Declining ad revenue. New Media. Widespread layoffs. Paywalls. Pulitzers. And a controversial Australian named Julian Assange. 

In 2010, The New York Times made plenty of historic headlines.

And it was all caught on tape. 

Page One: Inside The New York Times was co-written by director Andrew Rossi (who was associate producer on the highly rated documentary Control Room) and producer Kate Novack--the two previously worked together on documentary Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven.  The film chronicles a year in the life of The New York Times, taking viewers inside the storied office building on Eighth Avenue, affording them up-close and personal perspectives on the intricacies of editorial decision-making and page-one meetings.  

Rossi's initial interest in the story came shortly after the financial crash of 2008, when newspapers across the country took a major economic nose-dive, and dozens across the country never came up for air. "There are some really smart people who were saying that, with the digital revolution, on the road to the future there are going to be some dead bodies, and some of those are places like The New York Times, and that's OK, that's part of progress," Rossi observes.  "And I felt that it would be valuable for everyone to take a step back and get a front seat in a place like the Times--and it didn't have to be the Times, it could have been The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, anywhere that has as its mandate the creation of original reporting. I thought the world needed to see what that kind of journalism takes to do."

The film primarily follows journalist David Carr, a member of the Times' media desk, who is brazenly optimistic and unapologetically brash, and happens to be a devout believer in the longevity of The Gray Lady. In fact, it was Carr who sparked the idea for the documentary. 

Rossi first met the journalist while shooting a documentary for HBO on Web 2.0 ventures, like Four Square. After talking to the grizzled newspaper vet about the future of print journalism, Rossi says, "This light bulb went off.

 "I realized that David could be a sort of Virgil character, leading us through some of the issues that are a part of the digital future," Rossi continues. "And I thought that the stakes for him--as somebody who's at a newspaper that people are speculating could go out of business, and somebody who's both a chronicler of a specific world but is also really specifically implicated by everything that's changing--the stakes were so high that he'd make an ideal protagonist."

It took about six months of discussions with the editors for Rossi to ultimately gain access to the building, no holds barred. By explaining his process--relative "fly-on-the-wall" journalism coupled with analytical sit-down interviews with those outside the walls of the Times building--Rossi convinced editors that his concept for the film was not bolstered by any sort of agenda, or even any expectations. "I was able to explain the way I wanted to make the film, and people basically felt comfortable participating," he says.

Armed with a Sony EX1 HD camera and a cell phone (with which he would constantly text Novack to get more information on some of the issues circulating the newsroom), Rossi spent at least three days a week at the office, sometimes all week, ultimately compiling about 250 hours of footage. While some difficulty arose when certain members of the newsroom chose not to be on camera, one of the more challenging aspects of filming in a fast-paced newsroom setting came from simple logistics: "I was trying to be both a cinematographer and a director, and a producer and a journalist, and trying to keep up with all the different strands of the story, while physically moving around from the third floor, where the media desk is located in the corner, to the fourth floor, where David's desk is, to the second floor, where the technology desk is, all the while texting my co-producer and co-writer, Kate Novack, who's doing research so that I would be informed enough to do an interview with Bill Keller on the days when they were releasing the Wikileaks information," Rossi explains, without taking a breath. 

"Juggling all those responsibilities was thrilling--I think that's the joy of making a documentary film," he maintains.  "But, it's also extremely challenging."

While Rossi certainly spent many hours sitting in the newsroom merely observing his subjects, he was also buried in a tangle of storylines and timetables that sometimes dictated where he needed to be at a given moment. "As part of trying to have a very small footprint, to not become an obstacle and get in the way of the journalists as they're working, I would have to coordinate to meet people while they were trying to do an interview," he reflects. "I would kind of keep track of everyone's schedules, and then still try to accommodate the spontaneous things that would emerge."

One of the more exciting moments during production came in April 2010, when the newspaper received reports of a controversial video posted on YouTube by WikiLeaks. "It really represented such a confluence of drama, the visual drama of [Times reporters] trying to produce that story, and also the meaning of WikiLeaks trying to put this video out on YouTube," Rossi asserts. "It represented everything that's happening in the media today, where NBC or The New York Times is sort of irrelevant in that equation."

This came after Rossi had been in the newsroom for about five months, and it was at this point that he knew he had enough significant footage to make the film. He kept production to a 14-month timetable because he felt it was important for the film to be released as soon as possible, "in order for it to have some impact on people's conversations and thoughts about journalism and maybe allow people to take some action." (Rossi and Carr have been involved with numerous lectures and discussions on the future of media in the months leading up to the film's release.)

