We are now thrilled to announce that Adobe will offer 15% to IDA members from here forward. No changes throughout the year, it’s simply 15% off Adobe products purchased through the Adobe store.

Some key benefits of getting software through this program include:

• All standard commercial Adobe products are eligible for the savings. See terms and conditions below and atwww.adobe.com/go/cspartners
• The more you get, the more you save, since you receive a percentage discount off your total order
• Save on shipping by ordering the downloadable version, and benefit from instant registration as well

Here are the simple steps required to get the discount:

• Visit www.adobe.com/go/cspartners
You will need to provide your name, e-mail address, validation number 72360, and association name code DVPRO'; } else { print '
• Please login to view validation number and activation instructions.
'; } ?>
• The Adobe Store URL with the embedded coupon code will be e-mailed to you. The email may take up to two hours to arrive. If it doesn’t arrive within that time period, please check your spam folders. If you have any problems receiving the Adobe Store coupon email, you may also contact Adobe Sales at 800-585-0774 from 5am to 7pm Pacific Time Monday through Friday. You need to identify themselves as an association IDA member and let the Adobe rep know that your are eligible for the 15% savings as part of their association membership benefits.
• The coupon code--embedded URL--can be requested and used only once per three month time period
• Full terms and conditions are detailed at the URL referenced above

The body of Poveda, 52, was discovered in a car in Tonacatepeque, a poor rural area 10 miles outside the capital San Salvador. Police say that he was driving back from filming in La Campanera, an overcrowded ghetto that is a stronghold of the Mara 18 gang, when he was apparently ambushed.

Gangsters are suspected to be behind the killing. La Vida Loca focused on the tattooed members of Mara 18 gang. Several of the gangsters were killed or jailed during filming and the documentary records disturbing scenes of gang members gunned down in the streets, relatives crying over coffins and young female gangsters with tattooed faces, the report said.

In a statement, Wide Management said:

Christian [Poveda], was a militant, a war journalist engaged in a fair cause and wanted to calm the political and sociological tensions down in San Salvador, unfortunately, it leaded to his own death last night. Since his time as a journalist for Paris Match and Newsweek, covering already civil war in Salvador, Christian Poveda has been very moved by the young generation situation emerging from it and worried about the consequences of the war. La Vida Loca remains a testimony of this lost generation.

See some of the images from the film and the Mara 18 lifestyle on the La Vida Loca Flickr page.

Read the entire Times Online article here.

An article in the Los Angeles Times from April 2009 details the making of La Vida Loca and is accompanied by a video profile and interview.

Find out more about La Vida Loca on the film's official website.

The IDA's condolences go out to Poveda's family and friends.

Crude director/producer Joe Berlinger has just released the following letter about his documentary that examines "the real price of oil" and the infamous $27 billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case. The film opens at the IFC Cetner in NYC on Sept. 9 (prepare by watching the trailer here and reading an article from Documentary magazine here). And now the letter:

Dear Friends,

We’ve certainly had cushier assignments. Bouncing along an unpaved Amazon road on the back of a bald-tired pick-up truck in blazing 120-degree equatorial heat can lead to reflection on how you wound up in your current situation. Making documentaries, we have filmed all over the world under a variety of conditions. Some places – Maui, Copenhagen, Vienna – have been beautiful and sometimes even luxurious. Others not so much, like this part of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. Once a pristine Eden, today this place bears numerous scars and open wounds, both literal and figurative, left by forty years of oil extraction.

For the past eight or ten hours we’ve been breathing noxious petroleum fumes while filming at some of the oil pollution sites that contaminate 1700 square miles of the rainforest here. The physical effects of even very short-term exposure to the pollution are palpable and unpleasant.

Crude, the film we are shooting, tells the story of the largest environmental lawsuit on the planet. 30,000 indigenous people and poverty-stricken campesinos (peasant farmers) are suing Chevron for $27 billion, claiming that Texaco – which was purchased by Chevron in 2001 – destroyed their rainforest home and created a “cancer death zone” the size of Rhode Island in one of the most bio-diverse ecosystems on Earth. Known as the “Amazon Chernobyl” case, the suit has been going on since a year after Texaco left the country in 1992, when the local people charged that the American oil company used outdated technology and irresponsible practices in order to save money on their operations in a place they knew no one was paying any attention. We spent three years documenting the case, during the most exciting and dramatic period of what has now stretched to 17 years of epic conflict.

