Of all the challenges in life that one might choose to pursue, trying to reproduce a painting by one of the most admired Dutch painters of the 17th century, Johannes Vermeer, is not one that comes to mind. Nevertheless, having no experience as a painter, San Antonio-based computer maven Tim Jenison decided to set that task for himself. That saga, which took over five years, is the subject of Tim's Vermeer, produced by Penn Jillette and directed by his partner in magic and performance, Teller.

Penn and Teller had produced a highly successful show for Showtime, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, on which they debated and debunked political topics and pseudo-scientific ideas along with popular fads and misconceptions. The show ran from 2003 to 2010. During this time, the duo's friend Jenison, inspired by David Hockney's book Secret Knowledge, which investigated the camera obscura technique practiced by Vermeer and his contemporaries, set out to prove that one need not have artistic talent to achieve what Vermeer did. All Jenison had to do was to reproduce whatever combination of lenses, mirrors and other 17th-century tools the artist might have.

Jenison was clearly no stranger to the technical qualities of creating images. His highly successful company, NewTek, developed Lightwave 3D, a 3D modeling rendering and animation system, which has been used extensively in television and film. When he told Penn and Teller about the details of the project, Penn said, "We need to get a film crew for this." But they were not successful in raising the money. So, with Teller as director, they proceeded to produce it themselves.

Wading into the long-standing debate about technology and art, Jenison traveled to the Netherlands, learned Dutch, and made contact with one of the leading Vermeer experts, Philip Steadman. His book Vermeer's Camera argues that Vermeer had to have used the camera obscura—and offers a detailed examination of the geometry of paintings themselves as the evidence. That Vermeer, who died in 1675, had access to camera obscura equipment is generally accepted; whether he used it or not is essentially unprovable.

Vermeer made only 36 paintings that have survived—small gems depicting quiet interior scenes of everyday life. The paintings are famous for their remarkable detail, their composition, their jewel-like color, and the beautiful soft light that bathes the rooms and their occupants.

In the film, Jenison decides that in order to test the notion of a camera obscura, he will have to build an exact replica of the room that appears in Vermeer's The Music Lesson, and then create an optical system to paint it himself, while peering at a mirror reflection of the original. He enlists the ongoing help of both Steadman and Hockney.

The Music Lesson is a classic Dutch genre interior scene with a young woman at a harpsichord and her teacher standing nearby. Above the instrument is a mirror in which we see a partial reflection of her and the space behind her. The entire scene is suffused with Vermeer's lovely light, which appears to come from the windows depicted on the left side of the room.

"Tim needed a Vermeer scene whose elements he could replicate accurately," Teller explains via e-mail, on Jenison's choice of The Music Lesson. "The dimensions of the studio room were established several years ago by Philip Steadman, author of Vermeer's Camera. Each of the furnishings of the room—the lion's head chair, the harpsichord, the carpet, the mirror, the viola da gamba, the costumes—were obtainable by purchase or construction."

Employing computerized rendering tools, Jenison calculated the exact dimensions of every object seen in the original painting: stained glass windows, a harpsichord, a chair, a rug, and the costumes of the two figures. Constructing all of this by hand and positioning each just right in the room took him close to seven months. Throughout this venture, Jillette banters with him and narrates the story on camera as it develops, with no lack of humor and the occasional touch of disbelief that it will ever work. As it happens, Jenison's project and the film could not have been made without the advanced technical tools of recent years—no doubt a contributor to the challenge for him.

"This is a film that couldn't have been made even 10 years ago," says Teller. "Thanks to advances in digital movie-making, we were able to run multiple cameras throughout the painting process, which made sure we had eyes on every brushstroke. Additionally, Tim used Lightwave to model the details of the room, such as the size and pattern of the window. Also, the animations that illustrate the various optical points were created by Tim's team, using Tim's products. Finally, Tim's years of studying what makes the nuances of light in an image seem 'photographic' were at the heart of his quest. Tim was certain Vermeer wasn't just making these scenes up; he was recording them with an optical tool."

As Jenison pursues his obsession, we see him grinding his own lenses, mixing period-appropriate oil paints and sitting down for months on end peering into a small mirror to work on the painting—for a total of 1,875 days. Re-creating the extraordinary detail of things like the intricate painted patterns on the harpsichord and the complex color scheme of the Persian rug in the room, Jenison soldiers on, and we cannot help rooting for him. If he had not completed the project, there would be no film.

"We also discovered early on that Tim had trouble talking directly to a camera lens, so he equipped his Red like a teleprompter with a Skype feed of our producer Farley Ziegler in Los Angeles, whom Tim debriefed at the end of every work day," Teller explains. "That way, Tim could be confiding his thoughts and feelings to a beautiful friend, and I think that was well-reflected in his attitude towards the camera and viewer."

Finding themselves with enough footage for many films, Penn and Teller had to figure out how to structure all this material into one feature doc. "We went through many, many clever ideas for presentation," Teller related at a press conference following the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. "At one point, we were going to present it like a Penn & Teller Bullshit episode with clever little wraparounds. We thought about presenting it like a video game with a graph that showed how much life Tim had left, with it slowly depleting. But the more we looked at the footage, the more it became apparent that this was Tim's story and Tim was the driving force behind it."

Finally the great day comes and the replica Vermeer is complete. Jenison takes off for London to share his amazing painting with Steadman and Hockney. Both are impressed and positive about what he has done, congratulating Jenison on his contribution to the issue of technology and the arts. Before the 19th century, many people felt using such tools diminished the "originality" of the artists' work, that it was a kind of "cheating." Of course, artists today use all sorts of technologies in their work; not only is it entirely acceptable, but artists are admired for working with these new tools.

Tim's Vermeer had a popular festival circuit run this past fall. Following a weeklong qualifying run in December, the film opens nationwide January 31 through Sony Pictures Classics. "I've been stunned at how many people are in love with the film," Teller exclaims. "It seems as though many people in all the arts feel that Tim's Vermeer is telling their story, of the ingenious, funny, arduous and surprising adventure one must undergo to get from an idea to a completed work of art."

Wanda Bershen is a consultant on fundraising, festivals and distribution. Documentary clients have included Sonia, Power Trip, Afghan Women, Trembling Before G*D and Blacks & Jews. She has organized programs with the Human Rights Film Festival, Brooklyn Museum and Film Society of Lincoln Center, and currently teaches arts management at CUNY Baruch. Visit www.reddiaper.com.

If it's possible to push a boundary any further after 40 films in a nearly 50-year career, Frederick Wiseman—a filmmaker with a ceaseless curiosity and a wide range of interests—has achieved that distinction with his 244-minute documentary At Berkeley. The film premieres January 13 on PBS' Independent Lens.

The filmmaker's particular affinity for institutions and the people who are invested in them are in full flower in the film, a wholly engrossing, immersive study of the importance of higher public education, as evidenced by the myriad day-to-day activities that his camera captures on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.

Speaking by phone from Paris, Wiseman notes that while At Berkeley had more rushes than any other film he's directed, "It was fun to do." And if completing a film wasn't difficult enough, he adds, "It was complicated because I interrupted the editing of Crazy Horse to shoot Berkeley. Then, when Berkeley was over, I had to go back and finish Crazy Horse. Then I interrupted the editing of Berkeley to shoot National Gallery [his most recent film, now in post], so the editing got stretched out over a longer period of time."

In total, he spent 12 weeks on location, shooting 250 hours of material on a Sony 900HD. He worked with only two crew members, staged no events, used no artificial lighting and, when all was said and done, spent 14 months—spread out over two-and-a-half years—editing the footage. 

Filmed during the Fall 2010 semester, At Berkeley posits the idea that declining government investment in affordable, public higher education will have a domino effect on a societal level. Berkeley is a salient choice for this examination. It's an educational powerhouse that over the course of 145 years has maintained both its rigorous standards and its commitment to a democratic academic philosophy. The university's ethnically, culturally and socio-economically diverse student body reflects the rapidly shifting demographics across the US.

As one professor lectures in the film, Berkeley was founded with "a sense of the future and an ideal that people should be able to study, even if they weren't elite, for the future of the State of California and its diverse population."

Wiseman, who chose Berkeley as his subject because of its national and international prominence, sees the university as "the real face of America." He also notes, "Approximately one-third of the student body is on scholarship. It's hard to get into.  It's open to people of all races, classes and ethnicities—and quite deliberately so."

It's a heady, utopian notion, but Wiseman unknowingly arrived to film as the university entered a maelstrom. The State of California and all its public institutions were in financial free fall. Over the past decade, Berkeley's state funding had dropped from roughly 45 percent of its operating budget to its current level of 12 percent. "As I found out about the budget crisis, it became an important element of the film," Wiseman says. "But I hadn't followed that or known much about it before I went there."

To gain what appears to be an all-access pass to meetings and classes, Wiseman had the approval of the university's then chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, an affable Canadian physicist who in the film seems uniquely suited to steer the ship during the fiscal storm. The process was a rapid one. Wiseman wrote a letter and Birgeneau responded immediately. A lunch meeting ensued shortly afterward that included provost George Breslauer, another solid presence in the film, and the chancellor said yes.