 "Bill's tenure, his eight years at the paper, really represents a clear term," Rossi maintains. "He took over in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, he oversaw the corrections to reporting in the failures in the run-up to the Iraq War with Judy Miller and the WMD reporting, he has overseen these layoffs, and the murders/kidnappings/injuries to countless reporters and photographers who have been in war zones reporting under his watch, and he was there when the paywall went up. His stepping down now and [former managing editor] Jill Abramson taking over really crystallizes this idea of the movie almost representing a field manual for all the landmines that somebody taking over now will have to contend with."

Page One: Inside The New York Times opens in theaters June 17 through Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media. For more information,  click here.

Claire Walla is a New York-based freelance writer whose work has been published by the likes of American Cinematographer and VanityFair.com. She can be reached at claire.walla@gmail.com.

A girl stands in a desert landscape, swirling a hula hoop easily round her slender hips, intent on the Rubik's cube she swivels round and round, trying to solve the puzzle: One of the many images that comprise Kevin Macdonald's Life in a Day, the opening film of DocAviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, an image that might well describe the festival itself: intense, full of energy and curiosity, trying to do everything at once and, amazingly, succeeding, thriving in a hot and often harsh climate.

The festival was founded in 1999 by documentary filmmaker Ilana Tsur, who felt that docs deserved their own festival platform in Israel. Israeli documentaries have been enjoying the same surge of creativity and corresponding popularity experienced in the local feature film industry over the past 15 years, and the festival has become a significant presence on the cultural scene. Tsur resigned as artistic director last May; this year's festival, which ran from May 12 to 21, 2011, was marked by change and innovation as the first festival under the artistic direction of Sinai Abt, former head of Noga Communications Channel 8.

Going global in a big way, Abt chose to diverge from the DocAviv tradition of opening the festival with an Israeli film--perhaps a sign that local filmmaking has come of age and can now hold its own on the international playing field. Life in a Day, a YouTube project composed of user-generated footage, set the tone for this forward-looking fest, raising issues such as the impact of new technologies, access to and distribution of information, relationships between filmmakers and audiences, as well as identity and global culture. The film's editor, Joe Walker, was a guest of the festival and provided some insight into this very different process, saying, "We had no idea what the film was going to be until we started noticing trends."

DocAviv 2011 offered a packed program with a diverse array of strong films. Many of the directors were present at the screenings, fielding questions from inquisitive audiences, the conversations often carrying over to the hallways and terrace. The free-flowing, non-stop interaction between all festival participants--industry professionals, film students and the general public--is one of the outstanding features of DocAviv.

New forms and practices were the focus of two special workshops: Re:invent with Brian Newman, and a presentation by Sandra and Paul Fierlinger of their new online animation project in progress. After the workshop, the Fierlingers continued chatting with a group of Israeli animators in the library, talking about creating films that are intended for a new kind of audience on the Internet: an audience of one. Festival events at the Port of Tel Aviv had a Mediterranean feel, with open air screenings of music docs on the dock, and a two-day Food Doc program among the fruits and vegetables in the marketplace.

DocAviv's role in nurturing a generation of filmmakers can be seen in Tamar Tal's Life in Stills, winner of the Best Israeli Film award; Tal first participated with a student short four years ago. Personal and national history converge as 96-year-old Miriam Weissenstein and her grandson Ben fight to preserve the original Photohouse, home to an archive of photographs taken by Miriam and her late husband Rudi, documenting the first steps of the State of Israel and the city of Tel Aviv. Miriam's vivacious bold approach to life, the sometimes painful honesty of the relationship between Ben and Miriam and the tenacity of their devotion--to one another and to the family project--unfold in parallel to the centennial celebrations of Tel Aviv, a city that relentlessly reinvents itself. The complex relationship between the past and the future is conveyed through this intimate family portrait.

The images in Gianfranco Rosi's International Competition Award winner, El Sicario Room 164, written with Charles Bowden, are stark and simple: a man in a hotel room, his head covered, his features and identity hidden, describes his recruitment, training and actions as an assassin for a drug cartel. It's a horrifying reality where appearances have little connection to the truth, and an entire system of government and law enforcement functions efficiently to ensure the continued future of drug trafficking. As he speaks, his story takes form in the most traditional mode--drawn in his notebook in bold simple lines, the magic marker creating an eerie soundtrack for the film.

Another hooded figure, his hands creating artwork, declares, "What I do is a bit of a legal gray area," and raises issues of truth and identity in the art world. Banksy's film Exit Through the Gift Shop takes the viewer on a tour of street art, its practitioners and poseurs, while executing a mid-film role reversal that turns the camera and the interrogatory gaze on the documenter.

