The IDA Community is
Cordially Invited to the Preview (FREE) Screening of
Arabia 3D in IMAX

 

The California Science Center and MacGillivray Freeman Films cordially invites you and 3 guests to attend a preview screening of MacGillivray Freeman's Arabia 3D in IMAX - Tuesday, May 24th at 7 p.m. To RSVP, please reply to jhinrichs@macfreefilms.com with your name, IDA affiliation, screening date and number of guests. Please respond no later than May 20. Attendance is limited and will be accepted on a first come, first served basis.

California Science Center IMAX Theater is located at 700 Exposition Park Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90037. 

As an 11-year old in 1958, I watched the Disney film White Wilderness. We see a cute little bear cub lose its footing on a steep, snow-covered mountainside and fall faster and faster until it's tumbling down totally out of control. It eventually stops falling after banging hard into rocks. The audience laughs because we assume it is totally natural and authentic and it's funny in a slapstick kind of way–at least at first. In fact, it is totally staged top to bottom, including the use of a man-made artificial mountain and captive bear cubs.

When I was a teenager growing up in England, Life Magazine carried a prize-winning sequence of photographs showing a leopard hunting a baboon. It was dramatic and thrilling. The final picture showed the leopard crushing the baboon's skull in its jaws. Later it was shown to be all staged with a captive leopard and a captive and terrified baboon.

When I first got into television in my early 30s, I brought home a film I had just completed to show my wife, Gail. She especially liked a close-up scene of a grizzly bear splashing through a stream and asked me how we were able to record the sound of water dripping off the grizzly's paws. I had to admit that my talented sound guy had filled a basin full of water and recorded the thrashings he made with his hands and elbows. He then matched the video of the bear walking in the stream with the sounds he had recorded. Gail was shocked, offended and outraged–and called me "a big fake" and a "big phony-baloney." I had made a documentary after all, which led her to expect authenticity and truth.

What ethical issues do these three stories illustrate? First, audience deception through staging and manipulation. Second, cruelty to animals. And third, a more subtle ethical issue but a vital one nonetheless: Do wildlife films encourage conservation?

Animal harassment and cruelty have been pervasive in wildlife filming for decades. This harassment can take the form of everything from simply getting too close to wild animals and disturbing their habitat to deliberate violence. In the old days, if a filmmaker wanted to capture a hunting scene of a bobcat chasing a rabbit, it was standard practice to get the shot by the use of invisible filament around the rabbit's neck or leg to artificially slow it down. Luckily, such overt abuse is now uncommon. However, many on-camera hosts like Jeff Corwin, Bear Grylls or the late Steve Irwin still grab and harass animals in order to create entertainment.

Unfortunately, however, the physical abuse of animals is only one of several major problems in the wildlife film industry. Far too many producers have resorted to creating "nature porn"–productions focusing solely on the blood, guts and sex of the animal kingdom. Graphic footage of shark attacks and feeding frenzies might make for thrilling entertainment, but it is irresponsible. Programs like Untamed and Uncut and Man vs. Wild depict animals as menacing at a time when these animals face constant threat. By misleading audiences and inspiring fear and terror, these TV programs are effectively discouraging conservation.

When filmmakers depict wild animals as murderous and evil, they make it all the more difficult to convince the public of the need for protecting these animals. Sharks, for example, face dire threats from the pollution of their habitat and the disgusting practice of shark finning for shark fin soup. If viewers think of sharks only as killers, they are much less likely to act to protect and conserve them.

Concerns over ethics have been with us throughout the history of wildlife filmmaking. But it was a tall, eccentric Englishman, Jeffery Boswall, who began a systematic study of the issue starting in the 1970s. Boswall, born in 1931, spent nearly three decades as a producer for the BBC Natural History Unit and is one of the industry's most probing and illuminating thinkers.

In a 1988 paper on wildlife filmmaking ethics, "The Moral Pivots of Wildlife Filmmaking," Boswall asserted that anything that made an animal behave unnaturally–for example, baiting it or giving it food it does not normally eat--constitutes audience deception. He points out that introducing one animal to another it does not normally interact with–for example, a wolverine and a python--is deceptive. So is having the film crew behave in a way that disturbs an animal's behavior–for example, frightening a bird off its eggs by moving too fast near its nest.

Other deceptions include the temptations to exaggerate, overdramatize and sentimentalize. Boswall describes the common sin of anthropomorphism–or attributing human characteristics to animals–as "a kind of lying" because it teaches audiences to misunderstand the real nature of animals.

His definition of audience deception is sweeping. In his mind, it includes pretending that a recording of a bird's song was made at the same time as the pictures for that scene. Or recording the flapping of an umbrella and pretending it's the noise made by a bird's wings. Boswall claims that even music can introduce a lie. If you accompany footage of animal behavior with music that suggests that the animal is behaving in a human way (for example, by making it look as though the animal is dancing or feeling romantic), then "you are deceiving the people who are experiencing the film."

Though these all qualify as deceptions in Boswall's mind, they are not all necessarily bad. Boswall believes it's up to individual filmmakers to decide where to draw the line–but warns that audiences might be surprised to know where filmmakers have been drawing it recently. Even strongly conservation-minded filmmakers sometimes bait sea creatures with chum (an oily mix of fish bait and blood), which can lead to unnatural feeding frenzies, or use bright spotlights to film lions hunting at night, which give lions an unfair advantage. And if you see a bear feeding on a deer carcass in a film, it is almost certainly a tame bear searching for hidden jellybeans in the entrails of the deer's stomach. The candy gives the impression that the proud carnivore is feasting on a fresh kill.

Let me now relate another story–this one about Randy Wimberg, a highly capable and experienced cinematographer. A few years ago, he was with his dive team at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific filming wildlife in an area known as Shark Pass, which has a large congregation of reef sharks.

