Documentary film is critical to our culture and our democracy. When the DVD became the default media format of our time, the ability of filmmakers to make fair use of copyrighted video clips became compromised. Because “ripping” a DVD requires bypassing the DVD’s “technological protection measure”, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act made the act of “ripping” a DVD illegal even in situations where the doctrine of fair use permits filmmakers to use the material on the DVDs without permission.

Fair use is a critical part of documentary filmmaking. For over a century, filmmakers have had the right to make fair use of copyrighted work in their films. Using the footage is still totally legal under fair use; however, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes sure that ripping a Blu-Ray is a crime. This law undermines filmmakers’ ability to utilize fair use with the footage in their films.

Some light shone through in July 2010 when documentary filmmakers won a three-year exemption that allows a filmmaker to take materials from DVDs and use those film clips for criticism and commentary. This year, the IDA and Kartemquin films together will be requesting that this exemption be renewed to allow all filmmakers to obtain the film clips they need under protection of the law. To do so, WE NEED YOUR HELP.

Check out our questions regarding your experience with fair use and the DMCA’s current restrictions. If you have an account of your experience that you would like to tell, please submit your story using our online form or send them to DMCAstories@law.usc.edu.

We need as many responses as possible! We’d like to hear from you as soon as possible in order to meet the deadline. Of course, we’d still love to hear from you after the November 4 deadline to help in fighting this fight to preserve our fair use rights.

Thank you so much for your help!

Editor's Note: Sara Nesson's Poster Girl airs this month on HBO. Below is an interview we conducted with Nesson last February in conjunction with her film having been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

In the days leading up to DocuDay LA and DocuDays NY, we at IDA will be introducing--and in some cases, re-introducing--our community to the filmmakers whose work has been nominated for an Academy Award for either Best Documentary Feature or Best Documentary Short Subject. As we did in conjunction with last summer's DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, we have asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far, and the impact of an Academy Award nomination.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Sara Nesson, director/producer of Poster Girl (Prod.: Mitchell Block), which is nominated in the Documentary Short Subject category.

Synopsis: Poster Girl is the story of Robynn Murray, an all-American high-school cheerleader turned "poster girl" for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine's cover shot. Now home from Iraq, her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Shot and directed by first-time filmmaker Sara Nesson, Poster Girl is an emotionally raw documentary that follows Robynn over the course of two years as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption, using art and poetry to redefine her life.

IDA:  How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Sara Nesson: I went to University of Vermont (Class of '97), and although they didn't have a film program when I was there, I did my senior thesis making my first film while studying abroad in Italy. My dad, Bob Nesson, is also a doc filmmaker, so it's in my blood. His advice to me was to avoid being a filmmaker at all costs and that selling insurance is a more stable profession. Of course, he waited to tell me that while we were stranded in Siberia on the Koni Peninsula for 12 days. That's a longer story.

IDA: What inspired you to make Poster Girl?

SN: Before PTSD was of national interest, I met a group of very young veterans who had just returned home from the war in Iraq. They were emotionally very damaged and trying to make sense of their lives as mostly hidden members of society. Yet, in their raw state of mind, they were open to sharing their stories with me, defying the stereotype I had held that veterans did not "talk about it."

Before Poster Girl, I was making Iraq Paper Scissors, which focused on the Combat Paper Project. The film followed a group of veterans transforming their military uniforms into hand-made paper, books and unique works of art. The vets were literally cutting, beating and shredding the fibers of their old "rags" into fiber. This was the beginning of a very long and slow journey to process their emotional trauma and reconcile their experiences at war.

My goal for making Poster Girl was to break through the cultural disconnect between veterans and civilians. I wanted to bridge that gap by showing the struggle and healing journey of one person. In this case, I was lucky to find Robynn Murray, whose voice was so powerful; I knew she could be a voice for the thousands that were struggling alone.

IDA: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?

SN: The veterans I was working with were very weary of the media and had very little trust of civilians in general. Working with anyone who has trauma is difficult because you take on a lot of their suffering. I had to learn to be patient and I never tried to control them for the sake of the film; they always came first. I also made a video for them to use to promote the Combat Paper Project. They saw the value in what I was doing for them, helping to spread their message.

I devoted several years of my life to this film, and I got very close to the vets--maybe too close. We had a lot of ups and downs, but I have a very good relationship with all of them, especially Robynn.

IDA: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?

SN: After two years of following vets around the country for Iraq Paper Scissors, I knew I needed a deeper focus for the film. I had been a one-woman crew, filming and doing sound while directing and producing. I needed a fresh perspective.

In 2009, I took Mitchell Block's IDA Producing Workshop in Los Angeles, and he suggested that one of the veterans in the film, Robynn, a powerful, articulate woman, and former machine gunner, should be the subject of a separate film. Mitchell and I worked together to develop Poster Girl, and a long-distance, LA/NY producing/directing team was forged.  

