Producer/co-director Julie Bayer reports that she and partner Josh Salzman have completed Time and Tide, a documentary for which the IDA acted as fiscal sponsor. Time and Tide explores the impact of globalization and global warming on the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu, as witnessed through the eyes of a group of expatriates returning home for the first time in nearly 20 years. The film was a self-funded project that took years to put together. Academy Award winner Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons) calls the film "a timely, resonant story of a nation's literal struggle for survival in the face of conflicts both internal and external, with sensitive and visually rich direction from filmmakers Bayer and Salzman, this film deserves to be seen." 

Alan Berliner was selected as one of four International Trailblazers at MIPDOC in April. This new initiative was created to celebrate and promote the work of outstanding documentarians, as well as to give MIPDOC delegates the opportunity to see what it takes to make a truly great documentary. The other honorees were Khalo Matabane from South Africa, Trinh T. Minh-Ha from Vietnam and Martichka Bozhilova from Bulgaria. International Trailblazers is sponsored by the Sundance Channel and the Korean Broadcasting Institute and organized with the support of the National Film Board of Canada. The four filmmakers were selected by a panel featuring representatives from the IDA, the European Documentary Network (EDN), Encounters (the South African Documentary Festival) and EBS International Documentary Festival (EIDF).

Celesta Davis and her documentary about sexual abuse, Awful Normal, were the focus of an episode of ABC's Primetime Live this past January. The award-winning film details the intimate journey Davis took with her mother and sister to track down and speak to the man who molested her when she was five years old, and has been used as a tool for healing. 

Philippe Diaz, founder of Cinema Libre Studio, won the Grand Jury Prize Award at Slamdance 2006 for his film The Empire in Africa. The film was shot during the last month of the civil war in Sierra Leone and features voiceover by folksinger and activist Richie Havens. The Los Angeles Times' Kevin Crust said, "Diaz delivers a withering analysis of international culpability during Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war. The film alleges that Western governments, corporations and global organizations such as the United Nations are largely responsible for the protracted fighting and resulting humanitarian disaster. Diaz's firsthand footage of the carnage and implications of collusion and exploitation are deeply disturbing." www.cinemalibrestudio.com.

Joseph Fatheree recently completed production on the film An Uphill Climb, which showcases the extraordinary life of Kyle Packer, who was stricken at birth with cerebral palsy. Packer lets nothing stand in his way. His accomplishments include crawling on his knees to base camp of Mt. Everest in 1998. Packer's biggest struggle is dealing with the obstacles that are placed in front of him in his everyday life. The film just received two regional Emmys (for writing and music), and was also nominated for best documentary. An Uphill Climb will be released nationally through PBS this spring. 

Maureen Gosling's Blossoms of Fire screened in October at the Austin Film Society in Texas, the Rafael Film Center in Mill Valley and the Mission Cultural Center Video Festival in San Francisco, with special guest Martha Toledo. Martha, who is originally from Juchitán, Oaxaca, and appears in the film, not only answered questions, but enchanted the audiences with her singing and photography. In November Blossoms of Fire was invited to the new Hanoi Cinematheque in Vietnam for the United Nations Population Fund Film Festival on gender issues. The film's distributor, New Yorker Films, opened the film at Cinema Village in New York on February 3. In October, Gosling and co-producer Chris Simon filmed for ten days in southwest Virginia on their film, No Mouse Music: The Story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records. Gosling recently finished editing Jed Riffe's Waiting to Inhale on medical marijuana and California's ‘Lost' Tribes, part one of the four-part California and the American Dream series to be broadcast on PBS . www.maureengosling.com.

Director Phil Grabsky (The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan) has completed his latest film, In Search of Mozart. After only three weeks in release in New Zealand and Australia, the film has become one of the top 50 grossing docs of all time there. Grabsky is now finishing a film on Chernobyl and has begun filming a new film in Angola.

The feature documentary production arm A&E IndieFilms and the International Documentary Association have announced the first A&E IndieFilms/IDA Documentary Finishing Grant to Affinity Films. The $25,000 grant will be used to complete its feature Gwen's Story: Crazy Like Me. The film, produced and directed by Mary Katzke and produced by Deborah Schildt, is described as the story of  "an Alaskan woman who sustained third-degree burns over her back, legs, arms, face and head, losing fingers, an ear and half of her scalp after being thrown into a campfire by her own mother at the age of 10 months. Now 26, Gwen has embarked on a quest for answers."