Questions of identity loom large in The Collaborator and his Family, directed by Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash. Ibrahim has been an informant to the Israelis. Following the shooting of his brother, also accused of collaborating with the Israelis, he flees Hebron for Tel Aviv with his family, despite not having an official permit. Caught between two cultures, the family belongs nowhere, living in constant fear of being detained by the police and deported, but since they're viewed as traitors in Hebron, they can no longer return home. The access the filmmakers received from Ibrahim and his family creates an intimate portrayal of the most marginalized members of society. The film offers a very different view of Tel Aviv--the poor neighborhoods in the southern part of the city, rarely seen in the media.

Efrat Shalom Danon's film Dreamers follows Ruhama, a teacher and screenwriter, and Tikva, a wigmaker and aspiring actress, in the making of a feature film. Both women belong to the Ultra Orthodox community, where some rabbinic authorities ban movies and television. Their search for artistic expression that will not conflict with the strict practices of their community, their courage and resilience make this film an inspiring adventure.

Identity, past and community all come together in Nick Brandestini's Darwin. In this former mining town of 35 in Death Valley, California, interviews with an assortment of individuals--filmed at a conversational distance, many in warm outdoor light--draw us close to their stories. As they reveal the layers of their past and present lives, one finds in Darwin a sense of tolerance and acceptance, an eclectic affirmation of life in the midst of the desert.

Ayelet Dekel is a writer living in Tel Aviv, and founder and editor of Midnight East, an online Israeli culture magazine.

In 2003 filmmakers Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley read a story in The New York Times about a development project that would bring the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn. But the story sounded more like a "funky press release" that didn't sit quite right with them. And rightly so. A few days later Galinsky saw a little green xerox poster that said, "Stop the Project," with a woman's phone number on it. Galinsky, who lives in Brooklyn with Hawley, called the number.

The woman turned out to be intrepid journalist/activist/writer Patti Hagan, who was concerned about the proposed Atlantic Yards Project long before anyone else knew much about it. The $4.9 billion venture, supported by local government supported by local government, and to be carried out by Forest City Ratner, one of the largest developers in New York City, included a new basketball arena, shops, restaurants and housing--all designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry. But in order to begin the project and "build a new community from scratch," people were going to be forced out of their homes, some of whom had been living there for generations.

This David-and-Goliath case of the big developer seizing private property--with compensation--in the name of "development" and "the public good" amounted to Eminent Domain abuse.

When Hagan started talking Galinsky's ear off, the seasoned filmmaker picked up his camera and said, "I'll be right there." This was the beginning of a very long road. But now, nearly nine years later, Battle for Brooklyn will have its US theatrical premiere in New York City on June 17.

This project, which has been an exercise in patience and perseverance, began with an education in both New York City politics and the proposed development plan and how it would affect the local community. Galinsky and Hawley began searching for characters and a storyline. Early on, the filmmakers were alerted that a loft-dweller named Daniel Goldstein might fight the developers, so they should pay attention to him.

It just so happened that Galinsky was acquainted with Goldstein. Not only had Goldstein done the graphic design for Galinsky and Hawley's Horns and Halos, but he was the college roommate of a good friend of Galinsky's, and this made getting initial access to Goldstein much easier. "We didn't know at the time that he would be the one who would fight to the end because there were many people fighting at that point," says Hawley. "But it did seem the way in to tell this story." This suited Galinsky and Hawley's filmmaking style, which is to make "character-driven films about people who push back against the system."

One by one the loft-dwellers settled with Forest City Ratner and moved out; within the first six months of shooting, all of the tenants except Goldstein had agreed to settle and had vacated the building. Goldstein's battle had begun, and the filmmakers hunkered down to follow the story for seven more years through innumerable community meetings, rallies and legal battles.

"We filmed a lot in the beginning," recalls Galinsky. "It was very intensive because there was so much confusion and everyone was trying to get a handle on it. And then it settled into almost like the trenches, and at that point there was a lot less shooting." Galinsky maintains that it became a challenge to figure out when not to shoot. Over time there were so many public meetings that if he filmed a meeting, it meant they would have three or four more hours of footage to contend with. Not only would they have to make decisions about whether or not the footage would actually make it into the film, but most of the time nothing really happens at a given meeting. Hawley recalls that there was a lot of deliberation about when to shoot, "Michael would be like, ‘Ah, there's another hearing tonight; should I shoot it?' And it would be a big discussion--is it going to go into the movie, is it not going to go in the movie?"

Sometimes, however, the decision would be made for them. With two small kids, they had certain priorities, says Galinsky. "And then we'd say, ‘You know it's bath night,'" and he'd skip the meeting.

