.

The television landscape is a crowded marketplace right now, but that doesn't bother Daniels. Within the first year of the new channel's launch, "We want to firmly establish Wild with National Geographic Channel as a great one-two punch, and a competitive force." In five years? "We want to be globally dominant and commercially successful while staying true to the brand, and continuing to inspire folks to conserve."

When not out making docs, Lauren Cardillo is involved in the work required to raise a wildlife group comprised of two daughters and a pet rabbit. For more information, please visit, www.themotherroad.tv.

Documentary production and distribution have enjoyed huge resurgences over the past decade, giving rise to a plethora of specialized festivals and markets, as well as to experiments in modes of distribution. Documentaries can now garner coveted attention and audiences at festivals, on TV and in theaters. The documentary pioneers--Joris Ivens, John Grierson, Pare Lorentz, Dziga Vertov, et al--would marvel at the global impact of the form they helped create.  This resurgence, coupled with the cost efficiencies of the tools of production, has attracted both an audience and a filmmaking community that is younger and more diverse. The rapidity of these changes, thanks to the digital revolution, is continuing to subvert conventional processes of production, distribution and funding.

For independent documentary makers, one of the most effective developments has been the rise of documentary co-production markets-often called pitching forums-around the globe. Certainly the grand dame of these is the IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) Forum, which was launched in 1993 (IDFA itself premiered in 1988). Hot Docs, the largest documentary festival and market in North America, modeled its Toronto Documentary Forum after IDFA's. And one of the latest entries is The Good Pitch, a partnership between the UK-based Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Program. Each of these forums has specific structures and guidelines for submitting projects on their websites, as well as news about successful projects and new initiatives. We spoke to the respective managers of all three forums about their goals, and how they see the current international landscape for documentaries.

Attending IDFA as a delegate will put you in a room with hundreds of colleagues participating in a dizzying three-day ritual of seven-minute pitches, roundtables, one-on-one meetings, lunches for networking and, as a finale, awards for Best Pitch and Favorite Commissioning Editor, known as "The Cuban Hat."

The 2009 the IDFA Forum attracted 400 visitors and delegates, as 43 filmmaking teams pitched their respective projects. In addition, an international audience of 160 observers and other film professionals--commissioning editors, producers, distributors, sales agents and independent producers--saw 27 Central and 16 Round Table projects pitched before 120 commissioners and other financiers. Those include "seedling projects," in their early stages, and "rough cut projects," looking only for finishing funds. New media funders and non-government organizations (NGOs) are welcome, since the Forum sees them as crucial for the market in the coming years. One of the key elements at IDFA is the two-hour sit-down lunch for all participants. As a guest of Rotterdam's Cinemart for many years I always found the similar lunch there to be one of the best opportunities for informal networking.

According to Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen, the Forum's industry office director, the selection process starts with a committee of five people working in international documentary--including producers, commissioning editors, distributors and representatives of institutes. Another review committee includes people with a broad international overview of projects in development and in production, along with market trends. Selection is made in a two-day meeting in Amsterdam, where the committees read proposals, watch trailers and review other submitted material.

The most important criteria are "creative documentaries bringing new stories with international appeal," van Nieuwenhuyzen says. "For international co-financing, it is crucial that the stories and themes have international relevance and appeal. Projects dealing with topics, stories and themes covered previously in documentaries that have been broadcast and screened internationally won't make it into the selection." About 80 percent of the Forum projects selected must be from European Union (EU) member countries. The Forum is very open to projects with multiple platforms, and views itself as evolving with an industry in which "endless technological possibilities are enhancing the ability of documentary filmmakers to convey their message."

Recent successes coming out of IDFA include Lixin Fan's Last Train Home, which was pitched at the 2008 Forum and captured the prize for Best Feature at the 2009 festival. The film will be released theatrically in the US this September through Zeitgeist Films. Another big success is Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith's enthralling The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, which was also pitched at the 2008 Forum; the film earned an Academy Award nomination this year for Best Documentary Feature.

The Toronto Documentary Forum (TDF) at Hot Docs is a similarly intense two-day experience. As we went to press, the 2010 TDF, held May 5 and 6, expected over 500 leading industry professionals to hear 25 pre-selected international project presentations. Guests were to include key international commissioning editors and an observer's gallery composed of fellow producers, distributors, sales agents, funders and other buyers. TDF also offers Observer accreditation for independent producers; representatives of foundations, public agencies and film institutes; sales agents; distributors; etc. As at IDFA, each slot includes a seven-minute presentation from the production team and its trigger decision-maker, and a seven-minute discussion-and-response period. Teams are encouraged to include one- or two-minute video clips. 

A particular draw at TDF is The Doc Shop Online, a digital video library offering users on-demand access to over 1,500 documentaries at any of the 40 onsite computer terminals during and after the festival for registered buyers, distributors, sales agents and festival programmers. The Toronto Forum also offers multiple opportunities for informal networking via one-on-one meetings and receptions. New for 2010 is a special workshop focused on interactivity co-sponsored with the Canadian Film Centre (CFC) Media Lab entitled "Leave the Walls at the Door," a facilitated matchmaking and think-tank workshop designed for documentary producers of every ilk. Thirty participants, including myriad storytellers working with a variety of platforms and backgrounds (traditional, interactive, commercial, art house, big budget, do-it-yourselfers) will have three hours to share ideas and experiences.

One of the big success stories that initially surfaced at TDF was the Israeli film Waltz with Bashir (Dir.: Ari Folman). Pitched in 2007, it met with very mixed responses. People were unsure about the animation approach stylistically, as well as the expense involved. Later the filmmakers had follow-up meetings in Toronto and were eventually able to secure Arte as a co-production partner. Waltz with Bashir went on to win numerous awards--not only for best documentary, but also in the animation and foreign film categories.

The Good Pitch is the new kid on the block, founded in 2008 as part of the BRITDOC festival in Oxford, England. The BRITDOC Foundation describes itself as is "a new social entrepreneurship organization bringing new thinking to public service delivery." It gives grants for production, and it brokers partnerships around specific films, reaching out to diverse potential supporters for documentary. According to its website, The Good Pitch invites "NGOs, social entrepreneurs, broadcasters and potential corporate and brand partners to form powerful alliances around groundbreaking films."

