PARE LORENTZ DOCUMENTARY FUND

Made possible by The New York Community Trust

Inspired by the legacy of documentary pioneer, Pare Lorentz, the Fund supports projects that reflect the spirit and nature of his films and embody Lorentz' central concerns - the appropriate use of the natural environment, social justice, and the illumination of pressing social problems - presented as a compelling story through skillful filmmaking.

Perhaps it was from celebrating the festival's 10th anniversary through the rousing rituals of a sauna, ice swim and night of Finno-Balkan beats, but the DocPoint Festival, which ran from January 25 through 30, in both Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, made a wry virtue of Finnishness. Witness the welcome letter from Executive Director Leena Närekangas and Artistic Director Erkko Lyytinen to festival guests:

"The Finno-Urgic bloodline obliges us to behave in a peculiar way. Our way of expression is stiff and brief...[In the Q&As] don't get depressed if there is not exactly a rain of questions right from the beginning. That is because of our national norms...we just need a little bit of time to get the conversation going!"

This self-awareness was also evident off of the page. Following a screening in Tallinn of Bohemian Eyes, a new documentary on Finnish actor Matti Pellonpää, who shone in the country's films of the 1980s and 1990s, director Janne Kuusi waited for the audience to ask questions. With no takers, he encouraged the Estonian crowd by saying, "Don't be so Finnish."

Droll self-awareness and concerted promotion have made documentaries of two-sided appeals. Last year the two most popular festival films, Reindeerspotting (Dir.: Joonas Neuvonen) and Steam of Life (Dirs.: Joonas Berghäll, Mika Hotakainen), illustrated the potential of Finnish documentaries to be externally accessible while opening new angles on native life, whether drug abuse in the north of the country or the intimate histories of the land's less prominent, male gender.

Following last year's success, this year's Finnish documentaries were presented with a frank judgment of local accomplishments, as described in the festival's "Report from the New Finnish Documentary Films": "The best submissions were excellent but there were not many in the top class...[and for student films] It was even harder to identify unique, solid works of art...Some unique short films, such as Elina Talvensaari's How to Pick Berries, stood out positively."

Talvensaari's short, which has screened at Venice and other festivals, portrays the tensions between Lapland locals and the Thai workers who come to pick berries in the woods. The professors and students of the documentary department of Aalto University's School of Art and Design explained at our screening that while the film can be placed among debates about guest workers, Finnish audiences see the irony in the townspeople's complaints about foreign laborers, given the ratio of forests to the population.

Among popular selections such as Exit Through the Gift Shop and Inside Job, a master class with Stefan Jarl, a session on the Congo, and a career tribute to Pekka Lehto, as well as the first accompaniment of Jean Painlevé's underwater studies by a Finnish rapper and music group, the section of Finnish classics revealed continuities with contemporary docs that led to fresh contemplations on Finns and documentary's role in national life.

As Närekangas and Lyytinen noted in their welcoming letter, the famous Finnish reticence is loosening among the younger generation. Yet Finnish documentaries are distinguished by the ways they have overcome varieties of silence and absences. For example:

When filmmaker Antti Peippo was dying of cancer, he used tilting movements on archival and family photos, drawings and paintings, with concise remembrances to resurrect his childhood in Sijainen (Proxy; 1989), in which he recalls his mother "smothering some words on the way home from school: ‘I hope you'll die soon.'"

Where there were no family records, filmmaker Johanna Vanhala used Super-8 footage from other families to illustrate her childhood memories before her separation from her mother, as the end title tells us for her short Voitko Rakastaa (Could You Love?; 2010).

And following a long separation from her father, filmmaker Anu Kuivalainen edited shots of her trip to visit him, with non-synchronous recordings of her discussions, anxieties and attempts to make contact, concluding with his brief message on her machine, and a glimpse of him in long shot at the doors of a station in Orpojen joulu (Christmas in the Distance; 1994).

Even with onscreen drama, as in the trials of vacuum-cleaner salesmen in Pölynimurikauppiaat (Suckers; Dir.: John Webster; 1993), restraint in behavior leads to effective and "hilarious moments of Finnishness" (in the words of the festival catalogue), as when a salesman asks a widower to play his accordion before pressing his wares. The national manner can also inspire filmmakers by necessity. In Marja-Sisko (Dir.: Reetta Aalto; 2010), neither the Church where the protagonist works nor a transgender association would speak on camera about her gender-correction surgery. So the director turned the reflections of her character, which was meant only as preliminary research, into the film's non-synchronous commentary.