Per the filmmaker's agreement with the university, Berkeley officials could not review the film before it was finished and they had no control over editorial content. The only major restriction imposed was that Wiseman couldn't attend tenure meetings, which he agreed was understandable due to the deeply personal nature of those events. The other restriction was that the university wanted 48 hours to veto any sequence that he shot. He agreed to that condition and the veto was only exercised once in regard to a conversation that referenced some California politicians by name.

With a camera that seems to find itself at literally every corner of campus, it's hard to imagine how even an artist as precise as Wiseman could distill 250 hours of raw footage into the final, lyrical, four-hour version. "Literally, the general description of the editing is trying to think your way through the material," he explains. "What do you learn from the sequences, and what's going on? What seems to be important and why are certain things happening? I constantly have to ask myself ‘Why,' and I ask that through every minute of the editing. I have to be able to offer myself an explanation of what it is that I'm looking at and listening to in the rushes."

The overview of academics, showcased in eight segments, is deliberately broad in scope and hews each part in its own way, to the greater theme of the film. Wiseman selected classes by following his instincts and using a little judgment. "I never know what it means to be representative, but in that context you have to completely discard the idea of being representative," he maintains. "I wanted English, science, some philosophy. I tried to go to classes that would be interesting."

Wiseman's ability to render the driest, most impersonal proceedings into very personal and intimate scenes is one of the strength's of At Berkeley. "I want to give a sense of the people who are in the sequence but at the same time be fair to the original event," he explains. He remained mindful in editing not to distort what he considers to be the meaning of the class or meeting. Whether it's a group of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans discussing the challenges of life on campus after serving in combat, a physics lecture covering the difficulty of accurately measuring dark energy in space, or administrative summits that run the gamut from facilities maintenance and security to financial aid, Wiseman carefully paints a complex picture of the enormous task that is running the university and just how far afield its academic and social influence extends.

In one particularly illuminating moment, Chancellor Birgeneau discusses how a collectively agreed upon, across-the-board faculty furlough program saved the jobs of 460 of university's lowest-paid employees, as well as critical cash. It's clear that protecting the positions of particularly vulnerable staff has an impact beyond the campus. When he reveals that he spoke about the plan with leadership from other top universities, Birgeneau mentions that they were astounded and told him that even the suggestion would never be accepted by faculty at their schools.

It would be easy to dismiss At Berkeley as a defense of liberal academia's refusal to face fiscal facts. That perspective would be doing a terrible disservice to what's actually at stake—the critical importance that higher public education plays in creating a well-informed and involved populace.

Wiseman freely admits he's not an expert (the film is his impression) but his concern for public education is in the consequences of our fiscal landslide. There is a new drive to apply a cost benefit analysis to universities and At Berkeley sounds the alarm that a corporate approach would have devastating, long-term effects.

 "Let's say Renaissance history only has six students, so why should we teach Renaissance history?" Wiseman posits. "In business, if there's not a demand for something, you eliminate the product. The humanities are more likely to be cut rather than the sciences or the technology-oriented, engineering-type courses, and that has political consequences for the next generation. They won't get an education in, let's say, democratic theory or the Enlightenment or what the Constitution means, etc., because those courses are the first to go. If people are technocrats, they're less likely to be concerned about the human consequences of political decisions, particularly if they have no exposure to the history of the issues and some of the reasons the US was founded."

Vital and timely, At Berkeley succeeds in supporting the importance of critical thought while building knowledge in the arena of ideas. In campus research facilities, classrooms, performances and social groups, Wiseman shows us passionate learners, fully engaged in the exchange of viewpoints. Education, the film says, has a moral imperative and should not be exclusive.

Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson is a Los Angeles-based writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Documentary, Movie City News, Dice.com, Health Callings and more. Her stories have covered the gamut from movies, music and culture to IT and healthcare.

Covering  documentaries at Camerimage, the Bydgoszcz, Poland-based festival dedicated to the art of cinematography, is more difficult these days because the festival has grown so large, with almost too many films, too little time, and too much else going on to attract and distract you. Dramatic feature films are screened upstairs in the Opera Nova building's Grand Theatre, while feature-length and short documentaries play downstairs in a space much too small to accommodate the eager crowds. Staying for the Q&As is rewarding, though; the discussions are  focused, given that most of the audience members are documentarians themselves. What's more, Camerimage attracts visitors from all over Europe and Russia, so audiences bring to the discussions different points of reference in terms of their society, culture and values.  

While writing this from France, I am watching images of riot police trampling over citizens in Kiev's Independence Square on the anniversary of the Ukraine's 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. What has this got to do with documentaries at Camerimage? Not much—and at the same time, a great deal.

Ukraine is Poland's next-door neighbor, sharing a 575 km. border, so sitting in Bydgoszcz, we were only hours away from where these events unfolded; when Camerimage was in Lodz, it was easy to jump on a train to nearby Ukraine for a day trip. Although this year there were disappointingly few films in the documentary section that touched on historical or political events, many of the narrative films did. Like a mirrored image of this weekend's violent scenes of a brutal crackdown, Agnieska Holland's Burning Bush portrays a decisive event in 1969 Prague that changed the course of history, as did  Krzysztof  Lukaszewicz's Viva Belarus, which re-creates events in 2009, with  raw, rough jostling images that simulate newsreel footage of mass demonstrations, protest marches and rallies against the Soviet satellite regimes. Reflecting on this now, those films seem more relevant, timely and valuable towards understanding the struggle in the Ukraine.

Two notable documentaries that did address history and politics were Haskell Wexler's exuberant Four Days in Chicago, in which Americans demand a better life and a more equal share of the wealth, and Matthew VanDyke's Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution, which brings us to the war in Syria and the struggle for freedom there amid one of the most catastrophic humanitarian and refugee crises ever recorded.

The 12 documentaries selected for this year's Feature competition  included work from Austria, Switzerland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the US, Germany and Poland. Among the titles were Thomas Reidelsheimer's Breathing Earth—Susumu Shingu's Dream, which portrays an artist conversing with nature through his scuptures and  the wind; Steve Hoover's Blood Brother, about  a disillusioned American who "finds authenticity" through working with HIV orphans in India; Inigo Westmeier's Dragon Girls, about a kung fu academy in China; Sebastian Junger's Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Times of Tim Hetherington, which examines the life and inner motivations of photographers in war zones; and Manuel von Stürler's Winter Nomads, about an elderly man and a young woman making a yearly trek, with 800 sheep, for fresh pasture land in winter.   

The  Camerimage's prestigious Award for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking was  presented to  Joan Churchill, the first woman to ever receive such an honor. Churchill also chaired the jury of the Feature Length Documentary Competition, which presented the  Golden Frog Award  to Camille Cottagnoud, who photographed the aforementioned  Winter Nomads, with a Special Mention going to cinemtogaphers Aage Hollander and Marc Schmidt for their work on Schmidt's Matthew's Laws.

Veteran cinematographer Stephen Lighthill presided over the Documentary Shorts Jury , which awarded the Golden Frog-Grand Prix to cinematographer Johan Palmgren and directors Åsa Blanck and Johan Palmgren for Grandpa and Me and a Helicopter to Heaven, about the relationship between a perceptive young boy and his wise, bedridden grandfather. A Special Mention went to cinematographer/director Matthew VanDyke for Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution.

Camerimage also presented a selection of Churchill's work, including two of her collaborations with Nick Broomfield—Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer and Soldier Girls—and Peter Watkins' Punishment Park. For those lucky enough to get a place in their Masterclass on Experiential Cinema, Churchill and  cinematographer/sound recordist Alan Barker debunked the early myths of cinema vérité or direct cinema that the cameraperson  was a "fly on the wall." "That was so false," said Churchill at the Masterclass. "A more honest approach is when the cameraperson interacts with those 'inside the circle.' You have to establish a relationship with the person you are pointing a camera at, and with the small digital cameras that are held away from your eyes and face, they can see my emotions and my reactions, and it acknowledges that relationship. You have to earn their trust every day. I think you have to be a little crazy to do this kind of filmmaking because you need a lot of patience and you spend long periods of time just waiting around. You have to be prepared to take as long as it takes. But while you are waiting around, you have to be present, in the moment, aware of what is happening, alert and engaged all the time. You  can't be thumbing your iPhone"

Based in Paris and London, Madelyn Grace Most develops independent films, writes about cinema and covers film festivals for European film magazines. She is a member of French Film Critics, Union of Cinema Journalists and the Foreign Press Association in Paris.

Peter Wintonick, who passed away from cancer a week before the International Documentary Festival at Amsterdam (IDFA) began this year, was ever-present at the festival.

The larger-than-life filmmaker, programmer and all-around doc booster, who had become a festival fixture, was celebrated at daily afternoon gatherings and at the opening of the Forum (the granddaddy of pitching events), and was remembered in many conversations. Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen, head of IDFA's industry programming, pointed out that Peter always seemed as eager to learn from the people he was mentoring as he was to teach them. Fest director Ally Derks reiterated her sense of loss: "He was my soulmate and my partner in crime. We were on the same wavelength."