IDA:  As you've screened Poster Girl--whether on the festival circuit, in screening rooms or in living rooms--how have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions?

SN: It's all been very positive. I have men coming up to me and telling me that they never cry, but they cried throughout this film. I think the film is opening people up emotionally. Robynn has a way of affecting people that way. She is just so honest and raw and her voice shivers with pain. It's hard to not feel for what she is going through.

I just showed the film at the Athena Film Festival, and a woman approached me after the screening and asked if I could share my film with her friend's son who is at West Point and wants to join the Marines. I just received an e-mail from a mother, asking me to help her bring understanding to her son's decision to enlist.

I feel so rewarded by this. I feel that if I can help to shed light on the consequences of war, it may not change peoples' minds about enlisting, but maybe it will help veterans cope with trauma once they have seen how someone else like Robynn learned to deal with it.

IDA: Where were you when you first heard about your Academy Award nomination? 

SN: I was standing in my kitchen in Brooklyn. My editor at HBO, Geof Bartz,called and said, "Congratulations." I couldn't react until I saw the film posted on the Academy website. When I saw it, I just started shouting, "I'm going to the Oscars!"

IDA: Although it's only been a month since the announcement, how do you anticipate this nomination will impact your career as a filmmaker? 

SN: It's an amazing feeling to know that I have finally earned credibility as a filmmaker. With a nomination now attached to my name, I feel it will bring more opportunity to continue to do what I love, but hopefully this time with financial backing!

IDA: What docs or docmakers have served as inspirations for you?

SN: My dad, Bob Nesson. I grew up watching his films and being inspired by his thirst for learning and adventure. Born into Brothels was the first documentary I saw that got me excited about making film a work of art and a vérité journey. I love the films of Ondi Timoner, Ellen Kuras, Kate Davis, Dana Shapiro, Ross Kauffman, Jeremiah Zagar and the latest, Banksy.

Poster Girl will be screening Saturday, February 26, at 11:40 a.m., as part of DocuDay LA at the Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills, and Sunday, February 27, at 12:05 p.m., at DocuDays NY at The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan.

Director and cinematographer Goro Toshima doesn't set out to find individuals on the margins of society. He's drawn to telling the stories of those whom he connects with personally. This tendency is highlighted in the way he began his most recent documentary short, Broken Doors: after reading an article in LA Weekly about a homeless youth named Rico, Toshima set out to find him with no plans or intentions other than speaking with him. Thankfully, he did plan enough to bring his camera.

What followed this initial meeting was six months of trust between subject and filmmaker as Rico allowed Toshima to document the daily struggles he and his girlfriend Starr face living on the streets of Hollywood. At times so intimate we forget the filmmaker was ever present, Broken Doors is a poignant record of the lives of two young adults wrestling with their grim reality.

This multi-award-winning short subject is currently in the running for Best Short at the 2011 IDA Documentary Awards. In light of this recent nomination, we sat down with writer, director and cinematographer Goro Toshima to discuss his background, his inspirations, and why 15 minutes is all it takes.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Goro Toshima: In high school and college I was taking a lot of pictures and doing a lot of photography. After college I kind of fell into this job working for this production company that was doing short pieces for Japanese TV. They would call the production company or we would pitch ideas to the network about some New York story and then we would make a two- to three-minute news piece. But that was news; it wasn't really documentary.

I was always interested in documentaries, and around that time I was thinking of starting to get into documentary work. I ended up applying to a graduate program for documentary filmmaking, which I got into. I graduated from Stanford, [which] has a small documentary program. After I finished that degree I started freelancing in the Bay Area, where there are tons of independent documentary filmmakers. So I started freelancing, doing kind of bullshit work filing or paginating transcripts. For me it was kind of frustrating because it never really led to anything. I was bouncing from one office PA job to another office PA job.

I think I was doing that for five years, and then I decided that I really wanted to make my own films. I started shooting A Hard Straight on my own. Eventually I got ITVS funding for A Hard Straight and was able to not work for other people and just focus on that project for a couple years.  

IDA: How did you meet Rico and Starr?

GT: I saw this article in which Rico was mentioned. I tracked him down and met with him, talked with him and started filming with him.

IDA: And you met Starr that way too?

GT: Yeah, through Rico.  

IDA: What was it that made their story one you had to tell?

GT: I think it was a combination of a lot of things. When I first met them, I didn't know them that well. I just met them for 15 minutes and said, "Let's start filming."  I'd been in LA for a few years, and driving up and down Hollywood [Blvd.] I saw all the street kids. I wanted to do something local; something about street kids would be an interesting film.

With Rico and Starr in particular, the main thing was that they were a couple. At the time they were very close. They really depended on each other, and I thought that dynamic was interesting. They're in love, they're a couple, and they're on the streets. Their situation was interesting--them talking about the turbulence in their life and how unpredictable it was, and the struggles that they have to go through every day of being homeless. I thought all that would make for an interesting film.

