From Godfrey Reggio’s 1983 film Koyannisqatsi. Courtesy of The Criterion Collection It's so familiar now, but at the time there had been nothing like Koyaanisqatsi. This is affirmed by Ron Fricke, cinematographer on the film, in a new interview featured in the Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray sets of The Qatsi Trilogy. He particularly means the time-lapse footage that it's most famous for, but there are other aspects that were new to audiences 30 years ago, additional reasons it is recognized by the Library of Congress as a landmark of American cinema. Philip Glass had never scored a movie
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Les Blank, whose scintillating portraits of Americana defined a six-decade career, died April 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif., of complications of bladder cancer. He was 77. He leaves behind a trove of poetic explorations into the lives of legends and unknowns alike—Lightinin' Hopkins and Leon Russell, as well as gap-toothed women, garlic and tea aficionados and Mardi Gras revelers. Legendary folklorist Alan Lomax mined this territory too, but Blank opened it up further and deeper, beyond the conventions of ethnographic filmmaking to a more resonant kind of poetry. (For more on Blank's canon
The World at Warby Taylor DowningPalgrave Macmillan, 2012180 pages with black-and-white and color photographs$23.96 Are there reasons why a reader should spend time with a small book containing a detailed examination of a documentary series produced in England in the 1970s? The answer is yes, when the film at hand is The World at War. This remarkable work is a landmark in documentary, not only for its groundbreaking filmmaking and its insistence on authenticity, but for the lasting impact it continues to have on understanding the history and production of historical documentaries. To watch
"I went into documentaries because I wanted to make socially responsible movies. It was a way to use cinematography to make a statement about the human condition. They were also the only opportunity available to women." —Ellen Kuras, ASC The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) was founded in Los Angeles in 1919 as a peer group, much like the International Documentary Association (IDA). The first 15 members were exploring the frontier of a new art form. The purpose of the organization was to provide a forum for sharing ideas and advocating advances in technology. It was a man's world
From S.R. Bindler's Hands on a Hardbody. Courtesy of S.R. Bindler by Ayn Carrillo-Gailey and S.W. Gailey In 1992, S.R. Bindler was in Longview, Texas, and stumbled upon a real-life scene that would launch his career as a film and commercial director. "I was home on break from NYU, hanging out at a bar," he recalls. "At 3:00 a.m., the place closed up and I stepped out into the night. Across the street, I saw a car lot lit up. I was drawn to it like a moth." When Bindler approached the lot, he was met with a tableau vivant made up of five nearly motionless strangers standing around a Nissan
Artwork for Marc Levitz' I Survived BTK, Courtesy of Marc D. Levitz In a 2006 article about the Emmy Awards that appeared in Documentary magazine, the author, Andrea Van Hook, wrote, "So now that you've made your film, shepherded it through the festival circuit, had a feature release and successfully inked a television distribution deal, it's time to think Emmy...all you've got to do is produce an outstanding documentary film. How hard can that be?" Actually, really hard, as I came to find out. I Survived BTK, my high-concept, micro-budget, true-crime debut attempt at documentary filmmaking, a
From Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl. Courtesy of Historic Adobe Museum It is a well-worn cliché that "a picture is worth a thousand words." Often, there is validity to such maxims, especially in documentary filmmaking. Finding the right still or seeking out the archival footage that can change a story or drive it forward is one of the holy grails of production. But just how do filmmakers produce compelling programs with old or grainy images? The different schools of thought are almost as numerous as all the images sources available today. "I look at footage as a main character," says Emmy and
Don't you just love archival footage? At its best, it's a window into the past and a revelation about a period in time. A scene of kids hula-hooping in the Soviet Union, for example, can make a film look and feel more authentic and honest, and can touch the emotional core of audiences. Fun as it may be to work with archival footage, tracking it down comes with many challenges: Where do you go to find it? How do you access archives? How do you license and pay for it? These are all concerns for the documentary filmmaker. Now, thanks to online archives, access to archival footage has become more
Agnes Varda's The Beaches of Agnes. Courtesy of The Cinema Guild Sometimes a documentary not only inspires you, but also gives you courage. I was inspired when legendary filmmaker Agnès Varda stepped in front of the camera to tell her own story. At the time, I was having a crisis in the editing room, where I realized I needed to take the film that I was working on, Connected, in a completely different direction-a personal direction, which scared the hell out of me. In order to get to the root of our strong desire for connection, technologically and otherwise, I had to explore what connection
Film School is a new documentary series that recently aired on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). This 10-part, five-hour series, created and executive produced by Nanette Burstein ( The Kid Stays in the Picture; On the Ropes) and produced by Jordan Roberts, documents the efforts of four New York University graduate film students to make their second- and third-year films. The film credits Tamas Bojtor, Rebecca Cammisa, Sybil Dessau and Gregory Orselli as directors and cinematographers and Thomas Haneke, Mary Manhardt and Charles Marquardt as editors. Both Burstein and Roberts are graduates