POV Blog

How Did "The Way We Get By" End Up on POV?

2009-11-04T22:45:54Z

The Way We Get By premieres on PBS next Wednesday, November 11 at 9 pm on most PBS stations. (Check local listings.) In this video clip from the film's world premiere screening at the SXSW Film Festival, a member of the audience asked how the film got chosen to be on POV. Here's what filmmaker Aron Gaudet and producer Gita Pullapilly had to say.

HOW DID "THE WAY WE GET BY" END UP ON P.O.V.? from The Way We Get By on Vimeo.

Learn more about The Way We Get By and watch the trailer on the POV website.

Doc Soup: A Conversation with Alyce Myatt, Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media

2009-11-02T16:59:44Z

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Tod Lending, director of The Principal Story, about how he hit the jackpot by getting money from the Wallace Foundation to make a series of nonfiction films. I asked him if there were other goldmines for filmmakersout there, and he directed me to Alyce Myatt, the head of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM). I just caught up with Myatt — and while she may not actually be sitting on a mountain of gold coins, she did impress me with GFEM's incredible resource: a database of films that allows foundations to find a project that they may be interested in. It's fascinating to peruse through the various projects and see what sort of financing has been achieved, and what's still needed. Read our conversation below, and make sure to check out the database at media.gfem.org.

Doc Soup: So, is there foundation money out there for documentary filmmakers?

Alice Myatt: The short answer is yes . . . and no.

Doc Soup: That sounds like the beginning of a very long answer.

Myatt: What's been happening is that just as there has been an evolution in technology and media, there's also been an evolution in philanthropy. There's been a generation of wealth in the last couple of decades, so you have a greater number of relatively new family foundations with living donors and some of whom are entering the media sector and are funding films. But they're not doing it at the same degree as grants that were made by the Ford Foundation or MacArthur. So, 20 years ago, you could get $250,000 from Ford, but now that $250,000 is coming from various grants pieced together.

Doc Soup: Can you tell me some of the names of the family foundations you're talking about?

Myatt: Chicken and Egg, Cinereach, the Fledgling Fund.

Doc Soup: Is the recession inhibiting this sort of funding?

Myatt: It has had an impact across the board. If you are a large foundation, if you go from $7 billion to $4 billion, you still have $4 billion. However, the same anxiety that permeates society as a whole, extends to everyone. And what happens is that philanthropies want [to keep] their long-term grantees going. In some instances, they have raised their payout sometimes as high as 9 percent, so that they can honor the commitments because they don't want these organizations to fail. So a new film project has a harder time because of these ongoing commitments.

Read more about GFEM and funding for docs after the jump...

How Common Is Your Last Name?

2009-10-29T20:10:35Z

In 1990, my last name — the prosaic-in-China but seemingly obscure-in-America "Xu" — was the 10,540th most common name in America. In 2000, my last name had made an incredible leap — it climbed more than 7,000 spots to become the 2,701st most common name in America. What a difference a decade makes! How common is your last name? And has it moved up or down according to the census? Find out in POV's Last Name Popularity Index!

In 2001, POV aired The Sweetest Sound, filmmaker Alan Berliner's meditation on names. For the film's website, we launched the Last Name Popularity Index, which became our most popular web feature ever. Hundreds of thousands of web visitors have entered their names — and the names of friends, loved ones and acquaintances — into the site, all in a quest to find out exactly where their last names ranked in the pantheon of American last names.

The old version of the Last Name Popularity Index used data from the 1990 census. This time, we've included names from the 2000 census as well. So not only can you find out how popular your last name is, you can see whether your it is on an upward or downward trajectory.

Can you guess what the top seven last names in America are? Who were the biggest gainers and losers from 1990 to 2000? Visit the How Common Is Your Last Name page to find out now!

Doc Soup: Have the Great Titans Moved On?

2009-10-23T20:44:31Z

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.

Have the great doc titans lost their oomph? And if so, is that such a bad thing?

I got to ruminating over these questions when I began considering how, this September, we saw the two most popular documentary filmmakers release new works practically right on top of each other: Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea on PBS, and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, in close to a thousand theaters. Both were released to good amounts of fanfare and then, well, they became yesterday's news.

Burns' series is truly beautifully shot. It's strong, effective, moving and important. And outside of my mother and brother, I haven't heard anyone talk about it once. Even Burns' World War II series a couple years back created more ripples in the cultural water cooler.

Read more after the jump...

Last Chance to Register for the 2009 National Film Challenge

2009-10-20T17:30:29Z

Here are a couple of items in my inbox that I thought filmmakers might want to note:

There is only about a week left until the launch of the 2009 National Film Challenge, the sister competition of the 48 Hour Film Project. There is still time to organize your team and register before the kickoff on Friday, October 23. Registration will be accepted through Thursday, October 22. On the following day, hundreds of filmmakers from around the world will start writing, shooting and editing their films. So whether you are a 48HFP virgin, or a seasoned 48HFP pro, stop talking and start filming!

Mark your calendars: The Emmy-nominated International Documentary Challenge will be taking place March 4-8, 2010. This is the 5th Anniversary of the Doc Challenge and we will be back at Hot Docs with the finalists! In addition to the Hot Docs premiere, the POV and DER Awards will return, as well as screenings at international festivals including Big Sky and Dokufest in Kosovo. Take part in what is being called a rite-of-passage for all documentary filmmakers!

An Update to "Street Fight"

2009-10-20T17:16:17Z

There's a lot going on New Jersey these days: a heated race for governor, a money laundering and public corruption scandal that saw the arrest of 44 people in July, and a bumper crop of cranberries. The city of Newark, N.J., is also back in the spotlight as the focus of a new Sundance Channel documentary series, Brick City. We asked Marshall Curry, director of the Emmy and Oscar-nominated film Street Fight, which chronicles a bare-knuckled race for mayor of Newark and aired on POV in 2005, for an update on the city and the subject of his film, Cory Booker.