All day and over the course of the past two years, we’ve heard stories from indigenous people about the health problems they and their families say they face on a daily basis. They’ve told us about losing their land, their culture, their loved ones, and their dignity. Village elders have described this place as a former paradise, before the fish, animals and plants that for millennia allowed them to live in harmony with nature were destroyed by oil production. The voices and faces of these people echo in our minds as the breeze on the back of the moving pick-up cools the sweat that seeps through our layers of DEET-soaked jungle clothing, providing a respite from the extreme equatorial heat and the mosquitoes that the CDC label as carriers of malaria.

In the early 1960s, Texaco began exploring for oil here. Back then, the company made a deal with Ecuador’s government, and the first place they struck black gold was underneath territory that belonged to the Cofán indigenous group. “A tremendous noise came from the sky,” says Cofán leader Emergildo Criollo, remembering the sound of Texaco’s helicopters descending on his village. “We wondered, ‘What kind of animal is this?’” He laughs, with more bemusement than bitterness, at his own naïveté. Emergildo was just a boy when Texaco arrived, and now his two sons have died from what he believes were the effects of oil contamination.

To the Cofán and a number of other indigenous groups in Ecuador, Texaco’s arrival was both an attack and an occupation. The native people tell us about their ancestral territories being invaded first by missionaries, then by heavy machinery, explosives, bulldozers, drills, riggers, strange white men, and other people from various parts of Ecuador, who came here in search of work. The fertile land once named in the Cofán language of A’ingae was re-christened “Lago Agrio,” meaning “Sour Lake,” after Sour Lake, Texas – birthplace of Texaco.

For me, the making of this film was a wake-up call. The treatment of native people in both of the Americas by the “white man” over the past six centuries is one of the most disturbing chapters in human history.The behavior of profit-driven multinational companies, particularly in the extractive industries, is just the modern-day continuation of this shameful trend.

As the sun dips below the jungle canopy, it’s easy to appreciate all that has been lost in this part of the Amazon. Squinting toward the empty spaces between the gas flares that spew toxic filth into the air, one can imagine how this place – one of the only locations on Earth to survive the last ice age – must have looked before it was decimated in pursuit of economic “progress.”

As I mentioned at the outset, we have certainly had easier assignments. In making this film, we endured oppressive heat, nasty toxic fumes, numerous bouts of chiggers (tiny insects that burrow under your skin to lay eggs), and even a case of Hepatitis A. But in shedding light on a story that has been swept under the rug for decades, we remember why we got into this business in the first place.

In bringing Crude to film festivals over the world over the past nine months – from Sundance to Quito – we have been moved by the incredibly warm reactions the film has received. Anger, tears and even peals of laughter have filled the cinemas. We hope that you will come to see Crude when it opens next week in the hope that, like ourselves and the festival audiences with whom we have been fortunate enough to share the film, you too will be moved and even entertained by this important story which affects us all.

Joe Berlinger
Producer/Director, Crude

For more information about Crude go to www.crudethemovie.com.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor (and later pardoned) for crossing into North Korea from China, are finally speaking out and telling their side of the story.

The piece "Hostages in the Hermit Kingdom" is posted on the Current TV website. The two were working for the company and reporting on human trafficking for when captured.

Ling and Lee talk about the moments before their capture:

There were no signs marking the international border, no fences, no barbed wire. But we knew our guide was taking us closer to the North Korean side of the river...

...When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.

The two go on to recount their time in captivity, what they did to protect their sources and sanity. And more importantly, point out:

...We do not want our story to overshadow the critical plight of these desperate defectors.

Since our release, we have become aware that the situation along the China-North Korea border has become even more challenging for aid groups and that many defectors are going deeper underground. We regret if any of our actions, including the high-profile nature of our confinement, has led to increased scrutiny of activists and North Koreans living along the border. The activists' work is inspiring, courageous and crucial.

Read the entire account on the Current TV website.

