Today the US Supreme Court struck down a statute on First Amendment grounds that criminalized a lot of documentary filmmaking. Congress enacted a law to criminalize any depiction of any acts to animals in a film that results in the animals being killed or harmed, even if the activity on the screen is completely legal. Such a restriction would obviously cover hunting or fishing. The only requirement for prosecution was that the activity be illegal in the place that the film is possessed, exhibited or sold. Even though the act exempted serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for an 8-1 Court decision, held the statute to be “substantially overbroad and therefore invalid under the First Amendment.”

Your IDA, along with Film Independent (FIND), the Independent Feature Project (IFP) and the Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA), filed an Amicus Brief to help the Court understand the threat to documentary filmmakers. The case involved a documentary filmmaker by the name of Robert J. Stevens, who had included clips of a legal Japanese dog fight in a film he produced. The government did not argue that Stevens shot the film or was even present at the shoot. Since dog fighting is illegal in the United States, Stevens was arrested, tried and sentenced to 37 months in federal prison--a term longer than Michael Vick received for actually participating in dog fights in the United States. Whatever one might think of Mr. Stevens and his films, the threat to filmmakers had to be removed. That is when IDA stepped in.

The case was brilliantly argued before the Supreme Court by Patricia Millet from the Washington, DC office of Akin Gump law offices. Former IDA President Michael Donaldson organized IDA’s participation in the case and recruited Film Independent, IFP and IFTA to join. He was in attendance at the hearing in Washington and joined other counsel after for a lunch honoring Millet’s hard work as lead counsel. Like Donaldson, she rendered her services on a pro bono basis.

It is essential that filmmakers in general, and documentary filmmakers in particular, receive the support they need from Congressionally funded groups like the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and they never will until they make their presence, and their role as true artists, known. For documentary filmmaking is indeed an art, and deserves to be recognized--and funded--as such. Taking our place at events such as Arts Advocacy Day is key to making sure that happens.

We began our day with a rousing pep rally featuring inspirational remarks from arts champion Louise Slaughter (D-NY), civil rights icon John Lewis (D-GA) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who was presented with the Congressional Arts Leadership Award. Then we fanned out across Capitol Hill to take our case directly to the men and women who make the decisions about government funding for the arts in America.

I, along with representatives from Arts for LA and the LA County Arts Commission went to the office of Lucille Roybal-Allard, representative of House Congressional District 34 (downtown Los Angeles) to urge Roybal-Allard to support a budget of $180 million for the NEA in 2011, which would restore the agency to its 1992 funding level. The NEA provides critical support to our country’s nonprofit arts industry, and the IDA is determined to make sure that documentary filmmakers get their fair share of these funds.

We also asked Roybal-Allard to push Congress to appropriate $53 million for Arts in Education programs and to retain the arts in the definition of core academic subjects of learning. This designation is key to keeping the arts as part of our country’s educational system, and to ensuring that IDA’s high school documentary production program, Docs Rock, can expand to more high schools in Los Angeles and across the country.

I came away from the day’s events convinced that this kind of advocacy is vital to the future of the arts in America, and to the future of documentary filmmaking. Fortunately, this is exactly the kind of role that IDA was founded to play. In the days to come the IDA will continue to make the case for documentary filmmaking as a vital art form, and to seek ways to ensure that the artists who make documentaries get the funding they deserve. Meanwhile, I urge IDA members to do their part by going to the Americans for the Arts website at http://www.artsusa.org/get_involved/advocate.asp to send their own message to Congress about supporting the arts, including the art of the documentary film.

H'or d'oeuvres were served, drinks were consumed and some won great raffle prizes as the crowd chatted away into the night. Here are some fun pics from the evening.

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

Greed is good--but most would agree it is not. But what if it's greed for good? Washington, DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff began his political career as a conservative College Republican building a movement around Ronald Reagan's election and that president's fervor for smaller government. Thirty years later, Abramoff is serving time in Federal prison, convicted of multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion.

Abramoff's spectacular rise-and-fall is documented in filmmaker Alex Gibney's upcoming Casino Jack and the United States of Money. The music-driven, information-saturated exposé takes on the multi-faceted Abramoff, who represented interests from the Mariana Islands of the South Pacific to Russia, and became notorious for the $45 million he persuaded American Indian tribes to pay him for his lobbying efforts on behalf of the gaming industry.

