Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert were finalists for the Documentary Completion Award for a Documentary Work-in-Progress at the 2005 IFP Market for A Lion in the House, as was Scott Hamilton Kennedy, for Tierra Y Libertad.

Producer/director David Brown's The Bridge So Far: A Suspense Story premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival this past October. The 56-minute documentary takes both a humorous and serious look at the wild and troubled history of the new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Roberta Grossman and Lisa Thomas' Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action earned the Grand Teton Best of Festival and the award for Best Environmental Program at the 2005 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.

Jerry Henry, along with Andrea Chia, earned the Gordon Parks Award for an Emerging African-American Filmmaker-Directing at the IFP Market for their film Something Other Than Other.

Maid in America, produced and directed by Anayansi Prado and produced and shot by Kevin Leadingham, had its broadcast premiere on PBS's Independent Lens series on November 29, 2005. The project was part of the IDA Fiscal Sponsorship program. For more on the project, www.impactofilms.com.

The Crash of Flight 191, a 90-minute documentary special edited by Ken Luebbert which aired last year on the History Channel, has been requested by the directors of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago to become part of its Permanent Archives Collection. The show investigates why American Airlines Flight 191 crashed seconds after take-off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 1979 and the devastating impact it had on the victims' families. Written and produced by Lee Fulkerson and associate-produced by Ann Putney for Traveling Light Media, the film previously won two World Gold Medal Awards at the New York Festivals for Best Show in the History & Society category and Best Writing, Documentary/Informational program.

Chris Palmer has been named President of MacGillivray Freeman Films Educational Foundation. Palmer will lead the foundation's strategic programming and fundraising efforts and will over see its official launch in 2006. The MFF Educational Foundation was established by Greg MacGillivray as a charitable, non-profit 501(c) 3 organization to contribute to the protection and conservation of the planet's natural and cultural resources.

Bob Niemack reports several recent broadcast premieres on the Discovery Health Channel. Two episodes of Lifeline with Dr. Oz premiered in September. For those "into babies being born," Babies: Special Delivery aired on the network multiple times, with regular showings throughout the month. IMPACT, "for those sports fans who love to watch people crash and get put back together again," premiered in a regular Monday slot. Currently, Niemack is writing and editing War Zone Medical: Surviving Iraq, which he produced in August during a dusty, hot sojourn to Iraq, Germany and Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. The program premiered on November 6.

Indie doc distributor Seventh Art Releasing reports that The Art of Flight, Davin Anders Hutchins' guerilla film about Sudanese refugees in Egypt, competed in the First Appearance showcase at the International Documentary FilmFestival Amsterdam (IDFA), which ran from November 24 through December 4. The Art of Flight made its world premiere at the AFI International Film Festival in Los Angeles in November.

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