Week 2 of IDA's 14th Annual DocuWeeks begins today with six films screening daily at the ArcLight Hollywood and at the IFC Center in New York. The Los Angeles lineup for August 6 through August 12 includes Apaporis, Louder Than a Bomb, My Perestroika, Steam of Life (Miesten vuoro), Summer Pasture and This Way of Life. Films screening through August 12 in New York include Budrus, For Once in My Life, HolyWars, Most Valuable Players, Pushing the Elephant and Quest for Honor.

Tickets are available online at the links above or at the ArcLight (6360 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood) and IFC Center (323 Sixth Ave @ W. 3rd St., New York) box offices.

Editor’s Note: Waste Land, an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, will be screening Saturday, February 26, at 4:00 p.m., as part of DocuDay LA at the Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills, and at 5:10 p.m. at DocuDays NY at The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan.

Over the past couple of weeks, we at IDA have been introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from July 30 through August 19 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Lucy Walker, director of Waste Land.

Synopsis: Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio. There, he photographs an eclectic band of catadores--self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with them, as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage, reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Waste Land offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

IDA:  How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Lucy Walker: One winter, when I was about 21 years old and studying fiction filmmaking in grad film school at New York University, I went to stay with some friends--a bunch of young artists and writers in Galway, Ireland. I arrived early on New Year's morning, and they were still asleep. I was very excited to try my new, first-ever video camera. I filmed everyone as they slowly woke up, made tea on the old potbelly stove, smoked cigarettes while they washed the dishes from the party the night before, and discussed the year ahead; it was a little bit Withnail and I, a little bit Slackers, and I was having a lot of fun filming it.
I really liked the footage, and when I went back to New York I showed it to my beloved directing professor at NYU, Boris Frumin, who compared these kids to Jesus and his disciples (and I could see what he meant!) and encouraged me in my feeling that this was just as interesting as the fictional scenes I was working on. After that, I started compulsively documenting the most interesting young artists and musicians and activists I could find in New York, intending to make a film about their struggles. I ultimately decided it wasn't a sufficiently focused documentary to finish, but I had learned a lot and gotten the bug.

IDA: What inspired you to make Waste Land?

LW: I had finished my previous film Blindsight and was looking for a follow-up project. I was introduced to the artist Vik Muniz and had some very open, organic conversations with him about how we might collaborate to make a documentary. I didn't want to make a film that looked at all his different works like a wide-ranging retrospective art show;  brilliant as Vik's work is, that just doesn't offer a compelling through-line. I love films about art like Quince Tree Sun, which simply focus closely on the making of (or the failed attempt at making, in that film) one single painting.
I showed Vik Blindsight because I thought that one giant, challenging project would make the most dramatic structure for a documentary, as well as the most revealing approach to documenting his art-making process. And, like Erik Weihenmeyer going to Tibet to meet the blind Tibetan students and take them climbing in Blindsight, I challenged Vik to come up with the toughest possible project, one that would test him to the max as a human being, not simply as an artist.
I was stubbornly fixated on the fact that Vik had grown up in Brazil very poor, and had been shot in the leg, and the rich guy who had shot him paid him off with a lot of money, so he bought a plane ticket and came to the United States and pursued his dream of being an art photographer. I love how this story shows how fortune, or life, or fate, or the universe, or God, or whatever you call it, knocks us around in surprising ways. And it was pretty shocking to me how rich he was now; as an art photographer, he practically prints money. I thought it would be rich emotional territory for this rich, successful artist to confront the extreme poverty of his childhood.
I remembered watching Ilha Das Flores, a Brazilian movie about garbage, and learning about the catadores, or garbage pickers, from my friend Robin Nagle, who was in my triathlon club at NYU and taught an amazing seminar all about garbage. I had been so fascinated by Robin's work that I audited her class and went along to Freshkills landfill in Staten Island, and thought that it would make a genius location for a movie. This was long before Garbage Dreams, another beautiful documentary, so I guess I wasn't the only person to have this idea!
But this idea was perfect for us because Vik had previously done a series of works called Pictures of Junk\, which I found utterly captivating, and also a fantastic visual metaphor for how we can use documentary filmmaking to get very close to people who are normally so far away. For Vik to go to a landfill in Brazil and collaborate with the catadores there to make giant pieces of art seemed like the ideal story to follow to make a film, and once we had this idea, I stubbornly insisted on it, and then we had an amazing team to make it happen.

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

LW: Like all my films, this was an awful challenge! Not least because we had to work in the garbage dump--with all the attendant horrors of smells, dangers and threat of violence because of the favelas being controlled by drug traffickers and garbage dumps being used to hide guns, drugs and even dead bodies. I was terrified, but I knew that if people were working there every day, and if Vik wanted to go and work with them, then I should be courageous enough to go along and film it, because it was sure to be absolutely fascinating material.
I had so many vaccinations before I went that I could barely move my arms when I arrived in Brazil! And then I made the mistake of watching Manda Bala and showing it to our team, so then we had to go get kidnap insurance! Fortunately we had the most wonderful producer in Angus Aynsley, who believed unwaveringly in my talent and in Vik's, and who 100 percent supported our collaboration from the very beginning, including setting up all our conversations and financing our initial trips until we were able to make a trailer and raise production funds from the Brazilian government. We also had brilliant collaborators across the board, and I am really proud of the craft elements in the film--the cinematography by Dudu Miranda, the editing by Pedro Kos and the music by Moby.

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

LW: In a way, the film is exactly what I was hoping for. And the film is structured in a very chronological way. I was very strict about filming everything, from the very beginning of Vik's thinking about the idea, so that the viewers can observe the absolute entire process from start to finish. And I insisted that nothing happened off-camera, so that we were filming things freshly as Vik was negotiating them.
This being my third documentary, I was happy that I had learned a lot of lessons the hard way and was able to implement them. In a way, the structure of Waste Land is very similar to those of Devil's Playground and Blindsight as I follow a fascinating group of characters on an extreme journey through a very inaccessible world (whether the Amish community or Mt. Everest or the garbage dump).
The moment when I knew it was going to work was when I got to Jardim Gramacho for the first time and saw Valter, the bard of the dump who uses rhymes to keep everyone going, cycling into the frame. His bicycle was covered in trinkets he had retrieved from the garbage. He honked a grubby eagle-horn and smiled at me. I couldn't believe how charming, funny, funkily dressed, eloquent and soulful he and the other catadores I met all were. And I knew that they would be the beating heart and soul of the movie.

