Dear IDA Members: Once again, the Oscars Reception turned out to one of the highlights of the crazy awards season. Special thanks go to chair Rick Trank, co-chairs Lynne Littman and Bob Niemack, as well as Ann Hassett, Traci Lewis, Jeff Swimmer, diane estelle Vicari, Nancy Willen, Sarah Jo Marks and Sandra Ruch for all their hard work in producing the Oscars Reception. Thanks also to Sundance Channel for its sponsorship. And congratulations are due to IDA members Gail Dolgin, producer/director of Daughter from Danang; Jeffrey Blitz, producer/director of Spellbound; Alice Elliott, producer
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How do filmmakers choose what to document? They choose what moves them, what may bring about change; they explore personal histories, investigate issues—all in the spirit of creating art. The 16th annual AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival (Nov 7 - 17, 2002) provided filmgoers with these stories and brought the filmmakers out to talk about their work, their process and just what drives them to create. For 10 days hungry moviegoers crammed into the grandest movie hub in Los Angeles—the Arclight Cinema—for screening after screening of films from every corner of the globe. AFI Fest 2002
DOCS ROCK, a digital documentary film curriculum targeting high school students, was officially expanded in October 2002. A two-day teacher-training institute held at San Pedro High School in Los Angeles brought together teachers from seven LA high schools and filmmakers from the greater LA area. The scope and mission of the workshop was to train high school teachers in the DOCS ROCK curriculum, one that integrates standards of English and visual arts set by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The workshop followed a successful collaboration among the LAUSD, IDA and the City of
To say the Regus London Film Festival (RLFF) is a feast of film is an understatement. For the gourmet there's enough of the esoteric or obscure to be satisfying; for the gourmand it justifies gluttony with an international array of high profile movies. Nearly 250 films were shown during the 46th annual festival (November 6-21), 20 percent of them documentaries—apparently a record year for nonfiction screenings there. Having attended the fest two years ago, I came better prepared to manage the plethora of films, with my focus on documentary. Nevertheless my mission was daunting-just
Berlin, Germany. October 20, 2002. A clear, crisp, cold day, with autumn winds blowing in from the east. At the Intercontinental Hotel on Budapester Strasse, located in what 13 years before was part of the American sector of a divided Berlin, the World Congress of History Producers 2002—hosted by the German network ZDF and organized by the Banff Television Foundation—was getting underway. The Congress attracted delegates from Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia, among them commissioning editors, distributors, producers and directors, as well as independent producers just finding
May we direct your attention to the upper left-hand corner of your map? At the northwest edge of the continental United States sit two thriving documentary and independent film communities separated by a total of only 180 miles, Seattle Washington and Portland, Oregon. (Vancouver, a mere 130 miles further north, is also an artistically vital part of the Northwest scene—but since the process of funding, creating and distributing films in Canada is so different from that in the US, it receives separate consideration in the sidebar below.). While there's no single group or movement that links
A few years ago, in an attempt to escape the onslaught of "reality" and other tawdry genres taking over much of the documentary world, I decided to look into teaching. I had the good fortune to land a class at the International Film & Television School in Rockport, Maine. I've greatly enjoyed teaching there; it's hard work and long hours, but always a welcome respite from the trials of freelance producing/directing. Over the winter a friend and fellow teacher from Maine couldn't teach a one-week documentary class he was scheduled to conduct in Switzerland. He asked if I could substitute for
Documentarians and other filmmakers who rely on images from libraries and archives to tell their stories are being helped by long-promised advances in technology that make it quicker and easier to locate and acquire the right content. Following are some examples. Independent Television News (ITN) Archive At Independent Television News (ITN) Archive in central London, a database is available online at www.itnarchive.com. There is no cost for visiting the site and using it as a resource. Like most of the larger archives, ITN also employs a team of researchers to assist in searches. ITN maintains
In Spring 2002, news headlines announced that PBS would add four new episodes to its venerable documentary series Frontline with a new format examining international affairs. What the news didn't mention was that these four episodes, under the rubric Frontline/World (co-produced by WGBH Boston and KQED San Francisco), hinted at Frontline's origins 25 years earlier. Frontline was launched in January 1983, having evolved from WGBH'S 1977 international public affairs documentary series, World. The series was produced under the leadership of Peter McGhee, who then ran public affairs programming at
Dear IDA members, March is Oscars month. For IDA, the annual Oscars Reception for the nominees in the documentary categories takes place March 19 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. We'll be screening all the nominated films, from 10:00 a.m. to midnight on DocuDay, Saturday, March 22, at the Writers Guild of America's theatre, just blocks away from the Academy. The reception and DocuDay are IDA's longest running events, both spurred by a desire to raise the profile for documentaries and celebrate the groundbreaking films that documentary makers offer us year