"He was just a wild, larger-than-life character; he seemed to represent this out-of-control approach to money and politics," says Gibney, who decided to investigate the disgraced lobbyist, finding him spectacularly interesting, but not necessarily in a good way. "I think he is at the heart of a total breakdown of the system. He was not an exception to the rule; he was an exaggeration of business as usual." Abramoff's advocacy efforts on behalf of his clients at first pushed the boundaries of campaign finance laws but eventually crossed the line into illegal acts such as bribery, tax evasion-and perhaps even accessory to murder.

The film's subject dovetails well with two of Gibney's earlier projects: his Academy Award-wining Taxi to the Dark Side and the Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. "I seem to be interested in the process of corruption," he maintains, noting that Casino Jack tackles political corruption; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room examines economic corruption and Taxi to the Dark Side reveals spiritual corruption. 

"It gets in my craw when the powerful abuse the weak," Gibney explains of his choices. "I don't like it when people take more than what they are entitled to: that doesn't reckon with the fundamental idea of fairness that our society is supposed to be all about. The mistake is to think of Jack [Abramoff] as a bad apple, when he's the spectacular evidence of the rotten barrel." His fall became a convenient mechanism, whereby everyone else could say, "Everything is good now," when in fact it's worse, notes Gibney of the state of a US political infrastructure powered by political contributions rather than its citizens.

Gibney contends that Abramoff's earliest mindset was that of an idealist, but with the view that the ends justify the means. "People who are idealistic assume about themselves a kind of goodness, that cannot be besmirched by breaking a few rules here or there, so that's where they always get into trouble," he believes. Cutting corners eventually leads to greater transgressions.

Unlike Gibney's current untitled feature-length project on Eliot Spitzer (which will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival as a work-in-progress), Casino Jack's main idea has a certain simplicity: too much money in politics is a very bad thing. The Spitzer story is more complicated, and is structured more like a Greek tragedy, Gibney reveals. He believes the former New York Governor fell prey to the same hubris shown in the very executives he had once investigated. However, both films clearly demonstrate "the blood sport our political system has become," says Gibney.

The filmmaker was able to visit Abramoff at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, but the Department of Justice wouldn't approve filmed interviews. No audio recording or note-taking either ("Not even a pencil," says Gibney). Nor was he able to shoot in the US Capitol building: he had an idea for B-roll--janitors literally sweeping up the building--but that request to film was nixed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. "They found that a threat to the Republic," the director laughs.

An immense amount of information is imparted in the briskly paced film, which has been edited down eight minutes since its premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.  Because Abramoff was such a multi-tentacled operator, and traveled around the world on behalf of his clients, his peripatetic nature influenced the film's structure and cinematic style. There were numerous money trails to follow. And each of environments was captured in a different way, from a sweeping Steadicam shot of a casino floor, to an aerial overview of the tropical Mariana Islands to refracted, Cubist-like angles of Washington, DC.

Gibney also relied on film clips to illustrate the moral conflicts within US politics and lobbyists like Abramoff. Among the films excerpted are Frank Capra's iconic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Patton, a film lionized by the College Republicans; and a closing clip from The Natural, which speaks both to corruption and the mythic power of the American dream. Interviews were shot on HD, utilizing two cameras: one was placed directly in front of subject, the other at a 90-degree angle. "I like the shifting perspective," Gibney explains. "Sometimes you see interesting things in that hard-side angle." He also uses the second camera's footage to jump the angle within an interview rather than using an extraneous cutaway.

Gibney opted to narrate Casino Jack himself. "It feels more honest," he says. "I'm writing the copy; why not speak it?" In addition to the narration, Gibney and his team underscored the documentary's mix of news footage, interviews and film clips with a diverse soundtrack of contemporary, hip-hop and blues music by such artists as Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Costello and New Orleans' Wild Tchoupitoulas. Song choices reveal deeper truths and add a pulse to the film that Gibney describes as "a toe-tapping Greek chorus that comments on the action or reflects the place and environment."