While the absence of talking heads may be characteristic of regional, rather than only Finnish documentaries, the lack of the convention illustrates a range of relationships between image and soundtrack. How to Pick Berries blends the townspeople's voices without showing them onscreen, so their criticisms of the foreign workers acquire the force of community prejudice. While the women of Auf Wiedersehen, Finland (Dir.: Virpi Suutari; 2010) recall their flight from their homeland with the Germans who were their country's allies, the film shows them in old age braiding their hair, lying on their beds or lifting weights. Although the film includes the story of one man, the son of a Finnish woman and German soldier, his story blends with the women's into one tale of reversal, rejection and a difficult return.

In the most memorable Finnish documentaries, stylistic ingenuity in overcoming the absences of people or the past matches a strong responsibility to the material, or as director Suutari asked, "What is the truth you are trying to find and how do you get at it?" She and her crew shot super-8 footage to convey the women's passage out of Finland to Germany, to mirror the material shot by American soldiers from the end of the war. Rather than manufacturing a false continuity, this decision becomes evident when the son of the German soldier is filmed with his mother in Super-8, as if their stories have become part of history through their testimonies on camera. Such strategies recall essential questions of documentary: how re-creations and the catalyst of the camera can evoke experience, with respect towards the subjects who share it.

In ten years, DocPoint has provided Finnish documentaries with a base for successful distribution in theaters. Since 2003, the number of festival attendees has more than doubled, to over 30,000 this year in Helsinki and Tallinn combined. Since last year, it has become the only documentary--and perhaps only film--festival to attract full houses simultaneously in two capital cities. It has brought connoisseurs of documentary to Finland and the Baltics--in January--and continues to preserve the region's nonfiction film heritage. For example, DocPoint paid for the print of Suckers to be transferred to DigiBeta and subtitled for its festival screening.

Across the documentary field, there has been a growing convergence with the aesthetics and distribution practices of fiction films. Liisa Lehmusto, who worked at DocPoint from 2003 to 2010, notes in her article for the leaflet "New Finnish Documentary Films 2011" that "the word ‘documentary' was not even mentioned" in the marketing materials for Reindeerspotting, Steam of Life and Vesku from Finland, the country's top three nonfiction box-office successes of last year. This fusion of forms may be accelerated by the recent collapse of public broadcasting in Europe, including the Finnish YLE, which, according to producer Liisa Juntunen, has not financed a work for over a year. While the backing of both the Finnish Film Foundation (SES) and Centre for Audio-Visual Culture (AVEK) gives Finnish documentaries more support than in other European countries, filmmakers still seek new outlets of distribution, such as Juntunen's work on the board of the distribution organization Film Contact (at present only in Finnish).

One hopes documentary ethics will not fade in the remaking of its art. In Finland there is less likelihood of losing this dimension of empathy, as it remains part of a self-conscious modesty, and of filmmakers' sense of how they bring people's experiences to light. Documentary's foundations will then be refreshed in Finland, by a competent, punctual, at times conversationally-challenged, but altogether decent people, freed at this year's festival by sunlight, saunas and Balkan beats.

For further information about the Finnish documentary community, here's an article from the February 2006 issue of Documentary magazine.

Having covered most of the major European nonfiction festivals, Gabriel M. Paletz teaches documentary and screenwriting at the Prague Film School in the Czech Republic. Among recent work, he has co-programmed the original series “Documentary and the City” for this summer’s edition of DokuFest in Prizren, Kosovo.

With sold-out screenings, lively Q&As and impassioned audiences, the 22nd annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) drew a record 132,000 attendees out of the sunshine and into theaters in January. Of the 205 films screened, 43 were feature documentaries, including four world premieres.

A combination of submissions and films sought out by PSIFF programmers from other festivals and industry contacts, the documentary line-up featured a wide range of current international and US-made nonfiction films. "It's an eclectic round-up in content and style," says Ken Jacobson, the festival's programming/education coordinator, adding that  the documentary selections were narrowed down from approximately 300 submissions. "We're committed to playing the best in documentary," he affirms.

