"If you are Latino you are American. You are 10-15,000 years of America!" said legendary playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez in his opening keynote address at "NALIP 10: A Decade of Influence," the National Association of Latino Independent Producers 10th annual conference. Just as Newport Beach draped its manicured downtown with banners for the Newport Beach Film Festival, over 600 Latino filmmakers, writers, actors and industry executives gathered from April 16 to 19 in the heart of Fashion Island to celebrate a conclave of Hispanic film wizards. Attendance ranged from acclaimed Hollywood figures such as writer Peter Murrieta (The Wizards of Waverly Place) and director/choreographer Kenny Ortega (High School Musical), to less known independent filmmakers, some of whom are starting to make headlines, such as documentary filmmaker Hugo Perez (Summer Sun Winter Moon) and the new promise in Latino sci-fi, Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer).

NALIP founder and board member Moctezuma Esparza (Walkout) reminded the audience that in the US, 28 percent of people under 30, as well as 25 percent of kindergarten children, are Latino, as he presented the "Dedication to Diversity and Commitment to Latino Media" award to Home Box Office, Inc. "HBO, unlike the rest of Hollywood," said Esparza, "has an authentic will to listen and act and create representations of all US people. HBO has reached out to our community!"

His words were backed by the announcement of the new 2009 HBO/NALIP Documentary Filmmaker Cash Award, a grant that will give one Latino doc maker $10,000 for a work-in-progress. Through this cash award, HBO wants to focus on the Latino experience, and support the growth of social commentary by Latino documentarians. The award information will be published early May on NALIP's site (www.nalip.org); application deadline is June 19.

Esparza then introduced Luis Valdez, founder of the modern Chicano theater El Teatro Campesino and writer/director of Zoot Suit and La Bamba, as "a visionary who lived his ideas." Valdez' keynote address was a eulogy to the Hispanic heritage reminiscent of the civil rights era speeches. He captured the audience's sentiment that a decade of influence has not been enough for the Latino filmmaking community to establish solid roots in the media landscape in the US, in terms of both holding key executive positions and succeeding in disseminating tailored media content.

In the best spirit of oral storytelling, Valdez told the Latino equivalent of Rosa Parks' story. "I was born on a migrant labor camp. When I was a teenager, my cousin had a friend, Cessi, who went to the Navy during World War II. One day Cessi came back home to Delano on leave and went to the Delano Theater to watch a movie. He sat in the middle section, in the orchestra. Soon he was asked to leave the orchestra. The manager called the cops and had them take him to the police station." After two hours of intimidation, they had to let him go, because there was no law in California that said you could not sit in the middle in a theater. And all the pachucos-the ones who probably inspired his Zoot Suit play and film-gathered at the police station were delighted. "Next weekend, guess what? Everybody sat in the middle!" he said. Years later, Valdez found out that "the dude who desegregated the theater in Delano had become the apostle of non-violence." His name was Cesar Chavez.

Valdez became an organizer with Chavez. "I was arrested, jailed, and all this made me a Hollywood director." But he reserved the producer credit for Chavez. "Cesar Chavez was a producer. As makers of films, we're no different than the farmers picking up the fruit that God creates!"

Claiming back the term "Hispanic-American"-"What does Latino mean?" he questioned. "Should we be an adjective?"-Valdez encouraged the audience to document their Hispanic-American heritage. "We need to tell the American story, we need to recapture our own history, on PBS and elsewhere, on HBO." He then told in detail the story of Juan de Oñate, the founder of New Mexico. "This story beats Pocahontas! It is an amazing story; think of the sexual scenes we can have, the bloodshed!" In a note of humor, Valdez admitted that one of the problems when attempting to tell Chavez' story is, "The man was a saint! There were no microphones under the bed, nothing squeaky, not as appealing, no violence! But Juan de Oñate? That [film] should have been made a long time ago!"

Supporting Valdez' take on the need for widening the Latino presence in media, Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News columnist and co-host of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now" show, in leading the panel "Conversations with PBS President & CEO Paula Kerger," questioned the PBS head boldly about some crude facts: Only five percent of PBS staff is Latino, and while Los Angeles-based PBS Station KCET's audience is 60 percent Latino, only one of its 30 board members is Latino. Kerger admitted this is a challenge, and said that PBS is making an effort in widening their employee diversity, and that last year 48 percent of the new employees hired were people of color.

