Editor's Note: Inspired by the film Around the World in Eighty Days, the Ford Motor Company hired Filmways in New York to produce a series of commercials and a documentary about two guys driving a new 1958 Ford from LeHavre, France, across Europe, through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and on to Saigon. To realize this task required a caravan of five vehicles: two identical Fords (in case one couldn't make it), two small trucks—one packed with spare parts and the other with a generator for lighting and camping gear for the rough, remote areas of the trip; a station wagon carried
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From the very beginning, there were documentaries electrifying audiences in those early movie theatres, whether they were Parisians watching the workers of the Lumiere factory, or New Yorkers witnessing the inauguration of President McKinley. In fact, until the magic of Melies and Griffith infected screen fare, the documentary dominated the attractions that drew those early audiences into nickelodeons. It was not until 1941 that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially included documentaries in their awards programs. And this was a very appropriate moment: the horrors of
1941 SHORT SUBJECTS Adventures in the Bronx. Film Associates. Bomber. U.S. Office for Emergency Management Film Unit, Motion Picture Committee Cooperating for National Defense. Christmas Under Fire. British Ministry of Information, Warner Bros. *Churchill's Island. National Film Board of Canada, United Artists. Letter from Home. British Ministry of Information. Life of a Thoroughbred. 20th Century-Fox; Truman Talley. Norway in Revolt. March of Time, RKO Radio. A Place to Live. Philadelphia Housing Authority/ Association. Russian Soil. Amkino. Soldiers of the Sky. 20th Century-Fox; Truman
Best Documentary Feature THE LINE KING: THE AL HIRSCHFELD STORY Produced, written and directed by Susan W. Dryfoos Edited by Angelo Corrao Creative Consultant: Daniel Mayer Selznick A Castle Hills Productions, Inc. release of a Times History Production 87 min. A look at the 93 year-old caricaturist's astonishing career through interviews with the celebrities who have been his subjects, insights from his late wife Dolly Haas and his daughter Nina, vintage home movies and archival footage, along with commentary from Hirschfeld himself. The film documents Hirschfeld's life, from his childhood
From time to time, I lecture on the subject of documentaries. And I've found that the most frequently asked questions deal with funding: how do you obtain money for a specific idea. Many times, sheer luck has a great deal to do with creating and funding a concept. In my most recent experience, fortune came into my life in the guise of an old friend, William Cartwright, who has edited many of my films. He suggested I read a book about Man Ray, the early 20th century avant-garde artist, with the hope that we might be able to obtain funding for a documentary. The book, Man Ray—American Artist by
The 1996 additions to the U.S. National Film Registry included four documentaries: The Forgotten Frontier (1931), a film about nursing and healthcare in Kentucky; Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980), focussing on women at work during WW II; Topaz (1943-45), a compilation of home movies from Japanese-American internment camps; and Woodstock (1970), the record of the '60s celebration. The U.S. Congress established the National Film Preservation Board in 1988, to preserve films deemed important to the nation's culture. Each year, the board selects twenty-five films to add to the Registry
The documentary and IDA are on an important threshold. The documentary form is in the forefront of more minds, on more television sets, in more theatres, and more powerful than at any previous time. As a result, we have before us great opportunity at IDA. As the organization that is most closely identified with this genre, we are at the center of the profusion of non-fiction work. And it is incumbent on IDA that we use our voice to further support, promote and preserve the documentary. Of course, it's unrealistic to assume that IDA can or should do all the work necessary in this field alone
There's a new festival in town! It all started in November 1995 when Lyall Bush, with the support of the Washington Commission for the Humanities, decided to take on the monumental task of creating the first film festival in the Northwest dedicated solely to the genre of documentary film. In a city where there are film festivals for al most every ethnic group and style of filmmaking, the concern was: would a new festival be just another face in the crowd? January 1996 found Lyall and a small group of volunteers with a budget that would make any producer cringe. They began the task of looking
The worldwide proliferation of new documentaries has meant that festival programmers today have increased riches to draw upon, in their bid for relevance and audiences. Some recently established festivals specialize or emphasize a narrow spectrum from the annual avalanche of new documentaries, e.g., the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York, which in June concluded its seventh annual event. But "narrow" need not mean cramped or confined: indeed, the selection of human rights films is broad (41 titles from 15 nations). Human rights films seem to increase each year: only
EDITOR'S NOTE: Alan Rosenthal received the 1990 IDA Preservation and Scholarship Award, in recognition of landmark achievements in authoring and editing numerous books on the documentary; his most recent volume is Writing Docudrama (1994). A director/producer/writer of documentaries, based in Israel, his Out of the Ashes (1983) received Peabody and Christopher awards. From his association with Abba Eban on that film, he obtained assignment as writer/director for Israel: A Nation is Born (1989). When I asked Alan if he had some new thoughts about documentary to share with ID readers, he