Twenty-two countries were represented in the festival's True Stories documentary program, which varied from 2010's most notable documentaries such as the Academy Award-nominated Waste Land to the world premiere of directors Alex Dawson and Greg Gricus' debut feature Wild Horse, Wild Ride, to New Directors/New Films standout Bill Cunningham New York to PSIFF Audience Award winner and DocuWeeks 2010 participant Louder Than A Bomb.

 "We really want to continue to raise the profile of documentary films," Jacobson asserts. To that end, the festival's juried John Schlesinger Award, previously awarded to a debut feature, is now presented to an outstanding documentary. In 2011, the award went to Summer Pasture from filmmakers Lynn True and Nelson Walker. The film, which also screened at DocuWeeks 2010, chronicles a traditional, nomadic Tibetan family's summer in remote grasslands, set against the lure of modernization.

The majority of PSIFF's filmgoing audiences are retirees, a demographic that responds enthusiastically to nonfiction, historic and cultural subjects. Art-themed documentaries resonate strongly and often screen to overflow crowds such as those at the Bill Cunningham New York screening in the 400-seat Annenberg Theater at the Palm Springs Art Museum. "The audiences were so smart and sophisticated," says Richard Press, the film's director. "It was a total pleasure to watch the film with them,"

A profile of famed New York Times fashion photographer and writer Bill Cunningham, who writes and shoots the On the Street and Evening Hours photomontages for the Sunday Styles section, the documentary chronicles the octogenarian's extraordinary work ethic and process. "He has such a passion for what he does," explains producer Philip Gefter. "Audiences get the purity, essence, integrity and simplicity of the man, which is gratifying to us."

An original, charming and ultimately shy and self-deprecating character, Cunningham was reluctant to participate in the film and has never seen the finished work. As the filmmakers related at a festival Q&A, it took them more than eight years to convince Cunningham to allow them to capture his daily forays across Manhattan, where he shoots of-the-moment fashion trends as they happen on New York's sidewalks. 

 "We tried not to give the appearance of making a movie," explains Press, as Cunningham would never agree to be tracked by a full-on film crew. Press and cinematographer Tony Cenicola trailed Cunningham inconspicuously, using two lightweight, hand-held Canon pro-consumer cameras. An engaging portrait, the film also demonstrates the photographer's influence and wide reach. "Bill's work is basically the chronicle of fashion and society in New York City," Gefter notes. "It is very important in terms of documentary photography, as well as anthropologically and journalistically significant." Cunningham's knowledge of fashion from the 17th century to the present is astonishing. "He's a walking encyclopedia of fashion and brings all that to his images," says Press. Distributed by Zeitgeist Films, Bill Cunningham New York, which was a runner-up for the Audience Award at PSIFF, opens March 16 at Film Forum in New York City and March 25 at the Nuart in Los Angeles, to be followed by a roll-out to 50 US cities.

Throughout the festival, audiences lined up well in advance of screenings; many make a point of coming every year, drawn by the chance to see films not usually available in the desert community or elsewhere in the southwest. Per Jacobson, approximately 50 percent of the documentary screenings included Q&As with the filmmakers and sometimes the subjects of the films. Documentaries were screened at all festival venues, from the 1,000 plus-seat high school auditorium to the multiplexes at the Regal Cinemas and Camelot Theaters. 

The festival is one of the high points of Palm Springs' social calendar and its black-tie awards gala has become a prestigious pre-Oscar event too, drawing major stars such as Colin Firth and Natalie Portman in 2011. It's also a major fundraiser for the Palm Springs International Film Society--more than $1.3 million was raised at this year's event.

For the first time, the festival expanded beyond the city limits, hosting a pre-fest filmmakers' retreat in Rancho Mirage, co-sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation Trust, at the soon-to-open Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. Both narrative and nonfiction filmmakers were invited to the inaugural event. "It was a really great and totally unique experience," reflects Jon Siskel, Louder Than A Bomb's co-director and co-producer. Case studies were presented, and each filmmaker screened their film's trailer for the assembled filmmakers. Per Siskel, the filmmakers formed strong connections, and often went out en masse to each other's screenings during the festival.

Because of its subject matter--a youth poetry slam competition in Chicago--festival organizers also screened Louder Than A Bomb for free for area high-school students. Co-director Greg Jacobs and the film subjects Nova, Nate and Kevin Coval (founder of the Chicago Youth Poetry Festival) also conducted poetry slam workshops at the high school.