But over the years the story evolved and they accumulated footage--Galinsky shoots and Hawley edits their projects--and even though they had interns logging footage part of the time, Hawley watched every frame in order to understand the emotional content. She put some scenes together while the story was still unfolding, but in the end she edited for a year-and-a-half, during which time she mined some 300-500 hours of footage.

It took a long time to figure out how to make more accessible the complexities of Eminent Domain, city politics and a divided community while crafting an emotionally engaging story. They toiled to find the right balance of meetings and politics to make sure audiences understood what was going on without boring them. Furthermore, the filmmakers worked hard to build Goldstein's character while giving a complete picture of how the impending development impacted an entire community.

"We realized we had to pull back on introducing characters," Hawley notes. "We needed to show that he is not alone. It wasn't just a personal fight; he was doing it on behalf of a huge community--but we couldn't really introduce them [other characters] as people."

During the editing process Galinsky and Hawley held numerous screenings, particularly in the last nine months. While they welcomed feedback, they would often use cell phone usage as a barometer for boredom. "We definitely took advice from people, but mostly we watched when people got bored," says Galinsky. "If someone checked a phone we made a note of that, and by the end of the screening process people stopped checking their phones."

Now making its way into the world, Battle for Brooklyn is a gripping, cinematic story with an epic character arc that condenses seven years into 93 minutes. The film deftly captures infuriating politics and tender personal moments as Goldstein ends one relationship, begins another, gets married and has a child, all while fighting to keep his home.

Battle for Brooklyn premiered in April at Hot Docs in Toronto to lively, enthusiastic audiences and great press. The positive reception by international audiences of both doc makers and doc aficionados alleviated worries that the film is too specific to New York. "It was gratifying to see that it does translate to an international audience, because all politics is local and people understand that," says Hawley.

Over the years, the Atlantic Yards project itself has received much media coverage, but Galinsky explains that the news coverage was complicated and limited at best. "Everything is led by news cycles and the news cycles were led by the developer, so the developer is going to control the narrative," he points out. "With all the millions of dollars that they spent on PR over the years, they definitely controlled the narrative as far as people in New York understanding what was going on. This film is our attempt to take back the narrative and say, ‘Well actually, this is from a different perspective of what happened.'"

In the nearly nine years since Galinsky and Hawley began working on Battle for Brooklyn, they have become more intertwined in their own community. Over time they have established roots, cultivated friendships and become very involved with their children's schools--the "bedrock of communities," says Galinsky.

In a very personal way, making this film solidified their understanding of community and the conviction that top-down development doesn't work. "The people in the community and their bonds together were so much more than just a building," Hawley reflects. "To hear from someone on top saying, ‘We're going to build a community from scratch, and take away peoples' homes in order to do this' deepened our understanding of what was going on, why it was wrong. To just uproot the existence of social networks was a very big deal, and it unveiled itself to us very slowly over the seven years."

Battle for Brooklyn has its US premiere June 3 at the Brooklyn Film Festival, then screened June 9 as part of the Rooftop Films Summer Series; the film opens June 17 at the Cinema Village Theatre in New York. Galinsky and Hawley are working on theatrical distribution in theaters across the US, including an August 19 premiere at the Laemmle Music Hall in Los Angeles. For more information, click here.

Laura Almo is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and writer.

Although the 2011 Cannes Film Festival was one of the most interesting, engaging and enjoyable editions in recent memory, there was only one documentary in the Official Selection (Out of Competition):  The Big Fix, from husband-and-wife team Josh and Rebecca Tickell, examines circumstances surrounding the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig-what scientists in the film call "the biggest cover-up in US history and the most devastating environmental catastrophe in human history."

Stories told by local fisherman and their families damaged not only by the loss of livelihood, but also by mysterious illnesses they've recently developed, makes it clear that something far greater and more sinister is going on.

Having been left in charge to "clean up" the spill by the EPA, BP prohibited all access to contaminated areas; by controlling the beaches, waterways and even the skies, the company concealed from the public and the media what they were doing. BP's covert procedures in the darkness of night make Rebecca Tickell's footage even more compelling; she slips through security to film huge truckloads of sand being dumped on the shoreline and US Coastguard planes spraying chemical dispersants on the ocean surface in unprecedented quantities--estimated at more than two million gallons.

Louisiana's battered economy hit by polluted waters, a poisoned fishing/seafood industry, and collapsed  tourism industry needed rescuing, so the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Obama Administration misrepresented the science and the contamination levels, and a mere three weeks later, declared the water safe to swim in, the beaches clean and white and the seafood safe to eat. President Obama, after swimming in a private, protected unaffected inlet with his daughter, proclaimed before the TV cameras, "Louisiana is back in business!"