Throughout Casino Jack, Abramoff's skills as a lobbyist are in evidence. Former staffer Neil Volz contends that his former boss "could sweet-talk a dog off a meat truck." One can only wish that he had turned his considerable talents to good. "Sadly, he defined good as doing what he did," Gibney maintains. Lobbying remains pervasive in Washington, and true campaign finance reform is not imminent. Campaigns are staggeringly expensive and time-consuming. Gibney suggests that nothing has fundamentally changed since the Abramoff scandal: "The biggest problem we have is that money is able to exert a force of power [on Washington] that's irresistible. We need try to find a way to take money out of politics; unless that happens we're done."

Casino Jack and the United States of Money is scheduled for release May 7 from Magnolia Pictures. Participant Media is handling the social action campaign.

Kathy A. McDonald is a writer based in Los Angeles.

Hanover House picked up North American rights to Marshall Curry's doc Racing Dreams, which follows the lives of three young racers as they compete in the World Karting Association's National Pavement Series. The film was named the best doc at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and will be released in theaters Friday, May 21.

HBO has acquired the U.S. TV rights to the documentary Teenage Paparazzo, directed by actor Adrian Grenier. The film chronicles the true story of a relationship between 14-year-old paparazzo Austin Visschedyk and Grenier. The doc will debut on HBO this fall.

Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired North American distribution rights to Yael Hersonski's doc A Film Unfinished, which deconstructs a Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. The film premiered at Sundance this year and won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award. The film will open in August in limited release and a national release will follow.

The Cinema Guild has acquired video/VOD release rights to Agnes Varda's Cinevardaphoto, which is actually a trio of short films. The release date has been set for August 31.

Additionally, DOC: The Documentary Channel, a specialty channel that airs documentary programming announced it has entered into an agreement with DIRECTV that doubles the number of subscribers who can view DOC to 25 million.

The 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival gets a new neighborhood after four years in Westwood. Following the parent company's Film Independent's moving the Independent Spirit Awards from Santa Monica to Downtown LA this year (June 17-27), the high-profile festival will showcase its screenings in several venues there, with LA Live, the sprawling entertainment campus whose tenants include the Staples Center, Regal Cinemas and the Grammy Museum, among others, serving as the designated hub. The festival will also present its screenings and events at the REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), the Downtown Independent, the Orpheum Theatre and California Plaza. And LAFF will continue its tradition of nighttime screenings at the outdoor John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood.

"The festival's move to downtown Los Angeles allows us a unique opportunity to celebrate the history and future of our City," said Festival Director Rebecca Yeldham in a statement. "Our new location will continue to pave the way for LAFF to realize its potential as an international destination event, and unites our filmmakers and audiences with the diverse arts community that exists downtown.

LAFF is currently working on the fine details of the move, including tackling the high-price of parking downtown. Elise Freimuth, publicity manager at Film Independent, the parent company of the Los Angeles Film Festival, says "We've actually negotiated a parking rate for Festival patrons at LA Live: It will be $5 for the first 4 hours and $8 for the whole day...Plus, we're arranging free shuttles on the weekend to go between the venues."

More updates to come as they are announced. Get more information at the Los Angeles Film Festival website.

Join IDA members, IDA staff and board members! Connect with the documentary community, share your projects, meet new friends, and build your professional network. It all starts at 6 p.m.

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

RSVP for this free event and get all of the info on parking, taking the Metro and more for this great networking opportunity here.

Conventional wisdom leads most filmmakers to tour the festival circuit for a year and then, once they secure distribution, open commercially, with the goal to reach a large audience through positive press, and then generate significant distribution revenue. Yet a commercial run in theaters doesn't often come close to the full houses many filmmakers will have enjoyed at festivals. Increasingly, filmmakers are being more strategic, narrowing down a few A-list festivals as platforms to launch their film theatrically and looking into alternative venues such as museums and universities, to better control how their film gets out there.

Submitting to and playing at some festivals may help, but when filmmakers think of the festival circuit primarily as a direct exhibition tour that will lead to a distribution deal-or even a distribution mechanism itself-they are often disappointed. Filmmaker Paul Devlin truly adheres to the definition of a theater, whether the big screen is in a festival, museum, planetarium or university venue, taking advantage of what he calls "alt-theatrical screenings." His third feature documentary, BLAST!, completed in 2008, reached its core audience of science and astronomy enthusiasts, as it tells the story of Devlin's brother Mark, leading a tenacious team of scientists who try to understand the birth and evolution of the galaxies by launching a revolutionary new telescope under a NASA high-altitude balloon.