Debra Kaufman's documentary A School of Their Own: Reading, Writing and Revolution in Nepal played in February 2006 as part of the Boulder International Film Festival. 

Composer John Keltonic reports that Bonhoeffer, Martin Doblemeier's award-winning documentary, had its broadcast premiere on PBS on February 6. The film tells the dramatic story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German who offered one of the first clear voices of resistance to Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer openly challenged his church to stand with the Jews in their time of need--a stand that cost him his life. Says Keltonic, "Composing the score was a wonderful challenge; I used the music to convey the huge swings in emotion that happen in this story, portraying everything from the crushing brutality of the Nazi soldiers to the quiet desperation sometimes felt by Bonhoeffer. The score uses a mix of live musicians and synthesized instruments, as well as a choir." Samples from the music score can be found on Keltonic's website: www.jdkmusic.com.

MacGillivray Freeman Films is pleased to announce that Mystery of the Nile was honored on January 30 with the top three prizes at the La Géode Large Format Film Festival in Paris: the Grand Prize, the Youth Prize and the Public's Choice Prize. This marks the first time in the festival's 11-year history that one film received all three awards. A giant screen co-production of Orbita Max and MacGillivray Freeman Films, Mystery of the Nile follows the inspirational quest of explorers Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown to become the first in history to successfully run the Blue Nile River from source to sea. The film was the highest grossing giant screen film of 2005, having taken in $22 million at the box office worldwide through the end of 2005 since its release on February 18, 2005. www.macfreefilms.com.

Feature, documentary and commercial director John McDonald reports that he is currently working on a feature-length version of his short documentary Ghost Mountain: An Experiment in Primitive Living. The short, which was shot on super-16mm film, looked at the life of writer/poet/painter Marshal South. For 17 years, from 1930 through the Great Depression into the 1940s, South chose to live with his wife, Tanya, and their three children in an adobe house on the remote peak of Ghost Mountain, in southern California's Anza Borrego Desert. He saw the experiment in isolation from the American mainstream collapse in 1947, when he and his wife divorced in a bitter dispute. He died the following year, leaving behind a life awash in controversy, rumor and speculation. www.McDonaldProductions.com

Producer Ricardo Preve (Mondovino, Tango a Strange Turn) wrote and directed his first doc, Chagas: A Hidden Affliction, which aired from February to April on PBS stations in Virginia. Chagas is a deadly illness previously found only in Latin America, but which now also affects Latino migrants in the US and Europe. The film had a theatrical release in Argentina and is expected in theaters and DVD in Spain in mid-2006. Preve was partly sponsored by Doctors Without Borders, which recently launched a worldwide campaign against the illness. www.chagasthemovie.com.

Only in America: The Real 8 Mile premiered on Discovery Times on February 9. Jonathan Stack is one of the executive producers/directors of series. In this particular episode, New York Times reporter Charlie LeDuff goes back to his home town of Detroit to find out why so many kids are rapping and to hear what it is they are rhyming about. 8 Mile the movie told the true-life, rap-to-riches story of Eminem, a poor white kid from a dying industrial town who crossed the racial divide, made it and then moved out of the city. Today, thousands of Detroit kids, black, white and brown, are chasing that dream, too. However, Detroit is a dying city with few options, and the chances of making it out of Detroit, let alone in the music game, are one in a million. http://times.discovery.com/convergence/onlyinamerica/onlyinamerica.html

Clay Walker's The Cole Nobody Knows has been selected to tour with the prestigious 2006 Black Maria Film & Video Festival collection of films. The 50+ city tour will occur from New York City to Los Angeles to Rome, Italy over the next five months. The Cole Nobody Knows is a documentary on Chicago-native Freddy Cole, the lesser known, yet equally talented younger brother of the late Nat "King" Cole. At age 74, with his current recording receiving national recognition, Cole is finally being recognized for his amazing musical talent. Photographed in Atlanta, New York City, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Switzerland and France, the film features extraordinary, never-before-seen live performance material with Cole and his quartet. The film also includes interviews with music legends Monty Alexander, Clark Terry, David "Fathead" Newman, John di Martino, H Johnson, Carl Anthony and many others. The film's recent awards include a 2005 CINE Golden Eagle Award, the 2006 Director's Choice Award Black Maria Film & Video Festival and The 2006 Audience Choice Award for Best Music Documentary at the Park City Film Music Film Festival. The film will also screen at the upcoming Big Sky Documentary Film Festival along with Walker's other film, Post No Bills, the documentary on political poster artist Robbie Conal. www.planbproductions.com.