Crew members built a cage to protect him from danger, but they removed some of the panels to give the camera an unobstructed view. The plan was for Wimberg to be in the cage while someone in the nearby support boat threw chum into the water to attract the sharks.

He climbed into the cage and was eased out on a tether about 15 feet from the boat. When a deckhand threw in the chum, reef sharks quickly showed up in large numbers. Some of the chum drifted into the cage. Wimberg watched helplessly as frenzied sharks began crashing into the cage, tearing at chunks of food caught in the wire mesh. Soon, more than 30 sharks were competing for food that was either stuck to the cage or drifting through it.

Suddenly, a shark shot right through the gap and exited out the other side of the cage, grazing Wimberg as it passed. He tried to remain calm, the camera still rolling. He was frantically batting away sharks with his camera, but there were too many of them and too much chum.

Another shark shot through the gap. To Wimberg's horror, it didn't pass smoothly out the other side. Instead the shark ended up in the bottom of the cage and started thrashing wildly. Wimberg tried to curl up in the corner of the cage to escape the frightened animal. He knew that the shark felt very threatened and would use the only defense it had–its teeth and jaws.

Wimberg desperately attempted to push the animal up toward the exit with his camera, but that didn't work. He decided his only chance was to get himself out. As he edged toward the opening in the cage, his teammates in the boat saw what was happening and began raising the cage to the surface. And before the shark could get in a position to bite, Wimberg scrambled out of the cage and into the boat. The shark was released unhurt.

What went wrong? Well, there's one thing I haven't told you: The producer had positioned another cameraman in a protective chain-mail suit about 20 feet below the shark cage to capture all the action. In fact, Wimberg's brush with disaster became a high point in the film. My interpretation of this incident is that it was all about getting the money shot. The producer knew that the more dramatic the action, the more successful the film would be. This is why the producer kept telling the deckhand to keep throwing in more chum. Wimberg's life was endangered for the sake of getting exciting footage to help push up the show's ratings.

Two other points: First, the film's audiences were misled. They didn't know about the chum, so many viewers went away thinking that such frenzied feeding behavior happens naturally. And two, the cause of conservation was ill served. At a time when shark populations are plummeting worldwide, sharks were being unfairly portrayed as ferocious attackers.

You could argue that what went wrong in the incident with Wimberg is fairly obvious, but making ethically correct choices in wildlife filmmaking isn't always obvious. Consider the following six scenarios:

First, suppose you are making a film about chimps. You know that violence (or any extreme behavior) fascinates people and that chimps sometimes hunt for prey, such as other primates. You know that viewers will be shocked, even horrified, by the bloodthirsty brutality of the chimps, and the ratings will be big. Yet you also know that meat makes up only about two percent of the chimpanzees' diet. Mostly they feed on fruits, leaves and other plant material. By serving up a series of hunts, your film shows a far more violent picture of chimpanzee nature than is actually the case. It gives a wrong impression. Is the film unethical?

In my view, this may not be unethical, but it bothers me. I'd say don't make the film only about the hunts. The film has to be more balanced, even though the ratings might suffer.

Second, imagine you are a producer and you want a shot of a spider eating a fly. It's obvious you have to stage it because you don't have the money to wait around for weeks for it to happen naturally. But how far will you go with staging? For example, you also want a shot of a boa constrictor eating a monkey. Do you stage that as well? In other words, capture a boa constrictor, capture a monkey, put them in an enclosure and film the resulting predation? It's routine predatory behavior and happens all the time, and your film will promote conservation. Do the ends justify the means? Is it ethical to stage it?

I'd say, definitely don't do this. It's cruel and unacceptable, but you'll pay a price in lower ratings.

Third, imagine you're in Africa with Jeff Corwin and your goal is for him to find a rare lizard, not seen for 25 years. This is to be the climax of the film. You search for days with no luck, but finally the rare lizard is found–not by Corwin, but by a local African tracker who barely speaks English. You put the animal back where it was found, and let Corwin "discover" it and act surprised for the camera, thus capturing for your film an emotional highpoint. Is that bit of acting by Corwin unethical?

I'd say we shouldn't lie to audiences. Corwin should interview the tracker about his find even though the film may now have a reduced emotional impact and lower ratings.

Fourth, suppose you are in the field filming komodo dragons. You've heard that a komodo dragon was seen swimming out to sea to feed on an unfortunate goat that had fallen off a local boat and was drowning. It's the first time a komodo dragon has been seen swimming and hunting at sea and it would be a real coup to reproduce the behavior for the camera. Getting this sequence for your film would bring you a great deal of prestige, help your career and help pay to send your daughter to college. Are you willing to put live bait (a goat) in the water to help you get the shot? If you do, would you tell the audience, or keep it a secret?

I would say that putting a live goat in the water to seduce a komodo dragon to hunt is cruel and unacceptable.

Fifth, continuing with the last scenario, imagine that although the cameraman captured the sequence using a pole-cam (a camera on the end of a pole, so the cameraman doesn't need to be in the water) to add jeopardy to the "making-of" piece at the end of the film, you as the editor have been asked to cut together shots of the komodo dragon swimming with shots of the cameraman filming underwater–to add a sense of danger to the sequence. The shots of the underwater cameraman were actually filmed in another location with no komodo dragons in the water, so the sequence you are being asked to cut is untruthful. Is this type of deceit acceptable?

I'd say don't do this, because it's lying; if you do it, be open about it.

Sixth and finally, suppose you're filming tigers hunting an antelope, which is extremely difficult to see. You come across a young antelope that is lying quietly in the grass having been abandoned by its mother. It's the final afternoon of the shoot, your budget is exhausted, the weather is closing in, you have totally failed so far to obtain any money shots, and you are very worried about your job. You also know that there is a tiger only 500 meters away. Is it ethical for you to herd the young antelope towards the tiger knowing that without its mother, it will die anyway?

I'd say don't do that because you can't be 100 percent sure that the antelope has been abandoned by its mother.