BLAST! premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs in spring 2008, launching the film's festival run, where it screened at the Sheffield Doc/Fest in England, the Florida Film Festival, and the Vedere La Scienza Festival in Milan, Italy, where it won Best Documentary honors. The film was not accepted, however, into the same festivals that had showcased Devlin's previous film Power Trip (2003), including the Tribeca Film Festival and SilverDocs.

Distribution strategies for BLAST! evolved from the film's screenings at the IFC Center and Cinema Village in New York City. The reviews from this run led to further press interest and a National Public Radio interview with Mark Devlin, on its Science Friday program, which reaches up to 1.5 million listeners. Stephen Colbert, a science enthusiast and a fan of the NPR program, booked Mark on The Colbert Report, which gave the movie a big push, leading to speaking engagements at exhibition spaces throughout the country.

BLAST! continued on the alternative theatrical venue circuit, including a screening at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting, which capitalized on the fact that 2009 was the Year of Astronomy. Devlin explains, "It's rare to have a theatrical feature film on astronomy make it into the marketplace, so I think it was an exciting event for astronomers in their real working environment. There were 150 to 200 people in attendance." Additional screening venues included the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and ScienceWorks in Ashland, Oregon, among numerous others. Future screenings will be held at Cal Poly Pomona University, Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Explorers Club in New York, as well as a television broadcast on KVCR in San Bernardino, California.

Peabody Award-winning director Aviva Kempner strategized with Jewish film festivals to act as a platform for individual city screenings nationwide for her 2009 documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. The film tells the story of Gertrude Berg, known as "The First Lady of Radio," CBS' first family sitcom heroine, and the first female actress to win an Emmy. She gained fame and success as the creator, writer, producer and star of the Depression and World War II-era hit radio show-turned-TV sitcom, The Goldbergs, which aired on CBS from 1949 through 1956.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg garnered attention at the High Falls International Film Festival in Rochester, New York, which, in keeping with local heroines Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton, honors women in film--both behind the camera and on the screen. The film subsequently played at Lincoln Plaza in New York City. Kempner, along with Wendy Lidell, president of International Film Circuit Inc., exhibited the film through Jewish film festivals in Boston and San Francisco, the latter of which honored Kempner with a Lifetime Achievement Award, increasing press awareness and reviews. Her film opened commercially in San Francisco right after the festival. She and Lidell subsequently embarked on a national theatrical tour last summer.

Mitchell Block, executive producer and co-creator of the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Carrier, and president of the distribution company Direct Cinema Ltd., deems festivals a business--to rent condos, bring in tourists and accept submission fees--rather than an artistic venue for filmmakers to attract core audiences. The awards and exposure one gains from the festival circuit do not necessarily produce direct outcome if the goals are to secure a distribution deal and get your core audience to see the film. Festivals yield many "award-winning" films, but, as Block explains, "It's like Lake Woebegone, where all of the children are slightly above normal." So if festivals are your priority, keep in mind that even a prestigious venue like Sundance doesn't always lead to money or more work, and awards don't always pay the bills.

But speaker fees do, and in Devlin's case, the BLAST! theatrical release indirectly led him and his brother on a nationwide tour to universities, planetariums and museums. "The whole idea of ‘theatrical' is evolving," Devlin notes. "It used to be you played in big theaters across the country and used this derogatory term of ‘non-theatrical' to describe anything else." His speaking engagements in 2009 included one at Ohio State University that earned him a $10,000 speaker fee. This venue was an exception, as Devlin and his brother's fees range from $3,000 to $5,000. If they don't show up to the screenings, they negotiate a fee of $150 to $1,000. Appearances continue through 2010.

As his alt-theatrical strategy began to bear fruit, Devlin hired a producer of marketing and distribution, whose job is to book venues. "When you go to a distributor, you put your film up for adoption," Devlin asserts. "If you want to raise your own film the way you would raise a child, then you've got to do it yourself. So in essence, we've hired a nanny."

Birthing a film to a higher-profile theatrical distributor would have been less cost-effective and less hands-on for both Devlin and Kempner. Kempner's previous film, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000), about the first major Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues, earned $1.7 million in box office revenue. However, Kempner explains, "It was a different feeling for Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg because I knew my base was older people. The best thing for me to do was get those older people in the theaters before they die and before the big art movies come out in the fall."