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

LW: I guess the biggest surprise is that you have an idea and it actually works! Sometimes you can work really hard on something and it doesn't come together, but in this case our expectations were way exceeded. The people we met blew us away. Vik's project turned out to be the most magically transformative one imaginable. And the emotional reaction that the audience can feel about that is so gratifying. We've had a few charmed festival screenings where I've looked across and it seems like everybody's faces are wet, and the whole theater is crying...and of course, I am too because it makes it all so worthwhile.
But it's a slow build: The opening is the first part of a bookend that doesn't pay off until the very end, and I can watch people scratching their heads and wondering if they're in the right theater. But then when the ending does finally roll around, it really does pay off! Everybody who worked on the film could relate to having come through personal challenges where we felt our lives were "in the garbage," and that is a bond shared by the people in the movie, the people who made the movie, and now the people watching the movie.

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

LW: So many! To name just a couple, Hoop Dreams and Streetwise are two films I point to as being especially influential when I was starting out wanting to make vérité films about young people. I couldn't believe the twists and turns of fate in Hoop Dreams--and I think Waste Land for me is really about these big forces that act on our lives, the moments when lives dramatically shift before our eyes.
Streetwise fascinated me because of the amazing trust and access the filmmakers achieved with the homeless young people in the movie. I just couldn't believe that the filmmakers were in the room during such intimate scenes, such as 14-year-olds falling in love or returning home or even dying, and it became the benchmark to aspire to in my own films.
I was lucky enough to study with Barbara Kopple and work for Beeban Kidron, and these two amazing women personally taught me a great deal. I was drinking in everything I could about how they tackled things, and still today their words ring in my ears. For example, Barbara once told me, "You always miss 99 percent of what you know you need, but don't worry; just keep going." And those words encourage me when I miss an important scene, as inevitably happens sometimes in the uncontrollable world of documentary filmmaking.
Pixote, a Brazilian film, was in my mind a lot making Waste Land, because it is such a stunning film about poor outcast young people in Brazil, and also because our wonderful sound recordist was the son of its writer.

Waste Land will be screening July 30 through August 5 at the the ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles and August 13 through 19 the IFC Center in New York City.

To download the DocuWeeks^TM program, click here.

To purchase tickets for Waste Land in Los Angeles, click here.

To purchase tickets for Waste Land  in New York, click here.

Editor's Note: For Once in My Life, which won the IDA/Mujsic Documentary Award last month, airs February 1 on PBS' Independent Lens. What follows is an interview we conducted with director/producer Jim Bigham and director/cinematographer Mark Moorman when the film screened as part of IDA's DocuWeeks^TM.

Over the past couple of weeks, we at IDA have been introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from July 30 through August 19 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here are Jim Bigham, director/producer, and Mark Moormann, director, of For Once in My Life.

Synopsis: For Once in My Life is a documentary about a unique band of singers and musicians, and their journey to show the world the greatness--and killer soundtrack--within each of them. The band members have a wide range of mental and physical disabilities, as well as musical abilities that extend into ranges of pure genius. In a cinema vérité style, the film explores the struggles and triumphs, and the healing power of music, as the band members' unique talents are nurtured to challenge the world's perceptions.

 IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Jim Bigham:  I've always loved still photography and capturing that moment that can be suspended in time forever. I was greatly influenced by still photographers, people like Robert Frank. Looking at life as it is without manipulating it and putting those images together in order to tell a story or evoke an emotion was a direction that fascinated me early on. I was fortunate to be exposed to the area of editing docs while attending the London Film School. While being entrenched with several masters of the art there, I learned to appreciate the craftsmanship required in revealing the proper balance of information in a story. 

Mark Moormann: In 1988, in North Florida I met and shot a docu-travel video with Ned Deloach, author of the Diving Guide to Underwater Florida. Soon after, Ned invited me to travel with a group of cave divers he'd assembled to explore and shoot the underground aquifers of the Yucatan Peninsula for Hidden Rivers of the Maya. I shot all the topside 16-mm images and served as the camera technician on the underwater camera systems. I was a young guy at the time, and the expertise, professionalism and attention to detail these divers displayed made a lasting impression on me. On a side note, Wes Skiles, an underwater cinematographer on that expedition, died this week (July 21st) while shooting here in the waters off the Florida coast. RIP Wes Skiles.

IDA: What inspired you to make For Once in My Life?

MM:  I met Javier Pena while shooting a job. During our initial conversation I mentioned making documentaries, and at his urging I related some stories about the making of the music doc Tom Dowd & the Language of Music. He invited me to visit the Goodwill facility in Miami and check out the Spirit of Goodwill Band. I went down there with a camera and shot a band practice. It was obvious there was a terrific story there, with great potential, and I agreed to help Javier develop the project. Some time later, while meeting with director/producer Jim Bigham regarding a documentary I'd helped him shoot, I showed him a short demo of the film project. He and his wife, Cathy, were impressed with the band, and expressed an interest to get involved. We all met with Lourdes Little, executive producer of the film, and the project ultimately became a reality.

JB:  In our meeting, we set goals and determined we would make a film designed to appeal to mass audiences that would change pre-conceived notions about disabilities. We all realized at that time, we were signing on to a passion project.

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

MM:  One of the biggest challenges with any documentary film is getting the audience to care about the characters. In many cases with the Spirit of Goodwill Band members, that involved breaking down some very strong barriers born from preconceptions and misconceptions. At first glance it's easy for audience members (and society at large) to dismiss disabled people's ability to contribute in a meaningful way. While shooting the film, I think we made a real effort to capture the band members on camera as we would any other person. Over time, that allowed their personalities to come out, allowing the audience to relate to these individuals as they would any other person. In the end, it's the band members themselves who show us all how to overcome obstacles, especially when they are playing music for an audience, and their true essence emerges from behind the disability for the audience to see. 

