Hot Coffee" src="http://www.documentary.org/images/magazine/2012/FromTheCourtroomToTheEditRoom_Summer12.jpg" style="width: 647px; height: 411px;"> The career path to documentary filmmaking is a diffuse one. Some documentarians transition back and forth from broadcast journalism or fiction filmmaking, others shift from artistic disciplines such as still photography or theater. But given documentary's power to instigate social action and advocacy, a handful of practicing attorneys have made the transition from the court room to the editing room. Rebecca Richman Cohen ( War Don Don; Code of the
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The Story of The Photo League--1936-1951
In the most powerful moment of Matthew Akers' Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, a kid walks away from a sitting with performance artist Marina Abramovic and looks traumatized. Frightened, his mother asks, "What's wrong!?" and when she realizes he just had a transformative experience, she begins to cry. It's pride she's showing, and it scares her son out of his momentary, possibly transcendental stupor. Should he have been protected from all that? Is that a reasonable question? On the list of credible professions, "performance artist" ranks just beneath "ponzi schemer" and "tent revival
Cold winds and rainstorms dampened mind, spirit and bodies as audiences walked the red carpet at the Palais for the 65 th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Of the 22 feature films selected in the Main Competition, not one was directed by a woman. Although the committee tried to defend themselves from loud protests claiming films are chosen for their quality alone, their excuses were as fake and shallow as (many of) the films we saw, which worsened the inclement conditions even further. Having no place of their own at Cannes, documentaries appear within a specific strand such as Critic's
As documentary filmmaking has evolved, so too has POV, the influential and award-winning series on PBS that for the past 25 years has been a creative home to an eclectic group of independent filmmakers and their provocative films. As it celebrates its 25th anniversary, in addition to pure longevity, the longest running independent film series has also pioneered community engagement efforts and digital strategies that have expanded the impact and overall life of these films. "I often refer to POV's mission as developing an approach to the lifespan of the documentary," says Cynthia Lopez, co
A report on the 14th annual Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival Draws 155,000.
Doc Talk Radio offers a unique opportunity for documentarians to get the word out about their films. The program, co-hosted by DJs Arne Johnson and Shane King on 87.9 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area, is the only radio show that exclusively focuses on the documentary filmmaking community and its stories. The show explores the filmmaking process and the subjects of particular projects, and features both local filmmakers and those who are passing through the Bay Area for festivals, shoots and screenings. According to Johnson, the show grew organically out of his and King's own filmmaking efforts
What is a pioneer? We generally think of pioneers as explorers, innovators, trailblazers. People who open up new possibilities, new ways of thinking, seeing and doing. When Mel Stuart lit out for the media-making territory some 50 years ago, television had just begun to insinuate itself as an artistic medium that provided young filmmakers like Stuart with the opportunity to become pioneers. Stuart's first artistic impulse lay not in the media arts, however, but in music, a discipline he followed while a student at Columbia University and New York University. He may have abandoned music as a