These are tough questions, especially if you are a filmmaker with a family to support and a retirement to save for. What can we learn from the stories I've described and from those six dilemmas? As I've already indicated, there are three ethical issues with wildlife films:

First, Are audiences deceived and misled, and if so, does it matter? When does legitimate filmmaking artifice become unacceptable deception? I'm thinking here of fake sounds, the use of CGI to manipulate images, and captive animals that appear free-roaming. Recently, I saw amazing footage of a cougar hunting down a bear cub. It looked genuine and not fake in any way, but in fact, it had all been carefully scripted and shot with trained animals from game farms.

Second, Are wild animals harassed and disturbed during filming, and does it matter? Recently, I learned of a filmmaker who darted a hyena and then slit its skin open to implant a GPS transmitter underneath so he could track it and thus film it more easily.

And third, is conservation advanced by these films? Do they matter? It would be facile and misleading to claim that The Cove hasn't yet stopped the killing of dolphins in Taiji, Japan; Food Inc. has not yet led viewers to change their eating habits; and The End of the Line has not yet reduced over-fishing in our oceans–facile and misleading because where you stand on that issue depends on where you sit. If you're a dolphin in Taiji about to be butchered, then you might well think the film has failed to advance conservation. But if you're a viewer moved by the film to demonstrate outside the barbed wire surrounding the cove where the slaughter takes place, and the press is covering you and more attention is being brought to the issue, then the film may seem like a success in terms of conservation.

When I first got into wildlife filmmaking, I naively thought that the number of people watching a program told me something about the conservation impact. Of course, it doesn't. Ratings (or the box office results) and conservation impact are very different. I also naively thought that everybody viewing the program would be influenced in some way, but most people watching are already card-carrying environmentalists whose views are not changed by the program.

What made me question the conservation achievements of environmental and wildlife films is hearing producers claim smugly that their films have done great things for conservation, but when asked for evidence, point to a few admiring e-mails that they received–which may have been written by people already dedicated to conservation. Or they point to impressive ratings or box office numbers, as if the number of viewers is synonymous with conservation.

Raising awareness is good, but hard results are what really count. If dolphins in Taiji are still being slaughtered at the same rate, it's fair to raise the question: What good did The Cove do? Yes, there was more awareness after it won an Oscar, but has the film actually produced conservation results?

One approach is to pose that question to the viewers who made a film a box office success. After all, if one viewer changes eating habits after watching Food, Inc., then that viewer has a legitimate right to claim that the film advanced conservation. But it gets tricky. Many viewers who are moved by a film may rate it highly in conservation effectiveness terms, but have to admit, when pressed, that actually nothing changed in their lives because of it. They may have found it to be a richly rewarding but temporary distraction, and after a few hours basically forgot about it. If they didn't take any action, then nothing has changed. They were simply entertained.

I fear that environmental and wildlife films don't advance conservation as much as they could or should. If films are really to make a difference, then they must be one component of an overall campaign involving many different media platforms and social action. I'm delighted that entities like Participant Media, Working Films, The Good Pitch and ITVS encourage documentary filmmakers to make activist outreach and partnerships with NGOs an essential component of their distribution process.

Without wildlife films, people would have little knowledge of wildlife, but whether such programs actually promote conservation is still open to debate. Too many films fail to mention conservation, and some even imply an anti-conservation message by demonizing animals and encouraging us to fear and hate them.

Filmmakers have a responsibility to promote conservation because it is the morally right thing for them to do, especially since they exploit the resource to earn a living. Besides, filmmakers have a vested interest in conservation: It's impossible to make wildlife films when animals have gone extinct.

In sum, film has such unique potential for impacting public opinion that it is irresponsible to rely on sensationalized, inaccurate, destructive programming. The ethical questions related to wildlife filmmaking are not simple, but we must at least openly confront the issue of ethics instead of constantly pushing for nothing but ratings, no matter the cost. Wildlife filmmakers have a responsibility to depict the natural world accurately and in a way that will inspire people to preserve it.

Chris Palmer is a professor, speaker, author, and an environmental and wildlife film producer who, over the past 30 years, has led the production of more than 300 hours of original programming for primetime television and the giant screen film industry. In 2004, he joined American University's full-time faculty as Distinguished Film Producer in Residence at the School of Communication. There he founded (and currently directs) the Center for Environmental Filmmaking. His book, Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom, was published in 2010 by Sierra Club Books and has been widely praised.

In accordance with the received wisdom of our times, every human artifact or utterance--including every nature film or so-called "factual" film--is, at its core, a personal statement: a polemic that is intended, whether consciously or not, to persuade the recipient to take what its author regards as the right course of action, one that is mandated by the current cultural climate. Because both nature and factual filmmakers are generally quick to take issue with this thesis, they probably deserve to be labeled as primitive artists--creatives who, by virtue of their indifference to the forces that shape their work, unwittingly reveal more about the ethos of their age than is disclosed by the work of more "sophisticated" and self-aware artists.

It is this ingenuous quality--the assumption that they are not artists at all, but objective reporters, documenting the world as it is--that can be said to unite the nature filmmakers with their brothers and sisters in the factual (or "nonfiction") camp. And despite the occasional attempts by both sides to do so, neither group can claim the right to wave the banner of objectivity, proclaiming itself to be ideologically "clean." Instead, both schools may be considered to share a broadly humanist agenda, advancing through their works the model-of-the-moment for proper human behavior. That is, even the driest of nature films (picture an account of the mating behavior of pronghorns) or factual films (envision a video on safe practices in the workplace) can be viewed as an agitprop piece--a film that, if deconstructed, speaks volumes about the cultural milieu that dictated its content and form.

So, if they share so much in common, what then divides the two documentary camps? Why do the nature filmmakers and the factual filmmakers studiously avoid one another--staging their own conferences, festivals and symposia and handing out their own awards?