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

JB: The things that didn't change were the focus of making a film about the characters and the need to tell it in an entertaining fashion. When we first started filming, the only plan was to capture these interesting characters and their music. We were hoping for the storyline to present itself. A couple months into it, we got a lucky break when Miami's mayor, Manny Diaz, along with Emilio Estefan, visited the band and the mayor invited them to play at a large, prestigious event. The film now had a path to follow. From there we found a natural build and a timeline of events to work with. At that point, we began working with Javier Pena on music choices. That meant choosing music where Javier could create interesting arrangements that made full use of all band members and their skills. By working with our editor, Amy Foote, we were able to find the links to keep the story progressing forward and reveal a progression in the characters as well. We tried to find the perfect balance between the music, the characters and the build-up of events. We chose to experiment with The Edit Center in New York, where we were editing, by allowing students to take pieces of the film and edit segments as a student project. It gave us some interesting feedback as to what a general audience might be looking for because it was difficult not to become too attached to all our characters and the moments that impacted us as filmmakers. We also did a couple private screenings to see what scenes had the most impact and to lose other moments that we felt were great but maybe didn't have as much to do with the story.

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

JB: There's always fear when first showing your film to an audience; you never know what reactions you'll get. But I've been amazed at the strong response of our audiences at the festivals. We've only been in four festivals to date and have received five prizes, three of which were audience awards. Mostly I felt a gratitude and a humbling feeling from people as they watched and learned about the band members and their families. It was the same feeling I've experienced, and I was relieved that those feelings were conveyed. The film seemed to make people proactive. Everyone wanted to know how they could help the band and help the film to be seen. Many were grateful for exposing a sometimes uncomfortable subject in a unique way, and they praised Javier Pena for his work. I'm often surprised that audiences made up of all age groups and backgrounds have gone out of their way to express their love for this film, from young filmmakers and artists to seniors to working class, faith-based groups and more. On more than one occasion grown men have approached me in tears and have expressed that it really struck a chord. That's been absolutely awesome for me, and I feel privileged to have been able to be part of this story. From our positive experiences and a couple of rejections from festivals, we've learned a lot about finding the audience. Although we may not be the sexiest film out there, we do have a very wide audience and are figuring out how to market to them.  

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

MM: I know Jim Bigham and I were both influenced by DA Pennebaker's work. Dont Look Back, Monterey Pop and The War Room all serve as a powerful reminders that as a filmmaker you can capture history-in-the-making, and if you don't, who else will? I was also influenced by the work of the Maysles brothers, and Albert personally taught me a valuable life lesson. I had the honor of sitting next to him on a Sundance panel featuring several distinguished music documentary filmmakers. After all the other panel members introduced themselves to the audience, it was my turn to speak. I had always been more than a little nervous in front of crowds, especially being in this very elite company, but I managed to introduce myself and speak about my film. Upon finishing, I looked beside me to see Albert staring at me with a sly grin. He picked up his microphone like it was a weapon, and told the audience, "He's going to be okay, because he's got respect for his subjects, unlike . . . ," before going on to excoriate a modern-day documentarian for a one-sided, unbalanced approach to making documentaries. The lesson learned? If someone hands you a microphone (or a camera), don't you dare be nervous or timid. You chose this career for a reason: To tell stories, to say what you've got to say, to tell the world a story that needs to be heard.

JB:  In addition to what Mark said, when conceptualizing the story behind For Once In My Life, there were two other films that kept coming up in the back of my mind.   think documentaries such as Jean-Luc Godard's, Sympathy for the Devil and even Milos Forman's narrative classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were both influences in structure and content.

For Once in My Life will be screening July 30 through August 5 at the the ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles and August 6 through 12 the IFC Center in New York City.

To download the DocuWeeks^TM program, click here.

To purchase tickets for For Once in My Life in Los Angeles, click here.

To purchase tickets for For Once in My Life in New York, click here.

Editor's Note: My Perestroika opens Friday, April 15, in Los Angeles at the the Laemmle Sunset 5. The following interview with filmmaker Robin Hessman was published last summer in conjunction with IDA's DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase.

Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from July 30 through August 19 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Robin Hessman, director/producer of My Perestroika.

Synopsis: My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times--from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Using a wealth of footage rarely seen outside of Russia--including home movies from the USSR in the 1970s--the film combines an intimate view of the past with the contemporary lives of these former schoolmates, painting a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Robin Hessman: I was very active in theater and music throughout my childhood, and in my teens I became very serious about photography. I suppose documentary film integrated many aspects of visual storytelling that I had always been interested in.
In my freshman year of college, I went abroad to Leningrad (that was the year they voted to re-name it St. Petersburg). I vividly remember landing on the snowy tarmac in January, and being greeted by men in giant fur hats who handed us our sheets of ration coupons (since there was little food in the city.) I think I realized, being there, that no matter how much I had read in advance and how much I intellectually knew about Leningrad and the Soviet Union, it hadn't prepared me for what it would viscerally feel like to experience it. I realized that I had never seen a film set there, and I wondered how different it would have felt if I had.
The very first film I made was a 16mm short. I shot it in the summer of 1991 in Leningrad after the end of my semester studying there. (I was also working at the Leningrad film studio--Lenfilm--that summer on an American horror movie that starred the actor who played Freddy Kreuger in Nightmare on Elm Street.) When I left the USSR to go back to school a few weeks after the August 1991 coup, my film and all the cans of outtakes were taken away from me at the border, since I had no official papers or stamps giving explicit permission to export so many kilometers of film out of the USSR. 
My junior year abroad was spent at VGIK, the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, together with one of my best friends from high school, James Longley (Iraq in Fragments; Sari's Mother). We made a 27-minute documentary that year called Portrait of Boy with Dog. We shot on 35mm black and white cinemascope, and edited on flatbeds from the 1930s. That year at VGIK was such an incredible experience, I decided to stay with my film school class and complete the five-year film directing program.

IDA: What inspired you to make My Perestroika?