Media players from 20 US states, as well as from Puerto Rico, Canada, Dominican Republic and Mexico, converged at the conference, and about half of the filmmakers were documentarians. "Our ambition," said NALIP's executive director, Kathryn Galán, "and one in which I believe we succeeded, was to encourage a higher level of professionalism and to program panels that each had takeaways, action steps or reporting on trends." The conference program included six panels devoted to documentary filmmaking, with panelists representing Sundance Documentary Fund, Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), HBO and others.

Saturday's keynote speaker was Herb Scannell, co-founder and president of Next New Networks, a next-generation new media company. During his tenure as president of Nickelodeon, Scannell, very keen on his Puerto Rican roots, was responsible for developing popular shows such as Dora the Explorer, The Brothers Garcia and Taina that targeted the Latino demographic and expanded the reach of the Spanish language.  "Diversity is a plus," he said in closing. "My hope is that 10 years from now we move from a ‘decade of influence' to a decade of power, of real power."

One of the highlights of the conference was the screening Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer (distributed by Maya Releasing) on the same day of its national theatrical opening. In 1997, Rivera came up with a labor solution for the US: a physical wall built along the Mexican border. The migrants would come to the border towns to work as cybraceros in futuristic maquiladoras, where they would perform manual jobs through a remote-controlled system, a kind of Wii that would drain their physical energy in the same way it does now. Concluding the Q&A, Rivera declared, "This film is a documentary!"

Next day, Rivera led the panel "Fire Eaters & Pink Hair Strippers," on the new media revolution. Manuel García-Durán of mio.tv presented his three-month-old, advertising-supported, online-content company, "founded to fill the void of entertainment and digital experiences addressing the next-generation, acculturated, bilingual Latino community." In its free Web platform, mio.tv will start to air a new series, executive-produced by Antonio Banderas, based on the French hit Caméra Café: 35 three-and-a-half-minute episodes about life in an office, from the point of view of a camera hidden in the coffee machine.

Durán, former chairman of Telefónica Media, Antena 3 and founding member of terra.com, defined the term "communitainment" as "the ability for you and your friends to create your own kind of entertainment by interacting online." After Durán screened a few videoclips of mio.tv's online comedy offer, IDA Board Member Beth Bird pointed out that broadcasting the same old TV shows through the Internet will not entice younger audiences; the new generation of users needs to be able to interact with what they are watching online. Durán said that mio.tv will be signing a deal with Skype soon-so that "you can even call your friends' mobile or landlines directly through mio.tv while you're watching." Currently, registered members can vote on their favorite videos, embed them on their personal sites and in blogs, and stay connected to mio.tv with voice and messaging.

Running concurrently with the conference, the Latino Media Market provides, according to its description, "a unique venue for project writers and producers to meet targeted executives and mentors for concrete deals, options, licenses and advancements." Producer Shawna Baca, who participated in the market with her documentary project On The Pow Wow Trail, remarked, "NALIP kept me busy meeting with executives in the doc world, which is a fairly new category for me. They took good care of me and even teamed me up with a roommate who is a documentary filmmaker as well. I think my best meeting and pitch was in our room sharing our doc stories and connecting with each other."

Indeed, the conference has become like an extended family fiesta with piñatas full of surprises for Latinos in the Industry. Among the six awards granted by NALIP, the 2009 NALIP Estela Award for Documentary Filmmaking was given to filmmaker and writer Hugo Perez, whose work often focuses on his Cuban heritage. "No group has supported me as wholeheartedly in my filmmaking career as NALIP," said Perez to Documentary magazine. "I feel that, like my family, they are always shouting out, 'Ese es mi hijo!' [That's my boy!]."

Chelo Alvarez-Stehle is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles. A contributor to Spain's El Mundo daily, she has also published in Japan and the US. As a member of NALIP, she participated in the 2008 Latino Producers Academy with her current documentary project Sands of Silence: A Personal Journey into the Trafficking of Women. www.sosdocumentary.org  

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it a crime to unscramble the encryption on a DVD for any reason whatsoever. Documentary filmmakers who wanted to copy public domain material on a DVD or to copy a small portion of a DVD to use as fair use were faced with a dilemma: Either use other, generally inferior, sources for the work they wished to use or face criminal prosecution for unscrambling the codes on a DVD.

The IDA has asked the Copyright Office to approve an exemption for documentary filmmakers who are working on a documentary and wish to decode a DVD to access public domain material or for the purpose of accessing material to use in their documentary pursuant to fair use. The request was filed in November 2008. The hearing was held May 7, 2009, in Washington, DC.

