My brother Roko and I grew up on late-night dinner conversations with interesting guests, and summer trips to Eastern Europe to see family. But it was the television documentaries on PBS that allowed me to travel to the far-off corners of the world and had me home for school the next morning. Most of the documentaries I watched as a child told stories of adults and their usually formal perspective on the world. But one evening during my high-school years, all that changed. I watched the first segment of Ring of Fire, a four-part BBC series on PBS about a ten-year odyssey through the mostly
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Documentary shorts (40 minutes or less) represent a gem of a genre, yet it is so difficult for them to find their place in the world of American theatrical distribution. Here's the conundrum: documentary shorts are popular with festivals and festival-goers alike, but for these films to travel from the friendly environment of a festival into theaters is, to say the least, a challenging endeavor. "Shorts are some of the best filmmaking," says Nancy Buirski, executive director of the Full Frame Film Festival in North Carolina ( www.fullframe.org). She explains that people tend to take more risks
Things are not always as they appear. And for documentary filmmakers, understanding the appetites and working styles of potential filmmaking partners is essential. Among the most storied and respected of all of the documentary strands on US television, American Masters has carved a niche and created a genre of films for both American and world television audiences. The series is the creation of Susan Lacy, who has served as its executive producer since its summer 1986 premiere on PBS. When Lacy tells me how her idea was received back in 1984, it comes as a bit of a shock: "If this was such a
In March 2003, as we began screening documentaries by filmmakers from rural Kentucky to audiences in southwest China, American missiles began raining down on Baghdad; Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as part of the most extensive leadership change in China since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976; and whispers about the burgeoning SARS epidemic started to circulate. It was a sobering reminder of the vast realities of the modest inquiry that had brought ten of us––nine from AppalShop, a media collective in Appalachia, and myself, a film curator from New York––into contact with our counterparts in
DVD sales are setting records above and beyond any set by VHS sales or even rentals. How does this phenomenon affect documentary film? As of yet, it's unclear if it has. According to the Video Business 2003 Mid-Year Report, only one nonfiction title made the Top 25 for highest sales— Jackass the Movie (yes, it is nonfiction). At press time Bowling for Columbine is about to be released and is sure to shake up the DVD sales charts. In the meantime International Documentary interviewed several prominent DVD distributors about the art and business of marketing documentaries in an age when docs
Today it seems hard to believe that it was less than ten years ago that Sony and Phillips launched a video version of their hugely successful Compact Disc (CD) digital audio format. The new heir apparent was originally known as the Digital Video Disc, and now Digital Versatile Disc, or DVD. It was designed along the lines of a compact disc, with an increased capacity allowing bfor the transfer and storage of an entire feature film in high-quality digital video. Today DVD appears to rule the feature motion picture delivery universe. For the consumer, DVD provides a viewing experience with
The year was 1978. The music was disco, the carpets were shag. Lycra was in fashion. Sony's Betamax technology was battling it out with an upstart videotape format called VHS. And Jonathan Miller and Ilan Ziv, two college friends from New York University, launched a modest film distribution enterprise called Icarus Films. "I can't for the life of me think we knew what we were doing," says Miller today. "What we thought we were doing was getting interesting films that weren't being shown in the US and getting them out to people, finding audiences for them. We didn't have bigger plans or goals
As you may have read last week, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission has provided a generous grant enabling the IDA to recruit two promising undergraduate students for paid summer 2014 internships. During their time with us, these two bright individuals will gain expertise in event and educational program management. Corinne Gaston has joined us this week as the new Conference and Educational Programs Intern. Corinne has one more semester to finish at the University of Southern California where she studies Creative Writing, Folklore, and Screenwriting. Originally from Pennsylvania, Corinne
Judging from the films on display at the Maryland Film Festival, we are having a bit of an existential crisis in our film culture, which likely reflects trends that will ripple through our culture at large in the near future. In terms of form and theme, every film that I saw raised serious questions about not only how we define the real, but also about how we communicate about it. In a world in which we are flooded with both hyper-produced and seemingly instantaneous images, it's hard to grasp the meaning of authenticity. Humans are wired to find patterns. When we don't have them we often feel
The Roxie Cinema sits in the heart of San Francisco's hip/grungy Mission District, footsteps away from trendy pubs, the city's best burrito (the real San Francisco treat, according to Calvin Trillin) and one of its busiest drug corners. Like the neighborhood, the Roxie has survived by being spunky, taking risks with its programming and, in a rare venture for a small exhibition house, moving into distribution. Since 1984 Roxie Releasing ( www.roxiereleasing.com) has circulated more than two dozen films, including a slate of documentaries that have been praised ( Rivers and Tides, Genghis Blues