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1996 Academy Awards Nominees: Best Documentary Short Subject

By IDA Editorial Staff


An etched sketched of an older man wearing glasses, from Nancy Dine's 'Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walu.'

Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walu
Producers: Nancy Diane and Richard Stilwell
Director: Nancy Dine
Cinematographer: Rudiger Kortz
Editor: Maro Chermayeff
Distributor: Outside in July, Inc.

Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walu offers an entertaining and accessible look at the work of a prominent American artist. Over six days, Dine transforms the interior space of a German museum with massive charcoal drawings worked directly on the surfaces of its walls. Capturing humor and introspection along with the grime, dust, vacuuming, and handily improvised use of all manner of drawing implements, director Nancy Dine provides a dramatic picture of the developing work. Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walu is not only a testament to the powerful, short-lived works on the walls of the Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, but also serves as a succinct and revealing essay about the creative act and the everyday value of art in our lives.

NANCY DINE, a photographer and filmmaker, is the founder of Outside in July, Inc., a non-profit corporation she created in 1987 to produce documentary films based in the arts and education. Productions include Debut, tracing a young chamber music group from its inception to its New York debut; Bali Beyond the Postcard, about a Balinese families gamelan music and Legong dance tradition; and a trilogy of films about the work of Dine's artist-husband, Jim.

RICHARD STILWELL began his professional life in various cutting rooms for the BBC and Channel 4 in England. There he toiled on several anthropological and ethnographic documentaries, including Ned Johnston's Value of the Whip, Joanna Head's The Women Who Smile, and the trilogy China: 40 Years of the Dragon. Since moving to the United States in 1990, he has divided his time between production and post production of independent documentaries. Editing credits include Korea: Homes Apart, Sa-i-gu, and A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans, which will be broadcast in May on PBS. His production credits include Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Wall and the forthcoming All About Looking.

 

The Living Sea
Producers: Greg MacGillivray, Alec Lorimore
Director: Greg MacGillivray
Writers: Roger Holzberg and Tim Cahill
Directors of Photography: Greg MacGillivray, Howard Hall, Timothy Housel, Don King, Ron Fricke, Brad Ohlund
Creative Co Producer and Editor: Stephen Judson
Narrator: Meryl Streep
Featuring Songs and Music by: Sting
Distributor: MacGillivray Freeman Films

The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the earth's surface, with an average depth of two miles. We depend on the sea to produce most of our planet's oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. In fact, we are as dependent on the health of the ocean as the fish that swim in it. An IMAX film shot in locations around the world, The Living Sea explores humans' relationship with this complex and fragile environment.

The Living Sea takes audiences on a journey of discovery to learn how the world ocean waters are linked by currents, tides, and water cycles. Once feared as a dark and mysterious place, the deep sea's geography and inhabitants remained largely unknown for centuries while human beings focused on conquering the land and uncovering the secrets of the stars and planets. Today, the sea represents some of the last unexplored regions on our planet.

GREG MacGILLIVRAY shot his first feature-length com m ercial release, A Cool Wave of Color; while still in high school. Shortly thereafter he teamed up with friend and filmmaker Jim Freeman, with whom he became known for breathtaking aerial photography. Freeman died in a helicopter crash two days before the world premiere of To Fly, their first IMAX production. Since then MacGillivray has devoted himself to alternative­ format films. He has produced 17 IMAX films, more than any other independent filmmaker.

ALEC LORIMORE has both an extensive screenwriting career with the major studios and over 15 years' experience in the IMAX arena. During this time he's been variously involved as writer, producer, director, and editor on some of the most successful large-format titles, including Stormchaser, To the Limit, Behold Hawaii, The Discoverers, and At Sea. He is currently vice president of productions and development at MacGillivray Freeman Films.

 

Never Give Up: The 20th Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper
Executive Producers: Paul and Mary Ann Cummins
Producers: Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders
Director and Writer: Terry Sanders
Cinematographers: Terry Sanders and Erik Daarstad
Editor: William Cartwright Jr.
Distributor: American Film Foundation

Never Give Up is the inspiring story of Vienna­ born musician and conductor Herbert Zipper, who survived imprisonment in Dachau and Buchenwald to become one of the great music educators of the world. In Dachau, Zipper organized secret concerts using makeshift instruments, and it was there he learned that music and the arts are essential to life.