Foundation Director Beadie Finzi describes this as an ongoing process of continuous, year-round networking. Her staff works hard to make sure there will be at least one film with which participants will want to be involved so that no one comes away disappointed. Part of its cultivation efforts was a conference in June 2007 for 150 of the UK's top NGOs and foundations to learn about how documentaries can help them in their work. The conference was very useful in convincing the NGOs of the benefits of working with film and filmmakers. A conference of that kind in the US would be an excellent idea, and would have to take place on a regional basis, given that the country is so large and not centralized like the UK.

The Good Pitch provides numerous opportunities for filmmakers to connect with people on their panels--before and after their pitches--and produces a very comprehensive catalogue listing everyone attending the event, including their priorities and contact details. Business partners for specific films have included Saatchi & Saatchi, Nokia, Stella Artois, Waitrose and Greenpeace. In addition, throughout 2009, The Good Pitch was presented at Hot Docs, Silverdocs and Independent Film Week. A similar tour is underway for 2010, starting with the Tribeca Film Festival in April and May.

A further activity of BRITDOC is its online services, including the recently launched Good Screenings, a new film distribution website that allows users to hold their own screenings of the best social justice documentary films and, crucially, keep their profits.

An impressive success coming out of the 2009 SilverDocs Good Pitch was the film Hungry in America by Kristi Jacobson. The feature-length documentary presents an unflinching look at the root causes behind the 17 million hungry children in this country and asks tough questions about why a nation that could feed all of its citizens has failed to do so. She and co-director Lori Silverbush attracted NGO partnerships that progressed "from first-date to marriage" when a summit of 20 anti-hunger organizations convened following The Good Pitch to strategize about how they could use the film to amplify their own work.

According to executive producer Ryan Harrington, the anti-hunger NGOs assembled in Silver Spring raised $250,000 in funds for the film since that event, with more financing pending. Another success story from the 2009 Good Pitch at IFP's Independent Film Week was Glenn Baker's Easy Like Water, which received an investment of $10,000 from the Global Fund for Children. The film documents the innovative work of Mohammed Rezwan, who uses solar-powered floating schools in Bangladesh to turn the frontlines of climate change into a community of learning.

The organizers of these forums all noted the reduced budgets for commissioning editors. Jan Rofekamp of the Montreal-based Films Transit International also cited a decline in the autonomy of buyers in recent years.  They now have to speculate on what issues will have audience appeal--which may not always yield the most interesting or innovative projects. Rofekamp advises filmmakers to be aware of the buyers' priorities and spend some time researching some of the major buyers and what they have funded recently. A great resource is the European Documentary Network's annual Financing Guide, which includes detailed information on international broadcast buyers and distributors, funds for production and distribution, including video-on-demand. The guide is available in both printed and online versions. There is also enormous interest from documentary festivals and forums in the possibilities of new media; IDFA presented two panels in 2009 on these topics. If you have a multi-platform project, by all means, talk it up.

So if you are planning to pitch your project in the near future, what is the recipe for success? Rofekamp, who has participated in pitch events for many years, advises targeting the concerns of buyers. They want to know why your topic is important, why you are the best team to make it and why it needs to be produced now.  Claire Aguilar of Independent Television Service (ITVS), also a veteran of international pitch forums, recommends working with the moderators to help with the discussion and suggest broadcasters that would be responsive to your pitch. Memorize your presentation and be sure to make eye contact with those in the room, rather than look at notes. Your topic will do best if it has universal relevance (the ability to draw audiences from varied countries), so make sure to explicitly lay out the reasons for that and draw specific parallels for your topic, person or event.

Everyone recommends the strongest possible sample reel, since that is often what really piques participants' attention. Preparing a dazzling sample reel is well worth your time and money. Your major objective is to use the pitch to get to one-on-one meetings later in the event. That is where the real business gets done. As a documentarist, educating yourself about the many new options and ventures out there is the one of the most important things you can do to ensure your voice continues to be heard. 

Wanda Bershen is a consultant on fundraising, festivals and distribution. Documentary clients have included Sonia, Power Trip, Afghan Women, Trembling Before G*d and Blacks & Jews. She has organized film programs with the Human Rights Film Festival, Brooklyn Museum,  and Film Society of Lincoln Center and currently teaches Arts Management at CUNY Baruch. Visit  www.reddiaper.com.

Usually when one hears the phrase "boot camp," images of guns, camouflage fashionand tough sergeants barking out orders come to mind. A boot camp of a different sort took place this past February in Culver City, California, when five veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars spent three days together getting a crash course in documentary filmmaking. The experience was part of Operation In Their Boots, the kickoff to a unique fellowship program during which the vetswill produce and direct their own nonfiction films.

The program is part of the larger In Their Boots series, which is produced by Brave New Foundation and funded by a grant from the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund (IADIF) of the California Community Foundation. Brave New Foundation received the three-year grant to raiseawareness through documentary stories of how people here at home are impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The grant is flexible, allowing executive producer Richard Ray Perez to experiment with different ways of fulfilling its mandate.

During the first cycle of the grant in 2008, Perez wanted to experiment in new media because that's one of Brave New Foundation's prime areas of focus. He hired a producer and director and developed 12 stories, eight to 36 minutes in length, all of which were streamed on the website. In 2009, during the second cycle, Perez and his team produced a more traditional documentary series of 10 half-hour episodes, which they are currently considering releasing on individual public television stations. For the 2010 cycle, says Perez, "We came up with the idea to commission veterans themselves to produce and direct their own documentaries. I realized a lot of people who served are National Guardsmen who may have had experience in the film industry working as grips, DPs, electricians or in jobs that may have helped them acquire any number of skills that are transferable to documentaryfilmmaking."

Perez was able to work out a budget in which the foundation would be able to provide $7,500 in stipends to five filmmakers to help support them during a three-month, part-time filmmaking process. "We had to come up with a formula that would make this really possible for emerging filmmakers," says Perez. "Making a living and making a documentary are two differentthings." Each project was allocated a $10,000 production budget, most of which is expected to go towards travel and crew. The short docs are expected to run an average of 15 minutes in length. The budget does not include equipment rental or post-production costs, as Brave New Foundation will provide these items from its stash of in-house resources. In addition to the funding, a key part of the program would be the mentorship and guidance each filmmaker would receive from the team at Brave New Foundation, including Perez and Robert Greenwald.