The obvious distinction between the tribes is their choice of subject matter. Products, no doubt, of different patterns of nature and nurture, the filmmakers from the two schools elect to use different sets of props to put forth their philosophical positions. While nature filmmakers employ wild creatures as stand-ins for humans (the selfless lioness who fiercely defends her cubs, the brave baboon who risks his life to save his troop), factual filmmakers choose actual humans as role models (the blind musician who masters the cello, the handicapped gymnast who earns a gold medal).

But that is not to say that each camp is free of its own internal fault lines. While factual filmmakers fall into specialized camps that more-or-less get along (I refer to the camps of the science filmmakers, the social-issue filmmakers, the arts-and-culture filmmakers and the environmental-issue filmmakers), the nature school encompasses at least three distinctive cliques. And between these cliques there exists, at best, an uneasy peace.

Since the late 1920s (cf. the camera safaris of Osa and Martin Johnson and Frank Buck's Bring 'Em Back Alive movies), nature films have used every trick they could find to remind audiences of the wonders and horrors of the natural world--a world that is, on one hand, a living Eden to which we might aspire to return and, on the other, a jungle raw in tooth and claw, devoid of all civilized values. While over the years, the techniques of production have radically changed, nature filmmakers continue to spin the same basic fables. The blue-chip filmmakers--romantics endowed with the luxury of time and money--paint pictures of an earthly Paradise ("With the return of the rains, life resumes on the great Serengeti. And, with the rains, a new generation [cut to a stotting gazelle] discovers a world of limitless promise").

At the same time--and sometimes in the subsequent program on the same cable channel--another branch of the clan paints a darker vision, pitting fresh-faced adventurers against the world's deadliest varmints ("A little closer and Huey will have him [cut to a terrified snake, flicking its tongue]! Or else he will have Huey [cut to commercial]) !"

In defense of the modern-day beastmasters, they are heirs to an ancient tradition. Recall, for a moment, the bear-baiters of Elizabethan England, the bull-runners of Pamplona, the serpent-handlers of Appalachia and the bronco-busters of the American West. All of these rites of human dominance play to our fears of the beasts that menace our lives--not just the beasts who lurk in the wild but those who bully us in the schoolyard, lord over us in the office or terrorize us in the cave. Like a good dose of Dexter, a half-hour of old-fashioned one-on-one with a killer croc can go a long way to reassuring us of our place in the grand scheme of nature and in the competitive world of the workplace.

Though the tooth-and-claw tribe is a tough, libertarian breed, seemingly situated at the farthest remove from the faction of the factual filmmakers, at least one of their number managed to jump the divide. Stan Brock, who may be remembered as the muscular vaquero who manhandled giant anacondas for Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom, today heads the humanitarian organization Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit that airlifts medics into forgotten corners of the globe. In his new role, Stan continues to conquer fear, but the embedded message in his videos has changed. While in the past a viewer might have said, "If Stan can wrestle that snake, I can manage my kid," now a viewer, watching Stan in action, might say, "If Stan can parachute into Papua New Guinea with a stethoscope in his pack, I can at least volunteer at the blood bank."

There is a third group of nature filmmakers, a group that, compared to the romantics and the libertarians, shares many of the sentiments that Stan now espouses. This group--the activists--is driven by an urgent need to do what they can to stop the tide of destruction that threatens the wild. And they vent this need in their films ("And so, perhaps for the last time, the boobies gather on the shore. Their future, like the future of all mankind [cut to a booby gazing out to sea], rests in our hands"). Though by their nature the activists are more at home with indignation than are the romantics, they share with the romantics the vision of an unspoiled Eden, one to which, in their fondest dreams, we all might yet return.

Because it casts grizzlies as role models rather than villains, Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man fits comfortably into the nature-activist camp. And because it casts humans as role models, Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth fits comfortably into the factual school. The line between these films is the line between those films whose primary goal is to persuade us to model our lives on the lives of wild creatures and those films whose primary aim is to persuade us to pursue a specific course of social action.

In reality, of course, crossovers exist--schizophrenic productions that aim to have it both ways. To this group belong those nature programs that devote the bulk of their time to painting a portrait of the private world of some compelling wild creature, only to devote their closing minutes to the desperate efforts of a field biologist to save the creature from extinction. An audience, exposed to such a film, would be justified in wondering which of the film's heroes to root for. Am I a jaguar, running the gauntlet of perils in a tropical forest, or am I a researcher, conscientiously collecting samples of jaguar scat? At best such a film may provoke a useful response; but at worst it risks causing unwanted cognitive dissonance. 

While all three of these groups--romantics, activists and libertarians--may be spotted together in Bristol, Jackson Hole or Missoula, hoisting beers in the bar and trading tall tales from the field, there is little love lost between them. To the true romantics, the libertarians are amoral opportunists who play to the public's worst fears and urges. And to the hardcore activists, the romantics and the libertarians are equally dammed. For, in their view, both groups squander the opportunity that has been placed in their hands to arouse public outrage and strike a strong blow for the wild. And yet, no matter how annoying it may be for these tribes to spend time together, they share a common toolkit: the set of technical resources, without which they could not practice their art.

Though in the pursuit of their goals, the majority of factual filmmakers need little more than light, compact and eminently affordable cameras, nature filmmakers of almost any stripe are dependent upon an equipment list that includes long lenses, high-speed cams, time-lapse cams, crittercams, robotcams, cablecams, remote-controlled cams, gyro mounts, aerial rigs, jib arms, cranes, blinds and dollies--an arsenal that dwarfs, in weight and cost, the toolkit of typical factual filmmakers. To stay up to date on these tools of the trade, nature filmmakers rely on their own technology confabs. And a general disinterest in this specialized gear provides ample reason for factual filmmakers to stay away from such sessions.

