The summer granting cycle is open! Although they are competitive, grants are a great way to round out that ever growing budget. We've listed a few of our favorite documentary specific grants that are now accepting applications. Check them out and see if one is right for you.

THE CATAPULT FILM FUND
Catapult Film Fund opened it's summer round of applications on June 17th, but the actual deadline is August 19th. Catapult Film Fund provides development funding to documentary filmmakers who have a compelling story to tell, have secured access to their story and are ready to shoot and edit a piece for production fundraising purposes.

HOT DOCS
Blue Ice Group Documentary Fund is a grant supporting African American documentary filmmakers for development and production. Development grants of $3000 - $8000 and Production grants of $5000 - $40,000 are awarded to approximately four to 10 projects annually. Applications are accepted from June 18th - August 16th.

MACARTHUR FOUNDATION
The Foundation just announced its open call for documentary film proposals. Applications will be accepted starting June 27th, and the deadline is July 31st. The Media, Culture and Special Initiatives Program seeks to fund documentary projects that address the significant social challenges of our time or explore important but under-reported topics. Domestic and international topics are welcome.

ITVS FUNDING INITIATIVE
Open Call Round 1 deadline is coming up on June 28th. Open Call provides funds for single nonfiction public television programs on any subject, and from any viewpoint. The Diversity Development Fund (DDF) is also currently open for applications until August 16th. The DDF provides up to $15,000 in research and development funding to producers of color to develop single documentary programs for public television. Many of ITVS' other funding opportunities now accept applications year-round, so be sure to look into the International Initiative, LINCS and Series/Special Projects grants too.

THE FLEDGLING FUND
For those of you who will soon find out if you are one of The Fledgling Fund's spring cycle grantees - we wish you good luck! And for those of you who missed it, the next cycle for the Fund's Film and Creative Media Grant opens August 12th.These grants support outreach and audience engagement for social issue documentaries and range from smaller planning grants to implementation grants for projects that have a clear plan ready to launch.

For decades both documentary filmmakers and lovers of the documentary art form have relied on the Public Broadcasting Service to provide a forum where the best nonfiction work can reach the audience it deserves. PBS has become our nation's electronic commons—a space relatively free of commerce and commercialism, where diverse American voices can be heard over the for-profit media's roar.

But despite its vital role in our cultural life, PBS has always had the same perennial problem: how to pay the bills. Public funding was supposed to keep it independent, impartial and commercial free. But Congress has cut that funding again and again. Pledge breaks and tote bags can only carry a station so far. So a big donation from a major philanthropist can seem like a lifeline. The question becomes, does the lifeline come with strings?

In a recent New Yorker article, Jane Mayer lays out the case that when it comes to donations from conservative billionaire philanthropist David Koch, the answer is yes. Mayer reveals Koch's role on the boards of the PBS network's two flagship stations: WGBH-Boston and Thirteen/WNET-New York. She also takes a hard look at WNET President Neal Shapiro's efforts to placate Koch when a documentary critical of the Koch family, Alex Gibney's Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, aired on the PBS/Independent Television Service (ITVS) series, Independent Lens.

According to Mayer, Shapiro threatened to ban Independent Lens from the WNET schedule—a move that could be fatal to ITVS, given that New York is the largest media market in the country. He also rewrote the film’s introduction and staged a round table discussion after it aired to soften its impact. But despite Shapiro’s efforts, Koch eventually resigned from the WNET board—a move his critics applauded but which cost the station a promised seven-figure donation to its capital campaign.

There’s little doubt that filmmakers and fans of documentaries and PBS should be troubled by these revelations. Mayer makes a convincing case that at best Shapiro violated PBS’s vital commitment to “shielding the creative and editorial processes from political pressure or improper influence from funders or other sources.”

Mayer also reports that Shapiro’s flare-up may have had an impact on a second film project as well: Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's upcoming Citizen Koch, a fiscally sponsored project of the IDA, and a recipient of a grant from IDA's Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund. An uncompromising look at the impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision unleashing unlimited corporate money into politics, Citizen Koch focuses in part on the roles played by David Koch and his brother Charles in underwriting conservative causes and politicians.