Once they set the parameters for the program, Brave New Foundation put out calls for entry through a variety of outlets, including IADIF sister organizations, military.com and documentary-related networking groups. The foundation received approximately 100 applications, and selected Tristan Dyer, Kyle Hartnett, Chris Mandia, Victor Manzano and Clint Van Winkle to participate. Perez says that the filmmakers were chosen based on both their story ideas and an assessment of whether the applicant was capable of actually executing his pitch. While documentary filmmaking experience was not a requirement, filmmaking experience in any genre was a plus. Additionally, Perez wanted to make sure that the participants were open to collaboration and learning new storytelling skills, as the Brave New Foundation's staff would be advising them throughout the process. Although they had hoped to have a woman among the bunch, only two applied to the program, and ultimately Brave New Foundation went with those applicants who presented the strongest story ideas that were well suited for the documentary form.  

Hartnett was thrilled when he found out he'd been accepted into Operation In Their Boots. Hehad studied film production at San Francisco State, and he had come down to Los Angeles to break into the industry. "This opportunity came across as too good to be true," he says. "I never thought I'd be working on a documentary; I studied narrative fiction in school. This is not what I had in mind, but I'm super stoked to be doing it. I've been out here for less than ayear, and I'm already working in a professional environment. I'm super lucky to be a part of it."

Hartnett is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division; he served a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. His film is about his personal quest to gain a better understanding of the challenges Muslim-American service members and veterans face. During Tristan Dyer's five years of active duty service, he spent one year deployed to Camp Taji, Iraq. Upon honorable discharge he enrolled in the Visual Journalism Program at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, California. His film,which will utilize stop-motion animation, will examine substance abuse among Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans. Chris Mandia served as a US Marine infantryman in Iraq. An award-winning playwright and screenwriter, he currently attends the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. His film is about the transitional journey American service members make when they go from thebattlefield to a college campus. Victor Manzano also served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, and is now an entertainment entrepreneur and veterans advocate. His doc will chronicle the turbulent life of fellow veteran Rudy Reyes, who overcame immense hurdles to become a highly skilled combat Marine, a successful actor and an inspiring self-help author. Marine Sergeant Clint Van Winkle served as an AAV section leader during the initial invasion of Iraq. He is the author of Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and his film examines survivors' guilt among Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.

Despite their different service experiences and proposed projects, the filmmakers found a common bond when they participated in the three-day Filmmakers Bootcamp at Brave New Foundation. The purpose of the Bootcamp was to school the participants in everything from story structure to production basics, giving them the essential skills they would need to embark on their projects.

"There was a strong feeling of camaraderie because we all served," explains Dyer."You sort of click with one another immediately. We've been through a lot of the same stuff, even if it wasn't with each other. It's the whole tribal kind of mentality that's part of human nature."

Adds Hartnett, "We're kind of a rarity. Veterans are able to find their own, but there are so few of us out there who want to be filmmakers. It was immediately comfortable--like, 'I knowthese guys. These guys are me.'"

This trust and shared experience came in handy while working on storytelling exercises. Each vet was tasked with honing his story down to the essential conflict of the film or character. As each filmmaker tried to articulate his pitch and refine his story, the rest of the participants chimed in with valuable ideas and opinions. Their ability to do this was in part due to the fact that they all spoke acommon emotional language; their mutual understanding of the wartime experience gave them insights into what fellow group members were trying to express.

The bond among the five filmmakers has lasted beyond the Bootcamp, and they are all helping one another as they move forward with their documentaries. For example, the group is trying to locate Muslim service members for Hartnett to interview, as he's finding that the most challenging part of his film so far. And of course, it wouldn't be a Brave New Foundation program if new media weren't somehow involved. The program requires that all maintain Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts, and blog on a regular basis, so that the participants--as well as the public--can all follow one another online.

Perez anticipates that all five films will be completed by August. Ideally, he'd like to find broadcast distribution for the docs with a cable network or public television. Perez is open to packaging the films into a two-hour block, or playing them individually as shorts. The Foundation has also discussed bundling the films into a feature, but right now there is no money for the additional editing that would require.

Tamara Krinsky is associate editor of Documentary magazine.

The eighth edition of the AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival opens June 21 with the multi-director project Freakonomics, based on Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's bestselling book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Exposes the Hidden Side of Everything. The sextet of directors on the film project includes Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Seth Gordon (King Of Kong), each of whom created a short piece based on a chapter from the book.  The film is slated for a fall 2010 release through Magnolia Pictures.

The book famously applied statistics and incentives to analyze human behaviors, which yielded surprising and controversial conclusions that years of psychology and moral philosophy had yet to reveal. In the film, Gibney looks behind the fragile façade of Sumo wrestling and exposes uncomfortable truths about this ancient and revered sport; Spurlock examines the consequences of a name, and whether being dubbed Sheniqua, Tripp or Moon Unit have any affect on one's future prospects; Grady and Ewing explore whether money can be used to incentivize underachieving kids to improve their grades in school; Jarecki investigates Levitt's provocative theory as to why crime rates dramatically dropped in the early '90s; and Gordon weaves the pieces together with playful animation and commentary from the authors.

"We are thrilled to open the festival with Freakonomics, one of this year's most highly anticipated documentaries," said artistic director Sky Sitney in a statement. "Thanks to a team of celebrated documentarians, one of the best-selling books of the past decade debuts on the big screen for a riveting cinematic experience."

Silverdocs 2010, which runs from June 21 to 27, will showcase over 80 films plus special screenings, music performances and dozens of panel discussions featuring hundreds of filmmakers, diverse topics and media professionals. In addition, the festival will honor Frederick Wiseman, widely recognized as one of America's greatest and most prolific documentary filmmakers, at the Charles Guggenheim Symposium. The Symposium, named after the late, four-time Academy Award winner Charles Guggenheim, honors a filmmaker who has mastered the power of documentary and inspires audiences with powerful explorations of the human experience. Past recipients include Barbara Kopple (2004), Martin Scorsese (2006), Jonathan Demme (2007), Spike Lee (2008) and Albert Maysles (2009).