In celebration of this anniversary, Docurama Films, in partnership with Stranger Than Fiction and the IFC Center, will be screening nine of the classics from its library—as well as a hidden treasure of documentary filmmaking—over ten weeks. The kickoff begins on September 22nd at 8 p.m. at the IFC Center, with a one-time screening of the legendary documentary Jane (1962), a lost gem from the cinema vérité movement about Jane Fonda’s Broadway debut. As a special Stranger Than Fiction event, the film will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Thom Powers with filmmakers Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and Hope Ryden. A private reception will follow for filmmakers and members of the documentary community to raise a glass to toast a decade of documentaries.

The series continues with eight films from the Docurama library spotlighted in IFC Center's "Weekend Classics" program, with weekend matinee screenings October 2-December 6, plus a special Stranger Than Fiction presentation of The Weather Underground on November 16, with filmmakers Sam Green and Bill Siegel and Weathermen founder Mark Rudd in person

To ensure the entire country will be able to join the celebration, Docurama Films has partnered with Gigantic Digital Cinema to stream the anniversary program. Online tickets are available for individual titles or the full package, with films streaming in ultra high quality and ad-free. Eight of the titles will be available online for ten weeks, starting September 22nd, and a special online presentation of Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back will be available for a limited two-week window, beginning on the same date.

From the beginning, with the 1999 release of D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back, co-founders Susan Margolin and Steve Savage sought to create a label exclusively for documentaries, believing that the genre could speak to audiences in fresh ways. A decade later, they continue to support documentary filmmakers by acquiring and distributing every kind of doc: political, environmental, spiritual, comedic, personal and controversial. Recent and upcoming releases include Stacy Peralta’s explosive Crips And Bloods: Made In America, the entertaining yoga film Enlighten Up! and the powerful ocean doc The End Of The Line.

On September 8, 2009, the IFC Center honors Docurama Films with a special event screening before the series begins. The landmark documentary Brother’s Keeper, which follows a real-life murder mystery as suspenseful and compelling as any Hollywood whodunit, will be followed by a Q&A with directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky.

All screenings take place at the IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. (at W. 3rd St.), 212-924-7771. Tickets available at the box office or online at ifccenter.com

The American Documentary Showcase is looking for nominations of documentaries for possible inclusion in the 2010 series of the program. With the renewal of a grant by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to UFVA, the ADS is able to include 5-10 new titles and filmmakers in its second round, which runs through December 2010.

Mission:
The American Documentary Showcase, funded by and as a cooperative program with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of States, and administered through a cooperative grant to the University Film and Video Association, is a curated selection of contemporary documentaries that is offered to US Embassies for screening abroad. The Showcase is designed to travel American documentaries and their filmmakers to international overseas venues, including U.S. Embassy organized events and/or U.S. Embassy supported international documentary film festivals.

The goal of The Showcase is to offer a broad diversified look at life in the United States and the values of a democratic society as seen by American documentary filmmakers. The Showcase is intended to demonstrate the role documentary plays in fostering understanding and cooperation among people.

Qualifications for Consideration:
Documentaries nominated can be of any length and style, although the emphasis is on shorter, under one hour films in this grant cycle.  They must have a release date no earlier than January 2007and must be completed by September 2009, and available on DVD.  They must be made by an American citizen, focus primarily on American subject (this can be Americans overseas, but the main emphasis must be on American citizens), and fit in to one or preferably more, of the following categories.  Filmmakers may nominate their own films. Student films of exceptional quality are welcome.

Subject Categories:
The Democratic Process
Emigration/Immigration
Environment, Nature, Our Planet
Ethnic Diversities
Health
Innovation in Education
Music and Society (no concert films or music videos)
Popular Culture
Women, Families and Children

A panel of experts will vet up to 10 films for possible inclusion.  The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs makes final decisions about selection.  To nominate a film, four NONRETURNABLE DVDs must be submitted along with a short SYNOPSIS and CREDIT LISTS.  Entries must be shipped PREPAID.  Nomination Postmark Deadline:  SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

Nomination to this curated Showcase grants the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, the UFVA and the IDA the right to use brief clips, photographs, and biographical data of filmmakers and their subjects for publicity and promotional purposes, including UFVA/ IDA/DOS websites, podcasts and internet feeds.  If the film is chosen to be in the American Documentary Showcase, the copyright holder further grants permission to the Showcase to make DVD duplicates, to screen the entire documentary, or portions thereof, at American Embassies and overseas venues selected by the Embassies, including foreign film festivals.  The copyright holder also agrees to allow the Showcase to subtitle their film as deemed necessary by the Showcase.