Deal and Lessin told Mayer they submitted written and video proposals for the project, then called Citizen Corp, to ITVS and received a positive response. The filmmakers and ITVS entered negotiations for a license to broadcast the film on PBS. But five months after Gibney's Park Avenue aired, the negotiations ended without a contract.

According to an ITVS statement released today, it had "initially recommended the film Citizen Corp for production licensing based on a written proposal. Early cuts of the film, including the Sundance version, did not reflect the proposal, however, and ITVS eventually withdrew its offer of a production agreement to acquire public television exhibition rights."

Deal and Lessin are certain that fear of Koch was to blame. "This wasn’t a failed negotiation or a divergence of visions; it was censorship, pure and simple," they insist. "It’s the very thing our film is about—public servants bowing to pressures, direct or indirect, from high-dollar donors.

"After much thought, we decided to go public with our experience hoping that, like the film itself, it will spark conversation about how power wielded by high-dollar political donors like Charles and David Koch distorts the public dialogue."

This is the real lesson in Mayer's exposé. That PBS, our invaluable electronic commons, is under siege from interests devoted to profit and power, whose brand of philanthropy is defined not so much by altruism but by control. As long as it remains underfunded by Congress, PBS will be susceptible to pressures from wealthy activists like Koch.

Fortunately, there are two things we can do right now to start turning things around.

First, those who create content for PBS, and those who support them, must come together to develop strategies and tactics to deal with similar situations in the future, and to make sure that we continue to hold PBS to its own high standards.

Second, we need to free PBS and its affiliates from dependence on private donors by doing everything we can to ensure they get the full public funding necessary.

Only a combination of revitalized public funding and strict adherence to existing PBS standards for private donations will prevent conflicts of interest such as the ones that swirled around Koch and WNET. Only then will PBS be preserved as the diverse, impartial and commercial-free forum it has been for decades, and can continue to be for decades to come—if we commit ourselves to keeping it alive.

So call your congressperson, call your senator, call the President, and tell them to fund PBS. And support filmmaker advocacy by becoming a member of IDA.

Further reading:
Jane Mayer: A Word from Our Sponsor: Public television’s attempts to placate David Koch
Statement about "A Word From Our Sponsor," by Carl Deal & Tia Lessin
ITVS responds to New Yorker article on Park Avenue and Citizen Koch

The International Documentary Association has moved offices in Los Angeles. Please update your fundraising materials, both print and online, and make sure your donors have our new address.

New Address:

3470 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 980
Los Angeles, CA 90010

New Phone:

213 232-1660

Amy Halpin's extension: 209
Lisa Hasko's extension: 210

New Fax:

213 232-1669

As part of our ongoing Doc U educational series, we brought together the best fair use lawyers and researchers to help you understand what the DMCA exemption means for your non-fiction film.

Fair use is a concept that was created by the courts over 150 years ago. Courts recognized that it simply was not fair to say that every copying of a copyrighted work was a violation of the law. Some copying was necessary to promote the very creativity that the copyright law was designed to promote and protect. Documentary filmmakers have the right to use copyrighted material without payment or permission for certain socially valuable purposes such as criticism, commentary, for the purposes of reporting or in the classroom. If you are a documentary filmmaker who is exercising this right responsibly, then you are making “fair use” of the material and working within the parameters of the existing law.

We have always had this right to source footage from non-digital means. But what if the footage you want to use is on a DVD? According to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it is against the law to break the encryption built into the disc, and therefore illegal to rip that footage. In recent years, this law has been increasingly problematic for filmmakers who wish to make fair use of materials on digital media.

That's why in 2008, Professor Jack Lerner and the USC Gould School of Law's Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic (USC IPTLC), together with Michael C.Donaldson of Donaldson + Callif LLP, filed a request with the US Copyright Office seeking an exemption to the DMCA on behalf of all documentary filmmakers. This exemption, which was granted in 2010 and renewed in 2012, allows documentary filmmakers to rip materials from DVDs and online media for purposes of criticism and commentary in their films. This was a great victory for the non-fiction film community and creators everywhere who wish to talk about culture or society. But the exemption is dauntingly complex. How can we be clear what the DMCA still prohibits us from doing, and what the steps are needed to document your access to footage?