 "For over four decades, Wiseman has used a 16mm camera and portable sound equipment to create an exceptional body of work consisting of over 30 feature-length films devoted primarily to exploring American institutions," said Sitney. "We are thrilled to recognize his vast contribution to cinema and the documentary form."

Filmmakers, IDA members, producers and those who just love docs came together on Monday, May 10 at The Rooftop at The Standard for another great IDA mixer.

Here are some fun pics from the evening:

See photos from past IDA mixers here, here, here and right here.

The IDA and a group of filmmakers that includes Academy Award winners and nominees have issued an open letter in support of Joe Berlinger, the director of Crude, and objecting to a judge's ruling that Chevron could subpoena Mr. Berlinger's footage from his film.

Read about the developing story in the NY Times here.

And now the letter in its entirety:

May 12, 2010

An open letter in support of Joe Berlinger and the documentary filmmaking team of "Crude"

As members of the documentary film community, we the undersigned strongly object to theHonorable Judge Lewis A. Kaplan's ruling last week in the case involving our colleague JoeBerlinger, the Chevron Corporation, and Berlinger's 600 hours of raw footage shot duringproduction of his documentary film "Crude".

Judge Kaplan sided with Chevron and ruled that Berlinger must turn over all of his raw footageto Chevron for their use in the lawsuit discussed in the film. Berlinger and his legal team plan toappeal the ruling.

In cases such as these involving access to a journalist's work material, whether they involve anewspaper or online reporter, a radio interviewer, a television news producer, or a documentaryfilmmaker, it is understood that First Amendment protection of the journalist's privilege is neverabsolute. Typically, if such privilege is successfully rebutted in court, a turn-over orderdemanding a document or other thing is issued and the journalist must comply or face theconsequences. Therefore, it is astounding to us that Judge Kaplan demanded that all of thefootage shot during the production of the film be handed over to the attorneys of Chevron, giventhat the privilege exists primarily to protect against the wholesale exposure of press files tolitigant scrutiny.

While we commend Judge Kaplan for stating "that the qualified journalists' privilege applies toBerlinger's raw footage", we are nonetheless dismayed both by Chevron's attempts to go on a"fishing expedition" into the edit rooms and production offices of a fellow documentaryfilmmaker without any particular cause or agenda, and the judge's allowance of said intentions.What's next, phone records and e-mails?

At the heart of journalism lies the trust between the interviewer and his or her subject.Individuals who agree to be interviewed by the news media are often putting themselves at greatrisk, especially in the case of television news and documentary film where the subject's identityand voice are presented in the final report. If witnesses sense that their entire interviews will bescrutinized by attorneys and examined in courtrooms they will undoubtedly speak less freely.This ruling surely will have a crippling effect on the work of investigative journalistseverywhere, should it stand.

Though many of us work independently of large news organizations, we nevertheless holdourselves to the highest of journalistic standards in the writing, producing, and editing of ourfilms. In fact, as traditional news media finds itself taking fewer chances due to advertiser fearsand corporate ownership, the urgency of bold, groundbreaking journalism through thedocumentary medium is perhaps greater than ever.

This case offers a clear and compelling argument for more vigorous federal shield laws to protectjournalists and their work, better federal laws to protect confidential sources, and strongerstandards to prevent entities from piercing the journalists' privilege. We urge the higher courts tooverturn this ruling to help ensure the safety and protection of journalists and their subjects, andto promote a free and vital press in our nation and around the world.

Patrick Creadon                   Doug Blush
Los Angeles, CA              Los Angeles, CA

Eddie Schmidt
President, International Documentary Association (IDA)

With the support of IDA's Board of Directors:
Adam Chapnick, Beth Bird, Bob Niemack, Brian Gerber, Gilda Brasch, Laurie Ann Schag,Marjan Safinia, Moises Velez, Pi Ware, Sara Hutchison, Senain Kheshgi, Steven Reich,Sue West, Thomas Miller
Executive Director Michael Lumpkin

Supporting Filmmakers

Alex Gibney, Michael Moore, D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Bruce Sinofsky, Joan Churchill,Rob Epstein, Barbara Kopple, AJ Schnack, Kirby Dick, Ricki Stern, Annie Sundberg, HeidiEwing, Rachel Grady, Freida Mock, Terry Sanders, Marina Zenovich, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal,Kevin Macdonald, Ken Burns, Haskell Wexler, Ellen Kuras,Robby Kenner, Fisher Stevens, Margaret Lazarus, Renner Wunderlich, Gordon Quinn, Margaret Brown,
Rebecca Cammisa, Ondi Timoner, Elise Pearlstein, Ross McElwee

Davis Guggenheim, Lesley Chilcott, Rory Kennedy, Jeff Blitz, Laura Poitras, Marshall Curry,Ross Kauffman, Adam Del Deo, Hubert Sauper, Adam Hyman, Richard Pearce,R.J. Cutler, Sam Pollard, Jessica Yu, Nick Broomfield, Morgan Neville,Peter Gilbert, Steve James, Louie Psihoyos, Lucy Walker,
Pamela Yates

Morgan Spurlock, Bill Moyers, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, Tom Weinberg, Joel Cohen,Kate Amend, Anne Makepeace, Evangeline Griego, David Zeiger, Chris Paine,Greg Barker, Skip Blumberg, Brian Strause, Joe Angio, Ben Shedd,Brian Oakes, Dallas Rexer, John Maringouin, Jeff Malmberg,
David Van Taylor

Liz Garbus, Cara Mertes, Simon Kilmurry, Cynthia Wade, Stefan Forbes,Jennifer Venditti, Peter Kinoy, Tom Putnam, Jessie Deeter, Robin Hessman,Paco de Onis, Kim Longinotto, Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, Sean Welch,Steven Ascher, Jeanne Jordan, Kevin Walsh, Christine O'Malley, Theodore James,Tomlinson Holman, Paola Di Florio, Martin Smith

Diane Weyermann, Jehane Noujaim, Leon Gast, Bill Guttentag, Steven Okazaki,Peter Davis, Michael Tucker, Gabor Kalman, Andrew Goldberg, Eva Orner,Christoph Baaden, Mark Lewis, Annie Roney, Petra Epperlein, Christopher Quinn,Amy Berg, Douglas Chang, Tina DiFeliciantonio,
Jane C. Wagner