The filmmakers make the connection between Big Oil and its powerful lobbyists in Washington, unlimited campaign financing, the banking industry, the economic collapse and US government and the Pentagon's dependency on BP for revenue and oil to run its war machine, etc.-and that's where the film loses its focus a bit, and the audience its patience.

It is enough to hear about Huey Long and Matthew Simmons, and listen to Senator Bernie Sanders and others eloquently describe the pervasive corruption within our government, our institutions, our society.  Jean-Michel Cousteau, for example, angrily refutes the denial and the cover-up of how great this catastrophe is: " Ninety percent of the sea coral on this blackened ocean floor is now dead, the entire food chain has been contaminated, there are holes in the ecosystem, it will  collapse." But the oil is still leaking and drilling has resumed in the Gulf of Mexico.

Which brings us to Iran and Im Film Nist, or This Is Not a Film.

The camera shows a man wandering from room to room inside a spacious, somewhat luxurious apartment in central Teheran. Outside, tall cranes swing back and forth within a jungle of concrete high rise housing blocks. A steady clatter of hammering, mechanical drilling, banging, the shrill of sirens and the crackle of gunshots that turn out to be firecrackers, make up this nerve- wracking soundtrack. This is how we meet Jafar Panahi, one of Iran's most statured and successful film directors, presently under house arrest in his noisy, gilded cage, being filmed by his friend and colleague Mojtaba Mirtohmasb.

Panahi's body of work includes The White Balloon, which won the Camera d'Or prize at Cannes in 1995; The Circle, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000; Crimson Gold, which won the 2003 Jury Prize in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section; and Offside, which won the Silver Bear at Berlin in 2006.  Panahi's films are often critical of the restrictions and constraints put on Iranian society by the ruling religious council; both The Circle and Crimson Gold are banned by the Islamic government of Iran.

Panahi's seat on the 2010 Cannes Jury remained vacant while he languished in a Teheran jail on a hunger strike, but international attention focused on his plight when actress Juliette Binoche held up a sign with "JAFAR PANAHI" written on it before the world's cameras, and he was released one week later.

In December 2010, Panahi was convicted by the Islamic Revolutionary Court for "colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country's national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic." He was sentenced to six years in prison and barred for 20 years from filmmaking, political activity, travelling abroad and giving interviews. Just before the Cannes festival began, organizers scheduled a special screening for This Is Not a Film after downloading it from a USB stick sent from Iran to Paris, buried in a cake.

This day-in-the-life video takes place on the 2,000-year-old Persian celebration of the Festival of Fire. As it unfolds, Panahi asks his friend to come over, as it's not safe to speak on the cell phone; he checks his e-mails, but the network is blocked; his answering machine records a message from his wife saying the family will return home late; he patiently feeds his daughter's enormous pet iguana; and he speaks with his lawyer, who says there is no news about his appeal. The six-year prison sentence might be reduced if international pressure is kept up. "This is not legal; this is not in the statue books," she says. "This is political," so anything can happen.

Mirtahmasb's camera catches a moment when Panahi's frustration surfaces and he leaves the room, but returns, declaring that this ban does not forbid him from reading aloud from his script or from acting out the parts. As he reads the lines, he blocks out areas on the carpet with camera tape and describes how the camera will follow the actor exiting the room and down the corridor. Almost a master class in film direction, the mise en scene is simple, precise, carefully thought out and economically crafted; we understand how Panahi the artist, who wrote his first book at the age of ten, cannot live without being able to telling stories. 

As the day lingers on, we learn there is trouble in the streets, and Mirtahmasb must leave to accompany his children home from school. When a stranger knocks at the door to collect the rubbish, Panahi grabs his camera and hops into the cramped elevator with him, questioning this university student about his life, his interests, his future plans. Arriving at the ground floor outdoor courtyard, we see a dark, smoky world beyond the gated barrier, with a raging bonfire that seems very large and out of control, and we hear loud explosions and sizzling firecrackers everywhere.  "Don't come out, they might see you filming with your camera," the boy says, but Panahi keeps filming.

At the press conference at Cannes, a somewhat nervous Mojtaba Mirtahmasb carefully measured his words as he responded to questions.  He said that he and Panahi, who was watching this from Teheran via Skype and an IPad camera, decided to take the risk of presenting the film, although he didn't know what would happen when he returns to Iran. He then quoted the Persian prophet Zoroaster: "To fight the dark I don't need a sword; I need a candle."