On Monday, April 22, IDA offered a panel seminar and discussion Doc U: Access Granted—A Guide to Fair Use and the DMCA for Doc Filmmakers, moderated by IDA Board member and USC Law Professor Jack Lerner. This seminar was aimed at helping guide documentary filmmakers toward the steps needed to ensure they are properly applying fair use. He was joined by Dean Cheley, Associate at the law firm of Donaldson + Callif, and USC IPTLC participants Garrett Lee and Katharine Trendacosta. Together, the four panelists walked attendees step-by-step through how to find the safe harbor for fair use, and the seven steps you should follow to determine whether you can rip from a DVD or online source.

Dean Cheley presented us with a few fairly simple questions you can ask yourself to determine whether you can rely on fair use when using copyrighted material in your film. If you can honestly answer the following three questions with an objective "yes," your use will comfortably fall under fair use:

1) Does the item illustrate or support a point that the filmmaker is trying to make in the documentary?

Verbatim copying doesn’t work without commentary. Take the example of the film Room 237, which showcases commentary running through the entire film over fair use clips from Kubrick’s canon. The footage used is contextualized by what is being discussed on the audio track and is used to illustrate specific points that the filmmaker is making in the documentary. Without that critical footage, this film would be series of talking heads, wouldn't have the same emotional or dramatic impact, and the filmmakers would not be able to properly explain what they or the subjects of the film were trying to say. The filmmaker needed to rely on fair use to create a more robust and informative film.

2) Does the filmmaker use only as much of the item as is reasonably appropriate to illustrate or support the point being made?

Back to Room 237. Even though director Rodney Ascher used around 30 minutes of footage from The Shining -- an amount that would have been staggering in many other contexts, accounting for almost one-fourth of the runtime of the Kubrick’s movie—everything on screen is reasonably appropriate to support or illustrate points that the interview subjects were positing. The footage is shown at regular speed, sped up, slowed down, played backwards, and superimposed, all in service of the points that the interview subjects are saying.

3) Is the connection between the item you are using and the point you are making obvious to the average viewer?

Often filmmakers can create a work with a specific idea in mind but it is not clear to third parties, at least not upon first exposure to the film. Try not to make the connection between the point you are trying to make and the fair use material too esoteric. Usually the problem can be solved by better contextualization. You want your footage to directly correlate with the points being made not only for clarity, but also so that your use falls more safely within the parameters of fair use.

Following Cheley’s presentation, Garrett Lee and Katharine Trendacosta of the USC IPTLC fleshed out their guide to utilizing the DMCA exemption. In other words, if you are all set on fair use but can’t access the footage because it’s behind encryption, can you make use of the documentary filmmakers’ exemption to the DMCA? Lee and Trendacosta recommended that filmmakers adhere to the following seven-step process in order to be sure that they are using the exemption properly:

1) Am I using the clip in a documentary film?
2) Is the clip from a motion picture (i.e., a moving image)?
3) Is the clip from a DVD or online source?
4) Am I using the clip for the purpose or commentary or criticism?
5) Am I only using a short portion?
6) Are there reasonable alternatives to ripping?
7) Do the alternatives that I found reasonable produce the quality I need to make my commentary or criticism?

If the footage you want to use meets all of the criteria listed above, and your use of it constitutes fair use, then congratulations! You have made fair use and can include your desired clip in your project.

The panel ended with questions from the audience. The full program can be viewed shortly on our Doc U Online homepage (available to members only).

For more on how to make fair use and other details about the DMCA, please refer to Michael Donaldson’s Clearance and Copyright: Everything the Independent Filmmaker Needs to Know.

In addition, you can download the free brochure The Documentary Filmmaker’s Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use (pdf).

Do you have a story about your experience making fair use under the current DMCA exemption? Have you had trouble obtaining material from DVDs, Blu-Ray, or other encrypted media? Have you had difficulties—or successes—utilizing the DMCA exemption? Document your experience and share it with the people who help ensure your continued protection under this law. Email your stories to DMCAstories@law.usc.edu.