James Longley, James Marsh, Yance Ford, Lisa Rich, Tony Gerber,Amy Ziering, Kurt Norton, Amanda Micheli, B. Ruby Rich,Amir Bar-Lev, Jon Else, Judy Branfman, Lucy Phenix, Mike Tollin, Paul Mariano,Jay Rosenblatt, Johanna Demetrakas, Kristine Samuelson, John Haptas

Robert Greenwald, Terry Zwigoff, Laura Gabbert, Matt Tyrnauer, Anna Thomas,Doug Block, Ken Schneider, Gary Cohen, Peter Gerard, Nathan Truesdell,Chris Smith, Bob Richman, Sandy McLeod, Judith Katz, Paul Rachman,Hilari Scarl, Jonathan Stack, Shirley Moyers, Andrew Berends, Buddy Squires,
Jon Alpert, Matthew O'Neill

Lynne Littman, Mark J Harris, Thom Powers, Lauren Greenfield,Theodore Braun, Mary Ann Braubach, Frederick Gerten, Seth Gordon, Celia Maysles,Henry Alex Rubin, Rick Goldsmith, Bob Hercules, Jim Morrissette, Howard Weinberg,Judith Helfand, Andrew Garrison, Rebecca Chaiklin, Doug Pray,Katy Chevigny, Sarah Gibson, Daniel Junge, Ted Hope, Tom Fontana, Doug Zwick, Michael Winship, Stacy Peralta

Sandy Cioffi, Jeffrey Schwarz, Lyda Kuth, Sara Archambault, Geoffrey Smith, Marina Goldovskaya, Jennifer Grausman, Ginger Brown, Natalie Difford, Dierdre Haj, Jack Willis, Judy Irola, Kieran Fitzgerald, Jon Shenk, Mridu Chandra, Ryan Krivoshey, Doug Whyte, Rebecca Cammisa, Charlotte Lagarde, Alison Armstrong, Amy Geller, Gerald Peary, Paul van den Boom, Petr Lom, Jan Rofekamp, Rick Minnich, Henry Chalfant, Mark Achbar, Marcia Jarmel, Stephanie Soechtig, Fisher Stevens, Risa Morimoto, John Philp, Carol Dysinger, Tom Lino, Gregory Orr, Stuart Samuels, Daniel B. Gold, Alice Klein, Brian Newman 

Marc Simon, Summer Preney, James Scurlock, Neil Sieling, Laura Israel, Tom Yellin, Michael Schwarz, Joshua Z. Weinstein, Safina Uberoi, Dylan Robertson, Linda Jaivin, Karin Hayes, Ondi Timoner, Jeanne C Finley, Eric Lin, Joanna Rudnick, Justin Pemberton, Esther Robinson, Kief Davidson, Colin Powers, Laurie House, Stephanie Black, Ayza Omar, Harold Moss, Robert C. Alexander, Daniel Coffin, Nilita Vachani, Mark Landsman 

Bill Ferehawk, Judith Ehrlich, Frank Christopher, Churchill Roberts, Xan Parker, Elizabeth Holder, Ivy Meeropol, Cameron Yates, Deborah Dickson, Paul Devlin, David Leaf, Janet Cole, Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher, Maro Chermayeff, Mario Murillo, Christine Noschese, Stephanie Caruso, Jason Figueira, Stephen McCarthy, Jonathon Napolitino, Nick Andert, Hima B., Gary Weimberg, Martin Harbury, Margaret Brown, David Soll, Neal Baer, Alcides Soares, Sandra Schulberg, Francisco Bello, Margaret Lazarus, Renner Wunderlich,
Miranda Yousef, Yung Chang

Among the events with the biggest buzz at the San Francisco International Film Festival were centered around documentaries, with Brazilian director-producer Walter Salles presenting his work-in-progress, In Search of On the Road; Sam Green's live presentation of Utopia in Four Movements; and Joan Rivers attending the closing night screening of the documentary of her life, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's Joan Rivers--A Piece of Work.

Salles, who was honored this year with the festival's Founder's Directing Award, got his start in documentaries. When he was tapped by producer Francis Coppola to make the film version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Salles began his research by re-tracing Kerouac's epic journey and interviewing people who inspired the novel's characters. The filmmaker amassed hundreds of hours of Super-8 and mini-DV material, including over 100 hours of interviews with such Beat Generationluminaries as Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Carolyn Cassady. Exclusively for the festival, Salles winnowed down some of the material into a one-hour documentary that festival head Graham Leggat called "an open-ended exploratory meditation." That's an apt description for Salles' compendium of road trips, interviews, musings on the appeal of road movies, and a fascinating casting call/reading from On the Road by actors such as Ashley Judd and Russell Crowe. As for the future of the film version of On the Road,  Salles joked, "You've heard of the Sisyphus myth?" Today's economic realities make funding difficult, and it's unclearwhether the film will ever happen. In Search of On the Road will not be finished until production starts on On the Road, or until the project is abandoned. "I've thought of ending [the documentary] with the clap" of the dramatic film beginning, said Salles. "If it doesn't happen, I'd like it to reflect on what the book meant."

Another a work-in-progress was Sam Green and Dave Cerf's Utopia in Four Movements, billed as "a live documentary" that Green presented on stage with his own narration, accompanied by sound effects and music. The work examines the utopian impulse in the 20th century, from the attempt to gain acceptance for Esperanto as a universal language and way of life, to an American political refugee living in the socialist society of Cuba. The film looks at the world'slargest shopping mall in China, now eerily deserted, a would-be happy place that's trying to be a cross between Disneyland and Las Vegas. And as a coda, Utopia in Four Movements shows forensic anthropologists excavating mass graves and hoping to identify the victims and re-bury them.Green calls their work hopeful, and the film itself is a hopeful act in a dystopian time. The live element evolved from presentations Green would do while he was looking for funding for the film, and he found that it added something to the experience. "Watching something about utopia, and doing it all together with a lot of people in the same room creates an energy that's inspiring," he explained.