Not only that, but few factual filmmakers are likely to relate to the typical subjects under discussion at Bristol, Jackson Hole or Missoula. Why, for example, would a committed documentarian, dedicated to exposing social injustice, need to know how to program a camera to peer into the private lives of penguins, or how to train a goose to follow an ultra-light in flight? And why would a nature filmmaker, who specializes in close-ups of bugs, need to sit through a panel discussion about securing funding from cultural foundations or spend time learning the skills required to score a slot at Sundance?

Furthermore, while few individuals (Michael Moore and Ken Burns may be exceptions) have earned a tidy income from the production of factual films, the nature genre has spawned more than a few genuine millionaires. And that is because nature programs (which are usually not culture-specific) generally enjoy a much wider reach than factual documentaries. While the global audience is likely to be strictly limited for a program about the plight of the homeless in Detroit, an eager audience around the world is likely to tune in to watch the antics of a family of meerkats in Africa).

Unfortunately, both sides of the Great Documentary Divide tend to view the other with suspicion. For their part, factual filmmakers, while envying nature filmmakers for the license fees they collect, may be inclined to dismiss them as escapists--dreamers who have turned their backs on social commitment and the need for social change. On the other hand, it is the risk of such condemnation that may make nature filmmakers wary of factual filmmakers.

Though it can be argued that the ultimate focus of both is the human condition, for the reasons suggested above--including subject preferences, technology requirements and separate markets--nature filmmakers and factual filmmakers seem destined to stay in their separate camps. But at the very least, through an open dialogue between us, we may hope to gain a better understanding of one another and an appreciation for the many ways we may choose to tell the same important story.

Barry Clark has worked as a writer and producer of nature films of the activist and romantic stripes, and in addition has produced social, political and cultural-issue documentaries. He is currently engaged in the production of a film that explores the challenges and life choices of the common people of Saudi Arabia.

Jerome Foundation Accepting New York City Film and Video Program Applications

The Saint Paul-based Jerome Foundation is now accepting applications for its New York City Film and Video Program on an ongoing basis. In addition, the program no longer limits applicants' budgets to $200,000 or less. Budgets of any size are allowed and will be given the same consideration. Applicants with small budgets are welcome and encouraged to apply.

The film and video grant program is open to individual film and video artists who reside within the five boroughs of New York City and who work in the genres of experimental, narrative, animation, and documentary production.

The program awards production grants to emerging artists who make creative use of their respective media and whose work shows promise of excellence. Only applicants who have total creative control of their projects qualify for support. Applicants are usually identified as the director but may also serve as producer, writer, editor, etc. Artists may apply as individuals or as two-person teams with equal responsibility.

The foundation is most interested in funding projects in their early stages. Requests for productions that are more than half completed are eligible but represent a lower priority.

The program does not support installation, new media, or interactive work, which are subsidized through other foundation programs. It also does not support commercial, industrial, informational, or educational work. Full-time students are not eligible to apply.

Grants ordinarily range between $10,000 and $30,000 per project.

Applications may be submitted at any time during the year. Applicants should allow up to seven months for review.

Visit the Jerome Foundation Web site for complete program information, the application form, and an FAQ.  Click here for the APPLICATION GUIDELINES.

DocuWeeks™ helps to qualify outstanding new feature and short documentaries for Academy Award® consideration, by providing its participants a commercial theatrical exhibition in Los Angeles and New York.

Among other requirements, to be eligible for consideration for the 84th Academy Awards®, a feature documentary film must complete a seven-day commercial theatrical run (screening twice daily) in the County of Los Angeles and in the Borough of Manhattan between September 1, 2010, and December 31, 2011. Short documentaries must complete a seven-day commercial theatrical run (screening once per day) in the County of Los Angeles or in the Borough of Manhattan.

DocuWeeks provides one-week theatrical runs in Los Angeles and New York City, as well as the required advertising and publicity support. 

The Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, which wrapped on May 8 after 11 days of screenings, pitch sessions and workshops, had its iconic status with Toronto's discerning public confirmed again this year. Audience numbers rose to over 150,000, representing an increase of 11 percent over the previous year, while box office revenue showed a 24 percent jump over 2010. Yet despite increased national media attention and wide interest abroad, including massive delegations from Italy and the Netherlands, all was not sanguine at the festival.

 "There was a dip in delegates, in registration revenues. That's telling," notes Chris McDonald, executive director of Hot Docs. While pleased with the great success of the festival, he acknowledges, "These are difficult times for filmmakers in Canada. A lot of them are closing up shop. So we took a bit of a hit [in the industry side], but it was more than offset by the box office."

That's the current drama in documentaries--and the irony. Just as docs are hotter than ever, traditional sources no longer want to fund them. Canada's CBC and other publically minded broadcasters around the world have had their funding cut back significantly in the past half-decade. Commercial 'casters are designating reality TV shows as docs. In an economically challenged environment, with audiences diminished by the so-called 500-channel universe, docs with a point-of-view are rarely being commissioned.

In what was likely the most significant move at the festival, Hot Docs announced a new million-dollar initiative to finance films in Africa. The first international fund to be administered by the festival, it is financed by Blue Ice Films, a production company run by Neil Tabatznik and Steven Silver, whose feature docu-drama The Bang Bang Club has opened across North America in the past month.

The South African-born Silver has lived in Canada for decades and is a former senior vice president of factual entertainment at one of this country's media giants eOne [Entertainment One)]. "He has been on our board for the past year and a half and during that time, he's gotten to know us," says McDonald.

"The fund is for African filmmakers," McDonald continues. "The non-equity grants will range from 10 to 40 thousand dollars. Each grantee will work with a Canadian company as a national partner. The Canadian companies won't necessarily be rights holders; it will be more of a mentorship process, depending upon how the project is structured.

"The point is to help the project in the international marketplace," he says. "There will be money set aside so that the filmmakers will be able to come to Hot Docs to take a place in the Forum and the festival and the marketplace."

