Any accidental tourists strolling through the lobby of Wyoming's Lake Lodge sometime during the last week of September might have thought they had wandered into a mecca of devout followers on their customary pilgrimage. All they had to do was overhear any of these devotees wax poetic about the value of this film festival to understand why it is a "must attend" for natural history filmmakers and broadcasters. Although the Wild Screen Film Festival, held in alternating years in Bristol, England, shares the "must attend" status, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (JHWFF) remains the
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Celebrating and Preserving the Latino Experience–His Own Way
The series will highlight four new documentary films, with a filmmaker Q&A after each screening.
When was the last time a documentary inspired Americans to throw 3,000 viewing parties for nearly 100,000 people, making $850,000 in the first three days of distribution alone? When was the last time a documentary screening was co-sponsored by four competing presidential candidates, enabling the Dean, Kerry, Clark and Kucinich campaigns to put aside their differences for a night in Los Angeles to support the film and its defining issue? How many documentaries have inspired a punk rock band to approach the filmmaker for 10-20,000 copies of the film to hand out to fans on their tour? Yet this is
I have always considered myself privileged to have had my baptism of fire as an apprentice documentary filmmaker in the turbulent 1960s. It was a time of great social and cultural upheavals and a time of violent brutality and political repression. The era began with the civil rights movement's assault against segregation, a flood of protest that in turn fructified into a series of liberation movements for a variety of oppressed groups—the anti-Vietnam war movement protesting the senseless slaughter of Americans and Vietnamese; women demanding equality in all phases of the country's social
Dear IDA Community, This fall, we debut IDA's new three-day Documentary Film Conference in Los Angeles. Held in conjunction with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with the support of funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Catapult Foundation and the Kallis Foundation, this conference, we believe, could become a game-changer. It's a thrilling opportunity. We're hoping to kick-start something new, something that we desperately need in our community: a frank conversation about the state of the industry. Rather than hold more panels about festival strategy, self
Even during the annual Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival's celebration of everything nonfiction, not every Canuck obsesses over documentaries. Some are more concerned about hockey, the weather and, if in Toronto, Mayor Rob Ford. Still, it's heartening to note that while hiz-dizhonor was making international headlines by allegedly smoking crack, and local sports fans found their attention divided by, of all things, a basketball playoff, a record number of 192,000 Torontonians and visitors stood patiently in downpours of rain to attend screenings of the 197 films selected to
Unfolding in chapters, Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect records both an emotional, very personal search and an authoritative biopic. The subject: the filmmaker's own father, the renowned Philadelphia-based architect, Louis I. Kahn. Although the elder Kahn completed only a relatively limited number of commissions in his career, his legacy and influence still resonate today throughout the architectural world. Most will recognize his timeless building for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, while his Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Yale
A review of Jeffrey Ruoff's 'Coming Soon to to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals'
Film festivals are arguably the most important springboards for documentaries. It is of paramount importance to make the most of not only your film's introduction to the world but also your complete festival experience. The only way to start this process is by asking the ever-important question: "What do I want to get out of this experience?" The answer may be, to find a distributor, make a sale or generate publicity for a theatrical run. The trick is to use all available elements to get what you want from a festival premiere. One of the most acclaimed documentaries of 2002, Standing in the