In spite of his ordeals in the Nazi concentration camps, Zipper always remained an optimist, never allowing himself to become embittered or to waste time with feelings of hatred. He emerged from the camps with a powerful new sense of direction that shaped the second half of his life: to bring music to young people in order to "help raise the positive."

For the past half-century, Zipper has led the way in bringing professional orchestras into the inner-city schools of the United States to children who would otherwise never have the opportunity of hearing great music. Today, at age 91, Zipper is still going strong.

TERRY SANDERS is an Academy and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker (A Time Out of War). He produced War Hunt, Robert Redford's first starring role in a feature film, Terry Sanders Freida Lee Mock and many other features, television specials, and series. He was the co producer of last year's Academy Award-winning feature length documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.

FREIDA LEE MOCK been nominated for Academy Awards three times in the past: for Rose Kennedy: A Life to Remember; for To Live or Let Die, and for Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, which won last year's Oscar for best feature­ length documentary. She has produced a range of films on the arts and humanities, including the Emmy Award­ winning Lillian Gish: The Actor’s Life for Me.
 

One Survivor Remembers
Producer: Kary Antholis
Interviews by: Sandra W. Bradley
Editor: Lawrence Silk
Executive Producer: Stephanie Liss
Co-Producers for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Research Institute: Michael Berenbaum and Raye Farr Senior
Producer: Sheila Nevins
Distributor: HBO/Direct Cinema Ltd.

When Gerda Weissmann's father told her to wear her ski boots to the work camp in June 1942, he had no inkling how important they would be in her desperate fight for survival. Three years later, as one of fewer than 200 women remaining from the 2,000 who had started a forced 350-mile winter death march at the hands of the Nazis, she took the boots off her frozen feet and extracted hidden family photographs—the only remnants of her past—from the soles.

One Survivor Remembers is Gerda Weissmann's remarkable first-person story. During the war's final stages, after spending three years in concentration camps, she began a three-month death march to Czechoslovakia. As the 2,000 women end up red brutal cold and snow, Weissmann understood why her father had insisted she wear boots that summer day in 1942. "I saw girls breaking off their toes like twigs," she recalled. "And I Had my ski boots." Weighing 68 pounds, Weissmann was one day short of her 21st birthday when she was discovered by Lt. Kurt Klein, a German—born Jew who had moved to the United States to escape the Nazi regime. He remembers how, amid the devastation, she quoted Goethe: "Noble be man, merciful and good."

Weissmann's liberator is now her husband. Today, Kurt and Gerda Klein live in Arizona. They have three children and eight grandchildren. Her account remains a tribute to the millions whose stories are not told.

KARY ANTHOLIS was a director of documentary programming at HBO prior to making the transition to independent producer with One Survivor Remembers. At HBO he was responsible for overseeing the development and production of such documentaries as the Oscar-winning Educating Peter; the Oscar-nominated The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter, and the CableACE-winning Kary Antholis Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock. Prior to HBO, Antholis was vice president, business affairs and documentary production, for ZM Productions, which he has since rejoined as head of television development. There he was deeply involved in making Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse.

 

The Shadow of Hate: A History of Intolerance in America
Producer: Jennifer L. Gruber
Writer: Charles Guggenheim
Editor: Catherine Shields
Original Music: Michael Bacon
Narrator: Julian Bond
Distributor: Southern Poverty Law Center

“He didn't look like one of us." To many residents of Atlanta in 1913, this was reason enough to suspect Leo Frank of murder. For some, it was reason enough to hang him. It's a story as old as humanity-pointing the finger at those who don't look or act or think like we do.

Produced by three-time Academy Award winner Charles Guggenheim, The Shadow of Hate spans three centuries to examine this country's ongoing struggle to live u p to its ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all. Through documentary footage and eyewitness reports, viewers are given a powerful perspective on historical events from the ordinary people who lived through them.

CHARLES GUGGENHEIM has achieved an international reputation for his documentary films, which revolve around the subjects of architecture, history, and social issues. He has received the George Foster Peabody Award in broadcasting, 11 Academy Award nominations, four Academy Awards (for RFK Remembered, Nine from Little Rock, The Johnstown Flood, and A Time For Justice), Charles Guggenheim the American Institute of Architects' Institute Honor, and the Venice Film Festival's XI Gold Mercury Award. His productions have included film biographies commissioned for permanent exhibition in the presidential libraries of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Harry S. Truman; PBS's Journey to America, about the Ellis Island immigrants; and last year's Oscar-nominated D-Day.