The first application deadline for the fund will be in the fall of 2011, with guidelines to be announced in September. The five-member selection committee will be comprised of representatives from Hot Docs, Blue Ice Film and other international industry members.

McDonald points out that "this new initiative joins the Shaw Media-Hot Docs Funds in what we hope will be an ever-widening portfolio of production funds to support filmmakers, both in Canada and abroad.

"The marketplace is changing," he maintains. "It's becoming increasingly difficult to finance films in Canada. We've decided that there's a role for us to play beyond the conventional ways we've been supporting filmmakers. Creating funds to help filmmakers both here and abroad is an important part of that mandate.

 "Creating Crowdfunding sites and working with Crowdfunding partners internationally are important, as is fiscal sponsorship," McDonald explains. "So is encouraging Canadian foundations to support documentaries to the levels that we see their American counterparts do in media arts. We're being more pro-active than we have previously."

Another way that the festival encourages filmmakers is through the Shaw Media-Hot Docs Funds Forum Pitch Prize, which awards $40,000 to the best Canadian pitch at the Forum. On May 5, after over 120 industry stakeholders heard 28 pitches from 12 countries, Sarah Jane Flynn from Shaw Media gave the prize to Doc Pomus. The proposed film is a profile of the colorful blues belter, card shark and songwriter, who was one of the composers of "This Magic Moment" and "Save the Last Dance for Me."

Injecting excitement into a lackluster Forum was The Jungle Prescription, a film proposed by the creative duo of Mark Ellam and Robin McKenna, with Nomad Films producer Mark Johnston, about the controversial ayahuasca vine, which is purported to have spiritual qualities. Perhaps something mystical rubbed off on the filmmakers, who went from winning the coveted last spot in the Forum by having their card chosen out of dozens in the oh-so-Canadian Mountie's Hat to being the co-recipients of the "real cash, no strings attached" prize for pitching a "powerful and unique project." That prize, garnered by passing around a Cuban Hat, included over $100 US, over $900 Canadian, two Euros, a shequel, two Brazilian Reals, one Australian pence and a Toronto transit coin, as well as much larger amounts from Montreal's Eye Steel Film and international sales agent Jan Rofekamp's Film Transit.

The winner of the Hat itself was commissioning editor Nick Fraser of BBC's legendary Storyville program. He was, as the Brits would say, "full value" for the prize, having called a project on writer John Irving "awesomely normal," while deeming a proposed film about an activist theater movement in Belarus "a fucking great project."

Given the confluence of filmmaking and financing at the festival, it's appropriate that Morgan Spurlock opened Hot Docs with POM Wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (the filmmaker says that the title should just roll off your tongue). The deft repartee between Spurlock and Hot Docs senior programmer Sean Farnel after the screening won over the majority of the tastemakers who attend such occasions, but it's true that an ironic film about branding offended some hard-core documentarians. One in particular commented, off the record, that Spurlock's doc was "the most profoundly cynical film of all time." When the film started its commercial run on the second Friday of Hot Docs, it received quite favorable reviews.

With so many films attracting sell-out crowds, the choice of winners was highly contested. Nine awards and more than $72,000 were handed out as the festival neared its conclusion. The Best Canadian Feature, which comes with $15,000, was given to Family Portrait in Black and White, Julia Ivanova's compassionate treatment of a tough but loving woman who has raised a multicultural group of orphans in rural Ukraine. Dividing the second Special Jury prize worth $10,000 were At Night, They Dance, Isabelle Lavigne and Stéphane Thibault's film about a family of belly dancers in Cairo, and Thomas Selim Wallner's The Guantanamo Trap, about a German Islamist, who spent time illegally on the Cuban island as a prisoner of the US military. Interestingly, all the major Canadian prize-winning films weren't about indigenous events or characters.

The Best International Feature, which is awarded $10.000, went to Dragonslayer, Tristan Patterson's devastating look at California during its present economic crisis. The Sundance Channel's People's Choice Award was given to Linda Goldstein Knowlton's Somewhere Between, a US film about four Chinese-born adoptees. Both US films fit as closely with the zeitgeist of today's perilous times as those of their Canadian hosts.

Based in Toronto, Marc Glassman is editor of Point of View magazine and Montage magazine.

5/21 @ 7:00pm
NORTH KOREA-A-RAMA!:
The Red Chapel
shown with
The Frustrated Fascist Auteurism of Kim Jong-il

The Frustrated Fascist Auteurism of Kim Jong-il - 7:00pm
Ever since his early days overseeing his papa’s “Propaganda and Agitation” department in the late ‘60s, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il has had cinema on the brain: his first mistress was a film star, he reportedly owns several libraries’ worth of DVDs, he’s personally overseen the production of many features -- and he’s even written a textbook called “On The Art Of The Cinema”! From overly earnest “tractor operas” to parade-sploitation choreography porn, all the way through to the 1985 Big Rubber Monster-laden anti-capitalist allegory Pulgasari, North Korea’s rich movie culture is ripe for exploration -- so join us for a smattering of Cinefamily’s favorite film and video clips culled from decades’ worth of the DPRK’s secret history of light entertainment!

The Red Chapel - 7:30pm
"Incredibly, uncomfortably funny! Like a love child of The Idiots and Borat." -- Alison Willmore, IFC.com

Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, The Red Chapel is perhaps the most dangerous and compelling cinema prank ever committed, and puts all other piddly culture-jammers to shame. In the tradition of Michael Moore, Sacha Baron Cohen and The Yes Men, a trio of Danes -- muckracking journalist/TV personality Mads Brügger, comedic straight man Simon and self-proclaimed “spastic” Jacob -- fearlessly travel to North Korea under the guise of a "cultural exchange": pretending to be a small theatre group called The Red Chapel, they present themselves as regime sympathizers and join in on an absurd variety show in Pyongyang, for the purpose of collecting footage of the regime from the inside. Beyond its sharp humor, The Red Chapel is amazing because the stakes are extremely high: our heroes are not just pranking a governor, a CEO or an arena full of beer-blasted hicks -- they’re messing with one of the most notorious, mysterious and literally insane Big Brother-esque regimes ever created. Epic, terrifying stuff.
Dir. Mads Brügger, 2009, DigiBeta, 88 min.