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced today that the International Documentary Association is one of 817 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. The IDA is recommended for a $30,000 grant to support a new distinct online-home for Documentary magazine.

The NEA funds will be used to create a website that contains current issues of the print magazine, as well as an archive of 30 years of back issues. The funding will also help the IDA offer the magazine’s content on mobile and tablet devices, including the iPad.

Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, "The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all contribute to vibrant communities and memorable opportunities for the public to engage with the arts."

"Having an online home for Documentary will allow the IDA to better serve the documentary film community, as well as to preserve 30 years of information that has influenced as well as recorded the history of documentary filmmaking," explains Michael Lumpkin, IDA's Executive Director. "We are extremely honored to be recommended for NEA funding, and beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to better serve our community."

In August 2012, the NEA received 1,547 eligible applications for Art Works grants requesting more than $80 million in funding. Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. The 817 recommended NEA grants total $26.3 million and span 13 artistic disciplines and fields. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.

For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA website at arts.gov.

Documentary magazine has been in print since the IDA was founded in 1982 and delivers up-to-date, relevant content about the documentary film industry. Documentary is the leading authority on all things documentary – with a particular focus on the business of making documentary films. The publication currently prints quarterly with an average readership of over 15,000 for each issue.

The IDA is happy to announce the launch of the IDA Documentary Screening Series, invitation-only screenings of fifteen documentary features to take place annually between September and January. The new series will replace our DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase, a program designed to help filmmakers qualify their works for Oscar® consideration. We are making these changes in response to both the evolving needs of documentary filmmakers and recent changes in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' (AMPAS) qualifying rules for documentary features and shorts.

Over the last year, we have undergone an extensive internal audit, surveying our membership and the documentary community to gauge their needs and wants. Based on this feedback, we concluded that in addition to education, funding and advocacy, filmmakers are best served with a program that extends throughout the awards season and works in harmony with industry guilds and organizations to raise awareness for documentary films overall.

From 1997 through 2012, our DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Showcase helped to qualify outstanding new feature and short documentaries for Academy Award® consideration by providing its participants a commercial theatrical exhibition in Los Angeles and New York. During its sixteen year run, 30 films from DocuWeeks™ were nominated for an Academy Award® with 7 winning the Oscar®, including Smile Pinki (2008), Taxi To The Dark Side (2007) and The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006).

The new screening series will bring some of the year’s best documentary films to IDA members as well as members of AMPAS and industry guilds with the goal of increasing voting participation in the documentary award categories. Each screening will include a Q&A with the filmmakers, which will be recorded and made available on documentary.org, on our YouTube channel, and through the filmmakers themselves. We will share additional details about this new program in the coming months.

"As the industry evolves, so will we," says Executive Director Michael Lumpkin. "With this new screening series, along with programs like our annual IDA Documentary Awards and DocuDay, we will continue to celebrate and champion the art of documentary filmmaking worldwide."

For more on IDA's new screening series, see Steve Pond's exclusive on The Wrap.

To become a sponsor of the IDA Documentary Screening Series, please contact IDA's Development Director, Cindy Chyr at (213) 232-1660 x204 or cindy@documentary.org.  Sponsorship opportunities offer exceptional branding opportunities. Plus being a sponsor helps support the documentary film community!

Les Blank, whose scintillating portraits of Americana defined a six-decade career, died April 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif., of complications of bladder cancer.  He was 77.

He leaves behind a trove of poetic explorations into the lives of legends and unknowns alike—Lightinin' Hopkins and Leon Russell, as well as gap-toothed women, garlic and tea aficionados and Mardi Gras revelers. Legendary folklorist Alan Lomax mined this territory too, but Blank opened it up further and deeper, beyond the conventions of ethnographic filmmaking to a more resonant kind of poetry. (For more on Blank's canon and career, click here.)