RH: I began to think about this film 10 years ago. After I graduated from film school in Moscow, I spent several more years living in Russia producing the Russian Sesame Street, Ulitsa Sezam. By the time I returned to live in the States again, I had spent most of the decade--all of my early adult years--living in Russia. Back in the US, the questions I was asked made me think about the fact that despite the end of the Cold War so many years earlier, there was still a wall when it came to information and understanding about what life was like in the former USSR. Stereotypes and misconceptions prevailed.
So I wanted to make a film about my generation of Russians--the generation that I joined, in a sense, when I went to live there at age 18. They had normal Soviet childhoods behind the Iron Curtain, never dreaming that their society could change. Just coming of age when Gorbachev appeared, they were figuring out their own identities as the very foundations of their society were being questioned for the first time. And then, they graduated from college just as the USSR collapsed, and they had to figure out how to survive in a new world where there were no models to follow. Although I didn't grow up there and I have no Russian family history, I certainly shared their journey throughout the 1990s, adjusting to the evolving post-Soviet Russia. So I was an insider and outsider at the same time, which is a helpful position to be in as a documentary filmmaker.

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

RH: Raising money was the biggest challenge, but I imagine that's true for all documentary filmmakers. I had anticipated that it would take me two to three years to make the film, not the five plus years that it actually did take. But I think I got through it because in my mind it never was a question of if I would finish the film, only a question of how long it would take me. Having no doubt that I would finish someday kept me going steadily forward.
Another challenge for me was actually shooting the film myself. I started out convinced that I would work with a cinematographer. However, it soon became apparent that it would be difficult. First of all, it wasn't easy to find someone with the right eye and experience. In Russia, shooting styles usually vary between two extremes--either elaborative feature films with lighting and cranes, or journalism, where the main point is coverage, with little attention to composition or sensitivity to the subjects you are filming. And I certainly couldn't afford to bring someone to Moscow for months at a time over several years.
The very first day of shooting with a proper camera was with someone I hired...and it was a disaster for so many reasons. Spatially, one couple's kitchen was so small, I had to sit on the floor under the table and call things up to them. More troubling, the atmosphere was totally different. Whereas the couple had been completely at ease with me when I was shooting for research, once the cameraman was there, they stiffened up and became shy. So I really had no choice but to grit my teeth and take the camera in hand.
In the end, however, it was the best thing that could have happened. As the shooting progressed, I realized the extent that working with a cinematographer would have also been a logistical nightmare, as it was never clear in advance when I would be able to film any of the subjects. As a rule, they were not likely to make a plan more than a day in advance, and often it was completely spur of the moment: I would get a phone call and 15 minutes later I'd be trudging off to the metro with gear slung over me every which way. (I was often compared to a Christmas tree with enormous black padded ornaments.) I would never have been able to book time with a cinematographer that way. But more important was the extremely intimate setting that working alone allowed, where it was just me, the camera and the person I was filming. The predicament that filled me with despair when I was beginning proved itself a real gift in the end. And I also found out how much I enjoy shooting.

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

RH: During pre-production, a lot of the ideas were already in place. I knew that I wanted to film several people who had been childhood classmates and had grown up together. (In Russia, a class of about 20 people is together from first grade through the end of high school, so they really know each other well and have an entire shared history.)  I figured that once I found the anchor of the film, I'd meet his or her classmates from there. I interviewed dozens of people during my first trip back to Moscow, and I spent time in several different archives, as well as searching for 8mm home movies. From the very beginning, home movies also were an integral part of my vision for the film, as they provide a privileged and personal view into everyday life of the past, with no agenda other than preserving memories.
And it was also during pre-production that I began thinking about Russia's "unpredictable past" and began to seek out the perspective of history teachers in their 30s. They had been taught one version of the past as children and today are teaching a completely different interpretation of those same events (to students who were born after the collapse of the USSR, and are living in a completely different world.) I began speaking with dozens of history teachers and eventually was lucky enough to meet Borya and Lyuba Meyerson, a married couple who both teach history in the same Moscow grade school. Through them I met childhood classmates Olga, Andrei and Ruslan.
So the film does have all of the elements of the first early proposals I wrote back in 2004 and 2005: childhood classmates telling stories from their Soviet childhoods through their youth during Perestroika and their adult lives in a newly democratic Russia. It interweaves their stories with Soviet archival footage and home movies that show a more intimate view of the past. But there are certainly things I couldn't have predicted at the beginning. For example, I expected the home movies would be of the era and of the age cohort of the subjects, but I never dreamed I'd be lucky enough to have actual home movies of the characters when they were children. (Cameras were relatively rare.) It was a wonderful gift to find out that Borya's father had constantly filmed not only his son, but the entire class. So that was something that came as a total surprise to me.
And most importantly, in the end, no matter how much I might have imagined all of the elements that would go into the film in advance, it is really the characters--Borya, Lyuba, Olga, Ruslan and Andrei--and their stories and generosity and honesty that make My Perestroika what it is. And those specifics were all completely impossible to imagine before I met them.

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

RH: I have been so happy with the reactions to the film. The people who did not grow up in the USSR, and remember the Cold War from the West's side, either as children or as adults, have found it eye-opening and fascinating to see how similar "They" were to us. Western Gen X'ers, who are the same age as the characters in the film, have especially connected to seeing what our counterparts' lives were like then and are like today. People who have never been to Russia have expressed the sense that they had an hour and a half of getting to really know these people--sitting in their kitchens and learning about their lives. The way audiences connect with the characters has been really rewarding for me. But it is the audience members who grew up in the USSR who have had the most emotional responses. In Q&As,a few times, people have been moved to tears. Russian-American parents have thanked me for making something that they can show their children to help them understand the world they grew up in. So that was certainly what I had hoped for, but I was surprised by just how powerfully they react to the film.

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

RH: Alan Berliner's film Nobody's Business is always inspirational to me. Other films I looked at in thinking about My Perestroika were the films of Peter Forgascs. He often uses home movies in his films in a way that the personal aspects of life are in the foreground, while "history" takes a backseat. I always watch Fred Wiseman's films whenever possible, too.

My Perestroika will be screening August 6 through 12 at the the ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles and August 13 through 19 the IFC Center in New York City.

To download the DocuWeeks^TM program, click here.

To purchase tickets for My Perestroika  in Los Angeles, click here.

To purchase tickets for My Perestroika  in New York, click here.

Documentary filmmakers today gained access to previously "locked" DVD content for fair use in their productions under an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act granted to them by the US Copyright Office.