All materials must be shipped/mailed with all charges prepaid to:
Betsy A. McLane, PhD
Showcase Director
3801 University Avenue
Suite 260
Riverside, CA 92501

For more information visit www.ufva.org/showcase
Any questions not addressed above should be directed to:
betsymclane@documentarydiva.com

Read more about the 2009 American Documentary Showcase program here. 

by Eugene Hernandez

Eight months after receiving the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival--the second time she’s won the coveted documentary award--filmmaker Ondi Timoner is bringing her latest film to theaters herself. After raising money for the release and tapping Richard Abramowitz to execute the plan, Timoner opened We Live in Public Friday in New York City.

“I didn’t care for any of the deals that we were offered at Sundance and thereafter,” she recently told indieWIRE. Among the high-profile suitors she reportedly turned away was HBO, a dream distributor for most documentary filmmakers. But, Timoner has ambitious goals for her movie, which looks at Internet guru Josh Harris and his pre-Web 2.0 move to constantly document his life via the Internet.

After debuting her film at Sundance in January Timoner hit the road, often with subject Josh Harris in tow. The two have made public appearances at numerous festivals and along the way, Timoner has appropriately used Twitter (@onditimoner) to build a a fan base for her movie, constantly documenting her travels with TwitPics and tweets from around the world. She’s hoping that online tools will stir grassroots awareness for the movie that will effectively replace an expensive marketing campaign.

“I don’t think it makes sense to spend a lot of money on theatrical distribution,” Timoner explained, “(I am) really counting on some of these viral techniniques that we are putting into place.”

She feels that if filmmakers are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work, they can carve out a new path for reaching audiences, especially at a time when tradtional distribution companies and methods seem unreliable.

“So many distribution companies are closing their doors or seem confused by the new era of the Internet,” Timoner said, noting that she still has to recoup royalties owed to her for the release of her 2004 doc, DiG!

“If the Internet can get the word out—and word of mouth can spread virally—we’ll see whether or not the sheer force of how entertaining and thought provoking the film is can draw people,” she explained. She added that Ashton Kutcher, Trent Reznor and Demi Moore are among those she’s relying on to help her spread the word about her film via Twitter.

The theatrical release, timed to qualify the film for Oscar consideration, may hit as many as seven to ten cities, Timoner said. It opens today at New York’s IFC Center and will then head to the Nuart in Los Angeles and the Brattle in Boston next Friday. Theatrical runs in Austin, Chicago and Seattle are also in the works.

Timoner is resistant to talk too much anout her plans for the movie after its theatrical release, but she teased that the is eyeing an online premiere of the film the new year, simultaneous with the DVD release. In order to meet Oscar consideration requirements, though, she has to keep the theatrical and online releases of the film far apart.

Talking about her evolving plans for getting her film in front of audiences, Timoner reiterated that she is in this for the long haul.

“You can’t just be a documentary filmmaker and focus only on the creative side anymore,” she said. “I spent ten years making this film, I would be stupid if I just moved on and I just started shooting my next film.”

More on the movie is available via the film’s website.

This news item is brought to you by a special partnership between the IDA and indieWIRE and SnagFilms.

Flashback: Ken Burns and Buddy Squires met and shared an apartment over a liquor store in Amherst, Massachusetts during the mid-1970s, while they were students at Hampshire College. They credit their mentors, Jerome Liebling and Elaine Mayes, with teaching them that there can be more drama in documentaries than in fiction filmmaking.

Burns and Squires planned to produce their own documentaries on subjects close to their hearts. They began their careers by eking out livings as freelance cinematographers until Burns produced Brooklyn Bridge in 1981. He initially planned to shoot that film himself, but decided to focus on producing and directing; he brought Squires onboard as the cinematographer.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea is their 17th collaboration. Their films have earned an array of IDA, Emmy, Oscar and other nominations and awards. Burns is the youngest recipient of the IDA Career Achievement Award; he received that tribute in 2002. Squires was the second recipient of the IDA Outstanding Documentary Achievement in Cinematography Award, in 2007.

