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Veteran documentarian DA Pennebaker is fond of drawing analogies between film and video. In the 1930s, he recalls, filmmakers told their stories with amateur Kodak Cine Special film cameras, and today they do the same with consumer video cameras—cheap cameras designed more for shooting kids' birthday parties than making films. Filmmakers often transcend design in service of story: Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker's longtime collaborator, and her co-director Jehane Noujaim shot much of their acclaimed Startup.com (2001) on consumer video equipment. This year JVC offers filmmakers another shot at this

When it comes to the important things in life, there's a "first time" only once. I wish I could say I recall the first film I ever saw, but that event has long since faded into the blur of childhood. Now that I'm old enough to keep track of such things, I've sadly come to realize that most films I see are strictly one-night stands. The "first" time is usually the "only" time. Fortunately, there is an eclectic group of films that deserve a special place in my pantheon of first times—films that mark important moments in my evolution as a filmmaker. Of all my first times, there'll always be my

One of the great things about watching documentaries is that that they can take you places that you've never been, and expose you to worlds that you've never experienced before. I'm not talking about making documentaries and traveling the world, but about the evolving area of docu-travel—the idea that we can take some time off and go to a really cool place and see amazing films. Just consider these vacation destinations: Durham, North Carolina; Toronto, Canada; Tribeca (lower Manhattan), New York City. While festivals are often the domain of filmmakers who screen their films and look for

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

Dear Readers: Let's say the subject of your documentary has a past that is indelibly connected to American history. Such is the case with Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco's Daughter from Danang, which tells the story of Heidi Bub, the daughter of an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, and her unsettling re-discovery of her Vietnamese roots. What gives Daughter from Danang its proper context in the beginning is the footage—from the Vietnam War and from Operation Boatlift, the Ford Administration program that re-patriated Amerasian children like Bub. This is the time in which Bub was born and

"Diverse. Innovative. Smart." These are the three words Independent Television Service (ITVS) executive director Sally Jo Fifer uses to describe the programming that can be seen on the new, revamped Independent Lens. Beginning this month, the yearly 10-week fall series that premiered on PBS in 1999 will expand to 29 primetime episodes a year and will be curated by ITVS and PBS. Presented on Tuesday nights at 10:00 p.m., the series will complement P.O.V., PBS's award-winning 14-week showcase for personal documentary. Together, the two series will establish a consistent time slot for

The National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent government agency that was created in 1950 by an act of the US Congress, funds research and education in science and engineering. It is also a longtime supporter of documentary filmmakers' innovative approaches to science programming. "The charge is to make projects that inform the public about science, engineering technology and mathematics," says Hyman Field, NSF's senior advisor for public understanding of research. "We're looking for creative ways to get audiences engaged in science. And we're not just looking for the surface substance

Fangs, claws, dripping blood and sex scenes...No, it's not a drive-in monster movie from the '50s; it's probably a PBS wildlife special, the kind of sweeping look into the animal kingdom that established America's public broadcaster as this country's premiere outlet for natural history films. These programs have always been staples on the PBS menu, but it wasn't until 1982 that an ongoing regular wildife series became a part of the network schedule. It took the prodding of George Page, then head of the science and features unit at Thirteen/WNET in New York to make it happen. Impressed by the

This spring, two new documentaries bring to large format screens some of the most remarkable underwater images ever captured. On February 14, IMAX releases Coral Reef Adventure, the most expensive production to date from the man who took us to Everest, director Greg MacGillivray. On April 11, Disney releases Ghosts of the Abyss, a tour to the wreck of the Titanic from director James Cameron. Although Cameron is a nascent documentary director, he shares with veteran MacGillivray the passion to bring audiences up close to things few human beings ever see. And both men relied heavily on world

"It is important to make the primary distinction between a method which describes only the surface values of a subject, and the method which more explosively reveals the reality of it," wrote John Grierson. With this observation in his essay, "First Principles of Documentary," Grierson could well have been writing about Large Format (LF) film. With a film frame ten times larger than 35mm, the 15/70 IMAX format has a unique ability to transport audiences into the environments it depicts. Projected on a giant screen 100 feet wide and eight stories high, served up in six-channel sound, the LF