The IDA is represented by Michael Donaldson, past president of IDA and formerly general counsel to IDA. Working as co-counsel with Donaldson are Chris Perez and Ashlee Lin, members of the University of Southern California Intellectual Property Clinic, under the supervision of Professor Jack Lerner. Gordon Quinn, creative director of Chicago-based Kartemquin Educational Films, and his longtime colleague, Jim Morrissette, will provide written and oral testimony as part of a coalition of filmmakers and film organizations. In addition to IDA and Kartemquin, the coalition includes Film Independent, Independent Feature Project, National Alliance for Arts and Media Culture and University Film and Video Association, as well as filmmakers Robert Bahar, Kirby Dick, Arthur Dong, Jeffrey Levy Hinte, David Novack and Morgan Spurlock.

A lengthy brief in opposition to IDA's request has been filed by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and Time Warner. The thrust of the MPAA argument is that if any use group is allowed to rip DVDs, even for limited fair use purposes, rampant piracy will result. IDA noted that MPAA made exactly the same argument three years ago when film criticism professors made a request for exemption. The Copyright Office granted the request. Not one incident of piracy has resulted from that exemption.

After the hearing, the Copyright Office will consider all the evidence, make further inquiry of the parties, and issue their recommendation to the Librarian of Congress, who must sign the exemption. In the past, the Librarian has adopted the recommendations of the Copyright Office without change. A final decision is expected in the fall of 2009. If adopted, the exemption will be valid for three years, after which time, the request has to be renewed, reargued, and decided anew by the Copyright Office. 

Donaldson notes that "The heavy lifting on this request was done by USC law students Perez and Lin. They did virtually all of the drafting of the request, the follow-up brief, and the written testimony that will be provided in Washington. Their contributions were amazing in the quantity and quality of their work."

All members of the IDA team expressed optimism about the strength of their arguments, but recognized the formidable opposition being laid down by the MPAA. 

This May, HBO launches The Alzheimer's Project, an ambitious, multi-platform effort to bring a wider understanding of Alzheimer's disease to the American public. The project consists of a four-part documentary series, 15 short supplemental films, a robust website (www.hbo.com/alzheimers) , a companion book and a nationwide, community-based information and outreach campaign. 

The Alzheimer's Project is a follow-up to HBO's Emmy Award-winning The Addiction Project (2007). Much of the Addiction team is back for this latest collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including executive producer Sheila Nevins and series producer John Hoffman. Maria Shriver joins as an executive producer.

Hoffman says that when the Addiction series was done, "We at HBO were so pleased that it had served a purpose for the community that's involved with addiction, and that we had established such a great rapport with the NIH. To have them as a collaborator is such an unusual occurrence, and we felt we should we explore this relationship a little bit further and look at another public health issue that we could play a role in."

HBO and the National Institute on Aging (a division of NIH) landed on the topic of Alzheimer's because it affects such a large number of people, including a considerable group beyond those who are afflicted with the disease. It is estimated that family and friends act as caretakers for 70 percent of those who have Alzheimer's. The disease is the second most feared illness after cancer, and may currently affect as many as five million Americans. That number will only increase as the baby-boomer generation ages.

The same survey that revealed people's deep fears of Alzheimer's also showed that many are unaware of the advances going on in science indicating that there may be things that we can do to help our brains age in a more healthy way and possibly mitigate the chances of developing the disease. "I had no knowledge of this enormous amount of information that's emerging about the connection between cardiovascular health and brain health," Hoffman notes. "Hope is the most important word that's part of this project."

The quartet of documentaries in the series uses a variety of approaches to illuminate the different aspects of the disease. The Memory Loss Tapes, directed by Shari Cookson and Nick Doob, is an intimate, 90-minute vérité documentary about seven patients, each in an advancing stage of dementia. Momentum in Science is two-part, state-of-the-science report that takes viewers inside the laboratories and clinics of 25 leading scientists and physicians. Bill Couturié crafts five family portraits that illustrate caring for different stages of Alzheimer's disease in Caregivers. Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? with Maria Shriver is aimed at helping children and young adults understand Alzheimer's. The film is inspired by Shriver's book, What's Happening to Grandpa?, and her own experience with her father, Sargent Shriver, who suffers from the disease.

"In a sense, Memory Loss Tapes and Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? are there to lay out the problem," Hoffman points out. "Momentum in Science and Caregivers in many ways offer solutions. So problem and solution is really what we were very clear that we were setting out to present."

In The Memory Loss Tapes, we meet each subject just once for a brief episode, and each segment presents a patient who demonstrates a further progression of the illness. The separate pieces build on one another in such a way that by the time we get to the seventh and final patient, we feel as though we have been through the entire spectrum of the disease with him.

