Now in its 31st year, the annual New York Exposition of Short Film and Video was held November 19-22, with screenings and other events taking place at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research, in Manhattan. Five programs were presented: 9 titles in documentary; 13 in narrative; 13 in animation; 14 in video; and 10 in New Media, primarily interactive multimedia. Selections were culled from more than 700 entries. Distributors and agents for television are always in attendance. Now directed by the exceptional administrator Robert Withers, EXPO was founded by Nick Manning et al
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The theme of the 4th Sheffield International Documentary Festival (October 13-19) was "Making History." A broad range of subject matter and stylistic approaches were evident in the week-long event, including the conventional historical documentaries, personal histories and documenting people as they navigated a defined period in their lives, from a few days to six years. Many professionals from the British television networks and independent production companies joined others in attending the event. The guest directors for this year's offering were Yiktor Kossakovsky from Russia and Alan
The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, held every two years since 1989, took place October 6-13, one day longer than in previous years. Located about 200 miles north of Tokyo, the city of Yamagata is obviously committed to its festival, and the cultural attractions nearby complement well the profuse film screenings. An International Competition (consisting this year of fourteen films) receives consideration from a distinguished jury (usually five; four this year) for five prizes, ranging from about $25,000 U.S. for the Grand Prize to $2,500 for the Special Prize. This year
If you go to only one assembly of academics yakking about documentaries, make it "Visible Evidence." This challenging itinerant conference—previously held at Duke University, the University of Southern California, Harvard University and the University of Wales, Cardiff—promises seminars and screenings designed to spark "interdisciplinary cross-talk" and "exchanges among scholars, teachers and producers." The conference's next site is San Francisco State University, tentatively scheduled for August 1998. (Contact host/organizer Bill Nichols in the Cinema Department there for further details)
It gives me great pleasure to announce another "first" for the IDA as we conclude one of our most active years in history. Through the tireless and greatly appreciated efforts of former board member Ann Hassett, IDA and the Getty Center partner this month in premiering Concert of Wills: Making the Getty Center. Concert of Wills is a 100 min. documentary which has been 11 years in the making. In this film, IDA Career Achievement Awardee Al Maysles and filmmakers Susan Froemke and Bob Eisenhardt chronicle the conception, planning and construction of the Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities
Distinguished Documentary Achievement Awards SCARY MAN (Vogelvrij) Albert Elings and Eugenie Jansen Hoarse from shouting and tired from chasing, people invented the scarecrow to assert their superiority and prove that they were more clever than the birds. But that rag doll quickly became a symbol of the never-ending battle between man and bird. From time immemorial, people have tried to scare off the birds—a cat in a cage, fake birds of prey, laser guns, even sound tapes of bird distress calls. All to no avail. Geese in the meadow, gulls on a rubbish heap, sparrows in a glasshouse, pigeons in
October 29, 1997: In the blazing heat that late fall brings to Los Angeles, hundreds of construction workers are working feverishly to complete the $ 1 billion Getty Center for its long-awaited opening on December 16th. And 3,000 miles away, in a cold, dark editing room, three filmmakers fix their eyes on an Avid screen, racing to complete a film documenting the twelve-year creation and building of what is considered the most expensive American cultural project since construction of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the 1870s. "I live in fear about what we're doing—we'll get our
The proportion of documentaries to fiction features is always small at the annual New York Film Festival. This year, the 35th event (September 26-October 12, at Lincoln Center) offered only four. But they are excellent choices. The glamor spotlight went to the premieres of fiction features: Ang Lee's The Jee Storm; Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh; Adam Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, from Canada. Also prominent were the premiere of MoMA's restoration of Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, performed with the reconstructed score from composers William Frederick Peters and Louis F. Gottschalk; Lars von
"Bring your cowboy boots," the brochure urged, setting the tone for this highly unusual, six-day film festival held in September of this year. Part marketplace, part festival and all fun, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival is an industry gathering with a distinctive flair and has traditionally been a closely-guarded secret on the festival circuit, known only to savvy delegates, local wildlife enthusiasts and a handful of journalists. The story began in 1991 when Wolfgang Bayer, a renowned local wildlife filmmaker, decided to stage an event that would bring together friends and
IDA Board member Marina Goldovskaya worked for more than twenty years for Central Russian Television. She has made 27 documentaries as director/cinematographer/writer and 50 documentary television programs as director/cinematographer, for Russian, Austrian, French and U.S. broadcast. Among her works are Solovky Power (Special Jury Prize, Amsterdam; 1989), A Taste of Freedom (Turner Broadcasting; 1990), The Shattered Mirror (Golden Gate, San Francisco; Gold Hugo, Chicago; 1993) and House on Arbat Street (Best Film, Prix Europa; 1994). She taught at Moscow's State University and the University