KCRW’s Matt Holzman sat down with Lucy Walker, Kevin Pearce, and his brother Adam after the screening to discuss using this project to discuss important issues.
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Six feature-length documentary films have been selected to receive a total of $95,000 from the IDA Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund this year.
Since 1970, the giant screen 15/70mm IMAX format has provided a close-up and experiential view of nature's wonders. Historically, natural history and science films have provided the colorful backbone for content in this most immersive of motion picture mediums. The 15/70 film frame, which travels horizontally through the camera and projector, is almost nine times larger than a conventional 35mm film frame. Combine that kind of realism with 12,000 watts of surrounding six-channel sound and you have a medium that places audiences directly into the environments they depict, whether it is an
Ross McElwee's genial humor has guided him through some of the more thoughtful feature documentaries of the last 25 years: his pioneering Sherman's March (1986), Time Indefinite (1993), 6 O'Clock News (1997) and this year's release, his sixth feature, Bright Leaves. In each of his decidedly personal films, McElwee journeys from his base in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to his home state of North Carolina, visiting with old friends and family and using the past as a jumping-off point for his cinematic ruminations. He's inspired by these "periodic transfusions of Southern-ness." Although McElwee
Recently my company, HD Studios, contacted to co-produce a half-hour high-definition (HD) television series entitled Journey to Hollywood. Each of the 13 episodes deconstructs a specific area of Hollywood cinematic production—financing, costumes, acting, etc. Journey to Hollywood was shot in 23.976 PsF (progressive frames), using one of our Sony HDW-F900 high definition cameras. Sony BCT 40 HDCam master tapes were down-converted to Sony DVCam 64 using a Sony HDW F500 HD deck, and offline editing was done on an Avid. Online, primary and secondary color correction were done in-house on an Avid
It is an ironic metaphor that the most recent giant screen film to be funded with a grant from the National Science Foundation and investment capital from the Museum Film Network is Dinosaurs! Many large format filmmakers, distributors and exhibitors alike worry that this fractionalized industry is on the verge of becoming a dinosaur itself unless it reinvents the business from the inside out, both creatively and financially. That was the general consensus of those who attended the Large Format Cinema Association (LFCA) conference, held at Universal Studios in Los Angeles last April. The
DOCS ROCK, a bold new program developed for high school students by the IDA, is anchored on the premise that documentary films are a cultural art form that stimulates the development of basic principles of critical analysis. This program cultivates the ability to make judgments about media from a perspective of what is fiction and what is nonfiction, and expands this skill as it may be applied to all aspects of development, learning and human experience. The DOCS ROCK outreach program has steadily thrived and continues to grow. In December 2003, the curriculum received full accreditation for
'The Summit' opens in theaters October 4 through IFC Films.
In what is sure to be remembered as this decade's An Inconvenient Truth, Jacob Kornbluth's documentary feature debut Inequality for All tackles the increasingly unbalanced distribution of wealth among America's workers. Developed from the concepts of leading political economist and former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, the film uses Reich's wealth and poverty course at UC Berkeley as the through line by which the history of income inequality is simplified, explained, and exposed. Inequality for All screened on Thursday, September 26 in Los Angeles to kick off the IDA Documentary
In its sophomore year, Silverdocs—based at the American Film Institute Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, and co-sponsored by AFI and Discovery Networks—became a hub for documentary makers. It was possible not only to see several of 75 documentaries, but also to attend a conference for working filmmakers and programmers and, of course, to network. Some ten feature films competed for the festival's top prize of $10,000 in cash and services, and two ended up splitting it: Carey Schonegevel's compelling and poetic pastiche film Original Child Bomb, which combines familiar and unfamiliar images