There was no lack of inspiring energy at the festival, including the robust 80-year old Japanese inventor in Danish director Kaspar Astrup Schröder's The Invention of Dr. NakaMats. A genuine eccentric, NakaMats claims to have over 3,000 inventions to his credit, including the floppy disk. He says he thinks better when he's deprived of oxygen, so he invented a notepad and pen that he could use underwater during his daily swim. He photographs every meal he eats, plans to live to be 144, and has figured out the 55 best foods to eat in order for him to reach that age. Apress release from the producer calls The Invention of Dr. NakaMats "madcap fun," promises "nonstop laughs" and describes Nakamats as "utterly fantabulous." But Nakamats is too self-aware to be dismissed so lightly. Schröder says that when the project began, NakaMats gave him a long list of what they would shoot. He's shown as a tough negotiator in business, and such a total control freak that in one scene in which his children bring him a birthday present, he doesn't like the way they do it, so he sends them back out to do it again. "Normal isn't my style," he says.

The elderly husband and wife of Constantin and Elena are the antithesis of NakaMats, living a quiet life in a Romanian village. He farms. She weaves. Seasons change. They joke and reminisce, friends and family visit, nothing much happens. But the film builds an intimacy that is warm and comforting. It's like spending a year with your grandparents, which is exactly what 25-year old director Andrei Dascalescu, the couple's grandson, did. Dascalescu, who worked as an assistant to editor Walter Murch on Francis Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007), achieved the couple's ease in front of the camera with a direct cinema technique. "The rhythm of their life is better presented without moving the camera," he explained. "That, I felt, was a more honest approach."

A complex approach was called for in Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol, one of the most rivetingprofiles of the festival. Badly beaten in a bar fight and left brain-damaged, Mark Hogancamp saved his sanity and restored his health by creating his own universe--a miniature World War II Belgian town populated by counterparts of his friends and acquaintances. The characters are played by costumed Barbie and GI Joe dolls. "This is how I work out patience," he says. "This is how I work out dexterity. I create my own therapy." But Marwencol also gave him an emotional outlet. The town's hero, an American GI, is Hogan's own alter ego. "Everyone wishes they had a double who could do things they could never do," Hogancamp says. His doppelganger falls in love, has sex, marries, kills bad guys. The way Malmberg shoots the village mimics how Hogancamp sees it, up close and real. But the outside world intrudes, when his work is discovered by New York's art world, and he's invited to the city for a gallery show. How Hogancamp handles the event provides the film's climax.

Alternate realities are also the focus of Life 2.0, Jason Spingarn-Koff's look at peopleobsessed with the online world of Second Life, created by Linden Labs. To them, Second Life is a real community, and the people who live there are real, even when they're very different from their real-world selves--like the man whose avatar is an 11-year old girl. He eventually reveals a secret about his past that may explain that choice. A man and woman, both married, commit "emotional adultery" which escalates into a meeting, and the real thing. A Linden executive says, "The virtual world can only succeed if it's ungoverned," and adds, "It's safer than the real world." Not really. Lives are turned upside down. Real-liferelationships are destroyed. These people are addicts, and while you may root for them to make it in the real world, you're not surprised when they don't.

The real world was very much a part of the documentary lineup at the festival. Russian Lessons examines the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia. As soon as the conflict broke out, directors Olga Konskaya and Andrei Nekrasov headed for the war zone, each approaching in a different direction, since Russia was tightly controlling the borders. Russians and longtime human rights activists, they were skeptical about the information the Russian government was putting out. The result is pro-Georgian, a long and detailed look at the history and politics behind the war. "We did not set out to make an objective TV report," Nekrasov said. "What was important to us was to look at the culture of our country that encourages people to pursue that imperial greed." Nekrasov is no longer permitted to work in his native country.

Circumventing government opposition to their project was also a major preoccupation for Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey, directors of Mugabe and the White African. They hadto smuggle in their equipment, arriving in Zimbabwe through different borders. For a climactic hospital scene, they gift-wrapped their gear, and one crew member walked in using his boom as a crutch.

Zimbabwe has a policy of taking land from longtime white owners and redistributing it to black farmers. But the way it's distributed is based on cronyism. The film documents a white farmer's court battle to keep his farm in Zimbabwe, against the background of President Robert Mugabe's corrupt regime. Mugabe and the White African is structured like a legal thriller, with the outcome uncertain until the end. In spite of the hopeful ending, Bailey's update on the case and the family was less optimistic.

Presumed Guilty, the festival's Golden Gate Award winner for Bay Area Feature Documentary, is also a tale of legalinjustice. Lawyer and co-director Roberto Hernandez and fellow attorney and producer Layda Negrete took on the case of Antonio Zuñiga, who was convicted of shooting and killing a Mexico City gang member, although he didn't know the victim, was nowhere near the crime scene, and had no gunpowder residue on his hands. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The genius strategy thateventually got the case overturned was simple: The filmmakers took cameras into the courtroom during the appeals process. The case exposed the corruption of a justice system that has a 95 percent conviction rate, and in which suspects are presumed guilty even when they're proven innocent. Like many of the documentaries, Presumed Guilty, which Geoffrey Smith co-directed, advocated for change. Unlike most of them, the film was actually instrumental in causing it.

Margarita Landazuri is a San Francisco-based writer.

The 17th annual Hot Docs festival in Toronto started with a bang--I almost wrote "a rush"--with an Opening Night gala presentation of Thomas Balmès' Babies and a premiere of Scott McFadyen and Sam Dunn's new rock doc Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. After the films, there was a "green carpet" party at the Royal Ontario Museum (recently renovated by celebrity architect Daniel Libeskind) featuring local cocktails, eco-cuisine and a fairly hefty ticket price--$175--for a good cause: "The Friends of the Environment." The spirit at the after-party was effervescent, with the doc community--local and international--out in force to chat, drink, flirt and dance. If this is an industry in crisis, you certainly couldn't tell it at the ROM.

Over the course of the following week and a half, from April 20 to May 9, Hot Docs screened 166 films in 10 programs ranging from a South American survey to a retrospective on British veteran vérité specialist Kim Longinotto. Lovers of docs and stats will find it hard to stop dwelling on details. The festival presented lots of premieres:  20 world, 30 international, 26 North American, 48 Canadian and 16 Toronto. 