The seed of the idea for producing a documentary about the national parks began with a passion that Burns and filmmaker/writer Dayton Duncan shared about the subject. They discussed the concept for several years before launching the project in 2002.

Florentine Films produced the 12-hour documentary in conjunction with WETA-TV, the PBS affiliate in Washington, DC. Duncan wrote the script and co-produced the film. He has also authored a companion book, published by Alfred Knopf.

The documentary airs in HD format September 27 through October 2, in six two-hour segments that take the audience on journeys to national monuments and 57 parks in 49 states. The sole exception is Delaware, where there are no national parks.

"Helping to make this film was one of the great joys of my life," Duncan says in retrospect. "Each park is unique and has its own fascinating story." 

The nonfiction film blends archival still photos and newsreels dating back to the 1920s with around 400,000 feet of new Super-16 footage, including some 40 interviews with experts talking about the history of the parks. Peter Coyote is the narrator.

Duncan and co-producer/editor Craig Mellish scouted locations, and decided where and when they should be shooting. Squires was the principal cinematographer.  Additional cinematography was done by longtime Florentine cameraman Allen Moore, Burns and newcomer Lincoln Else, who sometimes accompanied Squires as an assistant cameraman. Else's father, filmmaker Jon Else, heads the documentary program at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.  

"Lincoln was a climbing ranger at Yosemite for eight years," Squires says. "He is an experienced mountaineer who knows the parks. It was incredible having him as an assistant. He also did some wonderful cinematography." Duncan usually guided Squires on his journeys through the parks. 

"The grandeur of our public lands is a symbol of the promise of a democratic country, where the land belongs to everyone, rather than being the private preserves of a privileged class of nobility and other rich people," Squires observes.

Squires usually carried supplies and his gear in a backpack, including the same reliable Aaton XTR camera that he has used for years, Canon 8:64 and 11:165 mm zooms and a 300mm long lens, a tripod and an ample supply of Super-16 film. On longer journeys through the wilderness, mules occasionally hauled supplies.

The crew also traveled to destinations in the Grand Canyon while riding on a raft for two weeks. A bush plane hauled them to parks in Alaska.

"We care greatly about what we do and, if necessary, we will fight and go to extreme measures to do it right," Squires says. "The July 4th weekend wasn't an ideal time to be shooting at Yosemite; there were huge crowds and traffic jams.

"But the parks are so expansive that you can find places that make people in the audience feel like they are the only ones there," Squires continues. "It was a magnificent experience. It is important for people to see this film and appreciate that these parks are a crucial important part of our history, culture and identity. Preserving them preserves our soul."

Filming was literally no walk in the park. Squires and Duncan generally began hiking to destinations where they planned to shoot in time to arrive 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise. They left 45 to 60 minutes after magic hour at sunset. They were shooting in Alaska during the summer, when there were 21 to 22 hours of daylight.

"No matter how prepared we were, there were always surprises," Squires notes. "It was 20 degrees below zero while we were shooting at Yellowstone National Park. The sky was filled with beautiful white plumes from geysers of boiling water thrusting up into the frozen landscape. I turned around and saw a buffalo with icicles hanging off his furry chin, with steam coming out of his nostrils."

At Katmai National Park in Alaska, Squires saw and filmed grizzly bears at the bottom of a waterfall, catching salmon with their paws.

"We had to see the potential, be at the right places at the right times, and then be patient...very patient," Squires maintains. "There is a place in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii where a river of lava flows off a cliff and into the sea. Flying low over the coast with the rays of sunset dancing off the primal fireworks display of red, hot liquid rock exploding beneath my feet was a magical experience. There is a purity to the accidents of nature that you could never plan. It was a wondrous process of discovery." 

Squires recorded daylight sequences on Kodak Vision 2 7212 color negative film. The 100-speed film is balanced for exposure in tungsten light.

