Women Behind the Camera secures another panelist.
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Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days returns to F/X on Wednesday, July 26 with a premiere episode that focuses on the US prison system. Spurlock once again volunteers himself as a human guinea pig and is locked up in Henrico County Jail in Richmond, Virgina for 30 days, along the way experiencing lack of privacy, solitary confinement, limited access to visitors and work in the prison kitchen. "I was in with people who were facing anywhere from 10 years to upwards of 30 years," says Spurlock. "You hear all the time that these are ‘bad people' who we need be ‘protected' from. It was a tremendous experience
Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from August 12 through September 1 in New York City and August 19 through September 8 in Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far. So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Michèle Ohayon, director/producer/writer of S.O.S./State of Security. Synopsis: January 2001
What do recent commercials for Secret, Budweiser and Dove have in common? All have been directed by award-winning documentarians. Nonfiction Spots, founded in 1995 by Loretta "LJ" Janeski and Michael Degan, specializes in crossing over doc directors into the advertising arena. Clients include Jessica Yu, Stacy Peralta, Barbara Kopple and Paul Crowder, among others. At first glance, documentarians and television commercials might seem like strange bedfellows, but with today's focus on "real people" ads, it makes sense that more and more nonfiction directors are being tapped to helm spots. Says
Since its launch in January 2011, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) has been chugging along under most TV viewers' radars. Amid harsh realities of getting a new cable network off the ground and transitioning Oprah's show audience to a whole slate of programming on a new channel, the network premiered the OWN Documentary Club in May. With three Emmy nominations for its inaugural film, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's Becoming Chaz, which follows the sexual reassignment of Chastity Bono to Chaz, the Club is off to an impressive start. An important player behind the Club's beginnings has been
Growing up in suburban Chicago in the late '50s, I wasn't tuned in to European Formula One (F1) racing, which pitted agile and fast Ferraris against Maseratis and other automotive exotica. For my gang of friends, watching A. J. Foyt driving his front-engined, Offenhauser-powered cars at the annual Indianapolis 500 was the race of all auto races. Little did I know, outside of the safe boundaries of my Midwestern myopia, that race around a circle track was derided as being about a bunch of hicks making one long left turn while driving cumbersome, uninteresting cars. That image was sealed when
I was 14 years old on September 11, 2001, when my mother woke me up to tell me I needed to come downstairs, now. I grew up on the West Coast, so since school hadn't started yet that morning, my siblings and I padded downstairs in time to watch the second tower fall. We were groggy and trying to process what was happening in New York, a city that felt both a world away and much too close at the same time. When I moved East I met people who were much more directly affected: what began while I was asleep they experienced in real time and particularly for New Yorkers, that day is an event they
While funding films is as difficult as it ever was, technology has lowered the hard costs of production to such a degree that there is now a literal deluge of movies inundating the gatekeepers who oversee festivals and distribution. A lot of these films are fantastic, but with such a flood of them, it's now even harder for all the good films being made to get the attention they deserve. Last year, I wrote an article for this publication about our successful crowd-sourcing campaign to raise some finishing funds for Battle for Brooklyn. Now I'd like to share our story of doing whatever it takes
Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from August 12 through September 1 in New York City and August 19 through September 8 in Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far. So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Phie Ambo, director of The Home Front. Synopsis: The Home Front is about conflicts in our
'Miss Representation' airs October 20 on OWN.