Tickets - $10/free for members

 More information available at http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/events.html#redchapel

A self-shooter, who also appears in his own films, Doug does not shy away from exploring his family's stories, even when it becomes uncomfortable. His lyrical, beautiful cinematic films invite us all into his family's inner dialogue, and allow us to reflect to how closely they mirror our own.

How did his filmmaker journey lead him to making personal documentaries? What are the hardest moments he's had to face while making work about his family? How has he developed the ability to still make strong directorial choice when the subject of his films is, quite literally, so close to home? How does he navigate production as a self-shooter who is in the film?

Join moderator Marjan Safinia for an intimate conversation with Doug Block, and learn more about the risks and rich rewards of making a personal documentary film, and the wisdom he's gained from a lifelong career as a documentary filmmaker.

The evening's on-stage conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A, and a reception on the Cinefamily's backyard Spanish patio!

Join IDA now! For discounted admission prices and more!

Special support provided by:

Big personalities and big issues dominated the documentaries at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway's Better This World, the story of two naïve and idealistic young Texans who fall under the spell of a charismatic FBI informant and are prosecuted for domestic terrorism during the 2008 Republican National Convention, earned two Golden Gate Awards, for Documentary Feature and for Bay Area Documentary.  The film is as gripping as any fictional drama, with two thoughtful and articulate protagonists.  

The drama in Yoav Potash's Investigative Documentary Feature Award winner, Crime After Crime, is even more riveting, as two lawyers struggle for years to free a woman who's spent decades in prison for her involvement in the death of her abusive boyfriend. They suffer setback after setback before a bittersweet triumph that reduced audience members to tears.

Both films, along with Susan Saladoff's Hot Coffee, were the focus of a festival "salon," an in-depth discussion about social justice documentaries moderated by San Francisco State University cinema professor Bill Nichols, who also put the genre into historical context. With the infamous case of a lawsuit against McDonald's for serving too-hot coffee as a jumping-off point, Hot Coffee explores how big business is subverting the criminal justice system, and issues a call to action.

As always, documentaries were among the festival's most interesting and innovative films, and several pushed the boundaries of the documentary form.  The Arbor, Clio Barnard's biography of British working-class playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died in 1990 at the age of 29, uses scenes from Dunbar's autobiographical plays, as well as interviews with her family and friends lip-synched by actors, in a technique called "verbatim theater." Barnard filmed in the public housing projects where Dunbar's brief, tragic life played out, often with current residents watching the action. The lip-synching is distancing at first, but after awhile the viewer stops noticing the oddness of the technique, engrossed in the dramas of Dunbar's life, and that of her older daughter.

There's nothing odd about the apparent incongruity in Régis Sauder's Children of The Princess of Cleves. Working class students in a Marseille high school read aloud (and sometimes perform) the words of  a 17th century classic French novel, La Princesse de Cleves, as they prepare to take their baccalauréat, a graduation exam. The life of a 15-year old heiress forced to marry a prince in the court of Henri II, and in love with another nobleman, resonates with these teens. The princess has the same problems they do: strife with her parents, frustrated love, duty versus desire. Framed in loving close-up, the students personify the universality of the adolescent experience.

The unconventional structure of Andrei Ujică's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu is both the strength and weakness of the film. It begins and ends with footage of the defiant Romanian dictator and his wife being interrogated just before their execution in 1989. He refuses to answer, calling the tribunal a "masquerade." Then begins the real masquerade: three hours of propaganda footage from Ceauşescu's official archives, without narration, portraying the 25 years of his iron rule as a socialist paradise filled with triumphal parades, foreign dignitaries and happy workers with a benevolent papa Ceauşescu presiding. The technique lies somewhere between direct cinema and utter tedium, but whether it might be more effective if it were shorter is debatable. The disconnect between manufactured prosperity and stark reality grows more appalling as the film goes on.

Unlike Ujică, who grew up in Romania during Ceauşescu's regime, Serbian director Mila Turajlic was a year old when Yugoslavian dictator Josip Broz Tito died.  During her childhood, Tito was still an influence in Yugoslav life, but after the civil wars that divided Yugoslavia in the 1990s, all traces of him were removed. As a film student, she discovered the Belgrade film studio Avala that was still operating but scheduled for demolition. She decided that the studio's demise would make a great metaphor for the collapse of Yugoslavia. In making Cinema Komunisto, Turajlic painstakingly obtained films from collectors, interviewed surviving filmmakers, and put together a lively, funny and poignant homage to a now-vanished cinema that was  equal parts propaganda and showmanship. One of her interview subjects was Tito's projectionist, who reveals that the dictator watched one film each day from 1949 to his death in 1980. He was such a fan that he personally chose Richard Burton to play him in Sutjeska (1972), about a battle with the Germans in World War II. "Tito wasn't just a film lover," Turajlic said during the question and answer period after the screening. "He was the storyteller, the grand illusionist."

Some of the most compelling documentaries in the festival took on personalities that were larger-than-life, and presented them without commentary. Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion's The Redemption of General Butt Naked profiles Joshua Milton Blahyi, who terrorized Liberia during the civil wars of the 1990s as the leader of the Butt-Naked Battalion, so named because they went on their murderous rampages naked except for their weapons. He later claimed he had killed 20,000 people. But in the late 1990s, Blahyi says he had a conversion, and now preaches the gospel. He testified before a war crimes commission, but many wonder if the "conversion" was actually a convenience to avoid prosecution. Shrewdly, the filmmakers simply present Blahyi's story, and allow the viewers to judge.