It was an intuitive decision. There is a 50-speed film that is balanced for exposure in daylight, but Squires felt that there is something special about the look of film balanced for exposure in tungsten light with a number 85 filter on the camera lens. When it got dark, he switched to 500T Kodak Vision 2 7218 color negative film.

"Film provided the latitude needed to record nature at its best, with true colors and details in the brightest highlights and darkest shadows the way the human eye sees them," Squires explains. "It is also the only proven archival medium, and this film is history."

The images were composed in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The processed negative was scanned at 3K resolution and sub-sampled down to a 2K 10-bit digital log file at Goldcrest Postproduction, in New York. Final editing was done by Paul Barnes, who has worked on Florentine Films since The Statue of Liberty in 1985. 

John Dowdell, at Goldcrest, was the colorist. He has served in that role on all Florentine Films from the beginning. Final timing was done in a theater environment with the images projected on a big screen.

"Today's technology allows us to isolate elements of frames, so Ken and Buddy could add painterly touches to the look," Dowdell explains. "There is a sunset scene at Yosemite with a mountain in the background where you can feel as well as see the texture of water in the lake. It's visual poetry in motion."

Burns concludes, "It's the most stunning cinematography in the history of Florentine Films." What is he going to do for an encore? Stay tuned. There are many future chapters to be written before this story ends.

Bob Fisher has been writing about documentary and narrative filmmaking for nearly 40 years, mainly focusing on cinematography and preservation.

While the U.S. automotive industry has had a little bit of hope lately, don't forget to miss the downer doc, The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant when it airs on HBO on Sept. 7. When filmmakers Julie Reichardt and Steven Bognar screened it to hundreds of workers who lost their jobs when General Motors closed an Ohio sport-utility vehicle plant, the subject of the film, it was met with cheers and tears.

RealScreen is excited to see the doc Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, come to the Toronto International Film Festival this year (he is, after all, bringing his girlfriends). TIFF runs from Sept. 10-19. (via Realscreen)

Andrew Herwitz's Film Sales Company has secured worldwide sales rights to Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound ahead of its Toronto premiere in September. Pretty swee, huh? (via Screen Daily)

A new movie directed by Jodie Foster, entitled Cockeyed, Earth Camp One by Paris is Burning director Jennie Livingston and Fame High by The Garden director Scott Hamilton Kennedy are some of the highlights of the upcoming Independent Film Week. Formerly known as the IFP Market, the invitation only Project Forum of IFP’s Independent Film Week will present some 116 projects this year, September 19 - 24, 2009 in New York City. See an entire listing here. (via indieWIRE)

Opening this week: We Live in Public, which tells the story of the effect the Web is having on our society; At the Edge of the World about volunteers determined to shut down an illegal whaling fleet in Antarctic waters (check out the New York Times piece and our own Doc Shot interview); The September Issue, about bringing the single largest issue of Vogue to life. Check out legendary Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour on The Late Show with David Letterman:

In anticipation, perhaps, of the release date of the actual September issue of Vogue, R. J. Cutler's The September Issue, which captures the production process of that monumental issue as well as the driving forces behind it, opens in New York today, via Roadside Attractions and A&E Indie Films, with a nationwide release slated for September 11.

From the forthcoming Fall 2009 issue of Documentary, here's an article by Sara Vizcarrondo, which includes an interview with Cutler.

Anna Wintour is famously private, but when R. J. Cutler approached her with the idea of making a documentary series on the production of Vogue's September issue, she was promptly supportive. This aside, it was not so easy for him to get the project rolling.

While fiction films have touched on the candy-colored universe of Wintour's Vogue magazine, Cutler asserts that the project, which evolved in concept from a series to a feature-length doc, is no reaction piece. "It's a narrative reflection of something that I witnessed over nine months, melded together with something I experienced when I was witnessing it--and that's it."

The September Issue, which rolls out to theaters in September through Roadside Attractions and A&E Indie Films, documents the editors of Vogue planning the largest issue the magazine has ever published, and they begin nine months before the issue goes to print. While all the editors are involved, one editor, the most famously inaccessible among them, gets center stage.

Anna Wintour is known for being fiercely private. Was that an obstacle to reaching her or representing her?

