Couldn't make it to this year's Sundance Film Festival? Never fear; you'll soon be able to check out the latest Sundance content on the phone tucked right inside your bag. The Sundance Institute has teamed up with the GSM Association (GSMA) for the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project, an initiative to bring original, creative short films to the mobile platform. Six independent filmmakers, all SFF alumni, have been commissioned to create five short films specifically for mobile distribution. The films debuted at the 3GSM World Congress, the world's largest telecommunications event
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Photo by Mark S. Wexler I was in Vietnam with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden shooting a documentary. I was filming a peasant working in a field when he stepped on a landmine. I was torn. Should I put the camera down and try to help him? I kept shooting while two Vietnamese farm workers ran into the field and carried him to a little nearby clinic. They were struggling, because he was a big guy and they were rather small. After they got him into the clinic, I kept shooting through a window as they attended to him. Most of his leg was gone. My tears made it difficult to see through the viewfinder
Do you know the difference between a webisode and a mobisode? Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? Wikis and blogs? IPTV and DRMs? Tapeless and DI workflows? If you are a bit frightened by the digital New World Order, you would have found a sympathetic ear at the wine bar of this fall’s Jackson Hole Tech Symposium, held at the SkirballCulturalCenter in Los Angeles. But thanks to a crack list of speakers, you would have found some answers, too. The symposium, spearheaded by the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (JHWFF), was launched in 1992 for doc filmmakers tackling the then-new high-definition cameras
FCC Rules in IDA’s Favor on Internet Transportation Speed of Films
Love it or hate it, reality TV is here to stay. In the last decade, more and more outlets (including networks) have put reality programs front and center in primetime programming blocks, and personality-driven reality shows have overtaken "infotainment" specials. That all means more between-projects work for the documentary filmmaker, but does it mean any more hope of getting a documentary series on the air? That all depends on your definition of documentary. R.J. Cutler sets the bar for that definition high and old school at "cinema vérité." Cutler is a producer behind such respected feature
By Tom White and Eddie Schmidt In the 2004 film The Five Obstructions, by Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier, von Trier challenges his mentor Leth to remake his 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times--each according to Von Trier's cerebrally wacky (wackily cerebral?) rules, or obstructions. We decided to take our cues from the Danish duo and challenge some of the leading lights in the documentary community to contort their sensibilities and aesthetics in absurd, demeaning and ultimately pointless ways...All in good fun! Obstruction #1--to Ken Burns Make a 12-minute nature documentary. Ninety
The NFB's Filmmaker-in-Residence Program in partnership with Toronto-based St. Michael's Hospital.
A review of the book 'Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada'
How would you like to make a critically acclaimed documentary and reap the ample rewards? Well, maybe not ample...but respectable? Sounds pretty good, huh? But what about all those years finding compelling subjects, following them around with a camera and then putting together a story that says something about the state of our world? Gosh, that sounds like real work or something! Well, with my handy flow chart (see handy flow chart below), you can create hit documentaries in minutes--using the Mix 'n' Match Instant Documentary Film Maker! Carefully stir together tried and true elements from
By Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady "I love to fly," says a gravelly teenage voice in the opening sequence of Streetwise. "The only bad thing about flying is having to come back down to the fucking world," he continues. The camera is focused on the jean-clad body of a skinny teenage boy, standing on the railing of a wharf at dawn, poised to swan dive into the Seattle harbor. We soon learn that the boy is Rat, a 17-year-old homeless kid who makes his living by picking pockets and "rolling queers." He lives in an abandoned hotel, eats out of a dumpster and clings naively to aspirations for a normal