Dear Readers, In concert with IDA’s much-anticipated summertime event, we look back on the making of one of the great rock’n’roll docs, D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, and how it has figured in Pennebaker’s illustrious career. We also go back in time, well before the 1960s, to the Roman Empire, the latest subject in Devillier Donegan Enterprises’ well-conceived strand series, Empires. Stephanie Mardesich profiles this and other episodes in this novel way of presenting and interpreting history. Once you’ve made your documentary, how do you get it seen? Well, we look into two areas—festivals
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There is no question that Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, her 1936 masterpiece of the Berlin Olympic Games, is the main reason I became a documentary filmmaker. She was the original storyteller, introducing innovative techniques that we all try to emulate today. Even with modern technology, which brings intimate beauty and drama to today’s filming of sporting events, what producers claim to be innovative only have to view Olympia to realize that it all began almost 70 years ago with Riefenstahl’s Olympic epic. One would think that, with Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels as her bosses, Riefenstahl
A long line of impatient movie-goers stretches around the corner and down a residential street in the heart of Toronto’s Little Italy on a warm spring evening. The fact people in this hockey town are lining up on a weeknight to see documentaries during the NHL playoffs is not only surprising to the neighborhood locals. Of the many things the Hot Docs festival achieved this year, perhaps the greatest has been its affirmation that documentaries are a film genre audiences will line up to see. Hot Docs was created eight years ago by the Canadian Independent Film Caucus to address an increasing
Bud Greenspan, whose award-winning documentaries on the Winter and Summer Olympic Games made him synonymous with that quadrennial event, passed away December 25 at his home in New York City. He was 84 and had been struggling with Parkinson's Disease. According to an obituary in The New York Times, Greenspan sold his first documentary, a short about a Gold Medal-winning African-American weightlifter entitled The Strongest Man in the World, to the United States Information Agency. While making commercials for an advertising agency in the 1950s and '60s, he worked on a 22-hour series called The
When Bob Dylan met DA Pennebaker in 1965, the singer/songwriter had earned acclaim as the forerunner of the folk genre, with four groundbreaking albums to his credit and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of songs in his head. To his contemporaries he was both the heir apparent to Woody Guthrie and the wise and mischievous little brother of the Beat Generation. Pennebaker had been making films for over ten years, working first with such pioneers as Shirley Clarke and Willard van Dyke, then as part of the legendary Drew Associates team that included Robert Drew, Albert and David Maysles and
With much regret, I write this farewell to Tim Lyons, dear friend and former editor of International Documentary. I was one of his writers, specializing in foreign and domestic documentary film festivals. Our working relationship lasted about three years, until his departure, which I protested vigorously, but in vain. After that, until his death, we kept in touch by phone and letter and by exchange of materials, at times. He was a special bloke. I miss him now and will remember him for that special comradeship between writer and editor. Often the writer is impulsive and extravagant, the editor
With Jack, it was a friendship that went back over 40 years. I had been working as an independent film researcher in New York when David Wolper persuaded me to come out to Los Angeles, and join his “huge” organization. I still remember my shock at entering the touted headquarters of Wolper Productions, which consisted of two rooms in a beat-up building on Sunset Boulevard. Wolper had the larger office. The smaller room contained a desk, which I would share with Jack. Sensing my disappointment, he put me at ease with a few irreverent remarks about Wolper. Talented, buoyant, carefree, blessed
Every good documentary has its own compelling story, concept and point of view. Writing documentaries on historical subjects carries an additional challenge—the filmmaker must tell a visual story, but he or she can’t just take a camera and record what happens in reality. On a March morning at the Writers Guild of America West office, Joan Owens-Meyerson gathered together five award-winning WGA writers for a lively roundtable discussion to explore the creative challenges of writing historical documentaries. Lyn Goldfarb’s credits as a writer, producer and/or director include the Academy-Award®
Dear IDA Members: The big news at the IDA is that we have a new Executive Director: Sandra Ruch. She was selected as the final candidate at a special board meeting held April 26 at IDA headquarters. Over 150 applications were received and reviewed. Two committees worked on the search. First. Barbara Leigh Gregson and Steve Poster headed a search committee that included Richard Wells, Cara White and Rick Trank. They worked for months laying the foundation for the final search, headed by Larry Cate. Richard Propper, Mitch Block and Lyn Goldtarb rounded out the committee. Lynne Littman, Sven
Dear Readers, It is never an easy task to salute the passings, in each issue of ID, of so many dignified members of the documentary community. But when we lose members of our own IDA family, as we did one weekend in April, the task is onerous, indeed. In this issue, former IDA President Mel Stuart reflects on Jack Haley, Jr., and Gordon Hitchens, a longtime contributor to these pages, recalls his 20-year association with Timothy Lyons. Jack Haley, Jr., was an IDA Trustee for many years, and was very generous and gracious with his time, emceeing many of the Oscars® receptions, IDA Galas and