The exemption was granted as a result of an action spearheaded by entertainment attorney Michael Donaldson, who assembled a coalition of documentarians and filmmaker organizations led by the International Documentary Association and Kartemquin Films, the Chicago-based nonprofit. Donaldson provided legal counsel for the effort on a pro bono basis, along with the USC Gould School of Law Intellectual Property & Technology Law Clinic, led by Professor Jack Lerner. 

The exemption allows documentarians to obtain short portions of material from DVDs, even when that material is behind encryption and other digital locks for any non-infringing use in a documentary. That includes copying public domain materials and to make fair use of other material contained on such DVDs for use in a documentary. This was a crime under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Documentary filmmakers can take advantage of this exemption through October 2012, when the next DMCA rule-making will take place and the filmmakers' exemption will be up for renewal.

Many filmmakers, particularly those who incorporated current or historical events into their work, were previously restricted by the DMCA from using a wealth of material available only on DVD. Today's decision enables them to use everyday cultural material contained on DVDs to tell their stories.  

 "The organizations and filmmakers who have joined together on this issue represent the cornerstones of the documentary filmmaking community in the United States," said Donaldson, in a statement. "The filmmakers knew it was time that they confronted this problem that hampered their work on a daily basis, so we decided to come together as a united front--filmmakers and advocates alike--to change the law. Collectively, this group--five major documentary and independent filmmaking organizations and six award-winning documentary filmmakers--has garnered Peabody Awards, Academy Awards, National Board of Review honors, Sundance Film Festival Awards, MacArthur Foundation recognition for excellence, and some of the most honorable, international distinctions in film over the past 50 years.

"In a digital world without this exemption, fair use existed largely in theory but not in practice," said IDA Board President--and award-winning filmmaker--Eddie Schmidt. "The DMCA forced filmmakers to attempt highly inferior technical methods to avoid breaking digital locks, or prohibited them from using such material at all. Decriminalizing the use of digital excerpts for documentary filmmaking purposes shows that the Copyright Office continues to understand the historical, cultural and journalistic implications of this provision in copyright law and its integral nature to freedom of expression."

 "This exemption will affect documentary filmmakers across our community," said Kartemquin Films Co-Founder and Artistic Director Gordon Quinn. "The DMCA had made it difficult for filmmakers to exercise their fair use rights. Today's ruling removes the unwarranted threat to the exercise of those essential rights--rights that we must be able to use if we are to continue to play a vital role in our democratic culture as reporters, critics, commentators and educators." 

 "This was an important victory for free expression and the essential role that documentary film plays in our democracy," said former USC Law student Chris Perez, a lawyer with Donaldson & Callif who also served on the pro bono legal team while at USC. "To make social, political or cultural critiques, filmmakers need to quote from copyrighted material such as motion pictures. It's well established that this type of use is permitted by the fair use doctrine in copyright law, but the DMCA was preventing it."  

Students from USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, under the supervision of Professor Jack Lerner and in close collaboration with Michael Donaldson, are now turning to educational and training efforts designed to help documentary filmmakers understand how to use the exemption properly.

Here is a summary of the recommendations of the US Copyright Office:

The exact language is that if you are engaged in documentary filmmaking, you can copy a DVD without violating the DMCA as follows: "solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use..."

In order to qualify for the exemption you must meet all of the following criteria:

1.  You must have lawfully acquired a lawfully made DVD. In other words, don't buy a pirated copy. Don't steal a legitimate copy.

2.  You may only copy short portions of material for a "non-infringing use" which essentially translates into material in the public domain or material that you plan to use pursuant to the doctrine of fair use.

3.  You must be making the copy to use in a documentary.

4.  You want to be sure that you are well aware of public domain and fair use laws.

5.  You must only copy what you need, you cannot copy the entire DVD.

It is important that documentary filmmakers be very diligent in complying with the details of the regulation when they take advantage of the exemption, as the Copyright Office will be reviewing the issue anew in October 2012.

For the complete ruling and Determination of the Librarian of Congress, click here.

Editor's Note: Pushing the Elephant airs March 29, 2011, on PBS' Independent Lens.

Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from July 30 through August 19 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here are Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel directors of Pushing the Elephant

Synopsis: Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the ethnic violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet she emerged from the suffering advocating peace and reconciliation. But after helping numerous victims to recover and rebuild their lives, there is one person Rose must still teach to forgive: her daughter Nangabire, now 17 and living in Arizona. Pushing the Elephant captures one of the most important stories of our age, in which genocidal violence is challenged by the moral fortitude and grace of one woman's mission for peace.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Beth Davenport: I started out working in commercials and music videos. I loved the medium of film/video, but wanted to work on social-justice issue films. In 2003, there was an opportunity at our company, Big Mouth Films, the production department of Arts Engine, to help produce a film about girl rockers and to work on the outreach campaign for Deadline, a film dealing with the death penalty. I jumped at the chance to get involved with such disparate projects and have been at Arts Engine ever since.
We believe that filmmakers who document human-interest stories that deal with social justice issues in accessible ways are creating critical tools for engaging audiences, raising awareness, inspiring action and affecting policy.

Elizabeth Mandel: I had a previous career in international affairs. I felt passionately about the issues I was working on--women's economic and political development--but I wanted the opportunity to approach the challenges to women's empowerment, security and autonomy from a more creative perspective.

IDA: What inspired you to make Pushing the Elephant?

BD & EM: Arts Engine is committed to telling multifaceted stories through an intimate lens, and we have both always been interested in making such a film about a strong woman. With the kind of serendipity filmmakers dream of, we learned about Rose and her family just two weeks before the reunion with Nangabire. Here was an opportunity to make a film about a powerful African woman and a refugee who is a leader and an activist, a model we rarely get to see on film or other media sources. We jumped in, confident that in capturing the reunion, we were on the road to tapping into something both unique and universal. For all the unique circumstances of the story, it contains universal truths about the mother-daughter bond and the importance of family, connection and forgiveness--themes to which women everywhere can relate.