The enthusiasm of festival audiences guarantees that Louder Than A Bomb will return to Palm Springs during the film's theatrical run. "We now have an army of high-school students supporting the film," says Siskel. "We doubled our Facebook fan numbers from that one screening alone." Grey or young, Palm Springs' film fans have taken documentaries to heart.

Kathy A. McDonald is a Los Angeles-based writer.

The Association for Information, Media and Equipment (AIME), a nonprofit trade association of educational video publishers, and New York-based Ambrose Video Publishing (AVP) recently filed a copyright infringement and breach of contract suit against The Regents of University of California and UCLA.

The plaintiffs charge that UCLA has illegally streamed copyright-protected DVD titles hundreds of times for use by faculty and students both on and off campus on the University's Web-based Intranet, using a technology system called Video Furnace, which enables the recording of content and subsequent delivery as video-on-demand to computers and set-top boxes..

According to the complaint filed with the US District Court of the Central District of California, UCLA had acquired a series of BBC productions of Shakespeare plays. The DVD streams of the series were linked to course websites and accessible to students and faculty enrolled in or teaching the course.    

Upon learning of UCLA's practice, AVP challenged the university, citing copyright law, and the fact that streaming was a violation of the AVP DVD license. AVP also offers institutional streaming licenses for its titles.

UCLA countered these challenges, claiming fair use as well as a public performance exemption for face-to-face teaching and digital distance learning uses.

According to the court filing, UCLA has placed over 2,500 titles on its file server for use by students and faculty. The titles include hundreds of documentary films distributed by such respected companies as The Criterion Collection, California Newsreel, Women Make Movies, among many others.

Given the educational market's longstanding preeminence as a major and steady revenue stream for documentary filmmakers, this case has significant implications for the documentary community. IDA will be monitoring the developments of this case and posting updates on www.documentary.org.

To download the PDF of the US District Court Filing of AIME v. The Regents of the University of California, click here.

As reported in The New York Times, a federal appeals court ruled earlier this month that filmmaker Joe Berlinger could not invoke journalist's privilege in protecting the 600 hours of footage of his documentary Crude from Chevron's subpoena of the material last spring.

Although the same Second Court of Appeals ruled last summer that Chevron could not arbitrarily claim all of Berlinger's footage, in submitting the more recent ruling, the judges wrote, "Given all the circumstances of the making of the film, as reasonably found by the district court, particularly the fact that Berlinger's making of the film was solicited by the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio litigation for the purpose of telling their story, and that changes to the film were made at their instance, Berlinger failed to carry his burden of showing that he collected information for the purpose of independent reporting and commentary."

At last week's Cinema Eye Honors in New York City, IDA Board President Eddie Schmidt addressed the audience about the January 14th ruling: "In a year when corporations were given the opportunity to express themselves in our elections, and another corporation is able to win a ruling judging that a documentary filmmaker investigating them is not, in fact, a journalist...I ask if you begin to see the connections in the world we're living in. If we're not independent, who is?...There's no question in my mind that the most important investigative journalism, and the most in-depth examinations of the human condition, are happening today because of the people in our community. 

"One of the things that IDA is working on for the future is a federal shield law that properly includes documentary filmmakers in the very definition of journalists. Had this been in place in a meaningful way, what happened to Joe Berlinger might not have been possible.  It appears there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the process in our work, and just as we expect truth from our news sources, our new sources require the building of trust.

"So I may be calling on many of you, as I have in the past, to come together and make a difference again to help this bill work its way into law.  We can be independent, but should be united.  As we clearly see from what is happening in Joe Berlinger's case, our professional lives and our pursuit of the truth may depend on it."

For his part, Berlinger responded to the ruling, in an e-mailed statement, "I am deeply concerned by the Court's fundamental misunderstanding of the circumstances surrounding the production of this film in particular and the nature of long-term investigative documentary reporting in general, when filmmakers embed themselves with their subjects over a long period of time to be able to tell underreported stories that serve the public interest. 

"While the idea for Crude was pitched to me by Steven Donziger, one of the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs' lawyers, this was not a commissioned film. I had complete editorial independence, as did 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair, who also produced stories on this case that were solicited by Mr. Donziger.   The decision to modify one scene in the film based on comments from the plaintiffs' lawyers after viewing the film at the Sundance Film Festival was exclusively my own and in no way diminishes the independence of this production from its subjects. I rejected many other suggested changes and my documentary Crude has been widely praised for its balance in the presentation of Chevron's point of view as well as the plaintiffs'.   