IDA: So you only knew them for 15 minutes before you started shooting?

GT: Yeah. It wasn't the smartest idea!

IDA: But it doesn't seem like the camera is in the way at all. You seem to be there for their most interesting moments. How did you enter into their lives in such close quarters without the camera getting in the way?  

GT: When we were filming, we did spend a lot of time together. It was also just kind of getting them comfortable. First of all, they felt comfortable with me as a person. Even without the camera, just hanging out, they felt comfortable with me. I think one of the things was that they don't have a lot of adult figures in their lives. With me, I think they felt that they could trust me. I was this adult figure who they could confide in and talk to about stuff. I think that was a relationship that was important to them, so they felt comfortable.

IDA: What were some challenges you encountered when making this film? I imagine it was hard to not become emotionally involved.

GT: I would never do a project like this again. After a couple months it just got so difficult watching them go through what they went through. The most difficult was filming with them and then leaving them after filming and coming home to my house, which is not a great house, but compared to what they live in, it's pretty luxurious. Seeing what they went through was obviously difficult and frustrating.

Your impulse is, you want to help them. In a lot of ways I did try to help them with suggestions and to just try to steer them in the right direction. Ultimately, especially for something like our relationship, there is only so much you could do for them.

Both of them had just horrible childhoods. They have really deep, deep issues that they need help with. As a documentary filmmaker, I'm not able or equipped to help them in the ways they need to be helped. I think that was the most frustrating part--wanting to help but knowing that you can't do what needs to get done.

IDA: Your previous film, A Hard Straight, deals with other characters that are similarly on the edge of society. Do you find that you gravitate toward telling the stories?

GT: It's not like it's a particular interest of mine. It just happened that I made A Hard Straight. I didn't stumble upon Broken Doors, but it wasn't an intentional thing. It's not a theme I'm trying to pursue. The thing that does interest me is that for both those films was these people who have serious challenges in their lives. I think in terms of doc filmmaking and telling stories in the documentary format, those [challenges] are thematically an interesting subject. I wouldn't say it's a theme of the films I'm interested in making. It just happened to be the two films that I happened to make.

IDA: The skateboarding scene in the parking garage was very cinematic and almost meditative. Can you tell me how that scene came to be?

GT: Basically I was just hanging out with Rico one day, and he was like, "Me and my friends are going to go skateboarding. Let's go film it." I sort of hopped on a skateboard. I know how to skateboard and surf so it was easy for me to shoot it.

At the time I was thinking that I had so much footage of bad shit happening in their lives that was sort of depressing. At the time I was really hoping for more light themes. For instance, there's that scene where they're dancing at Venice Beach. I wanted to do more scenes like that where it showed the fun side of their lives. When we did the skateboarding scene, I was really happy because I thought that was how I would use that particular footage, [as] something that showed something a little lighter in their lives.

IDA: How much time did you spend shooting the film?

GT: I would say over the course of six months or so.

IDA: How many hours of footage did you end up with?

GT: That's kind of difficult to answer because I was shooting on P2 [cards]. These days, you measure in gigabytes instead of hours. I had something like two terabytes or a terabyte and a half. If I were to guess, I would say maybe 50 or 60 hours. A typical documentary has about 100 to 200 hours, but this was a short.

IDA: Did you set out with the intention of making a short?

GT: No, I actually set out with the intension of making the feature. As I was shooting and shooting and tracking the story, [I was] thinking in my head what the story was going to be as I was filming. The thing is, not a lot happens in their lives. There are moments that are super unpredictable and dramatic, like they lose their place, or Starr gets pregnant, or Starr gets the abortion. But I'd say in general, their lives are kind of static. There's not much movement in their lives. The same thing was happening over and over. Rico and Starr lost their place when I was filming with them two or three times, and Starr actually got pregnant a couple of times. It was sort of the same thing repeating itself. I cut a feature-length version and started getting feedback. Everyone was saying it was cyclical and too repetitive. At one point I just decided to contain it into a short.

IDA: Who are other filmmakers that inform your work or inspire you?

GT: I'd say the people who inform or inspire my work the most are my friends who work in documentary. There's this guy Mark Becker, who's a good friend of mine. He helped me a lot with this film. This guy named Daniel Baer, another independent documentary filmmaker; a friend of mine, Tim Roberts, who's an editor. Those were the people who I went to Stanford with who were the closest to me in terms of filmmaking and who inspire me the most.

IDA: What has the audience reaction been when you screen this film? Have you been surprised by those reactions?

GT: It's a little bit hard to gauge because it's gotten into festivals, and I've gone to festivals but there haven't been big audiences as the screenings I've been to. I get the basic questions of how I found them and how they're doing, and what it was like filming with them. The reactions are more of curiosity about Rico and Starr and my relationship with them. It's a little difficult to gauge a general audience reaction because I haven't been exposed to a lot of audience reaction yet.