To date, Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg has earned $1.13 million in box office revenue. That number might have been even higher, ironically, were it not for her core audience: senior citizens, who pay discounted ticket prices, which, according to Kempner, meant 25 percent less revenue. She jokes, "It could be $1.17 million in revenue. I always tell Wendy to put an asterisk."

The rewards for filmmakers investing their time and money on self-distribution outweigh the risks of solely prioritizing festivals; net ticket revenue goes to the filmmaker's team, rather than directly to the film festival. "I don't think being programmed at a festival should be a goal, unless you are a student or independently wealthy," Block maintains. "Filmmaking is a business. Either make films to change the world or to make money, or to do both."

In addition, Block advises, sell your film before you make it. If the film does not have a television sale and/or theatrical deal in place before entering a festival, then the filmmakers should try to shop the work before showcasing it at festivals. Block cautions, "Films are worth more not finished than finished, since distributors and networks have different needs, markets, and deals for works-in-progress versus finished works." Devlin pitched BLAST! as a work-in-progress at the 2007 Hot Docs Forum, and international commissioning editors, including the BBC and Discovery Canada, came on board for TV distribution.

High-profile festivals generally reach a primary audience comprised of journalists, sponsors, agents, distributors, filmmakers, festival programmers, etc. But if a film can reach its core audience where the filmmaker controls the exhibition and distribution, then alternative distribution strategies--coupled with a well-positioned festival launch--may continue to be the wave of the future.

For Devlin and Kempner, self-distribution or some hybrid thereof--with festivals as one component, but not the driving one in their overall distribution plan--proved to be the optimal strategy for their respective films. For Devlin, targeting astronomy and science enthusiasts made the most sense, while Kempner's audience of senior citizens, the Jewish demographic and feminist groups helped drive box office revenues past the $1 million mark. Rather than put their films up for adoption through distribution, as Devlin suggested earlier, both filmmakers nurtured their films through adulthood.

It's been a flurry of activity over the past couple of days-Spring Break must be over. Magnolia Pictures is beefing up its doc slate for 2010, headed by the much anticipated omnibus project Freakonomics, based on the best-selling 2005 book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, in which the authors, an economist and a journalist, respectively, apply economic theory to a diverse range of phenomena in contemporary culture. The doc, which will close the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, is comprised of cinematic chapters, helmed by some of the most prominent names in nonfiction-the ubiquitous Alex Gibney, whose film Casino Jack and the United States of Money comes out May 7, also through Magnolia; Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, whose 12^th and Delaware airs this August on HBO; Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me); Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight); and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong). Chad Troutwine, who produced the ensemble piece Paris, Je T'Aime, is producing Freakonomics with Dan O'Mearta and Chris Romano. Michael Ciepley of The New York Times feels that Magnolia might have a hit on its hands, and with its previous hit, Food, Inc., having been inspired by two best-sellers, Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, he's probably right. The film opens in theaters this fall.

Another omnibus project, Convention, has found a home with Sundance Selects, which will release the film on-demand May 12, then in theaters beginning June 4 in New York City. The film documents the behind-the-scenes run-up to the historic 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. AJ Schnack was the ringleader of the project, gathering together an impressive ensemble of docmakers to make it happen: Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert (The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant); Laura Poitras (The Oath); Paul Taylor (We Are Together); and Daniel Junge (The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner). "This is an extremely well made and entertaining documentary of a historic event that will delight anyone with even a remote interest in national politics," said Jonathan Sehring of Sundance Selects, in a statement. "We are thrilled to be working with AJ and the all-star team of directors he has assembled. We think this is a great film for all our platforms."

Schnack commented, in the statement, "Having the opportunity to work closely with some    of my favorite filmmakers during the historic convention week was tremendously inspiring. I'm very excited about our new partnership with Sundance Selects and am glad that viewers of all political stripes will soon have a chance to see the film."

Elsewhere in acquisition-land, Arthouse Films picked up Lucy Walker's Waste Land, which won audience awards at both Sundance and Berlin this year. The film, which will be released some time this year, follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials.

Walker's other Sundance 2010 film, Countdown to Zero, which explores the dangerous presence of nuclear weaponry around the world, will be released theatrically July 9 through Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media.

Finally, as reported in indieWire, Balcony Releasing is distributing The Sun behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom to US theaters this spring. The film, directed and produced by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, opened March 31 in New York City.