IDFA is big, with 292 new documentaries and 100 older ones on display. (Think that's too many at a time for one small country? Well, they sold 220,000 tickets in 10 days.) Then there were the filmmaker training programs, a mini-hackathon just for Dutch and Belgian makers, an interactive program that is quickly becoming a parallel festival, a market that attracts global product, a pitch forum attended by virtually all European and Australian broadcasters, and many American ones, and networking opportunities to the max. "It just seems like it gets bigger every year, and more business is being done," said Women Make Movies' executive director, Debra Zimmerman.

"IDFA is a key venue for us," said FilmsTransit's Diana Holtzberg. FilmsTransit was repping 22 films, either at the Docs for Sale market or in the festival. Among them was The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, a true-crime story by Kirk Marcolina and Matthew Pond, with a compulsive jewel thief as an unlikely heroine. The company was also repping Henry Corra's cinema vérité feature Farewell to Hollywood, which debuted at IDFA. It raised eyebrows about possible exploitation and undue intimacy in his story of a dying girl's journey toward death (Regina Nicholson, the girl, was also the co-director.). Corra pointed out in a Q&A that his co-director had welcomed controversy, "because it's good for the film." "Easy for you to say," he recalled replying. "You won't be here."

"It's hard not to feel overwhelmed at first at IDFA," said Dan Rybicky, a Chicago producer with Kartemquin Films who was pitching a project on outsider art. Meanwhile, Kartemquin's executive director, Justine Nagan, had no sooner arrived than she successfully negotiated a sale for another Kartemquin film, Usama Alshaibi's American Arab, which competed in the Mid-Length strand.

New and newish players included representatives from Al Jazeera, which is spending big on documentary in the US, Sky Atlantic, and CNN, all of whom participated in the Forum along with virtually every European broadcaster and NHK.

The well-organized IDFA staff, which this year has truly gone digital (you could order your own press tickets online, for instance), reduces the confusion with lots of opportunities to network. Daily afternoon teas, later afternoon business gatherings and nightly parties give attendees a touchdown point, especially for those whose phones were not working in the international environment.

Many European documentarians develop their projects with resources from their national governments, which fund with a strong cultural-nationalism interest. They tend to be less market-oriented in their design than American producers, and some of the most interesting IDFA selections bear that out. Michael Obert's Song from the Forest, a German production that won for Best Feature-Length Documentary, follows an American who long ago ran away to live with Pygmies in Central African Republic and now has the largest recording of Pygmy flute music in the world, as he returns to the US for a visit with his Pygmy son. Song from the Forest is more slackly told than a US doc typically would be, but the character and his plight—he is watching the haven he found among the Pygmies fall to modernizing forces—are poignant.

Ne Me Quitte Pas, by Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Niels van Koevorden, follows two middle-aged Belgian drunks with molasses-slow pacing through a few months of alcohol-fueled bumbling-an unpromising scenario. But the level of intimacy that the fly-on-wall filmmakers won allowed them to be present at scenes so immediate and improbable that you could be forgiven for mistaking it for fiction. Screenings were packed, and many among the IDFA audiences found the two characters engaging in an all-too-human kind of way.

IDFA also showcases highly topical work, work that is relevant to human rights issues, and personal stories, whether or not they're finely crafted. Pussy versus Putin, by activists around the Russian punk rock troupe Pussy Riot, collects raucous and often hilarious on-the-run, underground footage of the group's combo of performance art and political activism. It's not quite a movie, but what an assembly! The jury awarded it the top prize for Mid-Length Documentary. Return to Homs, the opening night film, is a jerky personal diary by Talal Derki of a stint with ardent young militia men in Syria, without a shred of context.  

IDFA's respect for documentary elders had mixed results this year. Anyone who admires Marcel Ophuls for grand docs like The Sorrow and the Pity and The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie probably should not watch Ain't Misbehavin, a sad and sometimes embarrassing personal memoir. Thomas Balmes' Happiness, a hybrid doc about life in Bhutan, is agonizingly slow and not always believable.

IDFA also showcases little-guy voices and first projects. Among them was Michele Josue's personal film, Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine, which she funded on Kickstarter. The film shares insights into the complex character and personality of Shepard, from his friendship network that grew in the wake of his 1998 murder. Josue was thrilled to be able to premiere the film internationally at IDFA.

Several films excelled in linking local issues to international ones. Marc Bauder's Master of the Universe is a horror film of the financial world. A laid-off European banker, who designed some of the more complex trades of the last few years, explains on a deserted and empty trading floor how financial trading works—and doesn't. His presentation is calm; the news is ever creepier; his prognosis is grim. The movie has a hypnotic appeal. Lech Kowalski's Drill Baby Drill follows an unprepossessing group of Polish farmers in a bulldozer v. bulldozer fight with Chevron, which is trying to install a fracking rig. Kowalski also draws on his interviews with Pennsylvania residents who've had water polluted and health impaired. The movie has made the fest rounds, has also been used in organizing, and was shown at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference in November. Katiyabaaz Fahad Mustafa's Powerless takes us into a head-to-head struggle between a government electrical utility reformer, fighting internal corruption, and a neighborhood clandestine electricity siphoner. It's one way to get a look inside corrupt bureaucracy in India, and at a critical problem in developing economies.

Two of my personal favorites were Madeleine Sackler's Dangerous Acts and Shaul Schwartz' Narco Cultura. Dangerous Acts follows a theatrical troupe in Belarus whose work is a courageous and dangerous challenge to unaccountable power, as they face exile and a life in the US, where no one even knows where Belarus is. It's a story about why art matters, and what the price can be. Narco Cultura is a sometimes-uneven but rewarding look inside the making of the latest Latino pop music trend: corridos, or story songs, celebrating the gangsta life of Mexican drug gangs. One top performer is pulling down $45,000 per performance. Like country and western songs, corridos often feature the working stiffs of the business, but they also glorify the narco-celebrities. We meet the singers, the songwriters, the fans, the journalists and others who are alarmed by the celebration of thug life. And speaking of music, Morgan Neville's Twenty Feet From Stardom continued to win over crowds, as it has everywhere; it won the IDFA Melkweg Music Documentary Audience Award.

The Interactive Documentary Conference at IDFA, now in its second year, was packed with filmmakers, programmers and funders looking to grasp the emergent interactive documentary phenomenon. The speaker list was star-studded, including IDFA's Caspar Sonnen (an organizer of the event), the NFB's Kat Cizek (who most recently produced a New York Times Op-Doc, History of the High-Rise), Tribeca's Ingrid Kopp, Jason Brush (he designed the interface for the PlayStation4), and a clutch of others, culminating with artist/computer scientist Jonathan Harris, who delivered the keynote address.

One big takeaway: if you want to make interactive, it helps to be Canadian. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is far and away the most enthusiastic funder of the stuff. It launched a new game documentary at the conference: Fort McMoney.

If you're looking to catch up quickly on interactive doc, MIT Open Doc Lab's Sarah Wolozin is here to help. At the interactive conference, she formally launched Open Documentary Database, for which I'm proud to be a curator. The database, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the NFB and IDFA's DocLab, among others, has participatory aspects, and is available for mobile. Right now it's restricted to English-language projects.

Tribeca's Ingrid Kopp and POV's Adnaan Wasey teamed up to provide their top lessons from interactive doc hackathons:

• Be open to collaboration; don't come to a hackathon with a fixed idea.
• Failure is essential, but learn from failure, don't repeat it.
• Dream big (Adnaan) or let a small idea grow (Ingrid).
• Process and product are both important; without a process that defines a meaningful result, a product is just a waste of time.

   

  Pat Aufderheide is University Professor in the School of Communication at American University and directs the Center for Media and Social Impact there.

Tell Me Something: Documentary Filmmakers
Edited by Jessica Edwards
Published by Film First Co.
Designed by Philipp Hubert, Visiotypen
128 pages
$40

Most of the books about documentary film and filmmakers that I've reviewed for this publication have provided their share of varying degrees of useful information, but I have often lamented the surprising lack of concern for the visuals, the actual design of the books themselves, separate from the content. The New York-based publisher Film First Co., with the assistance afforded by a successful Kickstarter campaign, have addressed this aesthetic void by producing Tell Me Something: Documentary Filmmakers, a perfect coffee-table book (given its diminutive size). While the volume is slim at 128 pages, it packs a design punch with a thick, black, clothbound hardcover embossed with a silver dot pattern that carries through at a different scale on the weighty, glossy pages within. This is the perfect gift book for those whose interests lean in the direction of documentary film, and as a lighthearted read for more seriously engaged mediamakers.

Conceived and edited by Jessica Edwards, Tell Me Something is a compilation of reflections from a wide range of filmmakers: veterans like Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles, Errol Morris, Martin Scorsese, Michael Moore and Alex Gibney, alongside the next generation represented by the likes of Gary Hustwit, Lucy Walker, Kim Longinotto, Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, and many others. I was also pleased to see fresh new faces such as Clio Barnard and Yung Chang. Each of these docmakers were asked to provide one piece of advice, which is allocated to one page (a few are longer) that faces a single photograph of that filmmaker. The esteemed photographers who took the portraits—Jon Pack, Raina+Wilson, Jessica Sample among them—are as rich and varied in their respective oeuvres as the filmmakers they depicted. The photos invite further interpretation of each filmmaker's character, personality and self-presentation beyond what we know of them through their films. 