Docs from around the globe were represented: 47 from the US, 30 Canadian, 20 from the UK, 10 from Germany, seven from Brazil, six from the Netherlands and, well, you get the drift. Even Yemen and the Republic of Cameroon made the cut, with one doc apiece. The best stat of all? Forty-eight docs were from first-time filmmakers.

While all of this constitutes good news for the documentary and independent film scenes, one should approach all of the merriment around Hot Docs--and other documentary fests this year--with caution. True, this is clearly a landmark year in what is now one of Toronto's iconic festivals. But it's also certain that funding sources for docs are drying up around the world as the market for TV viewers and advertising dollars continues to fracture and governments grow increasingly reluctant to fund arty projects or prop up threatened public-minded broadcasters. And without TV dollars or arts council grants, many of the docs selected for this festival would never have been made.

Working to address the dodgy funding situation worldwide, the Toronto Documentary Forum's (TDF) director, Elizabeth Radshaw, "asked producers to explore and develop their projects' distribution, engagement and interactive strategies as part of their submissions." Thirty projects were pitched over two days, as well as an improvised submission chosen out of a "mountie's hat."

With the projects a mixed bag dealing with subjects as diverse as the traumatic and dramatic lives of height-challenged females (Tall Girls), the impact on the continent of soccer's first African World Cup (Africa10) and the gay-related reason behind the killing that started Nazi Gemany's viciously anti-Semitic Kristallnacht (Nice Jewish Boy), the TDF is always exciting. It transports us out of the quotidian festival experience and into a theater of dreams. For two days, the passions of filmmakers are played out in a room full of friends, rivals and potential backers.

The big winner of this year's TDF was doubtlessly Yung Chang, the acclaimed director of Up the Yangtze. He came in with two projects, China Heavyweight and The Fruit Hunters, both of which scored well with the 450 industry observers and 120 commissioning editors attending the sessions. Doc guru and China Heavyweight producer Peter Wintonick, of Manufacturing Consent and IDFA's Talks acclaim, started the pitch posing as a boxing announcer, standing towards the middle of the stage, swaying and intoning "in this corner, the light heavyweight champ Yung Chang will present his latest documentary project."

Wintonick got laughs and everyone's attention for a film about amateur boxers in China training under the watchful eye of a pugilistic Buddhist master for the 2012 Olympics. Among the enthusiastic respondents to the project was Patricia Finneran of the Sundance Institute, who started the next pitch (for Jonathan Stack's dot.com doc proposal Connected) by saying that "it's unfair to follow Peter." Wintonick observed a few days after the pitch that "there's never enough money, but we should be ready to go into production by the fall."

Yung did even better with EyeSteelFilm's producer Mila Aung-Thwin for The Fruit Hunters, which will investigate the seductive smells, colors and tastes in exotic fruit--and the people who are fighting to preserve them around the globe. Again, there was a gimmick: three commissioning editors were given a fruit to eat, which changes a human's taste buds from tart to sweet for a few minutes. At the end of the pitch, which included the possibility of having the film be a "doc Avatar" shot in 3D by potential producing partner the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the trio was asked to eat lemons. Each pronounced the taste to resemble lemonade.

The Fruit Hunters won the Canwest-Hot Docs TDF Pitch Prize, which includes $40,000 (Canadian) and is voted upon by the international commissioning editors at the Forum. A second prize of $15,000, awarded by the NFB for "digital development" was given to The House that Herman Built, a project with an intriguing cross-media element. The story of a friendship between artist Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace, a Black Panther radical imprisoned in solitary confinement for 38 years has developed creatively over the past eight years. Sumell worked with Wallace to come up with his dream house and that plan has turned into a potential community space for youths in New Orleans, Herman's hometown. Charmingly, the project also garnered the Cuban Hat, a "real cash, no strings attached" prize by colleagues attending the TDF. A total of $1013.67 was donated, including $500CD from EyeSteelFilm, $18 US, 5 Czech koruna, 2 Israeli shekels, 38 Malaysian cents, 20 pence and a Toronto transit token. (The design for Herman Wallace's project will be interactive and available online; for more information, check http://www.hermanshouse.org/)

The festival, which drew record attendance numbers of over 136,000, gave its Audience Award to Thunder Soul, Mark Landsman's film about the 35th year reunion of Houston, Texas's all-black and very funky Kashmere High School Band. Israeli filmmaker Yael Hersonski garnered the Best International Feature Award and $10,000 for A Film Unfinished, a beautifully realized deconstruction of a never-released Nazi propaganda film about Warsaw's Jewish ghetto. Laura Poitras garnered $5,000 and a Special Jury Prize for The Oath, her film about Osama bin Laden's former driver, as well as his brother-in-law, who was a prisoner of the US in Guantanamo.

Director Shelley Saywell, like Poitras, fearlessly took on a Muslim subject for her Best Canadian Feature Award-winner, In the Name of the Family. The powerful, vérité-style doc investigates honor killings, when fundamentalist fathers kill their daughters for becoming Westernized in their dress and beliefs. The jury, which gave Saywell $15,000, stated in part, "We were all moved by the young teenage Muslim women struggling to figure out their own identities, caught between two opposing worlds, to whom it gave voice."

The Special Jury Prize for a Canadian Feature, which is accompanied by $10,000, was given to Oscar-winner John Zaritsky's Leave Them Laughing, a moving portrait of feisty comic and cabaret singer Carla Zilbersmith, who is a dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Israeli filmmaker Tomer Heymann won the Best Mid-Length Award (and $3000) for I Shot My Love, about the challenging relationship between a German and Jew. Swede Jonas Odell garnered the best Short Prize for Tussilago, an animated doc set in the radical 1970s about a young woman's relationship to a German terrorist.

Last, but hardly least, the HBO Emerging Artist Award went to Jeff Maimberg for the eerie and moving Marwencol about Mark Hogencamp, who has re-created his life after a terrible beating through the creation of his own miniature world, populated by Barbie dolls, GIs and Nazis, all of which he has re-painted and re-imagined.

Based in Toronto, Marc Glassman is editor of Point of View magazine and Montage magazine.