"The facts concerning my independence were never fully before the Second Circuit, because this was not a significant issue in the district court proceedings and not addressed in the district court's holding.  The appeals court's ruling that a journalist must affirmatively establish editorial independence is a sea change in the law.  The standards it articulates for determining independence will unfortunately deter a great deal of important reporting by independent journalists."

Nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards have been announced.

Documentary (Feature)

• "Exit through the Gift Shop" Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz
• "Gasland" Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic
• "Inside Job" Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
• "Restrepo" Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
• "Waste Land" Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

Documentary (Short Subject)

• "Killing in the Name" Nominees to be determined
• "Poster Girl" Nominees to be determined
• "Strangers No More" Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
• "Sun Come Up" Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger
• "The Warriors of Qiugang" Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon

Mark your calendar for DocuDay LosAngeles, February 26^th at the Writers Guild Theater, and DocuDay NYC at the Paley Center - February date to beannounced. DocuDay is IDA's annual screening of the year's best documentary films, Oscar nominated shorts and features. Watch all the above films and get a chance to listen in on filmmaker Q&A's. Stay tuned for more information.

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011. The ceremony will again take place at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollyood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.  To view the full list of nominees, visit The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website.

Timed with the opening of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the Ford Foundation announced a five-year, $50 million initiative to help find and support a new generation of filmmakers whose works address urgent social issues.

The new initiative, JustFilms, will invest $10 million a year over the next five years to support and expand the community of filmmakers and mediamakers around the world focused on creating documentaries with passion and purpose, but who often lack funding to realize their visions or reach audiences.

“With the growth of the Web and social networks, the potential global audience for filmed content with a social conscience has exploded,” said Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, in a statement. “We want JustFilms to support visionary filmmakers from around the world to create works on urgent social issues, and help them reach and engage audiences.”

JustFilms will build on the foundation’s longtime support for documentaries, including such landmark productions as Eyes on the Prize, State of Fear and Why Democracy, among scores of others. It will also leverage the foundation’s global network of 10 regional offices to identify and lift new talent from around the world and to strengthen emerging communities of documentary filmmakers.

“Storytelling is a unique and powerful way of helping us understand our past, explore our present and build our future,” said Darren Walker, vice president of Ford’s Education, Creativity and Free Expression program. “We see these stories as vital ingredients to social change, translating how people engage with the world and the issues that define our time.”

The foundation said JustFilms would focus on film, video and digital works that show courageous people confronting difficult issues and actively pursuing a more just, secure and sustainable world. The initiative will pursue three distinct funding paths: 

• Partnerships with major organizations such as the Sundance Institute, the Independent Television Service, and others
• An ongoing open application process that will help JustFilms stay attuned to fresh ideas and stories wherever they may emerge, and
• Partnership with other Ford Foundation grant-making programs where the introduction of documentary film could help draw attention to an issue or advance a movement.

Directing the JustFilms initiative will be Orlando Bagwell, an internationally respected, award-winning filmmaker who has supported documentary film and other narrative art forms over the past six years as a program officer and director in the foundation’s Freedom of Expression team. 

“This major new commitment to documentaries reflects our recognition that individual stories--meaningful and well told--can be a powerful instrument of change,” Bagwell said. “The test of JustFilms will be its ability to lift the voices of independent filmmakers and mediamakers from outside the mainstream, to build audiences for social justice stories, and to enlarge the conversation on critical but often less visible issues. It’s work that at its essence is really about capturing imaginations.”

As a key component of the initriative, JustFilms will launch a major five-year partnership with the Sundance Institute, contributing $1 million a year over five years to support the Documentary Film Program at the Institute.  The resulting Sundance Institute/Ford Foundation Documentary Film Fund will support international and US productions that focus on human and civil rights, free expression, economic opportunity and other critical topics. It will also support filmmaker labs that enhance storytelling through cutting-edge editing, producing, and film scoring workshops. And it will support panels and dialogues at the Sundance Film Festival to enhance understanding and recognition of documentary film as a key component of social change.

JustFilms will spend roughly one-third of its annual budget on each of its three core funding paths (strategic partnerships, open applications, engagement with Ford Foundation grantees).  The initiative has also set aside funds for marketing partners who will help filmmakers promote their work and engage directly with audiences.