Sampat Pal Devi, the subject of Kim Longinotto's Pink Saris, is also a charismatic leader, an Indian woman of India's untouchable caste, who battles violence and discrimination against women. Herself a victim, she vows, "I won't let the world swallow us." She leads her posse of pink-clad women into villages, mediates family disputes, and fearlessly harangues men who victimize their wives, daughters and sisters. Sampat also supports her estranged husband, a flock of grandchildren and her current partner, a hapless man who's unhappy that she's stirring things up. "Show them you can survive!" she tells an abused woman who's threatening to throw herself under a train.

The powerful personality at the heart of Pierre Thoretton's L'Amour Fou is not superstar fashion designer Yves St. Laurent, but his life partner and business manager, Pierre Berge. The film is a gorgeous and touching look at the life and times of the fashion genius, as Berge prepares to dismantle the life they built together by selling their priceless art collection after the designer's death. It's a life the steady Berge made possible even as the emotionally fragile designer indulged in the excesses of his time.

Eva Mulvad's The Good Life purposely evokes the Maysles Brothers' Grey Gardens, but the Danish mother and daughter living in genteel poverty in a Portuguese resort town lack the goofy charm of the Edies. Stoic mother Matte and her whiny, entitled daughter Anne-Matte soon become tiresome, but the splendid cinematography and the very real issues raised by their plight make the film worthwhile.

Errol Morris returns to his exploration of quirky characters with Tabloid, a bizarre and compulsively watchable tale of American beauty queen Joyce McKinney, who in the 1970s followed her Mormon missionary lover to England and took him captive in an attempt to win him back. The saga captivated the British tabloids, and Morris retells the story from the points of view of McKinney, her accomplices and the tabloid reporters. Apparently McKinney regrets opening up. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik later reported that McKinney arrived at one screening "in a limousine marked with graffiti saying the movie was untrue," and sat in the back yelling "liar." From what we've seen in the film, McKinney's latest exploits are totally in character.

Margarita Landazuri works in TV news in San Francisco and writes for the Turner Classic Movies website and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

This past April, the Buenos Aires Lab (BAL), the oldest running production workshop and competition for independent Latin American film, held its tenth anniversary edition. Held within the framework of BAFICI (the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film), the BAL is a particular event in the world of production workshops in that it puts documentary on equal footing with fictional film--which is to say that documentary filmmakers and producers present their work to juries, possible funders and investors and buyers side by side with filmmakers of fiction (as well as those working in experimental film and animation).

Selected filmmakers and producers can participate through one of three programs run by the BAL: Co-production meetings, the Puentes workshop for Latin American and European producers, and the Work-in-Progress competition. And along with creating possibilities for advancing a film through a co-production deal, pre-sale or funding, the BAL offers over a dozen awards that include film stock and developing, post-production services, and cash. This year's jury included Argentine documentary filmmaker Andrés Di Tella, Spanish documentary producer and educator Marta Andreu, and Vicenzo Bugno, project manager for the Berlinale/World Cinema Fund.

While this year's edition included only four documentary films (out of a total of 32 films), all four docs were in the Work-in-Progress section, and made a very strong showing in the competition for awards.

The Lahaye and Tauro Digital Awards, which include the use of an HD camera kit and post-production sound work, respectively, both went to Aurora, a coming-of-age film that follows the lives of a family of adolescents and young adults from a closed community of German-descended farmers in the northeastern jungles of Argentina. The director, Nele Wohlatz, is a native of Germany who first came to Argentina in 2003 during the economic crisis and did camera work on a couple of documentary films. She moved to Buenos Aires in 2009 and shortly began work on Aurora. Her film is a portrait of both youth at a crossroads and the culture of the Protestant work ethic as it has defined this community for over a hundred years. Speaking of her participation in the BAL, Wohlatz was very pleased with the reactions to the work-in-progress presentation: "In many of the meetings, people mentioned that when they read the synopsis they weren't sure if the film was documentary or fiction, and that the photography gave them a similar feeling about the film."

Another documentary that did well in terms of awards was The Eye of the Shark by Alejo Hoijman, whose previous film Unidad 25 won the best Argentine film award at the 2008 BAFICI; The Eye of the Shark won two Sinsistema Awards. The film follows a pair of youths, Maycol and Bryan, who live in Greytown, a small town on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua where the main opportunities offered for making a living are drug trafficking and shark hunting. In discussing where documentary fits into the BAL and the BAFICI, Hoijman said, "In practice I always try to fight the idea that documentary is a genre. I think that documentary is a kind of cinema that establishes a particular dialogue with that which is real, and this dialogue is different from what we is called fictional narrative film. The BAFICI, and the BAL along with it, is one of the places in the world where they think in terms of cinema and not in terms of fiction or documentary."

The other two documentaries that participated in this year's BAL were also, coincidentally, coming-of-age stories, a strange occurrence that the filmmakers discussed with each other, joking that they were starting a trend.

Normal School by Celina Murga, who is known for her fiction films and who spent a year under the mentorship of Martin Scorscese, follows the lives of students in the upper grades of Argentina's oldest "normal" school, which came out of the standardization movement for public schools in the nineteenth century. The film intimately weaves the threads of the student election and the teachers' union meetings with the day-to-day life of the school. Ezequiel Yanco's Days is an observational documentary that records the lives of ten-year-old twin sisters, Martina and Macaela, as their parents struggle through financial difficulties during Argentina's ongoing economic problems while trying to provide the girls with a normal middle-class life.

For all four films, the rest of the year holds a number of possibilities for acquiring finishing funds and support. Both Doc Meeting Argentina, to be held in September, and DocBsAs, in late November, offer more opportunities for competing for funding and services awards as well as meeting with foreign co-producers, distributors and acquisition editors. And all Argentine or Argentine co-produced films are eligible to apply for funding through various channels from the Argentine Institute for Film and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA).

Richard Shpuntoff is a documentary filmmaker and translator who lives in Buenos Aires and New York City.