"In the beginning, Sheila said she wanted a film about what it is to lose your mind," says Doob. "That was our operating principle-that sort of losing who you are, your sense of yourself."

In the earlier part of the film, those who have less advanced stages of the disease are able tell their own stories. Fannie Davis mourns her loss of independence when her driver's license is taken away because she can't remember certain aspects of how to drive. Joe Potocny, who was diagnosed two years ago, keeps a "Living with Alzheimer's" blog. Eventually, the point of view within each episode shifts to that of the caregiver because those who have the disease either aren't aware of it or can no longer express themselves.

Cookson and Doob spent a lot of time on the phone with their subjects and their families before shooting, and shot the film with a small HD camera and miniscule crew. The idea was to just blend in and be a part of the moments as they happened. This results in access to extraordinary moments, such as when 78-year-old Woody Geist reunites with the Grunions, his a capella singing group. Despite suffering from Alzheimer's for 14 years and often not recognizing his own family members, he still remembers the Grunion's song lyrics as he sings along with them.

"I was touched and moved not only by what had left people, but what remained," remarks Cookson. "There's some sort of essence of a person that holds on. I was really inspired by how these families coped with it-just being in the present with them, finding a way to still have a relationship with their loved one."

People often forget that when families are dealing with Alzheimer's, there may be children who are struggling to understand what is happening to a grandparent or older relative. Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?, directed by Eamon Harrington and John Watkin, uses vignettes and interviews with kids to help them deal with issues such as fear of the disease, preserving memories and coping with patient's mood swings and unexpected behavior. 

Hoffman credits Nevins with the idea to make a piece for the series focused on children. "When we do these public health campaigns, we really try to address the needs of different audiences," says Hoffman. "It was a very inspired idea to think we should speak to children; it's not the obvious thing to do."

For those who are interested in understanding more about the pathology of Alzheimer's and current advances in research, Momentum in Science delivers a comprehensive look at the genetics, neuroscience, prevention and treatment of the disease. By the time you're done watching, you'll be an expert on everything from beta-amyloid to the latest developments in brain imaging...or at least understand enough to know why they are important.

Producers Hoffman and Susan Froemke prepared extensively for their interview sessions with the scientists and physicians by deliberately crafting questions that would garner responses with varying levels of sophistication. That way they'd have choices in the edit room that would allow them to strike just the right balance between general explanation and technical jargon.

"That was our need if this was going to be successful-not to lose you the viewer," explains Hoffman. "To pare the material down and make sure that we are not challenging you in a way that is just too tiring, too taxing, and that we are not requiring so much concentration that we lose you and you say, ‘This is more scientific than I was interested in. I'm not connecting with it; it doesn't feel like it relates to me.'"

Froemke and Hoffman were on the road for six months and shot 500 hours of material. Winnowing down the footage to two hours was a huge challenge. They eventually organized the film into chapters, at Nevins' suggestion. Hoffman says Nevins has an astounding editorial mind, and it was very helpful to have someone look at the project with fresh eyes during the process of putting it together. 

After spending this much time on the project, Hoffman's friends joke that he's ready to get his medical license, but the producer has more than just a professional interest in the subject matter. His father passed away ten years ago after a protracted fight with Alzheimer's, and Hoffman had a deep-set fear of developing the disease himself. After immersing himself in the latest research during the course of making The Alzheimer's Project, he is much more hopeful.

"What surprised me was that because my father had it, it's not a given that that is my fate," Hoffman says. "I had a much bleaker view of the genetics of Alzheimer's than research has proven. Frankly, with all this new information, I was amazed to find myself swimming in a calming pool of scientific discovery and optimism. I hope that other people will have that same experience."

In addition to its May 10th premiere on HBO, The Alzheimer's Project will stream all four films for the general public on May 8 at www.hbo.com/alzheimers. 

Tamara Krinsky is associate editor of Documentary.

It's obligatory (and necessary) to accompany any event one launches in New York with lots of bells and whistles. And fabulous parties, as well, needless to say. One needs to do something extraordinary to get people's attention--and keep it. Then, once the event is over, one needs to spend pretty much the entire year leading up to the next one figuring out how it's going to be even more dazzling, more relevant, better attended with even more generosity from major sponsors.