Position Among the Stars, the final installment of Dutch-Indonesian filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich's trilogy about the struggles and hopes of an Indonesian family amid the tumultuous socio-political changes that country has undergone in the past decade, earned top awards at IDFA and Sundance this past year. With the previous films in the trilogy, Eye of the Day (2001) and Shape of the Moon (2004), Position Among the Stars follows the Sjamsuddin family--Rumidjah, the grandmother and de facto matriarch; Bakti, her son; and Tari, her teenage granddaughter and Bakti's niece--as they negotiate life in the slums of Jakarta.

Domestic friction abounds here: Rumidjah and Bakti both pin their hopes on Tari, a bright but rebellious secondary school student, to graduate and go on to university; Bakti struggles to get by as a neighborhood manager, while spending time raising fighting fish--much to the dismay of his long-suffering wife, Sri, who, in a moment of rage, fries them; and Rumidjah and Bakti differ in their respective faiths--she's a Christian, he recently converted to Islam.

It takes a wise and patient filmmaker to capture the poetry and complexity of this family melodrama, and Helmrich delivers.  Through a remarkably intimate cinema-vérité style that he calls Single Shot Cinema, which emphasizes camera movement and long takes, the filmmaker unveils both the universal in the Sjamsuddin family and the intrinsic in Indonesian culture, weaving in interstitial scenes of an armless beggar who operates a cell phone with her foot, and a little boy running through the alleys of Jakarta.

Documentary spoke with Helmrich in between screenings of Position Among the Stars at the Los Angeles Film Festival last June.

How did you develop Single Shot Cinema?

Leonard Retel Helmrich: Well, my background is actually in fiction, and in fiction you always shoot and cover the scenes from the inside, and that's actually what I wanted to do when I switched to documentary at the beginning of the '90s. Then I thought, you always have to be an observer from the outside [in documentary].  I didn't want that, and I did not want to manipulate because in fiction you can manipulate the situation, while in documentary you cannot.

Then I found that the best way to not manipulate but still cover a scene from the inside is to be part of the event itself. But that doesn't always mean that you have to be physically there; you are just one of all the people who are experiencing something in one place. And that was quite a hassle with the big cameras at the beginning of the '90s, so I couldn't develop it right. But later in the 90s, with the DV cameras, you could do that.

And it's all kind of a mindset--being part of a moment, among the people, and shooting scenes from the inside, from all angles, which is normally only done in fiction--without manipulating the situation. The only way to do that was Single Shot Cinema. You can only cover a scene if you also capture all the nuances in between the different moments and elements and objects that are interacting with each other.

In order to be able to capture all these nuances, there are certain things you cannot do and certain things you can do. I don't use panning movements, but I do use orbital movements. I always like the relation between different objects in order to capture things as much as possible from the inside. And, according to Andre Bazin, the film critic from the '50s, who also inspired me to develop this technique, when you shoot something, you have to shoot it in the pace of reality. I call it temporal continuity. You have to use camera movements as main narratives; it becomes a different film language. It's not the frame that's the focus; it's the movement of the camera. The movement of the camera, according to Bazin, is the essence of cinematography.

There are some specific aspects of your work that struck me, particularly with Position Among the Stars. One is your affinity for nature. The dewdrops on the blade of grass...what you captured within those dewdrops, following a cockroach, following rats... How does nature figure in your work?

For me, nature is such an important element, especially in Indonesia, where there are always insects crawling around, lizards on the wall or cats walking around. I'm just aware of it.

Also, I want to use this family in my film as a microcosm for what's happening in the whole country--the political changes, the economic changes. In order for viewers to understand this, you have to go deeper, to a smaller world, to ensure that you [shift] in perspective from small to big and from big to small.

You capture scenes at remarkably low angles. In one scene, you're filming a cockroach's view of a street, you follow this cockroach up to the rooftop, then you shoot Bakti from the cockroach's point of view. How did you do that?

I have a special device called a Steadywing. It folds underneath the camera, and when you're filming you can unfold it during shooting and you can almost fly around. You can go very low to the ground, you can go high up to the ceiling--you're very free and still very steady. So steadiness and flexibility are very important in order to move your camera around. Then you can use your camera like you write; you describe the scenes with your camera movements.

That's actually the essence of Single Shot Cinema--capturing the moment as much as possible in one shot. Since reality is always longer than you can use in your film, you capture everything in one shot. Then it'll always be possible to condense it in shorter scenes without having to think of editing too much; you can always cut from movement into movement. That gives you all the freedom to go over very low surfaces, high ceilings, everything.

And that's what enabled you to follow that boy through the streets? How did you achieve that scene?