R. J. Cutler: Whether they're famously private or not, you have to earn your subjects' trust and maintain it through the duration of filming. If you do your job properly and protect that trust, the subjects become more committed to sharing their stories with you. You have to fundamentally believe throughout the process that the story belongs to them, and not to you. Therefore, the only thing you can do is endeavor to earn their trust.

You ask if it was difficult to get Anna to open up--Grace Coddington [Vogue's creative director] wouldn't let me film a frame with her for four months. I would show up and if Grace was there, she would ask me not to film, yell at me or walk out of the room. She was really unhappy that a camera was present at Vogue, and it was only when I could not imagine making the film without her--and I confessed that to her and basically got down on my knees--that she agreed to give us a chance. And then, she was involved.

Earning trust is always a challenge, but once you've done it, regardless of the person's reputation, you get to make a movie.

When did you begin to have the support of A&E Indie Films?

It's kind of a beautiful story. When I first started talking to Anna about this, I thought of making a series about it consistent with the other documentary series I've done [American High; The Residents]. I was very frustrated at the time. People who buy television series get very, very excited about it, and then they get cold feet. I went to Sundance, and while I was there I was having dinner with Stephanie Davis, who's a wise friend of mine, and I was bitching and moaning about two things: I was frustrated that I hadn't made the time in my life to make another film, and I was missing the fact I hadn't made a doc for a while. I said, "I have access to Anna Wintour and I can't even set this series up!" And she said, "I don't understand why you don't do this as a documentary." And all of a sudden the clouds in the sky cleared and it made complete sense to me. We went off to a party, where I ran into Micah Green from CAA, who is the maestro of arranging financing and sales for documentary films. I mentioned it to him and he said, "I'll call A&E the day I get home," and the next day he called me. It was really that kind of sudden transformation in the life of this film being made. It came after I had agreements with Anna, but a full year before we started shooting.

Did the deal with A&E affect the final cut?

No, I had final cut on this film. That's a critical part of making the movie, for me. It was something A&E and Anna both agreed to. When I met Anna and we started talking about doing a project together, her response to my desire for final cut was, "I totally understand. I'm a journalist, my father was a journalist and this isn't going to be a problem." I was grateful she totally got it but also struck that we had just met and she was talking about her dad. It was a clue to me that her father and how she sees herself were big issues to her. It was like she couldn't hold herself back from giving me that indication, almost immediately after meeting.

This is an aside to the issue of editorial control, but one of the reasons you have final cut is because you want the film to be exactly what you want it to be. It's an incredible privilege when you can have that, but in a way you're also protecting the subjects from themselves. It's always hard to look at a movie, and the first impression is not always going to have the perspective a filmmaker has. You want to avoid a situation where you're sharing any editorial control with your subject.

Part of the reason I ask this is that I thought A&E might have had an opinion on the inclusion--or in this case exclusion--of any mention of the death of the magazine industry in this doc.

This movie doesn't have anything to do with that. That's the kind of thing you would never ask a scripted filmmaker; you'd only ask a documentary filmmaker because there's this kind of misunderstanding--because documentaries deal with real life, that they're somehow obliged to cover subject matter.

We're telling stories about human beings. This is a movie about these two women who've been working together for 20 years and were in a certain moment in their careers: They know the end is near, they know how much they've accomplished but they still come to work every day and fight about what works and what doesn't, and they do it in the midst of this extraordinary world and this $300 billion industry they kind of run. Though they appear to be polar opposites, they have this deep symbiosis and what they create is quite extraordinary. In fact, they create the single largest magazine issue that's ever been published. That's the story. Commenting on the death of the magazine industry is something you write news articles about; it's not what you make movies about.

There was a lot of commentary from the people in the film about how hard it is to be a designer. Do you feel there's any parallel there to the difficulty of being a filmmaker?

Well, it's hard to do anything that's creative and driven by passion and part of an industry. One of the central themes of the film is how art and commerce have to find a way to live together, and what happens when they do. One of the by-products of that situation is that it's tough on the artists. That's one of the easier observations the film makes. Sure it's tough, but what Grace and Anna are able to accomplish and what you see in the film is an argument why it's all worth it.

Following its opening August 28 in New York, The September Issue expands nationwide September 11,

Sara Vizcarrondo is a film journalist writing and editing in San Francisco, California.