Tribeca Film Enterprises, established in 2002 by Robert DeNiro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, is the multi-platform media company in which the film festival, a cinema complex, a nonprofit film institute and a film center reside. (There is a Web presence for a sister film festival in Doha, Qatar, that will debut this fall but, mysteriously, no information seems to be forthcoming about that right now.) Despite the ever-shifting sands that occur with a good deal of regularity at any large media company (and this year, they saw plenty of that), TFE did put on a pretty good festival this year. 

As everyone who cares about these things knows by now, the Tribeca Film Festival got off to a shaky start in 2002--inflated ticket prices, badly-planned logistics, poor communication, shoddy liaising with attending press, etc.--after a heartfelt and hopeful welcome from the city for which it was created. But at eight years old, this two-week event (April 22 - May 3) is starting to come into its own, growing into its role as a major cultural presence, truly beginning to serve the community beyond the festival itself by nurturing a little bit of the talent that comes here to make art in an art-loving city. They're accomplishing this by providing more and more channels of funding and other in-kind support, including taking advantage of the enormous resource of talented filmmakers and producers that call New York home to mentor up-and-comers.

With a scaled-back program of international films and a, thankfully, very conservative output of printed information (TFF's website is one of the best, most efficient and helpful sites out there), the festival poured its money into the public meeting spots and the special events and parties that were staged throughout the latter part of April in downtown Manhattan, bringing a celeb-heavy presence to the proceedings. (Which is great; I just wish the festival would stop feeling compelled to put them on film juries.) 

TFF is about getting people in seats for screenings, obviously, but it's also very much about getting them out into the city, eating, shopping, touring, partaking of the Manhattan experience. The theaters are sufficient, nothing special, but every "extra-curricular" event I attended was done exceedingly well, creating a truly celebratory atmosphere. I especially enjoyed the Drive-In at the World Financial Center; on a hot night by the river,  I saw rapper P-Star give the crowd of thousands a fantastic performance both before and after Gabriel Noble's excellent film about her called P-Star Rising screened to an enthusiastic audience of about 5,000 people..

To debut work in New York City is a big deal for any artist. Each filmmaker I spoke with--from Beadie Finzi, director of the crowd-pleasing, Heineken Audience Award-nominated Only When I Dance, to effusive Argentine-Canadian Laura Bari, there with her exquisite piece called Antoine, to Marshall Curry, winner of the TFF Documentary Feature Competition this year for his superb and elegantly edited Racing Dreams-were thrilled and elated to be able to show off their latest works here.

The Tribeca Film Festival is not really a doc-centric festival; however, this year's selection of 32 nonfiction feature docs and 14 shorts showed off a fairly strong representation, albeit with some puzzling choices. For there are still some kinks in the programming department with a stable of programmers vying for spots for their favorites, all overseen by director of programming David Kwok. It's apparent that this festival needs to answer to a broader constituency that goes beyond the film world and apparently considers an array of other factors besides the most vital imperative of championing great work, something which programmers have the luxury to concentrate on at more traditional film festivals (one hopes).

So, despite a lack of a true center--there's still no "there" there and it still doesn't take place in Tribeca--the festival means to stay the course and will continue to treat the local community and international visitors to a great film event in the spring in the greatest city on earth.

Here are the documentary prize-winners announced at a ceremony hosted by DeNiro and Rosenthal on Friday, May 1:

Marshall Curry's Racing Dreams took Tribeca's Best Documentary Feature prize. Other nonfiction standouts were Yoav Shamir's Defamation (Hashmatsa), receiving a Special Jury Mention, and Danae Elon's Partly Private, which received a Best New York Documentary nod. Ian Olds won the Best New Documentary Filmmaker prize for his film Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, while the Best Documentary Short prize went to Matthew Faust's home, with Special Mention going to Liz Chae'sThe Last Mermaids.

Pamela Cohn is a New York-based independent media producer, documentary film consultant and freelance writer. She writes a well-regarded blog on nonfiction filmmaking called Still in Motion.

EPSN has snatched up the TV rights to Lost Son of Havana, the doc about Cuban pitcher Luis Tiant's return to Cuba after 46 years of exile and 19 seasons playing professional baseball for the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians. The film will be shown in both English (on ESPN) and Spanish (ESPN Deportes) in August 2009. (via indieWIRE)

Zeitgeist has picked up Jennifer Baichwal's Act of God, an opening night film at this year's Hot Docs in Toronto. Zeitgeist and Baichwal worked together two years ago on Manufactured Landscapes. Act of God is set for release this fall. Baichwal has also signed on for adaptation of Margaret Atwood's book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. (via All These Wonderful Things)

Working Title is in the pole position for a feature-length doc about Brazilian Formula One racing world champion Ayrton Senna, who died at age 34 in a crash while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy. Asif Kapadia will direct. (via Variety)

In case you missed the premiere of Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi this week at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, HBO has you covered. HBO Documentary Films has acquired the U.S. rights to the special and will air it this summer. (via WorldScreen.com)

Racing Dreams, Marshall Curry's latest documentary following his multi-award-winning 2005 film Street Fight, captured the Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film follows the fortunes and struggles of three young go-kart racers competing for the national championship. Racing Dreams is currently in the number one spot for the Audience Award at Tribeca, which will be decided Saturday, May 2. Street Fight won the 2005 Audience Award at Tribeca.