Well, it started off with very small things: The little boy started running suddenly, and I ran after him. I was behind him, then I managed to be in front of him, so I could film him. It was so nice that these shots were captured, and I thought, "Now I have to build it out to a more cinematographic story."  I built a special crane device from a bamboo stick, a kind of joint so I would be able to be move the camera with some ropes. I could control the camera as if it were a marionette.

So much of documentary is about achieving that sense of trust so you can capture intimate, very emotional moments. There is a particularly tense scene in the film-the confrontation between Bakti and Tari--and after the screening at Sundance, you talked about holding the camera away from you while filming that scene.

I'm never behind the camera. I always have my camera beside me or above me or underneath me, but not where I'm standing; the Steadywing enables you to do that in a very gentle way. When I was shooting that scene, I saw what was happening. Bakti was angry at his niece and he called her, so she had to come downstairs. I had the camera in front and then suddenly he slapped her. It really shocked me that he was doing that. Then he pushed her into her room. If you are part of an event, you are also responsible for what's happening, so if he had gone too far, I would have halted him.

I always had my camera with me. At a conscious level, you can say, I'm here physically; that's who I am: the camera goes in my hand and goes to my emotional point of view. My physical point of view is where my eyes are, but my emotional point of view is where the camera is. So I try to find those camera angles that you normally wouldn't use.

Is it just from years of experience of knowing what's in the viewfinder or frame that you can keep your camera out there and know what you're capturing?

Well, many times I don't know--I'm just pointing the camera in the right direction and I know already that angle would be good because I taught myself how to shoot without looking through the viewfinder. I just check it. Sometimes, especially in emotional moments, it's not always that you have to look at the faces of the people; it's also the moment itself.

I remember that scene of Bakti's wife frying his prize fighting fish. He then demolished her store and all the rubbish was lying on the ground. She was standing in it, shouting at him. I went with the camera to the rubbish and filmed over it. That moment I remembered that she was crying, Bakti was sitting there complaining--and I did not want to see the faces; I wanted to shoot the damage done. I had the feeling of a scene from Taxi Driver, at the very end, after the shoot-out and the camera goes over the whole situation. So I just follow my intuition. Where my view would go in reality, that's where I'll go with the camera.

You are both the director and the cinematographer. Is there a challenge of thinking as a director vs. thinking as a cinematographer?  

For me as a director, cinematographer and also a sound recordist, there is no difference between them. So I don't separate them. It's like a painter-you don't give the brush to someone else and say, Can you put this line here from left to right?

When you're filming a scene, how much do you think ahead to the editing room?

I'm thinking ahead mostly at the very end--the moment I have a feeling that I think I have seen a good beginning, a good middle and a good end.

When I'm shooting, I try to be in a kind of trance--still aware of what I'm shooting, but not thinking of the editing too much. I just film the details of the moment , then slowly pull out when the whole drama fades away. Then I become aware of what I've seen, and then I think, Will I understand everything that's in the scene? If I feel that this scene is complete, then I'm thinking of what angles may be used for an introduction or ending of the scene-and I'm also thinking of sound. Then I keep running the camera and I just shoot atmospheric sound.

What kind of cameras did you use for Position Among the Stars?

I shot with the Canon HVX A1. I actually used five different cameras, including that one; a JVC Ethereal, which is what I used for the cockroaches, for instance, because it was very good in micro; the Sony A1; and the Contour HD, which is a very small camera, but very good in wide angle. I also used a bigger camera for the little boy running that is fantastic for crane shots because they're so small and light. You don't need counterweights, so I just use a stick. I don't even have to lift it with both hands because then you'll be unstable. Just put it on the ground, put your foot there and it will not slide away. Then with a rope you pull it up.

There are a number of interstitial pieces in the film that are so poetic--for example, the armless woman who operates a cell phone with a foot. Was it a challenge to figure out how to fit these moments into the story?

In The Eye of the Day, we had lots of these moments of people who were not related to each other, who didn't know each other. The storyline was less clear, but I was very free to use these kinds of moments.

I still wanted to have the freedom to have sidesteps. That's why at the beginning, just to expose Jakarta as a city and what it looks like--and using this metaphor of how people live--I thought of the woman with no arms who could still operate the cell phone while begging. It was quite striking.

Going back to Single Shot Cinema, you teach workshops around the world, and you have a position at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute now as an adjunct professor. In teaching this, what are your goals and objectives, and what you do hope the students will take from it?

Film language was for a long time quite stuck into a fixed way of storytelling, editing and framing. I think Single Shot Cinema can help to bring it further. When you look at the whole history of how the language has evolved, it's evolved out of the technical changes of what happened in film. And those changes are happening quicker and more frequently, so you have to be ahead of that. One of the things that I now promote is using orbital camera movements, where you put that moment in its surroundings.  You can use orbital camera movement for dramatic reasons and shoot by intuition.