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

On a flight to Montana, I sit next to a 30-something man with crew cut, tattoos and work boots.  "Going home to Missoula?" he asks. "No," I answer. "And you?" "Yeah, I was just in Salt Lake for a surgical equipment convention showin' how to use these C arms I'm makin'...."So why Missoula?" he asks. "A film festival," I tell him, assured this would end the conversation. The man smiles with excitement. "Is this week of the Wildlife Film Festival? I almost forgot! I'll have to go to some of that.” First impressions say a lot.

This is not just another film festival; it’s an event the community is proud of. The next morning I attended a slot of “family friendly” screenings at the Roxy, a 124-seat theater downtown. The opening film, Microworlds--What Do Marine Animals Eat? (Prod.: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), displays an the enormous caterpillar walking on a set of delicate hairy legs. "That's a big cat!" exclaimed a boy from his dad's lap. "Wow," came from a tot behind me. When the music accelerated to the dizzying spin of cocoon building, it was nearly drowned out with "Oooh, that's pretty," and "Ahh, Look at that!" And "Mom, what's he doing?" But nothing matched the audience reaction as when that skinny black leg pokes out of the cocoon and moments later, a full-fledged Monarch butterfly.

Here in Missoula, on a rainy Saturday in May, not one adult hushes their child's exuberant response to the subject on the screen. Nor should they. After all, are they not the next generation of environmental stewards? A clip from the grand and balletic National Geographic series Great Migrations: Rhythm of Life causes my own enthusiasm to rival that of the children's, as hundreds of colorful butterfly wings fill the screen against a symphonic orchestral score. My week has just begun, but I am glad I have come.

The afternoon screenings include California Forever: The Story of the State Parks, a film I co-produced with David Vassar. The audience is slim, but they stay to ask questions. On my way out, a man stops me to say, "You know, I really like your film. But what impresses me the most is that you are here. Thank you for coming. It means a lot to us."

The International Wildlife Film Festival, in its 34th year, was the first wildlife film festival in the world and is now the longest running. This year's theme, "Hope in a Changing World," could not describe it better. Missoula's pride in participation is exhibited in the turnout at WildWalk, a yearly event to kickoff the festival. This year the parade fell on Mother's Day, so children and parents alike in every imaginable homespun, wildlife costume marched behind a giant, manned, papier-mâché elephant accompanied by a horn-playing child, sounding spookily like an elephant. Reminiscent of the Bread and Puppet Theater from the 1960s, right on cue, another group, this time adults, rallied across the street waving signs and chanting, "Resistance Is Forming to Stop Global Warming." The celebratory character of the festival gave way to a more serious undertone: The elephant was indeed in the room, and could no longer be ignored.

According to Festival Director Janet Rose, the recurring topic of elephant in this year's festival happened by chance. Many films on the subject were submitted and accepted, including the Best of Festival winner, Echo: An Unforgettable Elephant (Dir./Prod.: Mike Birkhead). What's more, Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the keynote speaker and winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, runs an organization to Save the Elephants in Kenya. The wonderful and emotional story of Echo, an elephant matriarch, was the official festival opener at the packed, 1,000-plus-seat restored Wilma Theater. When Echo dies in the film, she is mourned by not only her family, but also by the humans who have observed her for over 36 years. Echo's daughter, who routinely returns to her mother's carcass, displays the capacity for elephants to grieve deeply for their kin. Grieving poignantly characterizes the feeling audiences were left with after viewing many of the films in this year's festival. We grieved the loss of wild horses in our great American landscape when viewing the impassioned festival finalist Wild Horses and Renegades (Dir.: James Kleinert); we mourned the potential loss of animals and plants in the high desert of New Mexico, following John Grabowska's beautifully written and photographed Sky Island; and we were nostalgic in our sorrow for long lost landscapes and species changed forever by human interference, as expressed in numerous other films screening at the festival.

But our sadness and sense of loss was only matched by endurance, strength and hope in much of the festival as well. Noteworthy titles included National Geographic's Rise of the Black Wolf, where a rebellious wolf uses unusual tactics of subordination to survive and ultimately gain leadership of his pack; For the Love of Elephants, from Make Believe Media, where an elephant, orphaned when his mother is speared by poachers, ventures back into the wild to join another herd after a group of human caretakers assists him; and Sara Poisson and Alberto Montaudon's Bird Island: The Story of Isla Rasa , where chicks miraculously survive in their harsh landscape. To underscore this theme, Dr. Douglas-Hamilton, in his keynote address, reminded us of the pertinence of "observing, which leads to understanding, which leads to caring."