A Special Jury Mention went to Yoav Shamir's Defamation, which looks at the realities of anti-Semitism today, while Ian Olds earned the Best New Documentary Filmmaker award for Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, about an Afghani fixer who was captured and killed by the Taliban in 2007.

Rounding out the doc awards, Danae Elon's Partly Private won the Best New York Documentary award, while Best Documentary Short honors went to Matthew Faust's home, with Special Jury Mention going to Liz Chae's The Last Mermaids.

Here's a rundown of what's coming to US theaters this month:

Opening: May 1
Venue: Quad Cinema/New York City
Film: A Wink and a Smile                                                    
Dir./Prod.: Deirdre Allen Thomas; Prod.: Jack Thomas
Distributor: First Run Features
Web: http://firstrunfeatures.com/winkandasmile_synopsis.html
An intoxicating mix of private thoughts and public behavior, A Wink and a Smile exposes more than the human body by putting gender, power, sexuality and social identity under the glittery spotlight, as it follows the lives of  ten "ordinary" women who do something extraordinary--learn the art of burlesque dancing and striptease.  Through their adventures, we see how a homemaker, a reporter, a doctor, an opera singer, a taxidermist and a college student join the American cultural revival of burlesque, as it moves from fringe fascination to mainstream obsession, engaging a world where performance art and showgirl spectacle, music, theater and sensuality crash into over-the-top glamour--a world where many want to go, but very few dare.

Opening: May 1
Film: Naked Ambition
Dir.: Michael Grecco
Distributor: Lantern Lane Entertainment
Web: http://www.nakedambition.com/
From the trailblazing naughtiness of Bettie Page to the pole-dancing craze of modern housewives, the continual mainstreaming of adult entertainment is undeniable. Now comes Naked Ambition, An R-Rated Look At An X-Rated Industry, from renowned celebrity photographer Michael Grecco, which offers an unabashed peek under the silken covers of one of the few remaining concealed idiosyncrasies of pop culture: the multi-billion dollar porn industry.

Opening: May 8
Venue: IFC Center/New York City
Film: Objectifed
Dir.: Gary Hustwit
http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/
Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It's a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It's about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It's about personal expression, identity, consumerism and sustainability. 
Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world's most influential product designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

Opening: May 8
Film: Outrage
Dir.: Kirby Dick; Prod.: Amy Ziering
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures 
Website: http://www.outragethemovie.com/
A searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community, Outrage boldly reveals the hidden lives of some of our nation's most powerful policymakers, detailing the harm they've inflicted on millions of Americans, and the media's complicity in keeping their secrets.

Opening: May 8
Film: Brothers at War
Dir.: Jake Rademacher
Distributor: Goldwyn Films
http://www.brothersatwarmovie.com/
Brothers at War is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time.  Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake's exploits as he risks everything-including his life-to tell his brothers' story. Often humorous, but sometimes downright lethal, Brothers at War is a remarkable journey where Jake embeds with four combat units in Iraq. Unprecedented access to US and Iraqi combat units take him behind the camouflage curtain with secret reconnaissance troops on the Syrian border, into sniper "Hide Sites" in the Sunni Triangle, through raging machine gun battles with the Iraqi Army. Ultimately, the film follows his brothers home where separations and life-threatening work ripple through their parents, siblings, wives and children. Brothers at War provides a rare look at the bonds and service of our soldiers on the frontlines and the profound effects their service has on the loved ones they leave behind.