Young people understand film language so well. At NYU Abu Dhabai, they had bought many of the Canon 7D cameras--the photo cameras you can use for shooting. But I heard that many of the younger people had a problem with depth-of-field because that's not their way of thinking. They want to be free, move around and that's a hassle because depth-of-field is actually a photography way of thinking, not a cinematography way of thinking. If you want to think as a cinematographer, instead of using depth of field, you move gently with the camera--and then you also have the same feeling as with depth of field. That's what I want to teach.

Going back to old school, who were your influences, particularly in bdocumentary, both directors and cinematographers?

When it comes to documentary, of course the direct cinema or cinema vérité people, even though they didn't have the freedom yet to move like I do; the cameras were too bulky. But still, I know what they wanted to achieve, what they were aiming for, and they were very good at it. Further on, I always liked documentaries about nature. And there are many fiction filmmakers like Bertolucci and Visconti, when he goes for very slow, very nice movements. Or Sergio Leone, who used camera angles that were never thought of. Also Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa.

For more on Single Shot Cinema visit www.singleshotcinema.com. Position Among the Stars airs September 28 on HBO.

Thomas White is editor of Documentary magazine.

Every day the detonation of four million pounds of explosives echoes through the West Virginia mountains as a small army of companies lays bare the coal formed under the mountaintops over 200 million years ago. Like all wars, even environmental ones, there's collateral damage. 

"It's like living in Afghanistan or Pakistan," says Maria Gunnoe, whose childhood home where she still lives is just below ground zero for the Jupiter Mine's explosive mountaintop-clearing operations in Boone County.

Removing 800 feet of mountain also destroys the ancient hardwood forest, which not only provides shade and supports wildlife but also gives the land the ability to retain water when it rains. Without the protection of the forest, a devastating flood in 2000 put Gunnoe's home underwater and made her aware of the damage caused by what's become known as mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining.

The flooding was not the only problem caused by MTR. "The water and the air that our children breathe is the worst in the country," says Gunnoe. The blasting emits silica-laden dust from shale and granite, and if inhaled can lead to silicosis--obstructions on the lungs that block the flow of oxygen into the blood. This alone can be debilitating or even fatal but it also weakens the immune system and increases the likelihood of contracting other lung diseases such as tuberculosis or pneumonia. Studies have linked exposure to silica with various cancers (lung, stomach, lymphatic and skin) and kidney diseases such as nephritis and end-stage renal disease.

 "We've had medical studies done," Gunnoe asserts. "We're finding silica dust in our homes, even in our refrigerators. We as community members are breathing more dust than the workers. They have respirators; we're sitting ducks."

Instead of accepting defeat, Gunnoe transformed from waitress to activist, and now works full time to stop mountaintop removal. "I became an activist to fight for what's important to me," she maintains. Recognizing the importance of jobs to the community, she joined other activists to search for alternatives to blowing up the mountains. "We're at a crossroads now and we cannot sacrifice our planet for fossil fuels," she says. "They're poisoning our planet."

A study was commissioned that showed that the prevailing winds blowing across the tops of the ridges would provide more energy than the coal being blasted out of the ground. Building and maintaining wind energy devices would also provide more jobs than coal mining, and would not harm people or the environment. Unfortunately, once you destroy the mountaintops, what's left won't be high enough to be used as wind platforms. There's no second chance.

Gunnoe's fight to stop MTR and transform the Appalachian Mountains into a wind-energy powerhouse attracted filmmaker Bill Haney and his partners, who feature her in their feature-length documentary film The Last Mountain, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. "I found this amazing community who were pushing to do something extraordinary," says Haney. "They're reminiscent of the farmers who fought the Redcoats during the Revolutionary War--no chance of winning but they forge ahead and win. They're the wellspring of our democracy; democracy is a participatory sport."

The film makes it clear who the opposition is and how tough it's going to be to defeat them. We meet Don Blankenship, who until recently was the CEO of Massey Energy. He became known nationally in 2010 when the Massey-owned Upper Big Branch Mine exploded, killing 29 workers--the deadliest mine disaster in 40 years. This mine had over 3,000 safety violations before the explosion, but Blankenship was the master at delaying compliance. He was rewarded with a $6.8 million raise after the accident, pushing his salary to $17.8 million, not counting a deferred compensation package of $27.2 million that year. 

The film outlines how Blankenship earned his keep by "closing mines and re-opening them with non-union labor." The result: the majority of the miners in West Virginia who were once represented by the United Mine Workers are not today. According to author Michael Shnayerson, "Virtually none are." This has driven down wages, kept miners working longer hours and eliminated jobs. "It's like a jungle, where a jungle is the survival of the fittest," says Blankenship in the film.

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's also featured in the film, there are a lot fewer miners today in Blankenship's "jungle." Kennedy remembers first traveling to West Virginia with his father and meeting coal miners: "There were 156,000 miners there when I was growing up; now there are fewer than 18,000." It's the industry's strategy to "fire the workers and use machines instead." Of the 18,000, "There are only 6,000 in mountaintop removal."