And, of course, there's Werner Herzog, the subject of both Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe—the result of a bet he had lost to Errol Morris—and Burden of Dreams, the story of Herzog's epic struggle to make Fitzcarraldo. Herzog presented the 2011 IDA Career Achievement Award to Blank, citing his work as "always defining America, in a way."

In addition to the Career Achievement Award, Blank received the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award and, in 2007, the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contribution to the arts, which, according to an obituary in The New York Times, had only been given to two other filmmakers. The jury that year included filmmakers Taylor Hackford, Ken Burns, Steven Soderbergh, Mira Nair and Spike Jonze, as well as Thomas Luddy, a founder of the Telluride Film Festival. As a fitting final testament to his work, Blank was also to receive the 2013 Outstanding Achievement Award at the upcoming Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which will present a retrospective of his work. When the honor was announced last month, Charlotte Cooke, Hot Docs' director of programming, said in a statement,"His is an incredible body of work that explores culture, music, personality and beyond with grace, humor and the highest caliber of craft, and one which has also inspired generations of filmmakers."

In an interview with Documentary magazine, Blank mused about his work: "I try to find a fresh way of looking at the world around me and making some sense of it—hopefully something positive, something lasting that the world would want to see 100 years from now."

Blank is survived by two sons, Harrod and Beau, a daughter,  Ferris Robinson; and three grandchildren.

The International Documentary Association is now accepting proposals for the The Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, which provides production support for full-length documentary films. The Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund is made possible by a grant from The New York Community Trust.
 
Named in honor of the landmark documentary filmmaker, the Fund provides annual grants totaling $95,000 to be used in the creation of original, independent documentary films that illuminate pressing issues in the United States. In 2013, grants will be made to up to 6 projects that tell a compelling story and focus on one of Pare Lorentz's central concerns-the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all or the illumination of pressing social problems. The deadline to submit to this fund is Monday, April 22, 2013.

Launch Of FirstCom SoundFX Site A Game Changer
Producers and audio editors can now easily search, audition, and
download over 33 thousand premium, pre-cleared sound effects.

IDA Sponsors, FirstCom Music today announced the official launch party for FirstCom SoundFX at NAB 2013 in Las Vegas.  This new site is a rich and dynamic tool for producers to access thousands of quality online sound effects.  “Our clients needed a more effective way to search for sound effects,” says Carol Riffert, Vice President/General Manager for FirstCom Music. “To meet this need, we sought out and partnered with one of the industries most recognized sound editors, Rob Nokes.  Together we created a powerful, user-friendly sound effects site with a streamlined search, audition and download process.” The official launch party will take place at 3:00pm on Monday, April 8th in the FirstCom Music Booth #SL5820 .

Renowned sound editor Rob Nokes has traveled the globe in search of new sounds and now you can have access to this outstanding collection of sound effects and the dynamic online search tool that makes finding the right effect easy. "As a Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Effects Recordist / Designer, I strive to provide sound effects that enhance the filmmakers' story and enable the filmgoer to believe that they are immersed in the story with the characters. Recording and experiencing sounds from all over the world increases my knowledge and capability to select and create the best sound effects for the film,” says Rob.

Over the past few years, Rob has recorded fireworks in the Punta Del Este harbor in Uruguay, tropical fish in Saipan, spelunking the caves of Tinian, World War II planes, a Stuart Tank, spelunking the Christmas Caves in the Czech Republic, numerous Monasteries in Prague, WWII concentration camp, the steppes of Kazakhstan for indigenous voices and music, Chilean racetracks, the LA morgue, go-karts, modified cars, numerous dogs, football games, college basketball, junk yards, F-18 Jets, and much more. “I am excited to partner with FirstCom Music and to bring thousands of my best sound effects to the FirstCom SoundFX library," says Rob.

FirstCom Music, a leading music services provider, offers the most comprehensive musical selection worldwide. With more than 176,000 tracks, FirstCom Music is dedicated to providing high-quality, easy to license music to industry professionals.

FirstCom Music supports the documentary film community as a sponsor and major donor of the International Documentary Association.

For more information contact: Cristy Hyatt Coffey | Director of Marketing, FirstCom Music at 800.858.8880 or cristyc@firstcom.com