Editor’s note—It seems so many moons ago—but it was only last year—when filmmaker Doug Block took that one giant leap for filmkind and launched his doc Home Page on the Web as well as in the theaters. He reflects on the experience here. Home Page has been acclaimed as a groundbreaking landmark movie, but, truth be told, that's the last thing I set out for it to be. When it first premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, all I wanted was what every filmmaker dreams about—a fat distribution deal. Sure, I knew there were elements that were, well, different. The film is a first-person doc that
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After a week of endless meetings, screenings, seminars, lunches, cocktails, dinners, late night drinks and non-stop schmoozing, the 11,000+ buyers and sellers of programs for TV, video, cable, satellite and the Internet decamped from the semi-annual market in Cannes, France, called MIPCOM and headed home to begin the tedious task of following up. Responding to the surge of interest in new media, convention organizers erected a temporary structure to house the almost 500 Internet companies that wanted booths. This onslaught of Web companies stimulated a hunger for information about how their
“We spend 12 years in school learning the language of the written word, but no time on the language of the visual image,” filmmaker Jennifer Fox noted in her recent Documentary Master Class, held at New York’s New School and co-sponsored by IDA, Film/Video Arts and Women Make Movies. “We’re just expected to ‘get’ it.” Fox seems to have “gotten” it for herself while building a reputation as a powerful chronicler of private lives. Her first film, Beirut: The Last Home Movie, took top honors at Sundance in 1988, while An American Love Story, her 10-part series about an interracial family, aired
Editor's Note: What are you doing New Year's Eve? Well, if you're Daniel Kaven, you do the sensible thing: Contact, via e-mail, seven filmmakers from around the world, arm them with DV cameras and have them record a day in the life of their respective cities. Then bring the filmmakers and subjects together a year later for a big filmmaking bosh in Las Vegas. The result? The Glass Pool Incident . My eyes hardened into an unfamiliar daze. Across from me, a middle-aged Japanese karaoke music video producer, with a severe case of bad breath and gingivitis, reflected on his last 70 trips to
It’s that time of year again when an envelope arrives reminding us that this magazine is going to disappear from our mailboxes if we don’t renew our IDA membership. Should you need a reason, let me give you two: Charles Guggenheim and Martin Scorsese. Martin Scorsese took time out from shooting his current feature in Rome to film a message for IDA members that was delivered on the big screen during this year’s IDA Awards on October 27. Eloquent as ever, Mr. Scorsese commented that IDA’s recognition of The Film Foundation’s work in preservation was especially significant as it was recognition
Editor's Note: Welcome to "Playback," a new feature in which we invite a documentary filmmaker to reflect on one documentary that had special meaning to him or her. The criteria of selection are wide-open. The film could be a "Desert Island Doc"—the documentary for which one would stake career, livelihood and life to see over and over again. It could be a favorite doc, or what one feels is the most important documentary to the evolution of the genre, or the most influential to one's career as a filmmaker. To help launch Playback, we asked veteran documentarian Michael Apted to share his
“Back in 1976, when I brought Harlan County to the first festival here, it was a very different place,” says Barbara Kopple, whose new feature documentary on three generations of Woodstock, My Generation, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It was small and informal, and every filmmaker saw everyone else’s work. “It’s changed quite a bit,” Kopple continues, “but what was wonderful then is wonderful now—you meet extraordinary people, and you see films you wouldn’t otherwise see.” Indeed, the 25th Toronto Festival, which ran from September 7-16, bears few overt traces of the
Since its formation in 1990, The Film Foundation has been committed to fostering greater awareness of the urgent need to preserve motion picture history. Through such national efforts as the annual Film Preservation Festival on American Movie Classics, the foundation raises funds and distributes them directly to its member archives—Academy Film Archive, George Eastman House, Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Film and Television Archive—and to its affiliated organizations—the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the AFI and the National Film Preservation Foundation
Charles Guggenheim joins an elite assemblage of IDA Career Achievement Award winners that include Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Ted Turner, Shiela Nevins, Albert Maysles, Frederick Wiseman and Henry Hampton. Guggenheim has earned 12 Oscar® nominations from his peers; only Walt Disney earned as many. Guggenheim took top honors for Nine From Little Rock (1964), RFK Remembered (1969), The Johnstown Flood (1989) and A Time for Justice (1994), an incisive chronicle of the civil rights movement. There are no obvious boundaries around his interests or his approach to storytelling. Guggenheim has
SUGIHARA Conspiracy of KindnessProducer: Diane Estelle VicariDirector/Writer: Robert Kirk This documentary tells the remarkable story of Chiune Sugihara, who, in the face of the Nazi onslaught in Europe, and at great risk to his career and life, single-handedly saved more than 2,000 lives, using his power as a diplomat to rescue fleeing Jewish refugees. The Tree WomanExecutive Producers: Susanne Becker & Guenter MyrellProducer: Christian BauerDirector/Writer: Ziri RideauxTangram Film/ZDF The Tree Woman tells the story of 24-year-old Julia Butterfly Hill, who risked her life to save a 1,500