For one week in Montana, a group of filmmakers, judges and programmers; scientists, students and professors; public-land executives, as well as individual community members come together to go to films, partake in panels and participate in retreats. We come to educate each other as well as ourselves, discuss and at times passionately argue the issues, lend constructive criticism to the films screened as well as form lasting collaborations. In the end we emerge with a fresh understanding of why we do what we do and return home with a renewed call to action in the ever more relevant fields of conservation, preservation and restoration in which we wildlife and natural history film and television professionals reside.   

Sally Kaplan founded Backcountry Pictures with David Vassar in 2001. Their film California Forever: The Story of California State Parks won awards for Cinematography and Best Educational Value at the International Wildlife Film Festival.

The stark, breathtaking beauty of the high desert is immediately apparent in Sky Island, a profile of the landscape and ecosystem of the Jemez Mountains, a volcanic range in northern New Mexico. But there is deception at work here: behind the beauty lies a natural disaster, slow-moving but inexorable.

"When I started making natural history films 20 years ago, 'global warming' had hardly entered the lexicon," says environmental filmmaker John Grabowska. "Now I can't imagine making a film that doesn't somehow address climate change and its impacts. It is the most consequential issue of our time."

Sky Island, which Grabowska wrote, produced and directed, will air nationally on PBS as a prime time special Sunday, July 10, 2011. The film takes audiences on a journey through the desert and alpine ecosystem from the canyon floor of the Rio Grande to the peaks of the Jemez, examining the life zones that change dramatically along with the increase in elevation.

The title of the film comes from a phenomenon common in the Desert Southwest: isolated mountains that rise up from the desert floor, with unique populations of plants and animals that have evolved on the mountaintops and cannot migrate elsewhere because of the desert that surrounds them.

"The collected peaks of the Jemez were akin to the individual sky island mountains, but on a massive scale," Grabowska explains. "They harbor a surprising degree of diversity and really are like islands of  life surrounded by a desert sea. The Jemez are the epicenter of climate change in the Desert Southwest. Outside of the polar regions, some of the most visible and rapid changes are seen in high altitudes, particularly in arid lands. That describes the Jemez.

"Seen from space, the mountains are a near-perfect circle," Grabowska continues. "There is a smaller circle at the center that is actually a huge valley, the caldera of a giant volcano that erupted just over a million years ago and then collapsed. Most of the mountains and surrounding plateaus are protected land, managed by the Santa Fe National Forest and Bandelier National Monument.

"The Jemez have been sacred to several Pueblo tribes for generations," Grabowska points out, "and substantial portions of  land are owned by the Pueblos. San Ildefonso and Santa Clara Pueblos lie right on the flanks of the mountain. The Pueblo people still revere the land and care deeply about how it is treated."

The film's spare, poetic script is narrated by Meryl Streep and N. Scott Momaday, a scholar, author and poet who was the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature. He spent his formative childhood years in the Jemez Mountain area and until recently had a home there.

The structure of the film reflects that of the mountain itself, starting at the Rio Grande bottomlands and journeying to the top. Grabowska says the idea came from early scientific research done in the Desert Southwest by C. Hart Merriam, a biologist and co-founder of  The National Geographic Society.

"Merriam noticed that going uphill on a desert mountain was similar to traveling north to arctic latitudes," notes Grabowska. "Increase in elevation brings increased moisture and lower temperatures, not unlike going from Mexico to Canada. At the base of the mountain we see desert steppe with grass and scrub oak. As we ascend, the flora and fauna change, first to pinyon-juniper scrub, then Ponderosa pine, and finally to alpine forest."

Grabowska says that several sequences narrated by Momaday were inspired by his own writings.

 "Scott Momaday provides lyrical and meditative insights into certain sequences and locations, often adaptations of his own writings. He brings a wisdom and sensitivity regarding this particular place that perhaps no one else can. He's sometimes described as the voice of the Southwest, and he is that for me. I was impressed with how willing he was to reflect in the film on his mortality and, by extension, our own."

Mortality is not limited to humankind in the film. During a two-year period of  heat and drought, the pinyon pine forest, an icon of the region, collapsed. "Ninety percent of the pinyon on the Pajarito Plateau just died, stressed out from the heat and drought, no longer able to resist pine beetle infestations," says Grabowska. "Where we once saw these salmon-colored landscapes dotted with green, we now see gray, dead pinions--at least until they collapse into a pile of  bleached wood. The Desert Southwest is getting hotter and dryer and it is easily, and sadly, visible."

Many animal species on the mountaintops are marooned on this desert island. The film highlights an endemic salamander and the southernmost population of American pikas, small rabbit-like mammals that depend on cool temperatures to survive. Pikas die after a few hours of exposure to temperatures above 78ºF.

"Meryl narrates a part in the script about how climate change will determine which forms of life will survive--and how," Grabowska says. "Some species in the Jemez Mountains have nowhere else to go. They can't migrate, and they can't move any further uphill because they're already at the top."