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

BD & EM: Because of distance and time, the first time we met Rose and Nangabire, we were already filming. This is unusual for us, in that we usually spend time getting to know our film subjects, building trust, ensuring they understand what it means to agree to have a camera turned on their lives, figuring out the core of the story. However, we realized as soon as we met them how fortunate we were: Sight unseen, we had found subjects who were charismatic, compelling and willing to open up to us.
This presented us with a second challenge, however: how to do justice to the story with which they were entrusting us, while maintaining an unbiased lens to effectively present what happened. One decision we made early on was to allow Rose and her family's stories to be told in their own voices, from their own perspectives, rather than force our views as filmmakers--especially given that we are white women from a Western country. What we aimed to achieve through doing this was to give a voice to the often unheard--women who can tell how war and conflicts affect them, and also can offer solutions and ways for others like them to become empowered.
We are now working closely with Rose and with organizations committed to the issues dealt with in the film--refugee policy, peace-building and women's rights--to develop an audience engagement campaign, to get audiences involved in furthering those issues. In Rose's words, one person alone cannot push the elephant, but many people together can.
The other great challenge was to make sure that the film captured the joy and resilience of the Mapendo family; both because the truth of the story requires it, and because we want the film to be palatable to audiences and not feel like a school lesson. Throughout the editing process, we made sure to include moments of humor and lightness, as well as a lot of the music that is integral to the Mapendos' home life. We hope that we did justice to the feeling of wholeness Rose has maintained in her family's life.

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

BD & EM: Surprisingly, the film's themes have remained fairly consistent from the beginning. We knew we wanted to make a film about women and war, mothers and daughters, and the importance and challenge of public and personal forgiveness. The big change was that we thought those themes would revolve exclusively around Rose and Nangabire (which, for a long time, was the working title for the film). And then along came Aimee's story. Early on, Rose hinted that there was more to Aimee's story than we knew, and as the full story was revealed, that changed the arc of the narrative. However, it did not change our original themes; rather, it enhanced them. Rose's reveal of it, both as it unfolded to us and as it unfolds in the film, also enhanced the theme of the power of talking and storytelling to heal, and added the complex question of Rose's ability to forgive herself.

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

BD & EM: We have been very gratified to find that we have been successful in communicating the many themes of the film, and that the film has been inspiring people to ask us how they can get involved in the many political issues raised. We have also been surprised to find the many personal lenses people bring to bear on the film, and how that affects their reactions. This ranges from people finding ways to use it in their own activism that we never thought of--such as part of an African women's health initiative--to inspiring people to find forgiveness in their own lives. Following one of our screenings, one of our colleagues received a message from a friend saying that because of the film, she had found a way to forgive someone important in her own life.

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

BD: Films like Marshall Curry's Street Fight and Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans have been very influential for me. Films like these take great risks, turning on a camera with no guarantee that a story will emerge. I admire directors who have the temerity to follow their guts. They are also great films in the degree of access they managed to maintain. What makes a family reveal their very deep, extremely dark secrets to the camera--to the public--the way the Friedmans did? A patient, persistent director. Street Fight is a terrific example of getting an audience involved in an issue they might have just glossed over in the newspaper: local politics, deep-seated corruption. It was honest and hard-hitting without being sensationalist. And Curry's faith in his subject was beautiful to watch.

EM: As part of a women's rights seminar in graduate school I saw a film called Something Like a War, by Deepa Dhanraj, about India's forced sterilization program. I think it was this film that first planted the seed in my mind regarding the power of film to educate. Years later, when I was planning a career change, I kept thinking about how that film affected me; it got my attention, made me want to take action, and stayed with me. I also really admire films that tackle difficult subjects in an unconventional way, like Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes. The film focuses on men in its examination of gender and culture (which seems the obvious thing to do, but somehow isn't), and because it's also a fun film with great music, reaches an audience that might not otherwise watch a film about gender dynamics. 
While we are committed to making social-justice issue films, we would both love someday to make a film like Spellbound or Wordplay, which humorously and respectfully examine quirky subcultures, or Touching the Void, which, through a nail-biting adventure story as gripping as any Hollywood extravaganza, explores human relationships, the balance of responsibility between oneself and others, and the will to live. We also aspire to make a film as aesthetically powerful and true as Rivers and Tides, perhaps the most quietly eloquent art film we've seen.

Pushing the Elephant will be screening August 6 through 12 at the IFC Center in New York City, and August 13 through 19 at the Arclight Hollywood in Los Angeles

To download the DocuWeeks^TM program, click here.

To purchase tickets for Pushing the Elephant in Los Angeles, click here.

To purchase tickets for Pushing the Elephant in New York, click here.

Editor’s Note: Sun Come Up, an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Short Subject, will be screening Saturday, February 26, at 9:00 a.m., as part of DocuDay LA at the Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills, and Sunday, February 27, at 2:15 p.m. at DocuDays NY at The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan.

Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from July 30 through August 19 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films--the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Jennifer Redfearn, director/producer of Sun Come Up.

Synopsis: Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?

Jennifer Redfearn: I studied environmental science in college and thought I would become a tropical ecologist. In my last year, I took a film and photography course and fell in love with it. From there I worked my way up the ranks as a PA, AP, field producer, and producer. After producing for NOVA, Discovery and others, I decided to try my hand at an independent project.

IDA: What inspired you to make Sun Come Up?

JR: In 2008 a close friend showed me a humanitarian alert; it was the story of the Carteret Islanders. At the time, I didn't realize climate change was forcing people from their land, and I was shocked to learn of their story. I have a background in environmental science and journalism, and I realized that if I hadn't heard of the issue, then probably a lot of other people hadn't either. It seemed like an incredibly important story to tell.
After researching the story, I learned that the Carteret Islanders were negotiating for a new home on Bougainville, an island recovering from a 10-year civil war that had started over a different environmental issue--mining. Many Bougainvilleans lost their land, their livelihood and their sense of security during the war. There are parallels between their history and the story of the Carteret Islanders. I thought a deeper story might exist about two communities, both uprooted due to environmental tragedies, uniting over a common purpose or understanding.