Opening: May 13
Venue: Anthology Film Archives/New York City
Film: Revue
Dir.: Sergei Loznitsa
Distributor: Icarus Films
Website: http://icarusfilms.com/new2008/revu.html
As he did with his critically-acclaimed Blockade, a documentary re-creation of the WWII siege of Leningrad, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has once again scoured the Russian film archives for Revue, selecting excerpts from newsreels, propaganda films, TV shows and feature films that present an evocative portrait of Soviet life during the 1950s and 1960s.
With scenes taken from the length and breadth of the Soviet Motherland, Revue illustrates industry and agriculture (dam construction, steel plants, Stakhanovite labor competitions, farmland seeded by hand and plowed with horse), political life (local elections, abundant Lenin iconography, speeches by Khrushchev, the threat of capitalist spies), popular culture (a village choir, a dance troupe, a travelling cinema, poetry readings for workers, a propagandistic stage play), and technology (space exploration, astronaut Yuri Gargarin, new industrial development).

Opening: May 15
Film: Kassim the Dream
Dir.: Kief Davidson
Distributor: IFC Films
http://www.kassimthedream.com/
This is the story of world champion boxer Kassim "The Dream" Ouma--born in Uganda, kidnapped by the rebel army and trained to be a child soldier at the age of 6. When the rebels took over the government, Kassim became an army soldier who was forced to commit many horrific atrocities, making him both a victim and perpetrator. He soon discovered the army's boxing team and realized the sport was his ticket to freedom. After 12 years of warfare, Kassim defected from Africa and arrived in the United States. Homeless and culture-shocked, he quickly rose through the boxing ranks and became World Junior Middleweight Champion.
Kassim, now age 29, seems to have obtained the American Dream with his jovial nature, fame and hip-hop lifestyle. As Kassim trains for his next world title fight against Jermain Taylor in Little Rock Arkansas keeping his demons out of the ring becomes increasingly difficult. His desires to reunite with family in Uganda intensify when Kassim's only hope for a safe return is a military pardon from the president and government responsible for his abduction.
Director Kief Davidson received unprecedented access to Kassim Ouma during a pivotal time in the boxer's career. Filmed in cinema vérité style, the documentary blends current events with brutal revelations of a stolen childhood. The parallels reveal a complex and haunted fighter surviving against incredible odds.

Opening: May 19
Venues: GoggleWorks Theatre/Reading, PA; Allen Theatre/Annville, PA; Whitaker Center/Harrisburg, PA
Film: Rough Cut
Dir.: Todd Klick
http://www.toddklick.com/roughcut/documentary.php
Would you kill to make a movie? The scary thing is, two independent filmmakers did.
In January 2003 a woman was found beaten, strangled and stabbed in her Pennsylvania home. Eight months earlier, an independent horror film was shot on the nearby Appalachian Trail.
Rough Cut is a feature length documentary that explores the twisted true tale of two first-time filmmakers who had a dream of making a horror movie and the bizarre events that followed.

Opening: May 20
Venue: Film Forum/New York City
Film: Burma VJ
Oscilloscope Laboratories
Dir.: Anders Østergaard; Prod.: Lise Lense-Møller
http://burmavjcom.title.dk/burma-vj/
Armed with small handy cams, undercover video journalists in Burma keep up the flow of news from their closed country. Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, acclaimed director Anders Østergaard brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country. The Burma VJs stop at nothing to make their reportages from the streets of Rangoon.
Their material is smuggled out of the country and broadcast back into Burma via satellite and offered as free usage for international media. The whole world has witnessed single event clips made by the VJs, but for the very first time, their individual images have been carefully put together and at once, they tell a much bigger story. "Joshua," age 27, is one of the young video journalists, who works undercover to counter the propaganda of the military regime. Foreign TV crews are suddenly banned from the country, so it's left to Joshua and his crew to keep the revolution alive on TV screens all over.
With Joshua as the psychological lens, the Burmese condition is made tangible to a global audience so we can understand it, feel it and smell it. The film offers a unique insight into high-risk journalism and dissidence in a police state, while at the same time providing a thorough documentation of the historical and dramatic days of September 2007, when the Buddhist monks started marching.

Opening: May 22
Film: The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story
Dirs.: Gregory V. Sherman, Jeffrey C. Sherman
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
When asked how long it takes to write a song, the Sherman Brothers would often say, "It takes your entire life . . . plus the time required to jot it down." And what unexpected lives surface in this intriguing story of the sibling songwriting team behind such classic scores as Mary Poppins (1964) and The Jungle Book (1967) and the most translated song on earth, "It's a Small World," told against a backdrop of some of the most popular works of our time. As staff songwriters for Walt Disney and popular hit makers of their own, the Shermans' credits read like a virtual history of the American family musical: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), The Aristocats (1970), Charlotte's Web (1973), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and many more.
The brothers' personal relationship, however, is far from child's play. The two became so estranged that their own sons grew up without knowing each other, despite living only a few blocks apart. How the brothers could collaborate so extensively on Oscar-winning soundtracks, most of which defined wholesome family entertainment, and yet have a relationship so volatile they could never bring their own families together, is at the heart of this remarkable dissection of creativity, genius and family dynamics. It's made, after all, by the sons themselves, first cousins Gregory and Jeffrey Sherman, who upon meeting for the first time as young adults were moved to do some collaborating of their own.