Using an old union-busting tactic, the company brings in many of these workers from outside the state, lured by ads in USA Today and other papers. These are not permanent jobs or careers. A typical mountaintop removal mine is blown up, mined and covered up in nine years; the workers are as disposable as the mountain. The company plays on the miners' outsider status, pitting them against local activists who are concerned with their community's health and future.

The film takes us to a Labor Day rally Blankenship organizes for his workers and their families, and we see how he uses the stage like a magician who deceives his audience by shifting their attention to something else. In magic, it's called misdirection.

 "Environmental extremists are all endangering American labor," says Blankenship to the crowd. "In fact, they are making American labor the real endangered species."

The crowd eats it up. But the film shows us the reality as it takes us to towns that have been abandoned as a result of the company's policies to eliminate jobs. "We're living in a dead zone," says Gunnoe. 

The misdirection continues as Kennedy joins other activists at a rally outside the State Capitol to protest MTR. They're confronted by a counter-demonstration of angry miners who deny there are any negative health impacts from their work or the use of coal.  They blame chemical plants for mercury emissions and defend coal, since the "Indians" used it too. What appears to be a genuine outpouring of worker sentiment is questionable because, according to Kennedy, they were given the day off by Massey and told to stand in an area "organized as a barricade" between the protestors and the capitol building.

One of the film's best scenes takes place in a local café as Kennedy and Bill Raney, the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, an industry trade group, exchange views. Kennedy delivers a blistering denunciation of Massey for racking up 60,000 violations, many of which result in polluting waterways with toxins such as mercury. He says it's worse than "robbing a bank because a kid could eat a fish and get sick and get cancer." Raney retorts, "You guys from up North talk fast." His only defense is to point to the number of jobs coal brings to the state--to which Kennedy responds, "If this is so good for the economy of West Virginia, why is this one of the poorest states in the nation?"

While Raney and Blankenship rail about the outside agitators coming in to stir things up, they don't mention that the Frasure Creek Mine above Gunnoe's house is owned by Essar Energy, a company headquartered in Mumbai, India. "This is beginning to look like a banana republic," Kennedy observes. "This is the model for a colonial economy."

The film doesn't tackle the growing number of foreign companies engaged in mineral extraction in the US and the huge coal mining operations across the country that are feeding the growing energy demands of the developing world. But it does provide an in-depth analysis of the impact coal has on climate change, public health and the true costs of subsidies and tax breaks. It also lays out a prescription for a non-fossil-fuel future, making the case that developing wind power alone would provide more good paying jobs than coal does and these jobs won't contribute to the destruction of the planet. Instead they'll build a sustainable economy.

"Coal is a transition fuel," says Gunnoe. "We can't sacrifice our air, water and health. We've got to look to the future."

The Last Mountain opens June 3 in New York City and Washington, DC, through Dada Films, with a theatrical rollout across the country to follow.

Michael Rose is a writer, producer and director.

At first glance, Danfung Dennis' Hell and Back Again gives the impression of a highly cinematic fiction film. Terrence Malick's latest war epic, perhaps? The filmmaker's access is so intimate, the sound design so engaging, and the imagery so arresting, it's unfathomable that the film could be shot, and the sound recorded, by one man.

But it was. And its success is the result of a confluence of factors--right place, right time, right characters--but perhaps most remarkably, the filmmaker's unrelenting tenacity learned from years working as a war photographer, and the fairly recent development of the Canon 5D Mark II--the first (and perhaps still the best) DSLR camera that can record 1080p HD video.

The film takes us deep inside the war in Afghanistan, where we join a US Marine Corps unit on a mission to take down a Taliban stronghold in the South. Sergeant Nathan Harris leads the charge but is critically injured in battle, and returns home to his devoted wife in North Carolina to rehabilitate. The film contrasts his brutal, albeit exhilarating, experiences on the frontlines in Afghanistan with the mundanities of life back home--shifting back and forth between the grand vistas of the war-ravaged country, to the claustrophobic view from the back seat of Harris' car as his wife drives him to doctors' appointments and fast-food drive-thrus. We witness Harris' struggle with depression and his growing dependence on painkillers with a painful intimacy rarely captured in documentary film.

The 5D Mark II was the ideal camera for both settings, says the filmmaker, mainly because it's a small camera capable of superlative, cinematic-image quality. "I think that was one of my aims," Dennis maintains. "To borrow from the language of cinematic film and bring it to documentary...I wanted people to forget that they're watching a documentary, and when they realize that it's real, it hits them that much harder, and conveys that much more emotion."