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

JR: The greatest obstacle in making the film was the distance and inability to contact most of the islanders beforehand. The Carteret Islands are quite remote, and they don't have a way of communicating with the outside world, apart from a radio that connects them to Bougainville. The head of the Carteret's relocation program, Ursula Rakova, now lives on Bougainville and is working on the ground to facilitate the move through the islanders' own NGO, Tulele Peisa. I contacted her, and she helped us make plans to travel to the islands by boat once we arrived in the region.
The other obstacle was the lack of supplies and electricity on the Carteret Islands. We packed in almost everything we needed, including solar panels to charge the camera batteries. The camera's tape compartment jammed on Day 2 of the shoot, and I thought that was the end of the film! We were interviewing an island elder, Bernard Tunim, on Piul, one of six of the Carteret Islands. He encouraged us to be patient, and eventually we were able to open it and start rolling again.

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

JR: We initially wanted to follow the islanders moving, but when the move was delayed and Ursula explained that a group of young people was going to Bougainville to build relationships and negotiate for new land, I realized that their search for land could be a much more interesting development to follow. It seemed like such a rare process, and a crucial one to their relocation, especially in a region of the world where land is so intimately tied to identity, community and history.
We didn't have the opportunity to pre-interview anyone, so not too much changed during the production process. The challenge was making quick decisions about who and what to follow when we arrived on the Carteret Islands and later in Bougainville.
In post, we had to narrow down our characters, and a couple of the people we followed didn't make it into the film. Also, we initially covered the civil war in more depth. We struggled a lot with how to cover it responsibly and in a way that didn't take the viewer out of the vérité narrative. Too often, places are defined by something horrific, and local communities struggle against a narrative that has defined them over and over in media. The war is important in the region, but people are also moving on. I think we eventually succeeded in finding a way to cover it and show its importance without over-dramatizing it.

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

JR: The reaction to the film has been very positive. I was so nervous during our premiere at Full Frame, but the audience was great--laughing in the right places, gasping in the right places--and a woman next to my producer cried. We've also been surprised and thrilled at our audience's generosity. People ask us all the time how they can help. In response, we've created an outreach campaign to educate communities about climate change and displacement and to give them tools to help. Now community groups can host a screening and a "houseraiser"--a fundraiser that will help pay for houses for the Carteret Islanders.

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

JR: This is the most difficult question to answer, as so many docmakers and films inspire me. I had the privilege of working with incredible filmmakers on Sun Come Up--Tim Metzger, who has such an amazing eye for light and images, and who seamlessly and courageously blended into whatever was happening in the moment and captured it with respect; David Teague, who has an exceptional talent for finding characters, solid story structure and the emotional heart of films; and Abigail Disney and Tracie Holder, who supported us early on and helped us tease out the important themes in the story. I am in awe of Judith Helfand's dedication to the craft and the voice in her films; I aspire to some day make a film as powerful as War/Dance, by Andrea and Sean Fine; and I'm a huge Errol Morris fan. My tastes in documentaries are eclectic; if I weren't busy making them, I would watch documentaries every night of the week. I'm working with MediaStorm now, and I'm thrilled to be learning more about multimedia and how to integrate photojournalism into documentary narratives.

Sun Come Up will be screening July 30 through August 5, as part of the DocuWeeks Shorts Program, at the IFC Center in New York City.

To download the DocuWeeks^TM program, click here.

To purchase tickets for Sun Come Up, click here.

SnagFilms, the advertising-supported site for documentaries online, announced today, on its second anniversary, a major expansion of its distribution infrastructure, bringing its library of 1,500 titles to a suite of new platforms. Among the new ventures: the creation of VOD offerings with Comcast, the nation's leading provider of entertainment, information and communication products; and with Verizon FiOS TV, the converged communications platform.

Founded by AOL Vice-Chair Emeritus and award-winning documentary producer Ted Leonsis (Nanking; Kicking It), SnagFilms has become the Web's largest and most broadly-distributed home for nonfiction films, with its library streamed free to consumers on 90,000 websites and webpages. "We started SnagFilms two years ago for four simple reasons," Leonsis said in a statement. "We wanted to use the scale and interactivity of the Web to bring great films to a broader audience. We wanted to create new tools and revenue opportunities for the entire indie ecosystem--filmmakers, festivals, film schools, non-profits, journalists and advertisers. We wanted to provide context and a community for film fans and the industry. And we wanted to deepen the reach of what we call ‘filmanthropy' by utilizing powerful films to catalyze discussion and lead to positive social change through individuals contributing what they could, whether it's their time, money, or even the pixels on their Facebook page on which they could open a virtual theater with a great documentary film they'd snagged from SnagFilms. Today we announce a series of advances toward all of these goals."

Here's a summary of SnagFilms' new initiatives:

• Launch pay VOD offerings, beginning with Comcast and FiOS. Offerings will include special selections from SnagFilms' library, and new titles that will be offered on a monthly basis.

• Increase purchase and viewing venues. Selections from SnagFilms library will be available for purchase on iTunes; for rental from YouTube's premium program; and both free and for purchase on the iPad.

• Distribute select films through mobile phone carriers worldwide (via A3 Media Network). Initial distribution on two major carriers with a reach of six million subscribers is set to expand to multiple carriers with an addressable audience of over 200 million mobile customers.

• Extend its library to Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players, gaming consoles and set-top boxes this fall.

• Commence its second annual SummerFest, beginning July 15, offering viewers screenings of six heralded documentaries headed to theaters or TV in the fall. SummerFest 2010 offers two-week sneak peeks of each of the festival favorites The Age of Stupid; Shooting Robert King; Disco and Atomic War; Videocracy and The Socalled Movie, as well as ESPN-bound A Fighting Chance. (More about SummerFest 2010here.)

• Launch SnagLearning, a special site that will be made available next month to educators in time for the new school year, with over 100 films slotted by education advisers for grade and subject, to which supplemental study materials will be added.

• Expand its distribution of the greatest documentary film libraries. SnagFilms will now offer films produced by leading indie studio Lionsgate; noted documentary aggregator New Video/Docurama; top student films from USC's School of Cinematic Arts; major selections from the National Film Board of Canada; an innovative Flip Cam film from the famed Disney Imagineers showing their creative process, and an array of extreme adventure and music films from the production arm of Red Bull.

