Film Society of Lincoln Center launches a new series.
Latest Posts
Here is the latest installation of great funding opportunities coming up this summer. There is money to be had. Go for it! IDFA BERTHA FUNDThe IDFA Bertha Fund is the only fund in the world dedicated solely to stimulating and empowering the creative documentary sector in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe. The fund is looking for new creative documentary projects which can be submitted in project development, production, and post production. Deadline: May 15th, 2014 SHAW MEDIA-HOT DOCS FUNDSEstablished in April 2008, the Shaw Media-Hot Docs Funds consist
This is the best and worst of times for social documentarians. Never has it been easier or cheaper to make a social documentary than today. Many a film professional will grumble, though, that it's still pretty hard to make a watchable one. No matter how cheap it gets to capture images and edit them on your own computer, a social documentary is an artform, and it requires the powerful storytelling skills that are at the base of that artform. It also requires the expert skills of craftspeople ranging from cinematography to lighting to digital effects to editing. It is also hard—and, some say
After more than a year on the film festival circuit, the directors of We Always Lie to Strangers finally brought their feature-length documentary about Branson, Missouri to its de facto hometown. The Branson premiere, April 27, was a homecoming of sorts for co-directors David Wilson and AJ Schnack. The two made their first filmmaking trip to the small Ozark town in November 2007. Five years later, they returned to screen their rough cut for the four families featured in the film, all performers in the live music shows that dominate the Branson strip, often called the Las Vegas of the Ozarks.
"What was so unusual for the Women's Movement and filmmakers like myself," says Liane Brandon, recalling a period when both were just starting out, "was that the lives of ordinary women had not been the subject of documentary films. When I asked distributors why, I was told, 'Who cares?'" But Brandon did care. A founding member of New Day Films, the New York-based collective of social-issue media makers and distributors, she made her first important film about sex-role stereotyping, Sometimes I Wonder Who I Am, in 1970, and followed it with Anything You Want to Be (1971), Betty Tells Her Story
Japanese Documentary Film:The Meiji Era through Hiroshima By Abe Mark Nornes University of Minnesota Press 257 pps. (paperbound) $19.95 ISBN 0-8166-4046-7 Abe Mark Nornes came to write about Japanese documentary through a circuitous route. Asked, along with Fukushima Yukio, to program a retrospective called Nichi-Bei Eigasen (Japan/America Film Wars) for the 1991 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Nornes was charged with showing American and Japanese World War II-era documentaries that covered the same themes and subjects. "We showed an American film and a Japanese film on a
Dear IDA Community: Every year seems to bring the release of more and more important documentaries, on an ever-wider range of topics, from an increasingly diverse and expanding community of talented filmmakers. This year was no exception. To anticipate and meet the needs of this growing field, IDA has to grow too. And it has to change. 2013 brought plenty of both growth and change. One of the biggest changes brought the end of IDA's long-running Oscar-qualifying DocuWeeks program and the launch of IDA's popular new Documentary Screening Series. The series is designed to bring the best
Dear Readers: This past fall, IDA presented a daylong Doc U devoted to sound and music. Over the course of the day, the leading practitioners in all things aural—recordists, mixers, designers, composers and filmmakers—proffered sage counsel on how to achieve the best sound—ambient, dialogue, music—for your documentary. A veritable feast for the ears! one might exclaim-and a valuable touchstone for a deeper exploration into the issues and topics that arose out of the seminar. So, beginning with a report on the Doc U , we present our issue on sound and music. Ron Deutsch talks to some seasoned
Being a judge this year on the IDA, Directors Guild of America (DGA) and Oscar Documentary committees, I got to see a large number of films. There are some very high-quality docs being produced around the country and abroad. But is it the best of times, or the worst of times for documentary producers? The last couple of years in particular have seen the successful theatrical release of some wonderful documentaries, including Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound and My Architect. With the supposed 500-channel satellite and cable world opening up, it would seem that the possibilities for the