Looking ahead to Sundance, the Documentary Competion Jury consists of the following: Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Steven Okazaki (White Light/Black Rain), Annie Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback) and IFP executive director Michelle Byrd. The World Documentary Competition Jury includes Amir Bar-Lev (My Kid Could PaintThat); Leena Pasanen, director of European Documentary Network; and Ilda Santiago, director of Festival do Rio.
Filmmaker AJ Schnack joined forces with Toronto Film Festival doc programmer Thom Powers and online distributor IndiePix to launch the 2008 Awards for Excellence in Nonfiction Filmkmaking. The awards ceremony will take place March 18 at the IFC Center in New York City. Here are the details from the IndiePix website:
https://www2.indiepix.net/awards/infhome.html?ref=iba
And here's an article about the new awards from IndieWIRE:
http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/01/15_documentarie.html
Well, it was long in the speculation, but Discovery Communications announced last month that it was going to go public, in a deal spearheaded by Discovery Holding Company and Advance Newhouse Programming. Here are the details from WorldScreen.com:
http://www.worldscreen.com/newscurrent.php?filename=discovery121307.htm
In response to Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's Nanking last month, Japanese filmmaker Satoru Mizushima is in production on The Truth of Nanking, a three-part documentary series that alleges that the massacre did not occur. Here's a story from Yahoo!News:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071211/ennew_afp/japanchinawwiihistorynanjing70yearsfilm
Independent Television Service (ITVS) announced the production of The Calling, a four-part series about religion and faith in the US. The series, executive-produced by Chicago-based Danny Alpert, follows four Americans in their respective journeys to become religious leaders in the Islam, Catholic, Evagleical Christian and Jewish faiths. Here's a story from Marketwire:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=802560
Another major PBS project, slated for Spring 2008, is Carrier, a ten-hour series about life on the USS Nimitz. Filmed over a six-month period, the series was conceived by Mitchell Block, who serves as its executive producer with Maro Chermayeff. Chermayeff shared directing reponsibilities with Deborah Dickson, who also helmed a feature-length film on the deployment, Another Day inParadise, for theatrical release after the broadcast. Here's a story from Current.org:
http://www.current.org/doc/doc0722carrier.shtml
The George Foster Peabody Awards, which honor excellence in broadcast journalism, have been around since 1940, and are held in high esteem by the documentary community. Here's an interview with Peabodys director Horace Newcomb:
http://www.tvweek.com/news/2007/12/peabodys_in_the_pursuit_of_exc.php
The Bottom Line, the legendary New York-based club that closed in 2004 under pressure from its landlord, New York University, is the subject of a doc-in-progress by Lori Cheatle, who documented the club's last days and is continuing to work with its impresario, Allan Pepper. Here's a story from The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/nyregion/thecity/16bott.html?_r=2&ref=thecity&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
The D-Word hosted a weeklong conference last month with representatives of ITVS to take visitors through the byzantine process of applying for an ITVS grant. To log-in and register, go to http://www.d-word.com/.
Peter Bogdanavich's Tom Petty: Running Down a Dream had a brief theatrical release last month prior to its Sundance Channel airing and DVD release. Here's a focus on the film's editor, Mary Ann McLure, and the post-production process, from Videography:
http://www.videography.com/articles/article_15434.shtml
CourtTV was recently re-launched as trueTV; here's an assessment from USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-12-30-truTV_N.htm
There's been a discussion going around DocuLink as to whether or not BitTorrent is a boon for docmakers. Here's a piece from TorrentFreak.com:
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-a-boon-to-independent-filmmakers-071215/