"Our first two years were aimed at building our library and making those films widely available," said SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen in the statement. "Our 1,500 films are available on mainstream media sites like the Miami Herald, new media leaders like AOL, Hulu and Fancast, non-profit websites as varied as the USO's and Nature Conservancy's, and thousands of blogs, special interest sites and social network pages. We've brought a global audience to see films that may never have been shown in their local theaters, increased the engagement of audiences with powerful documentary films, and genuinely encourage philanthropic activity in support of causes important to passionate filmmakers. Two years in, we believe we are benefiting every aspect of the indie world, and define our success as a ‘double bottom line' business that does well by doing good."

For more about the expansion, here's an article in today's New York Times.

SAMO IS DEAD. That was the graffiti tag that defined the beginning of the meteoric rise and tragic fall of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. It's been over 20 years since he died, and more than 10 years since Julian Schabel made his directorial debut with Basquiat, the fictionalized bio-pic that starred Jeffrey Wright as the young artist, David Bowie as Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper as gallery owner Bruno Bischofberger, and a host of other actors playing New York City art-world characters. Now, with Tamra Davis' documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which Arthouse Films is releasing this summer, viewers have the opportunity to hear directly from Basquiat himself.

One of the uncanny things about film is that it can re-animate those no longer with us in a kind of pseudo-resurrection, where life after death temporarily exists. Back in the 1980s, Davis met Basquiat while she was a film student and he was visiting Los Angeles for his first show there. They became friends and immediately bonded over their mutual love of cinema. Davis began filming Basquiat painting, and whenever he returned to LA, she would film him while they were hanging out. In 1986, when he was 25 and already at the peak of his success, she shot a lengthy interview with him.  

When Basquiat died two years later, Davis put the footage away in a drawer; she didn't want to be one of those friends who appeared to exploit him and his work for profit. But 20 years later, when she was speaking to a curator/friend at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles as it was preparing for a major retrospective of Basquiat's work, it became clear to her that enough time had passed. Davis realized she had footage that offered a rare look into one of America's most important artists of the past 25 years, and it was time for Basquiat's voice to be heard, even if posthumously. 

Davis initially made a 20-minute film based on her footage, which was shown during the MOCA retrospective and at the other venues on the exhibition tour. She screened the short at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, where she met David Koh of Arthouse Films. He asked her if she could make the short into a feature, and Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is the result. 

Davis liked the purity of Basquiat talking, and was a bit skeptical about adding other voices, but she knew it was necessary to add context to the story. So she did "a ton of research" and began the process of interviewing people in Basquiat's sphere. She didn't want to just make a bio-pic; she wanted to follow more of a narrative structure.  She also tracked down quite a bit of archival material, even though her own material serves as the strongest thread in the film. Throughout, she tried to keep Basquiat's voice in mind while making the film; she wanted it to "have the heart," yet she also wanted to make sure she had the art history right. 

Besides being a portrait of an artist, the film is also a portrait of a time and place-New York's downtown art scene in the 1980s. Along with the archival footage, some of which captures the relationship between Basquiat and Warhol, the film features interviews with Schnabel, hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, dealers Bischofberger, Annina Nosei and Larry Gagosian, Basquiat's longest-term girlfriend (now a psychiatrist) Suzanne Mallouk, editor/writer Glenn O'Brien and author/curator Diego Cortez, among many others. The filmmaker herself has a small cameo, but it is in the intimacy of her interview off screen with Basquiat where her presence is most strongly felt.

Clearly there was a comfort level, a trust and connection not always felt between subject and filmmaker. After all, they were friends. For Davis, this is a very personal film. Her editor, Alexis Manya Spraic, kept pushing her to go deeper. It was difficult to be so vulnerable, and yet this intimate access is what makes the film more authentic and allows people to get a true sense of Basquiat, understand his process, appreciate his creative output and ultimately recognize the tragedy that came with his sudden rise to fame. 

The 90-minute film had a sneak preview at the Art Basel Miami Beach Art Fair in December 2009 and its official world premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Since Basquiat and his work are "so international," the film is being picked up around the world. It will have its New York City theatrical premiere at Film Forum this July and will also be broadcast on PBS at some point in the future. According to Davis, this is "exactly what Jean-Michel wanted." After all, television is more populist than the art world.

For Davis, "It's wonderful to see the reaction with an audience." I recently showed the film to a class of university art students, some whom had never heard of Basquiat. It was interesting to experience the class observing and learning about this artist who was at the height of his career--when he was just a few years older than they are now--and who brought a street energy to the gallery world and the art world at large. I sensed that the students could consider him some kind of role model. And yet, by the end of the screening, although they were inspired by his street smarts and his creative output, the students were ultimately saddened by his life tragically cut short.

And so the tragedy reads like a Shakespearean tale: the rise and fall of a tortured hero--a story we see too frequently in our overly star-crazed, media-feeding-frenzy universe. Davis's film helps Basquiat channel his own voice to a new audience, offering glimpses into the life and art of this "radiant child" who shone too bright and left too soon.

Kathy Brew is an independent filmmaker, media arts curator and writer, who also teaches at The New School, The School of Visual Arts and Rutgers University.

The Court of Appeals issued an order in the case of Joe Berlinger, a day after hearing arguments from attorneys for both the filmmaker and for Chevron, which underscores the court's recognition of the urgency involved in such matters. Berlinger had been ordered by the trial court to turn over 600 hours from his documentary Crude to Chevron.
This order is a partial victory for both sides. Chevron gets some but not all of what it wants. Berlinger has to turn over some, but not all 600 hours of footage. The many hours of footage that he gathered alone with the plaintiffs and their families, friends, and neighbors has all been protected. What is important to the documentary community is that--for the first time in this kind of case--the court is restricting Chevron on how it uses the footage: Chevron can only use it for litigation, arbitration or submission to official bodies. The company cannot use the footage in publicity or promotional materials. The documentary community is awaiting the final order of the court because it should give detailed discussion of the courts thinking and provide guidelines to help documentary filmmakers in the future.
It is important to note that the many hours of footage that Berlinger gathered as he talked to the victims and their families does not have to be turned over pursuant to this order.   In terms of the trust and confidence that is at the heart of investigative filmmaking this is a very important element of the order.

For the complete order from the Court of Appeals, click here.

Here's an article about the decision in The New York Times.

Photo: Juan Diego Perez