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.

CHAINSAW, an ongoing supporter of the documentary film community, joins as a sponsor of the 15th Annual DocuWeeks Theatrical Showcase. Other DocuWeeks sponsors are FotoKem, NBCUniversal Archives and the Canadian Consulate.

 Thank you CHAINSAW for being so awesome and
for all that you do for documentary filmmakers!

CHAINSAW, based in Hollywood, CA, provides editorial services from concept to completion. Emmy Award winning editors Bill DeRonde and Mike Polito used their years of hands-on experience to build a full-service post facility that gives editors what they need to get the client what they want. From American Idol to the Academy Awards, Chainsaw has been helping producers for over 15 years.

To learn more about CHAINSAW, visit their website by clicking here.

As the standard-bearer for daily journalism, the New York Times has been confronted bythe 21st-century old-media revenue crisis in a way mirrored by no otherAmerican newspaper. Andrew Rossi's Page One provides a tour through thesecritical issues, guided by the company's curmudgeonly, idiosyncratic mediacritic David Carr.

Wed., June 22, 7:00p.m., Regal 8 / Thu, June 23, 4:30p.m., Regal 12

FOR TICKETS, CLICK HERE.

Now in its 17th year, Film Independent’s Los Angeles FilmFestival, presented by Los Angeles Times, showcases the best of American andinternational cinema. The 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival takes place June16-26, 2011 in downtown Los Angeles. For passes, tickets and full Festival detailsplease call 1.866.FilmFest orvisit www.LAFilmFest.com

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN, an IDA fiscal sponsored film, profiles Chineseadoptees in contemporary America. This deeply moving documentary illustratesthat even the most specific of experiences can be universally relatable. Of theroughly 80,000 girls that have been adopted from China since 1981, the filmmakers followfour giggly, typical American teens who reveal a heartbreaking sense ofself-awareness. Issues of identity, race and gender are brought to life throughthese articulate subjects, who approach life with honesty and open hearts.

Now in its 17th year, Film Independent’s Los Angeles FilmFestival, presented by Los Angeles Times, showcases the best of American andinternational cinema. The 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival takes place June16-26, 2011 in downtown Los Angeles. For passes, tickets and full Festival detailsplease call 1.866.FilmFest orvisit www.LAFilmFest.com

CALL FOR ENTRIES 2011

Enter Now! Earlybird Deadline: June 10, 2011

IDA is proud to announce submissions are open for the 27th Annual IDA Documentary Awards. The IDA Documentary Awards is the foremost event dedicated to the art of documentary film. All winners will be honored at the IDA Documentary Awards Gala in Los Angeles, December 2, 2011.

Entry is open to any documentary, nonfiction or factual program completed between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011 that qualifies for one of the five main award categories.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT THE 27TH ANNUAL IDA DOCUMENTARY AWARDS EVENT PAGE.