The annual Tribeca Film Festival, launched in 2002 to help stimulate downtown recovery after 9/11, hardly occurs in Tribeca anymore. This year, most of the screenings took place a bit further uptown, in either the East Village or Chelsea. The festival is often critiqued as not really having a solid identity, of being all over the map with its wide range of films and populist programming that offers something for everyone. Despite the critique, the fact is, documentaries are one of the strengths at Tribeca, and this year's festival, which ran from April 21 to May 2, offered a diverse selection.

As with any film festival, even within a given genre, there was quite a range of themes and topics explored. Somehow my filter tended more towards the portraits and arts-related docs, although I did see a few of the social issue ones, as well.

April 22, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, was an appropriate date for the North American premiere of Climate of Change, an eco-doc that puts a somewhat different spin on the state of the global environmental crisis. Director Brian Hill presents a sampling of ordinary people from around the world--from India to Papua New Guinea to London to West Virginia to Africa--who are all making a difference, taking steps towards ending global warming in their respective communities.

At the panel that followed the screening, Hill (who almost didn't make it due to the international flight snafus resulting from the Icelandic volcano eruption) spoke about wanting to avoid "the apocalyptic tendency" in some environmental documentaries, and show real people taking steps in their own lives to make a difference and affect positive change. The filmmaker was joined on stage by Christopher Gebhardt of TakePart (whose parent company, Participant Media, helped fund Climate of Change), actress Jessica Alba and filmmaker Sebastian Copeland, whose doc Into the Cold also played at Tribeca, for a discussion about global climate change and community activism.

Climate of Change is also part of Tribeca's new distribution initiative--Tribeca Film-that was launched with this year's festival, offering 12 films to viewers via VOD as well as to theatergoers for a weeklong run at Tribeca Cinemas. Climate of Change opens May 12. The festival also initiated Tribeca Virtual this year, which enabled film lovers from around the world to screen films and watch panels on the Web.

Several of the docs I saw won awards at the festival. Monica & David, the Best Documentary Feature winner, chronicles the love between two people with Down syndrome and the impact of this relationship on their families, exploring the tricky fine line between support and over-protection that confronts adults living with disabilities. The film, directed by Monica's cousin, Alexandra Codina, in her directorial and producing debut, garnered some initial support in 2007 through Tribeca's All Access program and will have its broadcast premiere on HBO in October during National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The fact that Codina is part of the family clearly allowed for access and intimacy that would be hard to achieve from an outsider.

Bobby Sheehan's Arias with a Twist, which won Third Place in the Audience Awards category, focuses on the collaboration between cabaret and drag artist Joey Arias and master puppeteer Basil Twist, whose groundbreaking 2008 show of the same title brought them the biggest success of their careers. But beyond this collaboration, the film is a celebration of the creative process and the inventive, outrageous downtown art scene of New York from the 1970s onward, and includes wonderful archival material featuring never-before-seen footage of many downtown luminaries, including Andy Warhol, Jim Henson, Keith Haring, Grace Jones and Divine.

The Woodmans, directed by C. Scott Willis, took the award for Best New York Documentary, and brings viewers into the lives of the artistic Woodman family, whose best known family member, Francesca, committed suicide at age 22 in New York City in 1981. Through the creative use of her journal entries, experimental videos,  dynamic photographs and interviews with her parents and her brother--all artists -- and others who actually knew her (as opposed to art world authorities), Willis brings us into the life of this young artist in a very intimate, visceral and tragic way. Thirty years later, Francesca is acknowledged as one of the late 20th century's most recognized photographers.

I also attended a few of the panels and industry talks. One dealt with the future of film distribution, featuring filmmakers, sales agents and distributors in a discussion about how to enable independent film and filmmakers to reach audiences and make money in the digital landscape. Distribution is the key issue these days, and is in such a state of flux and evolution. The idea of festivals being used as the launch for a film is no longer the way things really work. The fact is, the audience is going to tell us how they want to see films. And so it's of the utmost importance to know your audience--who they are, where and how they're watching, and how you're going to reach that community. Clearly social networks and viral marketing are important elements in the current landscape--a kind of transmedia approach. The sky has fallen, and the audience has changed, with an expectation of a participatory kind of engagement. 

Another panel featured a conversation between Geoff Gilmore, Tribeca Institute's chief creative officer, and Sheila Nevins, head of HBO Documentaries-and described by Gilmore as "the de Medici of TV" and the "Dominatrix of Docs," since she's been at the forefront of exposing innovative new documentary films to a wider audience for over 25 years. Nevins discussed her passion for the genre and shared some insights on the future of documentary filmmaking. For her, television is theater, and real people are actors in their own life. She discussed the importance of documentaries in portraying the basic truth of the human condition and how changing societal norms and new technology are both contributing to increased opportunities for filmmakers to tell stories differently or with a new emphasis. Nevins also talked about the fear that she's programming for herself, but that she tries very hard to "feel the pulse." At the same time, she doesn't want to sell out for that fast acceptance of "what's now." The main thing is, the story is what comes first.

My final Tribeca event was the anthology film Freakonomics, the closing night gala film. I attended a second screening the following day, the last in the Tribeca Talks: After the Movie series that included a post-screening discussion with many of the filmmakers and Stephen Dubner, one of the writers of the best-selling book on which the film is based. Like the book, the film examines human behavior and popular culture as it relates to economics through some provocative and (in some cases) humorous case studies.

Accomplished documentary filmmakers Alex Gibney(Taxi to the Dark Side), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) bring their unique styles to the short documentary form, with stories ranging from corruption in the sumo wrestling world, to whether financial incentives can inspire high school students to study more, to an exploration of the sociological significance of baby names, to a theory that links the drop in crime rate to Roe v. Wade. Seth Gordon (The King of Kong) created the interstitial segments, helping to weave together the disparate short docs, offering comments and context from authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Having the authors comment and banter among themselves between the different pieces makes the film feel more like four short films strung together with commentary, like something made for public affairs television. It feels more journalistic, rather than cinematic, despite the strong individual short docs.  After all, the whole conceit stems from a book, and yet the film doesn't really allow for getting into any of the stories in depth. This may be one case where the book will be more successful than the film adaptation. The film will be released by Magnolia Pictures sometime this fall, so audiences will soon be able to weigh in for themselves. 

Kathy Brew is an independent filmmaker, media arts curator and writer, who also teaches at The New School, The School of Visual Arts and Rutgers University.