In the midst of vivid reminders that today’s news is tomorrow’s history, 400 filmmakers and broadcasters gathered in Boston last fall for History 2001, the inaugural edition of the World Congress of History Producers. The sponsor, Boston’s own WGBH, and the organizer, Canada’s Banff Television Foundation, trumpeted the conference as an international event exploring “the future of history.” But the audience—as participants were quick to point out—was dominated by documentary-makers from North America, Australia and the UK, making for more insular explorations than some had hoped for
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Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl's fetishistic film about Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg rally, is a controversial choice for "Playback," but not a perverse one. We recently sat down to watch it as we were preparing to make The Pink Fuhrer, a documentary about the controversy that Hitler might have been gay. For us, controversy is a critical ingredient for documentaries, whose raison d'etre is to look reality dead in the eye, and not be a hostage to political correctness or consensual thinking. A great documentary should not be afraid to ask the unaskable, even if it doesn't have the answers. Of
Looking back and looking forward have always been linked in my mind. What’s the use of looking behind us if not to see where we might go? These pages are filled with reminisces, reflections and remembrances of many of those who shaped the IDA. As someone who was recruited by Linda Buzzell a few short months after the formation of the IDA, I am proud to say that it is a joy to see the growth that has taken place. We were a very small group at the beginning. The bylaws needed some serious fixing. We soon launched a fiscal sponsorship program that was somewhat groundbreaking at the time. Today
Let’s reflect on the context for Linda Buzzell and the 75 documentary filmmakers that she compelled to gather in a cafeteria in Los Angeles for the very first meeting of the International Documentary Association on February 6, 1982: the personal computer was barely in its infancy; Sony and Phillips would introduce the compact disc a few months later; video was on the rise as a shooting medium; the Internet was primarily a tool for the military and academia; the networks were beginning to soft-pedal on documentary/nonfiction programming as the cable industry was starting to grow; and PBS was
A film festival that celebrates the funders of a film or video? That’s what the annual Council on Foundations Film and Video Festival does. An association of private foundations, it showcases a dozen selections of recent films and videos at several of the conferences it holds each year. The festival debuts at the annual conference, then travels to smaller COF conferences targeted at corporate, community and family foundations. It evidences foundations’ growing awareness of the importance of media in a wide range of action agendas, and their increasing interest in funding outreach, as well as
In 1991, as the new executive director of IDA, I received a telephone call from Hot Springs, Arkansas, seeking advice on starting a documentary film festival. I had no notion of the long-lasting and far-reaching impact this idea would have. Since it was my job to promote documentaries, I was not going to inform the business leaders of Hot Springs that such a festival was not likely to bring tens of thousands of cultural and tourist dollars into their community (I was ultimately wrong about that.). It was my job to do everything possible to help get films seen. Since then, the IDA and the
When I first started making documentaries in the ’60s, it was in the midst of the Direct Cinema revolution in America. Suddenly, it had become possible for two people to enter a dimly lit room with an Eclair and Nagra and record “life as it was happening” at 24 frames per second. The prevailing myth at the time was that if you hung around long enough, the “truth” would surely be revealed, and always while you had a full magazine of film to capture it. “Just pretend we’re not here,” we’d tell our subjects, as if those magic words would really make us invisible. Then one day I saw Chronicle of a
Dear IDA Members, The annual membership meeting in December, while far from a quorum, generated a lively discussion as to where IDA should head during the coming year. There was a general consensus that the “International” in International Documentary Association should be emphasized and that growth for the IDA should come through the establishment of chapters in various cities. The board members who attended supported the initiatives, but a formal vote was tabled until the first meeting of the new board of directors. Our target cities are New York, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Amsterdam and
Post-September 11, we have trained our senses on other corners of the world, and on ourselves. In “ Short Takes” this month, we cite two initiatives, 9.11 Moments, producing by Independent Television Service (ITVS) and War & Peace, a project of the D-Word Community, as examples of how our community is responding. In addition, New York-based collectives Third World Newsreel, Paper Tiger Television and Independent Media Center are all producing media works that examine the schism between how Americans really see themselves and how the America mainstream media and government would like us to be
Entertainment companies reeled in films and canceled dramatic shows that might remind people of the horrors of September 11, while channels that primarily broadcast documentaries clamored for programming that could explain the tragic events of that day. Documentary buyers, producers and distributors began grappling with this shift at last fall’s television market, MIPCOM, in Cannes, France, the day American bombs started to fall on Afghanistan. “A new reality has set in,” according to documentary production executive Ron Devillier. “We don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s there.” Even