Miriam Cutler served on the World Cinema Documentary Film Competition Jury at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, along with Jean Perret and Penny Woolcock. Cutler replaced Sabiha Sumar, who was not able to attend the festival due to last-minute travel issues. Cutler, a film composer with an extensive background in scoring documentaries, has been writing, producing and performing music for over 20 years. Her documentary film credits include three previous Sundance American Independent Documentary Competition entries: Scout's Honor (2001), Death - A Love Story (1999), and Licensed to Kill (1997). Additionally, Cutler has served as a lab advisor for the Sundance Institute Documentary Composers Lab.

Paula Lee Haller, one of the founders of the IDA, reports the success of the Third Annual DocuFest-Wilmington, North Carolina this past February. Seven documentaries, as well as Academy Award-winner Ryan (Best Short Animated Film), were screened at the Screen Gems Screening Room to overflowing crowds. The event was started by Haller and co-presented by WHQR/Cinematique and the IDA.

High Plains Films has completed American Values: American Wilderness, a new documentary that looks at the value of wild country as seen though interviews with a diverse group of Americans from across the United States. The film was made in association with the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, and is narrated by the late Christopher Reeve. High Plains Films is seeking distribution in all markets. The film was directed and produced by Christopher Barns, Doug Hawes-Davis and Drury Gunn Carr. The DVD will be officially released in late spring.

Joan Meyerson reports that she is writing "The National Memorial Day Concert" for the tenth year! One of PBS's highest rated performance shows, the multi-media event airs live on Sunday, May 29 at 8:00 p.m (check local listings). This year, along with a major sequence on Iraq, the program will also commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. As part of her research, Meyerson journeyed to that far-off fly speck of an island in the Pacific to attend its "Reunion of Honor" along with veterans of the battle and their families. This year's show features the National Symphony Orchestra, and such performers as Joe Mantegna, Charles Durning, Gary Sinise, Vanessa Williams and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will also present a memorial tribute to the late Ossie Davis, who hosted the event for more than a decade. 

Elizabeth Sheldon, director of acquisitions and co-productions at Schlessinger Media (a division of Library Video Company), reports that the company has licensed exclusive US educational and home video distribution rights to the new series This Is My Country, from Marathon International. The series will allow children to discover countries around the world through the eyes of a local youngster, aged 8 to 11, who will act as a guide. Concentrating on the unique and most unusual aspects of each location, this series will be looking at the various different symbols, the flag, the language, the currency, the country's climate and geography, the historical and political references and the lifestyle. Schlessinger has also licensed exclusive US and Canadian educational and home video distribution rights to the new 30-minute program, The Short Life of Anne Frank, from RNTV. The program provides a moving study of Frank's life, from her early years as a carefree child in Germany to the time she spent hidden in the secret annex during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam to her final tragic months at Bergen-Belsen. The program also includes the only existing film footage of Frank.

Producer/director Tracy Heather Strain and writer/co-producer Randall MacLowry's Building the Alaska Highway had its broadcast premiere in February 2005 as part of PBS' American Experience strand. The documentary tells the story of how in 1942, nearly 11,000 soldiers, including almost 4,000 segregated African-Americans, battled ice, snow, mountains, mud and mosquitoes to blaze a 1,500-mile road through the unforgiving sub-Arctic landscape.