Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey of World of Wonder are producing and directing a new documentary for HBO about Heidi Fleiss' attempts to open Heidi's Stud Farm, purportedly the first male brothel catering to women. At press time, filming was scheduled to begin in December 2005.

Andrew Berends' The Blood of My Brother: A Story of Death in Iraq had its world premiere at the International Documentary FilmFestival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film goes behind the scenes of a growing Shia insurgency in Iraq with scenes of fighting on the streets of Sadr City and Najaf, and tells the story of a family grieving at the tragic death of their oldest son, accidentally killed by an American patrol. Berends worked with an Iraqi driver and translator, outside the US military program of "embedded" journalists, to gain his unique perspective. 

Karen Bernstein and Ellen Spiro were awarded a Lone Star Emmy Award for their documentary Are the Kids Alright?, which explores the struggles facing Texas children with mental illness.

Dr. Lou Buttino was appointed Film Studies Chairman at University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW). Buttino, an award-winning filmmaker and scholar, has been involved in more than a dozen PBS documentaries, and has authored three books and numerous other journalistic and academic writings. He's earned UNCW's top honors for scholarship and teaching, including the UNC Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence.

Juan Dominguez's Anytown, U.S.A. was recently bought by Film Movement, a New York distributor, and will be released this quarter. The film epitomizes the idea that "All politics is local" as it follows a tightly-run mayoral race in the small town of Bogota, New Jersey. When the much-reviled--and legally blind--Republican incumbent Steven Lonegan (whose sins include slashing the local high-school football team's budget) boldly announces he will run for re-election, the citizens of Bogota go on the offensive to unseat him. Enter Democrat Fred Pesce, coaxed from retirement to share the ticket. With his health in question, and his politics compared to that of Tony Soprano, the field is wide open for sight-challenged town booster and former local football hero Dave Musikant to step in as a long-shot, write-in independent candidate--officially making it the only mayoral race in the nation where two of the three candidates are legally blind!

Cable television's new Documentary Channel will be airing William Gazecki's Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning film, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, as part of the channel's launch programming this year. Gazecki is currently in production on four films: Future by Design, celebrating the life and vision of inventor/futurist Jacque Fresco; Energy from the Vacuum, exploring the life's work of genius physicist Tom Bearden; Mentoring, showcasing the highly successful mentoring program of prestigious nonprofit organization, The Fulfillment Fund; and A Thousand Faces: The History of the Screen Actors Guild.

Ross Kauffman, who is currently producing the documentary Project Kashmir with producers/directors Geeta Patel and Senain Kheshgi, recently received a finishing fund grant from Sundance and funding from ITVS, with a guaranteed television broadcast on PBS' Independent Lens series. The documentary chronicles the journey of two American friends--one from Pakistan and the other from India--who journey to Kashmir to show two different perspectives of the politics and the life of ordinary people in the conflicted area.

Michèle Ohayon's Cowboy Del Amor was released theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on February 10 through Netflix and Emerging Pictures. The documentary, which won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at 2005 SXSW Film Festival and was nominated for an IDA Award, follows cowboy-turned-matchmaker Ivan Thompson--the self-proclaimed "Cowboy Cupid"--as he helps lonely American men find their ideal wife across the Mexican border. Ohayon was also recently nominated for a Writers Guild of America Documentary Screenplay Award for her work on the film. The rights for the fictional adaptation have been optioned by Focus Features, which is presently in early development on a feature film, to be written and directed by Ohayon. Cowboy Del Amor was scheduled to open in Dallas on March 3 and in Austin on March 24.

Director/producer Bann Roy is currently working on a doc entitled Taking The Heat, narrated by Susan Sarandon. The project is scheduled to air on PBS in March 2006 (Women's History Month). Fighting fires was the easy part of the job for the first women firefighters working in the largest and most respected fire department in the world, the New York City Fire Department. Taking The Heat follows how marathon runner and former law student Brenda Berkman relentlessly took on the New York City Fire Department in 1977 in what became a landmark gender discrimination lawsuit. Berkman leads the story of a group of pioneering women firefighters and the struggles they have endured for nearly three decades to do a job that they all call the greatest job in the world.

A Class Apart, the new documentary produced and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Carlos Sandoval, has been awarded pre-production funds by Latino Public Broadcasting, Humanities Texas and the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media. The one-hour historical documentary will tell the little-known story of an extraordinary band of underdog Mexican-American lawyers from Southeast Texas who take their jury discrimination case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court and win the first in what would become a series of landmark civil rights cases issued by the Warren Court.

IDA Board Member Eddie Schmidt's new film This Film is Not Yet Rated, a look at the MPAA's film ratings system and its impact on American culture, premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Schmidt, the film will have its broadcast premiere on IFC this coming fall.

Renee Sotile and Mary Jo Godges' Christa McAuliffe: Reach for the Stars won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the High Falls Film Festival this past November.

Filmmaker David Strohmaier is in pre-production on the tentatively-titled Now Showing! America Goes to the Movies, the first comprehensive feature-length documentary celebrating the history and excitement of the movie-going experience. The project will be filmed in High-Definition widescreen, and is slated for theatrical distribution in Fall 2006. www.americagoestothemovies.com. 

Women Make Movies is pleased to announce the acquisition of Rachel Landers' The Lost Tribe, which premiered at the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. This hilarious and highly-charged film introduces us to ex-Mormon/lesbian/atheist Sue Ann Post, who has molded a career as an award-winning stand-up comic from the lurid and toxic brew of tales from her childhood and adolescence. When she travels to Salt Lake City to speak at a conference for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Mormons, and learns she has been officially ex-communicated, the outrageous and emotional roller coaster begins.