Thom Powers, the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, curator for Sundance NOW Doc Club, and founder/director of DOC NYC—and himself a former filmmaker—explains in the foreword that when he moved to New York City two decades ago, he compensated for his lack of formal training in film with the chutzpah to call up strangers, those more knowledgeable than he, to ask for advice. This book serves to replicate that journey taken by Powers, though in greater depth and without the risk of rejection. He goes on to state that at this point in his career, he has met most of the filmmakers featured here and he assures us, "If you ask 50 filmmakers how they approach any aspect of their craft, you might get 50 different answers." 

Arranged in alphabetical order, starting with Matthew Akers and ending with Marina Zenovich, the filmmakers' advice seems to reflect the inherent truth of Powers' statement. Fred Wiseman is an example of the very few whose words of advice—"Marry someone rich"—are brief, flippant and eminently forgettable, while others like AJ Schnack give a very practical example of an actual form letter, filled with good advice, that you could use to send to the subjects of your film just before the film is seen publicly for the first time.

There are many surprises. Sometimes, the most famous names come across as the most humble. Martin Scorsese takes the time to give credit to filmmakers John Cassavetes, Claude Charbrol, Elia Kazan, Peter Bogdanovich and Steven Spielberg as influences on his work. Michael Moore, while in keeping with being Michael Moore, also advises, "The first rule of making a documentary is, Don't make a documentary. Make a movie. Nobody wants to see a documentary. To the often-posed question, ‘Hey honey, what do you wanna do tonight?' nobody responds with, ‘Lets go see a documentary!' People do though want to see a movie. And when they go to the movies, they want to be entertained." He goes on to say, "People don't want the invisible wagging finger of the 'documentarian' (a word invented for us because we don't make movies) pointing at them and telling them to take their medicine." He elaborates: "It's like this: You can make a 'documentary' about nutrition—or you can make Super Size Me."

I also encountered some unfamiliar names like Macky Alston (Family Name, 1997; The Killer Within, 2006; Love Free or Die, 2012). He had some "liberating" advice. After watching the work of Francois Truffaut, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Wim Wenders, Ross McElwee, Robert Altman and Jane Campion, he realized, "My favorite filmmakers all made at least as many god-awful films as they did great ones. Filmmaking (like most other creative pursuits) requires the audacity to fail big and very publicly." Certain other pithy statements—Jennifer Baichwal: "Have a plan, but be ready to abandon it at any moment." Errol Morris: "When you go to people for advice, expect the worst."—are pulled out of context and set in large typeface on full-color pages that are used as a sort of graphic punctuation throughout the book.

This is the kind of book that can be picked up at any moment, flipped through and randomly read, sort of like nibbling on the soda crackers they give you to clean your palate between wine tastings. It is full of clever surprises that would please Michael Moore, since it educates while it entertains. 

The IDA is pleased to offer a complimentary copy of Tell Me Something to our first 40 friends who contribute $100.00 or more. Give before December 31 to deduct from your 2013 taxes!

Cynthia Close is the former president of Documentary Educational Resources and currently resides in Burlington, Vermont, where she consults on the business of film and serves on the advisory board of the Vermont International Film Festival.

The Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award recognizes the achievements of a filmmaker who has made a significant impact at the beginning of his or her career in documentary film. 

This year's honoree, Zachary Heinzerling, began 2013 by earning the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival and securing a distribution deal with RADiUS-TWC for his debut feature, Cutie and the Boxer.    

Heinzerling graduated from University of Texas-Austin with a degree in philosophy, and while there he also soaked up the work of such cinematic greats as Tarkovsky, Ozu, Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers. He moved to New York City right after graduation and eventually found work as a production assistant at HBO on such Emmy Award-winning documentaries as Breaking the Huddle, Assault in the Ring and Lombardi.

What mainly drew him to New York, though, was not just the work, but the mystique and energy of a city that had beckoned so many aspiring artists before him. In 2009, he met his Brooklyn neighbors, Noriko and Ushio Shinohara, 40-year partners in art and life—and so began the making of Cutie and the Boxer. 

And as Heinzerling filmed their story over the next five years, he attracted the support and attention of such major players as San Francisco Film Society, Cinereach, the Jerome Foundation, the Tribeca Film Institute, the New York State Council for the Arts and the Berlinale Talent Campus. In 2011, he was selected as one of 25 filmmakers for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFP's Emerging Visions Program during the New York Film Festival.

Cutie and the Boxer made its theatrical premiere in August. The film recently earned six Cinema Eye Honors nominations, as well as a spot on the Academy Award Short List for Best Feature Documentary.

We caught up with Heinzerling via e-mail from his home in Brooklyn.

Documentary: You went to University of Texas in Austin—a town with a reputable film culture.  What were some of the key courses you took and films you saw that planted the seeds to your filmmaking career?

Zachary Heinzerling: One film that completely changed my view of cinema was Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia. It was the last film we screened during a class on Contemporary Russian Cinema. I remember being in complete awe the first time I saw it. Every line of dialogue was poetry. Every frame was filled to the edge with metaphor. It was so unabashedly aggressive in reaching for some form of transcendence through film.

I also remember being inspired reading Tarkovsky's Sculpting in Time—especially quotes like, "The infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image."

Another formative course I took was taught by a visiting professor from Germany. The course was entitled The Holocaust Documentary. For whatever reason, only two people signed up for the course! She showed us a few hours of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. Some of the scenes in that film are still to date the most powerful I've seen in any documentary. Lanzmann's ability to show deeply seeded prejudice and the banality of evil without having anyone talk about it directly had a profound impact on me and my direction as a filmmaker.

D: During the five years you were making Cutie and the Boxer, you worked on number of sports documentaries—including one on, yes, boxing. Other than helping to pay the bills, was there something about this particular sub-genre of documentary that resonated with you as you documented the lives of two artists in—to reference a great scene from your film- the "roar" of love?

ZH: When I started out as a production assistant at HBO, I worked for a director who specialized in sports-related documentaries. I didn't go to film school, so in many ways working on these early docs was my film education. Though I'm not much of a sports fanatic, I enjoyed working for this director. I learned the fundamentals of storytelling. The interesting thing about these films is that most had very little to do with sports. They used sports as a lens onto the human condition, exploring themes like family, relationships, race, passion, what drives us, etc. In many cases, such as a film about [the late football coach] Vince Lombardi, who, due to his obsession with work was notoriously absent for much of his children's upbringing, the films exhibited similar themes to Cutie.

D: You have cited in other interviews the work of the Japanese neo-realists, particularly Ozu, and the work of the Maysles brothers, particularly Grey Gardens, as inspirations in making Cutie and the Boxer. What is it about those works that enabled you to help find the narrative of your film?

ZH: I would add Hirokazu Koreeda to that list. Most of his films are intensely dramatic family portraits, but presented in an honest and unsentimental manner. He has a playful, comedic tone, but the films are heartbreaking at the same time. I remember seeing Still Walking a few years after I'd begun shooting with the Shinoharas and realizing that I could make this kind of film using the Shinoharas' daily lives as the central plot. I began to structure the story to feel more like a narrative film, eliminating all of the on-camera interviews. The film helped me see and use the quieter, less immediately dramatic, subtler moments of the Shinoharas' lives in a new light.

D: You managed to capture on film two very elusive and internal subjects: the creative process and the complications, exigencies and intricacies of a long-running love affair. The Shinoharas afforded you an extraordinary level of trust to open their lives to you. Over the years you spent with them, how did your vision for the film change from what you had originally presented to the Shinoharas to what you eventually screened for them?

ZH: I never presented an original idea of the film to the Shinoharas. It seems the film was constantly evolving until the day we printed our first festival master. When I met the Shinoharas in 2009 and started to shoot some footage of them, the most obvious place to start was with Ushio and his art. He was the more forthcoming of the two: immediately inviting me into his frenetic world, constantly performing and showering me with anecdotes from his storied past.

The relationship between Noriko and me took longer to develop. But that development in some ways makes up the narrative of the film. I was fascinated by the fact that this 60-year-old woman wore her hair in pigtails and referred to herself as "Cutie." Her egotistical and "bull-ish" husband had highjacked her innocence, and she was fighting back to regain it. The focus shifted to Noriko. There was movement in her story. She was undergoing this immense change and empowerment. And I sensed that she really wanted to open up, to shed some of the layers that protected her, and show her true self and her work to the public.

When I finally showed the film to Ushio and Noriko when it was finished, Ushio was a bit shocked. He asked, with a look of objection, "So this is a love story?" He thought the film was going to be focused on him and his art. Noriko then chimed in with, "You've had many documentaries made about you. Isn't it my turn?" Ushio laughed. He has since seen the film many times and seems to appreciate it more and more. Recently he said, "After seeing the film, I now realize that Noriko has actually loved me through all these years." Noriko replied, "You've only thought about this now after seeing a movie? You're a little late."

