Four large, soft, black leather chairs in front of a blank white movie screen. Four gray-haired maverick documentary pioneers sitting around talking... about themselves, each other, and their work together. Such was the IDA and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' joint tribute to David L. Wolper and his large circle of friends, here represented by Jack Haley Jr., Alan Landsburg, and IDA President Mel Stuart. Entitled "The Wolper Documentary: Creating New Concepts for Television," the evening was a nostalgic, informative, and intimate look at a remarkable period in the lives of a group
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Filmmaker David Grubin, a 1995 IDA Award winner for his remarkable study on Franklin D. Roosevelt, moderated the "In and Out of the Cold" panel, which explored the role that the documentarian and the documentary have played in the past 50 years of social change. Grubin labored mightily to harness this unwieldy subject and create a catalyst between two seemingly disparate camps: archivist Roger Smithers of the Imperial War Museum in London and Bill Murphy of the National Archives, on the one hand, and filmmakers Hartmut Bitomsky of Germany and Marina Goldovskaya of Russia, on the other. Grubin
"The Documentary Eye," the brain child of IDA Executive Director Betsy McLane and a work-in progress, took the audience through the rich cinematic history of the documentary, from the Lumiere brothers to the Burns brothers and beyond. Ricky Leacock and Joan Churchill, veteran filmmakers from different eras, provided entertaining insights and anecdotes about the past, present, and future of the documentary at key points in this seminar. "The Documentary Eye" was an ambitious undertaking for both the IDC and its producers, but they stumbled slightly by opting for slides of stills when the
Nick Deocampo is one of the leading exponents of Philippine independent cinema in the post-Marcos era, and his presence at the IDC underscored one of its predominant themes: the recent evolution in the documentary aesthetic from historical to personal films. In Decampo's case, the evolution is more of a symbiosis. "During the revolution in '86, there was a great element of risk; no one really knew how long the revolution would last, but you're there and you're living the moment," he told his "At One With ..." audience. "And I was capturing those events. In 1987, I made Revolutions Happen as
Robert Drew, 71, was a World War II fighter pilot who became a Life magazine editor and then formed Drew Associates, a documentary unit that included Richard Leacock and Donn Pennebaker. Their films broke the documentary "lecture" mold by recording only unfolding events and using minimal narration, walking hand held cameras, and other devices to keep the experience firsthand for the viewer. Drew's wife, Anne, who started with the company as an editor and has produced with him for 24 years, is now making a verite documentary on the U.S. militia movement. Both were present to screen clips and
IDC's "Distribution and Marketing" panel, moderated by Joe Kennedy, West Coast sales director of ITEL, presented the audience with a look at the challenges and pitfalls of distribution. Geoff Gilmore, director of film festival programming and special projects at the Sundance Institute, observed that the theatrical distribution situation facing feature documentary films in the United States has been "fraught with crisis for the past 50 years—as opposed to something that's hitting right now." While most films that find distribution do so through nontheatrical channels, some do find theatrical
To paraphrase Prospero from The Tempest, "My revels now are ended." After two years, I am stepping down as president of the IDA. A commitment to produce a group of television documentaries will require my full attention. I found my duties as president a very fulfilling experience. Among other things, I was able to meet a wide cross-section of documentary filmmakers, assist others in obtaining funds for projects, and, best of all, help to establish a permanent documentary archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. During these years, however, I noticed a further deterioration
How quickly time passes. It seems such a short while ago that I sat in the lobby of the Sofitel Hotel, having a drink with the winners of the 1994 IDA Awards as we watched some strange creatures out of the Hollywood landscape parade by in their Halloween costumes. Suddenly it's October again, and the IDA Blue Ribbon Panel has just selected the winners of the 1995 awards. As often happens, a film the IDA is honoring has been the subject of controversy and rejection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. (Who are we to flaunt tradition?) This year the film is Crumb; a portrait of the
CRUMB Producers: Lynn O'Donnell and Terry Zwigoff Director: Terry Zwigoff Cinematographer: Maryse Alberti Editor: Victor Livingston Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Crumb is an intimate, funny, and deeply disturbing portrait of the life and work of renowned underground cartoonist and artist Robert Crumb. Shot over a period of six years, the film uses unexpurgated interviews with Crumb, his family, colleagues, critics, and ex-lovers, along with footage of his work, to document the obsessions and uncompromising creativity of an individual who helped define the counterculture of the 1960s and
It's not often that you'll see documentarians outnumbering feature film types in the heart of Hollywood, but that's what happened when some 600 members of the worldwide documentary community (plus 400 students from the Los Angeles Unified School District, as part of the IDA Outreach Program) converged upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on October 25 to 27. The occasion? The IDA/AMPAS Second International Documentary Congress, the much-awaited sequel to our first congress, held in 1992. Following is selected coverage (divided into "Nuts and Bolts," "Our Documentary Heritage,"