Opening: May 22
Film: Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight
Dir.: Wendy Keys
Distributor: Arthouse Films
http://www.arthousefilmsonline.com/2009/03/milton-glaser-to-inform-deligh.html
For many, Milton Glaser is the personification of American graphic design. Best known for co-founding New York Magazine and the enduring I ♥ NY campaign, the full breadth of Glaser's remarkable artistic output is revealed in Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. From newspapers and magazine designs, to interior spaces, logos and brand identities, to his celebrated prints, drawings, posters and paintings, the documentary offers audiences a much richer appreciation for one of the great modern renaissance men.
Artfully directed by first-time filmmaker Wendy Keys, the film glances into everyday moments of Glaser's personal life and capture his immense warmth, humanity and the boundless depth of his intelligence and creativity.

Opening May 27
Film: Pressure Cooker
Dirs.: Mark Becker, Jennifer Grausman
Distributors: BEV Pictures/Participant Media
http://www.participantmedia.com/films/coming_soon/pressure_cooker.php
Pressure Cooker profiles the lives of three high school seniors from Northeast Philadelphia, each with unique hardships but with the shared goal of winning scholarships to the country's best culinary schools. Their unlikely hero is the irreverent culinary arts teacher, Mrs. Stephenson, whose teaching style is hilariously blunt. Mrs. Stephenson is both a surrogate mother and a culinary boot-camp instructor, as she pushes her kids to achieve beyond what anyone else expects from them.

Maysles, regarded as one of America's foremost non-fiction filmmakers and the master behind Salesman, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens, will get his recognition at the Charles Guggenheim Symposium during the Washington, D.C. eight-day documentary festival, running from June 15-22.

As part of the Symposium, SilverDocs will screen a series of excerpts from Maysles' body of documentary work. Following the screening, Maysles will be joined by special guests to engage in a discussion of his career, including Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Barbara Kopple and other special guests.

"With a career spanning over five decades, Albert Maysles' body of work covers the most iconic figures of our time and exemplifies Charles Guggenheim's passion for his subjects and keen awareness of the importance of documentary in both capturing events and framing history," said Sky Sitney, SilverDocs Artistic Director in a press release. "We are thrilled to recognize his vast contribution to cinema and the documentary form."

Maysles has directed over 35 films and was the cinematographer on 64. He is currently in production on In Transit, Scapegoat on Trial and Handheld and from the Heart.

Get all of the information about SilverDocs here.

Earth, the debut film from the Walt Disney Company's Disneynature division, has, since its record-breaking premiere on Earth Day April 22, grossed a total of $15,217,689 through Tuesday, making it the sixth highest-grossing docs of all time, according to boxofficemojo.com

The Disneynature team ought to know how to sniff out a hit: Earth is helmed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, whose Planet Earth, footage from which is repurposed in Earth, was a high-visibility project for Discovery Channel and BBC. Jean-Franco Camilleri, one of the co-producers on the Oscar-winning March of the Penguins, heads Disneynature, and the next film out of the Disneynature label, Oceans, is directed by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, whose Winged Migration grossed $11,689,053 in 2003.

Earth is the second doc to top the $1 million mark in 2009; the first was Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir, now at $2,273,903. Here's a rundown of the top ten highest grossing docs of the year so far:

1) Earth (Dirs.: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield):                    $15,217,689

2) Waltz with Bashir (Dir.: Ari Folman)                                   $  2,273,903

3) The Cross: The Arthur Blessit Story (Dir.: Matthew Crouch)  $   675,000

4) Valentino: The Last Emperor (Dir.: Matt Tyrnauer):               $   571,977

5) Every Little Step (Dirs.: Adam Del Deo, James D. Stern):      $   151,200

6) Brothers at War (Dir.: Jake Rademacher):                            $   113,674

7) Ballerina (Dir.: Bertrand Normand):                                      $     98,616

8) Enlighten Up! (Dir.: Kate Churchill):                                     $     93,311

9) Examined Life (Dir.: Astra Taylor):                                       $     87,700

10) Tyson (Dir.: James Toback):                                              $    85,046