D: Cutie and the Boxer has a remarkable cinematic texture—the vérité footage is enriched with archival footage of Ushio Shinohara both in Japan and in New York, and with animated renderings of Noriko's work. Talk about the structural process of weaving these formats in to strengthen your story.

ZH: The process of balancing the amount of archival and animation used was a long and difficult one. We realized quickly that the heart of this film was in the vérité footage, and that the film would rest on these revealing moments between Ushio and Noriko as their roles began to shift and Noriko's independence grew. But at the same time, we had a wealth of archival footage to work with, including Noriko's artwork, which works as a form of archival footage depicting their tumultuous past. Ultimately, the formal technique used to define how the different archival material was used was making sure the past was revealed out of the character's inner thoughts. We experience the past subjectively, from the point of view of the subjects. The easiest example is the animation. Stories from her past play out seamlessly from present to past in dreamlike sequences, heightening Noriko's twisted mix of reality and fantasy and transporting the audience into Noriko's mind. With the archival footage, it was important it played like a memory or a flashback. Finding points of connection where the present would flow seamlessly into the past prevented the film from losing its setting in the present tense. We kept the narrative based in the ongoing daily struggles of Ushio and Noriko, using the archival to supplement and deepen that storyline.

D: You spent a good deal of time capturing artists at work—and all the attendant trappings: the struggles, the sacrifices, the anger, the despair and the joy. How did this experience impact your self-regard as an artist?

ZH: I moved to New York the summer after I graduated from university, on a whim. I had this very romantic idea of the New York City art scene, defined by the '60s and '70s downtown era of artists who lived in shabby lofts and paid little if any rent, all working together to turn the art world on its head. When I met Ushio and Noriko and walked into their loft, it was like entering a time warp. While many of their contemporaries had either died, changed careers or become famous, Ushio and Noriko had maintained this art-at-all-cost spirit I had romanticized. Their loft space is like a shrine to the arts: art history books, 40 years of paint splatter on the floor, old photographs of famous artist friends, modeling sculptures. They were always in progress on something. There was never a sense of being finished or satisfied. And while I was working on this film, it felt like we were all in progress together. Their story and our relationship was constantly evolving and because of that the experience never grew stale. It was a ripe environment within which an impressionable young artist could develop.

D: What's next for you?

ZH: I'm in production on a documentary that I'm not allowed to tell you about just yet. I'm also in development on a narrative feature script that I started last year.

Thomas White is editor of Documentary.

As reported in The New York Times, filmmaker Ed Pincus, one of the pioneers in the personal documentary genre, died last week at home in Vermont, at age 75, of complications from leukemia.

Pincus was best known for Diaries, which documented five years of his life, from 1971 to 1976, with his wife, Jane, their two children—and a number of women with whom he had affairs. In an essay he wrote for Documentary magazine back in 2001, filmmaker Ross McElwee described Diaries as  a "portrait of a particular era—the early 1970s—a time in which a willingness to experiment in life, love and political expression was still present, but on the wane. That title—Diaries—is as unadorned, direct and honest, as is the film itself. What I experienced when I first saw Diaries was not a sense of voyeurism, but of privileged intimacy." (For the complete essay, click here.)

Pincus graduated from Brown University in 1960 with a degree in philosophy, and earned his master's in philosophy from Harvard, where he also developed an interest in photography. Although he never formally studied film, he appreciated the newly evolving direct cinema style. His first films, made for public television, included Black Natchez (1967), about tensions within a black community in Mississippi during the civil rights struggle, and One Step Away (1967), which documented the lives of hippies in San Francisco. But following those films, Pincus began to question the possibility of objectivity in documentary. As his son Benjamin told The New York Times, "He wanted to eliminate the illusion that there was an objective observer behind the camera. He wanted to make this statement that the documentarian's job was to be subjective."

Which led him to Diaries, followed by Life and Other Anxieties (1977), a collaboration with filmmaker Steven Ascher, in which they traveled to Minneapolis and, taking cues from Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin in their film Chronicle of a Summer,  interviewed people at random on the street, then asked them what aspect of their lives they'd like to be documented. Ascher and Pincus would later collaborate on several editions of The Filmmakers Handbook, an essential guide to the art and business of independent filmmaking.

By this time, Pincus was ten years into heading the film department at MIT with the legendary Richard Leacock. Their students included McElwee and Ascher, as well as  Robb Moss, Jeff Kreines, Joel DeMott, Michel Negroponte, Mira Nair and many others.

But following an unsettling series of incidents involving death threats from a former associate, Pincus and his family moved to Vermont in the early 1980s—and took what amounted to a decades-long break from filmmaking.

It was Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that compelled his return, and he and filmmaker Lucia Small embarked on a 60-day road trip from Vermont to New Orleans to document the sociopolitical fallout of that disaster. In their statement about the resulting film, The Axe in the Attic, the filmmakers wrote, "We wanted the viewers to understand on a visceral level what happens when a trust is broken between a government and its people."

In his final film, One Cut, One Life, Pincus once again teamed up with Small to explore their respective experiences with and observations about loss, grieving and dying-and living life well despite those experiences. Small is working to complete the film. For an article about One Cut, One Life that appeared in The New York Times, click here.

We reached out to various friends and colleagues of Pincus to share their thoughts about the late filmmaker.

 "I'm fortunate to have known Ed for over 35 years. I worked on Diaries, we co-directed Life and Other Anxieties and we co-wrote the first edition of The Filmmaker's Handbook.  Ed came out of philosophy and thought deeply about the experiment of film and the strategies he'd employ. But making a film was a spontaneous act that he didn't want to overthink.  He talked about trying to capture in Diaries the raw, often surprising feel of rushes, and some of the most challenging juxtapositions in the movie don't come from studied editing decisions but because that's the way the footage came out of the camera. Ed could at times be a tough critic of people's films, but I always admired that he didn't exempt himself from criticism or posture to make himself look better.  He never flinched from leaving in scenes that risked turning the audience against him; it's a kind of bracing honesty and willingness to just be himself. In Diaries, he opened doors to personal documentary by bringing audiences inside his and Jane's life, taking us through scenes that could be difficult, unresolved and full of emotion, a lot like our own lives. Ed tested the boundaries of what could be filmed and was looking for a new relationship between a film and its subjects. At the center was the inimitable Ed, such a warm, funny, truly interesting and interested human being.  Over all the years I've relished our conversations in which nothing was off the table, and I'll miss them most of all."

—Steven Ascher

"The last time I saw Ed was a few months ago in Vermont. He whispered a few things to me about his declining health as if it was a well kept secret (it wasn't). What he really wanted to talk about was film and photography; his illness wasn't going to sideline his passion. Maybe because he studied philosophy, he found questions more interesting than answers. This was evidenced in his films, which had a probing quality. Seeking to lay bare the relationship between subject and filmmaker, he spent five years filming his own family. Diaries is a landmark because Ed pioneered working solo in 16mm film and found magic in the everyday. He looked for the sublime and the essential in all his work, whether he was filming a counterculture commune in Haight Asbury in the 1960s (One Step Away), or the civil rights movement in Natchez, Mississippi, (Black Natchez). His rigor inspired a generation of filmmakers, and I am thankful to be one of them. "

—Michel Negroponte

"I didn't know Ed well and I've only seen his most renowned work, Diaries, once on DVD (which is never the proper way to see a classic doc). So his influence on me comes more through work of the great filmmakers who worked with or were taught by Ed—Ross McElwee, Steve Ascher, Michel Negroponte and Lucia Small, among numerous others.

But I'm deeply appreciative of Ed's role as pioneer of the personal documentary. His bravery and talent paved the way for all of us who work nin that most hazardous of film forms.

I also appreciate his golden years comeback working in collaboration with Lucia. The Axe in the Attic is a superlative film that never got its proper due.  And One Cut, One Life promises to be an incredibly powerful and poignant swan song. It's the doc I'm most looking forward to seeing in the coming year."

—Doug Block 

"Before I met Ed, I was unaware how much his work had indirectly influenced so many of us. I, like many others who were interested in first-person work, had not seen Diaries. Instead, I was influenced by the work of Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Nina Davenport, Steve Ascher and Jeannie Jordan. So, when I met Ed and was exposed to his early work—and not just Diaries—I was pretty floored by the profound impact he had on so many of us. It was as though I had come full circle.

In addition to being a philosopher and mathematician, Ed had been a photographer before he picked up a moving camera. Ed was in love with natural light-how natural light would frame a leaf, a face, a moment. That is a part of his work that is talked about less. In fact, one of the reasons Ed left film in the early '80s was that he didn't like the "tinny quality" that video initially offered. 

I do remember how Ed boldly re-entered this world of filmmaking, with dogged determination. He simultaneously impressed and frustrated me with his endless inquiries and recalculations about which camera to get, which film topic to choose, and even which route to travel when we were on the road shooting Axe in the Attic. I used to have to remind myself, 'Oh, yeah, Ed wrote the book: Guide to Filmmaking. Of course, he has to exhaust every option and question me along the way.'

