In the summer of 1994, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles announced the formation of Moriah Films "to undertake the production of films on major events and personalities in the 3,500 year Jewish experience." A major goal for the new production unit would be "to reach young people and the unaffiliated who do not belong to synagogues and have not been reached by the Jewish community." Although focusing on the Center's primary area of concern, the Holocaust, officials did not see the unit as being limited in scope to that subject alone; from time to time, Moriah would produce films that
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... and now for a brief look back at the IDA summer of '97: The summer began with the first public screening of the long repressed documentary Nuremberg (1946) by Pare Lorentz. With the cooperation of Elizabeth Lorentz, the Lorentz Panel, the documentary archive at the AMPAS Library, the California Council on Humanities and the Museum of Tolerance, IDA attracted an over-capacity audience at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles on June 2nd. With such strong interest in the film, IDA is now planning future screenings in Los Angeles, Washington and New York. Shortly after that "first", IDA
After a harsh winter, the coming of spring in New York City this year occasioned a joyful grin, even from the most ill-tempered New Yorkers. This phenomenon occurred during the same week that an innovative film festival hit the city—the First New York City Sierra Club Film & Video Festival (May 29-June) featuring programming that explored hard-hitting environmental issues. The event brought welcome relief to a documentary scene which - at least in the opinion of this reviewer—has been in the midst of a bleak "winter": wherein the documentary form has been threatened with compromise by a
The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival—the only festival devoted exclusively to human rights issues—held its eighth annual event at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (co-presenter), in New York City, June 6-19. With screenings at the Walter Reade Theatre, fourteen of the twenty-one features were documentaries, culled from 600 titles submitted for the festival's consideration. In the screenings,13 foreign countries and the U.S. were represented; for many films, the director and other production personnel joined human rights specialists for Q&A sessions and panels afterward
Imagine this: You've spent the last three years of your life toiling nights and weekends on your pet project. Finally, after mortgaging your house and maxing out your credit cards, you've finished the piece you always wanted to produce. But instead of shopping it to HBO, or hoping P.O.V. might have a slot for it, you upload it to a documentary repository site hosted by an Internet Service Provider. With a little promotion and a bit of press, 500 people a day "stop by" to watch. Believe it or not? Believe it. The scenario described above isn't reality quite yet. But the ability of the World
On the subject of our latest technological revolution, cyberspace, I am a neo-Luddite. Not a true Luddite; my Ludism is qualified, compromised. I revel in the word processor; I am grateful for computerized library catalogues; I appreciate the convenience of CD-ROMS; and I concede the usefulness of the Internet for retrieving information and conducting research. But I am disturbed by some aspects of the new technology—not merely by the moral problems raised by cybersex, which have occupied so much attention recently, but also by the new technology's impact on learning and scholarship
At first glance, the Internet seems to be an impossibly complex jumble of vague electronic resources. For an on-line neophyte, the task of learning where-and how-to start sometimes seems overwhelming. The enormous hype surrounding the Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, either leads an individual to a nagging feeling of "missing out, "or a deep suspicion that the grand frontier of the so-called "information super-highway" is pure hyperbole. The fact is, the Internet is a great tool - it's a wonderful opportunity to supplement your reach in a number of important areas. If you use
As I sat down to write this column for the "cyber-doc" issue of ID magazine, I went on-line. Although I am far from expert at using the Internet, I have found a few sites which I find invaluable. I have two sites that I go to in that never-ending search for money. My first stop is often the Foundation Center at fdncenter.org. Without leaving my desk, I can review annual reports, recent grants, search for possible funds, and jump to foundation home pages. If you haven't visited the Foundation Center site, go there now-it saves time and can bring in money. When I'm looking to the corporate world
Happy 40th birthday to the oldest film festival in the Americas. Documentaries at the 1997 San Francisco International Film Festival (April 24-May 8) were a mixed bag in every way but one: quality. From politics to frivolity and philosophy to sex, there were amazingly few bloopers on the screen. That's not to say that I wasn't disconcerted at times, but only because the genres are blurring to the point that some program notes seemed to be inviting me into a documentary that turned out to be fiction, or vice versa. Robert Flaherty would've been amazed! These days, he'd have the option of
POV celebrates its tenth anniversary season this summer, and in an era of frequent attacks on alternative viewpoints, few would have expected the acclaimed documentary showcase to sustain its reputation for programming fresh, provocative works by emerging and established independent filmmakers. But this is also a nation of a plurality of views, of unique voices and visions, of personal stories behind the political issues. And for ten summers, POV has not only brought these stories to America's living rooms, but challenged Americans to participate as viewers and as storytellers. Marc Weiss