Grabowska began his career as a television news reporter and cameraman. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America and worked on legislation on Capitol Hill. His previous natural history films for PBS include Ribbon of Sand, which focuses on a wild, undeveloped stretch of barrier islands off the North Carolina coast; Yellowstone: Land to Life, which takes audiences on a journey through the national park; Remembered Earth, which examines portions of the Colorado Plateau; and Crown of the Continent, which The Washington Post described as "both a spectacular testament to the architectonics of the planet itself, and a surprisingly intimate and moving tribute to his own father's dreams."

Grabowska began production on Sky Island in 2005, working with his long-time collaborator, cinematographer Steve Ruth, to gather images in Super 16 film format. "The organic look of film suits the subject matter, with wide open landscapes and the wilderness ecosystem," Grabowska maintains. "Cinematographers' eyes just light up when I say I'm shooting on film."

Grabowska had specific ideas about what he wanted to get on film, but production was mainly a process of time-intensive discovery that began with hiking and driving through the area. Ruth carried an Aaton XTR Prod camera with Zeiss prime and Angenieux 11.5:138 mm zoom lenses. He had Kodak Vision 2 7201 50 D color negative film on his palette.

There was no way to control lighting other than waiting and finding the right angles. "The latitude of the stock helped a lot in high contrast situations, and there are quite a few of those in the desert," Grabowska observes.

About halfway through the project, Ruth had to leave because of an illness in his family. Grabowska found freelance cinematographers in the region to complete shooting the film.

"These are the mountains where the 2000 Cerro Grande fire burned out of control, but fire is integral to the health of the natural landscape," Grabowska explains. "Profiling this ecosystem without including a fire would be anathema. I had counted on Steve to shoot a prescribed fire for me. The land managers don't schedule burns according to film production schedules. They wait for the right conditions. I needed a cinematographer who would be ready to shoot at a moment's notice."

In 2008, a prescribed fire was set to reduce the amount of duff and brush on the forest floor in Bandelier National Monument to avoid future catastrophic fires. Grabowska contacted Dyanna Taylor, a cinematographer who lives in the Santa Fe area. He knew her by reputation and through friends in the industry. Her grandmother, Dorothea Lange, was an iconic photo-journalist whose pictures documented the story of the Great Depression during the 1930s. Taylor learned the art of telling stories with pictures while watching her grandmother make prints in her darkroom.

"I love the fire and ice sequence Dyanna filmed," Grabowska notes. "Fire is so visually dynamic anyway, but Dyanna really understands its importance in the ecosystem, which really comes through in her images. Since she lives nearby she was also able to shoot scenics right after a snowfall, which doesn't last long down in the desert canyons. I put the two sequences together, fire followed by ice, and Todd Boekelheide's music is simply transcendent."

Academy Award-winner Boekelheide, another of Grabowska's long-time collaborators, created and recorded an original music score at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, CA.

John Britt, whose footage included the extensive aerials, also stepped in after Ruth's departure. Additional cinematography was by Scott Ransom and Michael Male.

Other members of his crew included Grabowska's teenaged daughters Hilary and Sierra, who recorded sound, hauled gear and shot production stills.

The negative was processed at Colorlab and NFL Films. Bobby Johanson and Jim Coyne at NFL Films transferred the film to digital HD format. Dave Markun at Henninger Media did the color correction after the final cut was done by Matt Witkowski in HDCAM-SR format.

Bob Fisher has been writing about cinematography and film preservation for over 30 years.

Good Cameras Make for Great Documentaries

The students of San Pedro High School participating in IDA's Docs Rock program got new camers - thanks to the fundraising efforts of their teacher, Mr. Tony Saavedra, who used DonorsChoose.org to raise the money. Additional funding for the program was provided by City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs; Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council; and Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council.

Thanks to all of you who donated.  Here's a letter from Mr. Saavedra expressing his gratitude:

I cannot begin to thank you enough for funding our need for cameras in our project "Good Cameras Make for Great Documentaries" Your generous donation has made the next school year an exciting prospect for our students.

Students are very media aware these days, and they can accomplish things on computer and with technology that continue to amaze me. They are constantly showing me what is new in media. So, it is no surprise that they were able to use the cameras almost immediately. It was fun to watch them tear through the directions.

Please, remember that your support of public education and especially arts programs is crucial at this time. Keep active with public education, please. It makes such a difference.

With gratitude,
Mr. S.

To view photos of the students using their new cameras, visit the donorschoose.org website by clicking here.

To make a 100% tax deductible donation to Docs Rock and other IDA programs and services, click here.