He had an incredibly dry sense of humor. He once said to me that all his films are comedies, once you understand what they are about: the human comedy. I think that is also a more subtle influence that he has had on nonfiction work." 

—Lucia Small

Photojournalist-turned-filmmaker Shaun Schwartz treaded dangerous ground to make Narco Cultura, the upcoming doc about a Mexican criminal culture he's specific about calling "The Mexican-American Drug War." Determined to depict the tug of war that has existed for 30 years but began a grisly golden age in 2006, Schwartz says he and the crew "kept their lives clear" of cartel business even while they had access to cartel members and members of the Juarez police force.

By widening his scope to the culture of the narcotics industry, Schwartz shows two sides of the struggle, with two protagonists guiding viewers through. Richie is a dedicated police officer who lets his parents' worries roll off his back; he chose his career because of a love for Juarez he isn't keen on forgetting, even if he's trapped into silence by internal politics and corruption. The drug trade is secretly supported by "bought" police officers—the cops who know this avoid entanglements and live not to tell.

Edgar is a Mexican-American narcocorridor-a singer/songwriter who specializes in ballads about narco culture. Corridos represent a Latin-American musical tradition that crosses epic poetry and current events and sets them to music-the simple kind you might hum on the way to work. Corridos are catchy and so mobilize the history (or propaganda) contained in the lyrics to reach into less technologically connected communities.

Narco corridos are anthems about violence-and in this case the violence is particularly anthemic. Edgar's success as a songwriter is due partly to the fact he neither lives in Mexico nor has much life experience in the criminal culture. His capacity to glorify makes him useful to the narcos commissioning him to write their corridos.

Like its own Latin-American parable, Narco Cultura pushes aside the specific criminal episodes to represent the broader cycle: how people get entangled, how punishments come from every direction, how justice is muted and how the crooks are getting away with the bag.

Documentary: Why are we saying the Mexican Drug War began in 2006?

Shaun Schwartz: Firstly, I want to make sure we [America] take credit: it's the Mexican-American Drug War. But as for 2006, Felipe Calderon was elected president and within a week he announced and mobilized an army in the drug war—which he mentioned during his campaign, but it wasn't as strong as the reality would require. To be completely frank, at the beginning it didn't sound like such a bad idea, and I personally think he meant well. But the reality becomes gruesome quickly. Some say the drug war is 30 years old but grows and diminishes in waves, and I agree to that as well.

D: Frequently in the film people describe drug dealers as Robin Hood figures—but Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, who were oppressed by a king. In this case, there is no king. 

SS: I think in order to understand how their brains work, you have to look at the drug war from different perspectives, and that's what Narco Cultura goes after. It's different in Juarez than in LA, different from Richie's point of view than from Edgar's. Though it's different, you do see glorification on both sides of the border. The music was controversial in Mexico because some people think of narcos as Robin Hood and are drawn to the lifestyle, and others treat it as the cancer I think it is. There was a Mexican push back-TV and radio in Mexico refused to air violent corridos—but Edgar, at the end of the day, dances in parades to the music without knowing that. He's American and feels he has to go on YouTube to understand. In a way he's a product of the war; it's his heritage.

The perspectives are extremely different, and that's what fascinating because everyone's pushing the same ball up the hill. It's not the Mexican Drug War; it's the Mexican-American Drug War. It's a clear cycle: money and guns come from the US; drugs go to it. For a corridor singer, the dream is to play across the border. A drug dealer can commission a corridor, and there's nothing better for a drug dealer than to have a song about them on American radio. This is a vanity game, after all. One perspective really drives the other; though they're all different, they're all pushing the same thing.

D: Were you at all afraid that in making a film about the culture you were contributing to its publicity?

SS: It's something we straddled the line with in the editing room a lot. Anytime you show something that's bad you can say you're giving it a voice, and in doing so, are you then helping it?

 It was interesting seeing Edgar watch the film. I wondered if I found in his character something shameful or regretful, and the answer is no. A month ago he sat with friends and family and a band and watched the film. Towards the end of the movie he ran out of the theater, and I ran after him. He said, "It's not an easy mirror you put in front of me."

I think that's what all the people in the film would think. Right now they all feel like they have a film made about their scene, but that's not the end. People ask me, "Why did you make such a violent film?" Because the war is violent and we wanted to show that. I'm a journalist and I believe this is our job. It's a whistleblowing issue and a lot of people would love to put their heads in the sand and call this Mexico's problem.

I can't tell you how everyone will react [to the film], but I'm proud we went after this issue in this unique way. There are so many docs made about the drug war, but it's all suspects behind desks throwing information at us. I'm doing it from a photojournalistic perspective, trying to make you feel how this affects millions by showing the culture it's creating. I feel strongly we hit the nail on the head and put it into question.

D: You give me the impression you're prepared for backlash.

SS: I'm not scared of it. It's part of touching controversial issues. This film has obviously played a lot of film festivals and I've done a lot of Q&As and for the most part I don't hear backlash. Mostly I hear, "I'm from this culture and thank you for showing it." I've had a great experience. I'm not about telling stories that have to be all balance and make everybody happy. Those are usually not the interesting ones. I feel proud of how honest we kept it and the access we had. I will say because of the access we had we had to leave stuff out.

D: You left things out to protect the people involved?

SS: We had to act responsibly and not endanger more people. While you're allowed to report everything, there's been enough blood. I'm not allowed as a filmmaker or journalist to cross that line. It's clear on paper, but in life those lines merge. It's a balancing act. I can't exactly tell you, but let's say it involved Edgar doing illegal things that could be pinned down. Our camera gets into the heart of the cartel; that kind of thing happens with a deal you have to keep.

D: Are you saying you compromised yourself?

SS: No, I didn't compromise the storytelling. Now, if I don't show you the outside of a house that's a meth lab, and the owner gives you this crazy access on the condition you "don't photograph my car or my house"... you walk carefully. As long as you're not changing the reality, you're not compromising. Edgar became a sensitive issue. We got so deep into this cartel [because of him]. If your protagonist creates access for you with his sources, you have to make sure you don't anger those sources. They could be lethal.

D: Access was dangerous because it could be used as evidence, but you were also actively interviewing with the police. You're cornered just like your subjects.

SS: We are getting into dicey things, so I have to measure [what I say]. But let's say, we believe that the current edit does not trace anything to endanger anyone, and on that level, that was more of a careful dance on the police side of the story. I wasn't interested in investigative journalism on the level of "Let's open a file and understand who killed who." That's how you get yourself killed. We went out to learn how this affects a culture and what that feels like. I'm much more interested in who Richie is as a person—a man who starts in law enforcement naively thinking he could fix the city he loves but realizes, as he says, he's "become part of the system." I'm also not interested in the cartel.

We survived by keeping our lives clear. We didn't make it about a particular murder or case or crime. It's about a much bigger picture.

D: Which suggests that general disclosure is safer—not to turn your case into a rule.

SS: Yeah. Straight up. There's a reason people talk to experts behind desks, but we pushed the envelope. We saw a lot more than we were able to film, and at a certain point I didn't want to hear things. Knowledge alone can get you killed in Mexico. This is not your average street corner. We're talking about the most vicious and powerful crime organization in the world. You have to play smart and be careful.

D: What makes the Narco life so appealing that it inspires anthems?

SS: I can totally understand why teenagers valorize narcos, and it's actually simple. At the end of the day, our policy has let the bad guys win for such a long time and it's never been worse. These kids see their parents work at a machiador for $5-$6 a day and then they see a kid driving around in a nice car, admired by teenage girls in high school, doing whatever they want, and at the end of the day these kids see our failed policies as evidence of what success looks like. They're on blogs, see who killed who, they see the amount of money and power involved. This is the anti-system rebellion and that's where they come up with "Robin Hood"—they see the most powerful government in the world support this and see the cartels and the drugs keep going north and the drugs keep coming south with the weapons. The bigger the drum beat, the bigger the hero you've made.

It's a ridiculous policy: the idea we could just give border patrol more money and guns and think it's going to work out. Look at cocaine as a commodity. If we think this drug war is at all successful, than how come coke isn't more expensive? If it were more dangerous to procure, scarcer—but the cost has consistently gone down? Isn't this evidence? And what are our side effects? Sixty to 70,000 dead, thousands in jail, we've closed the border and immigration has been greatly stopped. But I think that's not the goal—that's harmful, in a weird way—so now the Mexican kid who washes dishes in New York can't attend his mother's funeral because he can't hop the fence. That same fence doesn't stop the cartel. There's no sign of this getting better. We have a cartel leader who's both the most wanted man alive after bin Laden's death and also on Forbes' list of richest men alive. It gives you an idea of the vanity involved.

D: Tell me about your project with Time Magazine.

SS: I believe in photojournalists turning into filmmakers, and I've started a production company to work with Time Magazine's new film department, Red Border Films. We're creating a line of shorts for them, and we're committed for a year and hopefully forever.