Dennis spent eight months customizing his rig for shooting in Afghanistan, which he designed to fit into a backpack. "Other film productions have big crews and cases and cases of equipment. They're very slow-moving and encumbered and the shots reflect that:  They have to set up a tripod, and sort of manufacture their shots. When you work as a photographer, it's much more fluid; you have to stay light and be able to be dynamic to whatever's happening around you."

But as anyone who's used the 5D on a documentary knows, the camera has some serious issues that can impede shooting in dynamic, hand-held situations. "I think when they first designed the camera they had no idea that people would be using it to shoot films," he says. "They thought that they'd shoot Web clips and then take pictures, mostly... I knew there were weaknesses. The audio was a huge problem and the stabilization was a huge problem, so I spent a lot of time testing and re-testing and building some components to get it to do what I needed in these really difficult situations.

"I modified a Glidecam 2000 to accommodate the 5D and my sound equipment [which included a Sennheiser 66 shotgun mic and Sennheiser G2 wireless system running into a Beachtek DXA-2s duel XLR adaptor]," Dennis continues. "Because I was wearing body armour--quite a lot of other weight--I didn't want to be wearing the traditional kind of Steadicam vest. So I got my arms strong enough to hold the entire rig, which is 10 or 15 pounds, and be able to hold it for a couple of minutes for tracking shots. Then I would rest it onto my body armour with an attachment when I wasn't shooting, just to give my arm a break. I spent a lot of time practicing to be able to pull off these shots, to be able to get the kind of fluid motion and move with whomever I was moving with."

When he returned to North Carolina with Harris, Dennis went back to the drawing table and redesigned his rig to suit shooting in closer quarters and in more emotionally sensitive situations where a larger camera setup would prove too intrusive. This time, he used the smaller Zacuto Stryker kit to hold his camera and sound equipment and had a custom follow-focus unit built from a skateboard wheel.

But some issues couldn't be overcome by the rig, no matter how cleverly he modified it.

For one thing, the camera needed to shut off every 15 minutes or so to avoid overheating, especially in the 130-degree heat of Afghanistan. "There really wasn't any way around that," Dennis explains. "I only had one camera body, so I would just limit what I would shoot and only at the most important times would I let the camera roll. It was frustrating--some of the most interesting times I wanted to be filming more, the camera would shut itself off and there was nothing I could do except to let it cool. I also didn't know when I would have another chance to charge my batteries and I had a limited number of hard drives, so I had to carefully calculate how much I should be shooting to gauge the importance of everything that was happening around me and whether it was worth it to even turn the camera on or off."

Dust was also a major problem, Dennis says, and it nearly prevented him from getting those incredible shots from the opening of the film. "Just before the operation started, when all those helicopters were lifting off, there was this incredible amount of dust being stirred up," he recounts. "It got into the camera, and the shutter button got stuck in the down position. I only had about two minutes before the helicopter I was supposed to be on was leaving, and I wasn't able to start recording.

"All these esoteric questions flooded into my mind like, 'What am I doing here if I can't document this? Should I even get on when I don't have my tools? What's the purpose of being here?' And I just took my fingernail and scratched the dust out of the shutter button to pop it back up. I was able to begin recording, and I stepped onto the helicopter and began the operation. So, cleaning it every single day, getting as much dust out as possible was critical."

Keeping things in focus was yet another challenge, particularly because Dennis wanted to shoot at a very shallow depth of field to achieve a cinematic look. "I wanted to be able to ... isolate the subject and direct the viewer to certain points in the frame," he explains. "So I shot almost everything at f2.8 in Afghanistan, and then back in North Carolina even shallower depth of field, so f1.4, f1.2. At that depth of field, you're focused down to a couple of inches, so if anyone moved they'd go out of focus. So I had to re-rack or move with them, and with no auto focus, once you start recording my mind was constantly thinking about focus just my subject and keeping things sharp."

To do this, Dennis says the technicalities of the job have to become second nature. "Your fingers need to work with your mind in a way that doesn't require explicit thinking. It just automatically changes the exposure or the focus. Your tool has to become an extension of you."

But aside from all the specific technical challenges that he overcame, the question of motivation still remains. Where does the drive to go to such great lengths and at such great personal risk to achieve the aesthetic of this film? Turns out the answer lies in his background as a photographer: "It was the past work of other war photographers--mostly from Vietnam, Bosnia and Rwanda," he says. "I wanted to follow in that tradition of trying to contribute images that could burn into the collective consciousness and try to inform others of those realities and try and show what mistakes that society had made so that we don't repeat them.

"And it's very important to always be looking towards new technology to try to shake people from their indifference. It's easy to think of these wars as distant and complex and far away and as an abstraction, that they don't really affect our daily lives. So we do need stories to try to bring this war close to home."

Hell and Back Again is current screening at Film Forum in New York, through Docurama Films; the film opens in Los Angeles on October 14 at the Laemmle Monica, with additional opening dates scheduled through November.

Sarah Keenlyside is a Toronto-based producer and writer.