People say it's a hard time for print journalism, but it's also an exciting time. We let loose and take risks and so this may not be for all photojournalists, but I think there's a clan out there making that turn and it's an interesting one. It understands the story and does it in a gutsy, raw way. We'll have to branch out and put them with the right people and teach them the right crafts, but I do believe in the raw quality that could elevate a lot and become a unique branch. I'm proud to be part of it.

Narco Cultura, which was recently honored with an IDA Creative Recognition Award for Best Music, opens in theaters November 22 through Cinedigm.

Sara Vizcarrando is editrix of the release calendar at Rotten Tomatoes; a  film studies instructor; and a blogger for http://movieswithbutter.com.

As the 50th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy approaches, American Experience is presenting JFK, a new four-hour documentary on his life on November 11 and 12, 2013 on PBS (the film also streams online through December 11). JFK incorporates new archival material and the comments of Kennedy family members; historians Robert Dallek, Robert Caro and Evan Thomas; administration officials Harris Wofford and John Seigenthaler; civil rights leaders Andrew Young and Julian Bond; and more.

Susan Bellows, the director and producer of the film, and the series producer for American Experience, recently talked about her efforts to uncover the man behind the Kennedy myth and to explore the roots of his strengths and weakness and his path to the presidency. She shaped JFK with writer Mark Zwonitzer and executive producer Mark Samels.

Documentary: There have been many films on the life of Kennedy. How did you want to tell this story?

Susan Bellows: I worked closely with my writer, Mark Zwonitzer, in developing the film's narrative arc. He and I began with the legacies of Kennedy's presidency, his most significant achievements and his impact on American politics, and then worked backwards to understand the forces that shaped him and his actions in those key areas.  For example, Kennedy is known primarily as a foreign policy president. Where did this interest in foreign policy come from? Who were his role models? What experiences shaped his worldviews?

D: What are some of the new resources you uncovered?

SB: In terms of archival material, there have been a lot of new audiotapes and home movies released in the last few years, and personal collections have been opened up to the public. We worked to incorporate as much of that more recent material into the film as we could. This includes some home movies that JFK and his brother made when they traveled for seven weeks throughout Asia and the Middle East in 1951 when he was still a congressman. The footage allows us to see the world he was seeing on that trip. 

We also drew upon newly released Dictaphone audiotapes, which helped create a certain intimacy with JFK in ways that the visual material didn't.           

One thing I found fascinating was what a work in progress he was when he first started out in politics. He was not the skilled orator and politician that we came to know during his years as president. In early appearances on Face the Nation, and in a radio appearance he made when he was fresh out of college to promote his book [Why England Slept—1940], you hear that his pattern of speech was different, his delivery was monotone, and he sounds like he's reading prepared material—far from the extemporaneous speaker we know from his presidency. 

D: The film notes some of Kennedy's shortcomings such as his poor health and his personal affairs. Has public opinion of him evolved?

SB: His approval ratings remain very high, but the most recent revelations about his womanizing have been hard for a lot of people to take. 

The revelations about the depth of his health problems, which first came out about eight years ago when historian Robert Dallek published his [Kennedy] biography, make him more vulnerable and in some ways more human. They certainly undercut his image as a man of vigor, and that speaks to his duplicity, but learning more about his chronic health problems also deepens our understanding about what drove him. He had come close to death several times by the time he was elected to the Senate and had a sense that his time on earth was limited and he had to make the most of it.

D: Kennedy's need for constant medical treatment may surprise viewers. As president he was getting seven Novocain shots a day for back pain, and he was taking steroids and an array of pain medications. It's stunning he could function at all, let alone appear vigorous and healthy.

SB: Robert Dallek has said he found no indication that Kennedy's medical problems affected his performance in office. He specifically cites the Cuban Missile Crisis; records show he increased doses of some of the medicine he depended on during the crisis, yet throughout the 13 days he sounds completely lucid in the audio recordings of meetings with his top advisors. 

D: Viewers may also be surprised at his ruthlessness as a political campaigner and his use of his brother Bobby to attend to dirty work.   

SB: I don't know if I would use the word "ruthless." I think he was a shrewd, competitive politician. As Evan Thomas points out in the film, he did rely on Bobby to play hardball in the campaigns, and while that allowed [JFK] to be a sort of young Lancelot figure floating above nasty politics, it left Bobby to be the very tough, dogged campaigner and fighter.

D: In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy was more hawkish on military spending than his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon.

SB: The 1960 campaign was playing out when there was a heightened sense of competition with the Soviets. Americans were worried that we were falling behind, and Kennedy certainly played to those fears in the campaign. During the campaign, he argued that the best way to deter aggression was to build up our military defense, and his views on that were very much shaped by his own observations of England's weakness in the face of Nazi aggression on the eve of World War II.

D: Your film opens with a sequence on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which seems a pivot point for the film. Was that focus to show Kennedy's growth as a president in the greatest crisis he faced?

SB: We started the film there because the stakes are at their highest for him at that moment. He's on the brink of what would be both his greatest crisis and his greatest triumph. It allowed us to frame the film with some of the questions people have about Kennedy. Was there substance there? Was he just a superficial playboy whose father had bought him the office? He looked good, but did he have the skills the crisis demanded? And also the fact that some of his own missteps had contributed to the crisis makes it an interesting place to start the film, allowing us to then back up and figure out who was the man with his finger on the button.

D: In the crisis, he stood up to belligerent military advisors and avoided a nuclear war.

SB: Yes, nothing horrified him more than the thought of having to pull the nuclear trigger. He was one of the first presidents to lead the nation at a time when our greatest enemy had the power to annihilate us, and he felt in some regards that that threat trumped all others.

As the film shows, he would use the political capital he'd earned through his successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis to pass the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which is considered one of his most significant achievements.

D: In his American University speech in June 1963, he shared a vision for a world no longer held hostage to nuclear weapons.

SB: I think it is very hard to appreciate today, when the Cold War is part of the distant past, but in 1963 it was unheard of for an American president to propose that we could achieve any kind of arms control agreement with the Soviets and to ask the American people to think of [the Soviets] as not our enemies, but as people just like us. Some historians see it as the beginning of a détente that later presidents could build on.

D: The film notes that our involvement in Vietnam wasn't going well at the time of Kennedy's death. Do you sense that he would have removed US troops from Vietnam?

SB: We intentionally did not engage in speculation about what Kennedy's intentions were in Vietnam had he lived; we focus instead on what actions he did take in Vietnam during his thousand days in office. We establish that he deepened American involvement in Vietnam by increasing financial aid and the number of American advisors there. We also establish his initial support of the military coup, which led to the death of the South Vietnamese president just three weeks before Kennedy's own death. Kennedy gave mixed signals about his intentions in Vietnam in his final months in office, so we refrain from speculating.

D:  Some people may be surprised that Kennedy did not act on civil rights until a few months before his death. 

SB: When he took office, he didn't really believe there was much chance of getting a civil rights bill through Congress, so he made small gestures through, for example, executive orders requiring affirmative action hiring by government contractors.

He was primarily focused on foreign policy concerns, and that took primacy in the first years of his presidency. Dealing with civil rights was a political minefield, and he knew it. He dragged his feet on civil rights, but when he saw that doing nothing posed a greater risk than taking action, he stepped up to the plate and, in a [June 1963] nationally televised address, called for the enactment of the most far-reaching civil rights bill in history.

D: Civil rights leader Julian Bond says in the film that Kennedy saw civil rights protestors as "an irritant."

SB: He didn't want to deal with the Freedom Riders in 1961. He had been in office just four months when they launched their movement to integrate interstate buses. He was very pre-occupied with looming foreign policy challenges—including a pending summit with Nikita Khrushchev, and events in Berlin and Laos. Taking federal action on integration was politically risky, and he put it off. 

D: Your handling of the assassination was deft in focusing not on the shooting but on the reaction to the president's death.

SB: We were clear from the beginning that we weren't going to tell the story of the assassination. The anniversary of his death seemed like an opportunity to examine his life and his presidency, not how he died, and we didn't want to get embroiled in the conspiracy theories swirling around the assassination, which could quickly cloud any assessment of him or his presidency. That said, the archival footage we found of the world learning about and reacting to his death revealed much about the impact of that pivotal moment, so we found a way to include it to bring closure to the story of his life.

D: It's poignant that he was finding his stride as an effective leader in the last year of his presidency, and then he's murdered.

SB: Yes. He viewed his first year in office as a miserable failure but also learned a great deal and clearly grew in the office, as most presidents do. His domestic legislative achievements during his thousand days in office were slim, but it's hard not to feel that there was momentum building after the Cuban Missile Crisis for some of his initiatives, particularly with the successful passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. That said, there was a rough road ahead of him in getting civil rights legislation passed and formulating policy in Vietnam, and that would be among the unfinished business of his presidency. 

D:  Is there anything you'd like to add about what you hope viewers take from the film?

SB: In the tradition of the 16 other presidential biographies American Experience has produced, we set out to provide a comprehensive look at JFK's life and presidency and to try to look at who he was, how he shaped the office, and in turn shaped our country.  

As a filmmaker, I wasn't going in with an agenda. The only thing I want people to take away is a deeper understanding of him based on the most recent scholarship and archival material.

Robin Lindley is a Seattle-based writer and attorney. He is the features editor for the History News Network, and his writing has appeared in HNN, Writer's Chronicle, Crosscut, Real Change, Re-Markings, NW Lawyer and more. 

K2:  a brief, impersonal name given to a remote mountain on the border of China and Pakistan. Peaking at 8,611 meters, it is the second highest mountain on Earth. Its name, originating from a notation in the Great Trigonometric Survey, is appropriate for such an inaccessible and challenging mountain in the Karakoram range. Italian climber Fosco Maraini described it as "just bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human."

To mountaineers it is also known as "Savage Mountain," for it holds, after Annapurna, the dubious merit of having the second highest fatality rate in the world. Of the mere 300 climbers who have succeeded K2's ascent since the 1950s, 77 have died, most on the way down-that's one in every four. (To put that in context, K2 is far more deadly than the taller Mount Everest, which has been summitted over 5,000 times, with a record 633 ascents in 2007 alone.)

It was with full knowledge of these odds that on the morning of August 1, 2008, 25 climbers from different international expeditions set out to reach the peak. It was sunny, and after nearly two months of inclement weather, conditions were perfect for a summit attempt. Yet just 48 hours later, 11 of those climbers had perished.

The Summit, a documentary by Nick Ryan, unravels the mystery of what happened on those treacherous slopes, resulting in a body count double the macabre statistical prediction. The film is a riveting tale of determination, courage and altruism, in extremely demanding, hazardous conditions. It is also story of selfishness and selflessness, of little mistakes and tragic consequences, of fate and heroism.

On the phone from his native Ireland, the director told Documentary what inspired him to make the film: "I'm not a climber," Ryan explains. "What drew me in was when I listened to the statistics—particularly the one-in-four statistic—and thinking to myself , Wow! That's a peculiar form of insanity. Why would anybody put their lives at that much risk to reach a summit that had already been reached? I was drawn in by that."

K2 is a mountaineer's mountain—not for dilettantes, nor for affluent "tourist" climbers. But despite the experience of the climbers, early media criticism of the disaster emphasized the lethal convergence of factors—a crowded mountain, language barriers, summit fever, poor preparation and reliance on fixed ropes.

A brief outline of the tragedy: a delay in submitting meant the climbers made the descent in the dark, after nightfall. An avalanche killed one climber and snapped the fixed ropes along a steep bottleneck that the mountaineers were relying on to make their way back to the camp. With the fixed ropes gone, the rest of the climbers were stranded high up on the mountain, and forced to bivouac in the open overnight, in the "death zone," above 8,000 meters. The following day, Sherpas set out to rescue the survivors, leading them down the mountain—but another avalanche struck, killing part of the rescue party.

 "On the Internet, when I started doing my research, there was a lot of derision poured on these people," Ryan continues. "I can't say I wasn't somewhat of that belief at the time."

Reminiscing about the origin of the film, Ryan recalls, "Ostensibly the start of the film was to address some of the issues in the media where the Sherpas were not getting any kind of credit for anything that had happened on the mountains. A lot of the media reported on how the Westerners had saved their lives and survived out in the open, and so forth."

But in reality the Sherpas had to tie people on ropes to help them down. "None of the Western climbers on ropes would tell us that," Ryan explains. "[They] never volunteered the information that they were all tied together like children and brought down the mountain from the summit. It was really to address some of those issues; I started investigating what had happened from that perspective."

However, Ryan maintains that he "did not want to start this out like every other documentary about this subject matter, giving you the very dry statistics. I wanted to show the excitement of these people going, because it is exciting. And all of a sudden, showing how very quickly this turns."

The embodiment of the love of climbing, and at the heart of the film, is Ger McDonnell, a gregarious and experienced mountaineer who was on his second attempt at reaching the peak. He succeeds, becoming the first Irishman to summit K2, but on the descent, after a night of numerous avalanches off the serac, his body was never found. As Ryan began to piece together testimony from the various parties involved—McDonnell's trusted Sherpa, Pemba, and his expedition team leader, Wilco—it became clear that the Irish mountaineer had tried to rescue injured Koreans who were caught in the ropes. He had broken the unwritten code of the mountain: leave injured or disoriented climbers for dead, for survival depends on self-preservation.

What is unique about the film, apart from the arresting cinematography, is the seamless transition between the actual footage of the 2008 ascent and shockingly real re-enactments. These were shot on the Eiger in the Jungfrau region of Switzerland, and then the alpine background was altered via green-screen technology to the correct Himalayan landscape. When asked about the re-enactments, Ryan elaborates: "For certain people reconstructions are a dirty word, but from the very beginning I [knew] this was a challenging tale. The re-enactments basically cover areas that were not filmed by the climbers, essentially because they were busy trying to survive. So there were large tracts of the story that would have either been just talking heads or stills or repetition, and what we wanted to do was engage the audience and keep them utterly focused on the story.

 "For me, if we were going to do that, it was going to look like we had filmed this on K2," Ryan continues. "We green-screened the background in from real photographs given to us by the climbers. And I also went to K2 myself in 2011 and flew with the Pakistan military and filmed all those opening shots with a Cineflex camera.

 "There are green-screen elements in it because the Swiss Alps look nothing like the Karakoram," Ryan explains. "It was very frustrating for Robbie [Ryan] as a DP, because we would turn around and I'd see a mountain and I would say, 'We'll have to put a green screen,' and he'd wonder, 'What's wrong with those mountains?' and I would say, 'They're not the right mountains.'"

However, Ryan clarifies, there were some ground rules: "I never mixed real footage with reconstruction footage. When you go into a reconstruction, it's a reconstruction until the very end. I never used the shot from archive within it."

Apart from the standard funding difficulties in making a documentary, a mountaineering film offers a unique set of challenges. "Making a film is like climbing a mountain, so making a film about climbing a mountain is twice as hard!" says Ryan. "We filmed at 3,700 meters in the Alps. You're just so lethargic at the best of times. Some of the crew never acclimatized; they were always halfway down the mountain."

Ryan had done some test shoots a year prior with his lead safety climber, to do a proof of concept. But he concedes that the actual shooting of the re-enactment was more complex:

"It was kind of misleading because we just did three days. We filmed two little sequences. But the reality is that when you have four or five actors who are not really climbers, and even if they are climbers, when you are filming in that situation, health and safety is of primary concern."

Filming moved at a glacial pace, Ryan adds. "And because we had to rely on the weather, the schedule had to stay quite fluid as well. All of a sudden, everything is slowed down 10 times."

The director dealt with the restrictive budget with remarkable inventiveness: "Some of the people playing the other climbers were actually ski instructors who were around at the time. We would literally just look for people there and then, because we could not afford to hire people and fly them in. The actors playing the Koreans were actually Tibetan cooks from Interlaken. Jehan Baig [one of the Pakistani porters] was played by one of our grips. We were using the crew! The guy who plays Fredrik Strang is one of our line producers."

Ryan also delves into the past for his film, interviewing Walter Bonatti, a member of the 1954 Italian expedition that completed the first successful ascent of the mountain. But the success was shrouded in controversy: Bonatti, the youngest and fittest climber on the team, was in charge of bringing oxygen canisters to his teammates. He was forced to spend the night exposed to the elements, with no tent or sleeping bag, when his teammates deliberately moved the camp to a higher location to ensure he would not join them on their summit bid. He survived -58ºF temperatures, yet after the expedition he was falsely accused by his teammates of using the oxygen to survive his bivouac, and for decades, was unjustly vilified by the climbing community.

Explaining his decision to include this storyline in the film, Ryan comments, "I started doing research, and I read Walter Bonatti's book [The Mountains of my Life], given that he had been on the first successful expedition. He wrote so beautifully and when I read the story there were a lot of parallels, [in] what the mountain does to people. In his particular story, his life was ruined by Compagnoni and Lacedelli—[they branded him] a traitor—for having ambition and for being a very talented climber. What that said about the difference between now and 50 years ago is [that] now we have different climbing gear-better and lighter, better weather protection-but the mountain will still kill you in a heartbeat."

British mountaineer George Mallory famously quipped, "Because it's there," when asked why he wished to climb Everest. In addressing the issues of "summit fever" and poor decision-making on part of the climbers, Ryan responds, "They had been there 67 days before making the summit push. They are there and looking at a big 300-foot cliff of ice melting. The weather is perfect, you've been there for over 60 days and you are six hours away from your destination. And this is your last chance to do this. Are you going to turn around?"

Ryan's film delves into the peculiar characteristics of top tier mountaineers: ambition, obsession, confidence and blind optimism—a belief that they can defy the murderous odds. Watching The Summit reminded me of a quotation of renowned mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev, on his memorial on Annapurna: "Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve; they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion."

The Summit opens in theaters nationwide October 4 through IFC Films.

Darianna Cardilli is a Los Angeles-based documentary filmmaker and editor. She can be reached at www.darianna.com.