In 2002, I met a young city councilman from Newark, N.J, named Cory Booker. I remember being struck by his energy, his earnestness and his story. Cory's parents were civil rights veterans who had integrated the suburban neighborhood where he grew up. He had gone to Stanford, Yale Law, and was a Rhodes Scholar — and then he had moved into one of Newark's roughest projects and decided to get involved in politics.

When I met him he was only 32, but he was preparing to run for mayor against the wily and charismatic four-term incumbent, Sharpe James, who ran Newark's political machine.

I'd never made a documentary before, but this seemed like a story worth pursuing: two black Democrats from different generations and different backgrounds, facing off in a city known for its bare-knuckles electioneering. So I bought a camera and started shooting.

Read more after the jump...

POV to Relaunch "Re: Vietnam" as "Regarding War" Next Month

2009-10-16T20:37:12Z

In 1996, a "dog's age ago" in Internet time, POV launched one of our first websites entitled "Re: Vietnam | Stories Since the War." It was conceived as a companion website to the POV/PBS broadcast of the Academy Award-winning film, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. On the site's homepage, a quote from Maya Lin expressed the ethos of the site:

The site's producers aimed to contribute something new to our collective understanding of the Vietnam War by offering people who lived through that wrenching period the opportunity to talk about Vietnam's legacy and enduring impact on society. They hoped that twenty years after the war's end people were finally "ready to listen to each other's stories."

This fall, I'm excited to announce that POV's interactive team has begun work on relaunching "Re: Vietnam" as a new site entitled "Regarding War." We plan to include conversations and stories about all wars — particularly our current deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan — and to update the site with a new look and functionality that combines community features, social networking opportunities and the ability for users to share their own stories, images and video with the click of a mouse. (The original site encouraged visitors to share their stories and images, but the options were via email, telephone, fax or the mail — as in, the U.S. mail!)

Read more about "Re: Vietnam" and "Regarding War" after the jump...

Outside the Frame: Results: Documentary Website Cost Survey

2009-10-14T21:02:49Z

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her column, Outside the Frame.

This is part 3 of my series on producing great documentary websites. Read part one and part two.

The results are in! 24 filmmakers responded to our survey, "How Much Does It Cost to Produce a Documentary Website." Here's what we learned:

Dollars and Cents

A third of you either produced your last site yourself, or got a friend to do it for free. A quarter of you spent somewhere in the $1,000-5,000 range. (At the other end of the spectrum, one of you spent $100,000.)

All but one of you felt that people were the most expensive part of the site production process — either hiring a good design firm or new media strategist, or the cost of your own time.

Half of you expect to spend more on your next site, and around 40 percent of you plan to spend about the same amount. Only three of you intend to spend less.

Read more after the jump...

Doc Soup: The Wallace Foundation and "The Principal Story"

2009-10-12T14:23:46Z

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.

I continue here my exploration into foundations funding documentaries with a discussion with The Principal Story's Tod Lending, a director who pretty much won the doc filmmakers' sweepstakes with a giant grant from Chicago's Wallace Foundation.

Doc Soup: You received a grant from the Wallace Foundation to make The Principal Story. Did you go to them with the idea?

Tod Lending: It came about in an interesting way. It was the first time I was approached by a foundation for an RFP (a request for proposal). They sent it out to 16 filmmakers across the country and we were to submit a preliminary proposal that clearly stated our interests and intentions. The Wallace Foundation wanted us to look at the issue of principal leadership. Each filmmaker sent in 5-page proposals, and then they gave 3 out of the 16 filmmakers $10,000 grants to further the proposal.

Doc Soup: Had you ever heard of this sort of process before?

Lending: Never. It was a really nice thing to happen. My co-producer David Mrazeck and I both felt we had to shoot a demo to further the proposal. I am very glad we did because that's what apparently pushed us over the top. I don't know why the other two competitors didn't, but when you are given $10,000, you have no excuse. And, lo and behold, we were given the $1.5 million dollar grant. It's unheard of to get all of your money from one place. I should add that the $1.5 million was not just for the film. It was also for the outreach project, and we also made a number of other films for the foundation.

The Fire Next Time: Look Closely and You Might See Your Town, Too

2009-10-08T13:53:07Z

Over a stormy two-year period, The Fire Next Time (POV 2005) follows a deeply divided group of Montana citizens caught in a web of conflicts intensified by rapid growth and the power of talk radio. Many residents were losing their jobs in timber and mining, and blamed environmentalists. Throw into this stressful situation two disturbing elements of America's hyper-antagonistic politics — right-wing talk radio and anti-government militia organizing — and the tension became volatile.

Filmmaker Patrice O'Neill encouraged us to stream The Fire Next Time online in response to the recent violence on town halls about health care, so viewers could see how one community successfully dealt with rising tension and threats of extreme violence. Ever since the PBS broadcast of the 1995 film, Not in Our Town — about the response of Billings, Montana, to a rash of hate crimes — The Working Group (O'Neill's production company) has been helping local communities deal with intolerance and violence by holding film screenings and community discussions. She wrote in with some thoughts about current affairs, and what we can learn from the film today.

O'Neill: People are riled up. They're yelling at meetings, threatening local officials. Only strong partisans on either side are brave, engaged or committed enough to attend town hall meetings about contentious issues. Adding fuel to this volatile atmosphere is a radio talk show host who fires up his callers and listeners with scathing attacks on local leaders and citizens who disagree with his views. Does this sound familiar?

Health care rally held outside President Barack Obama's town hall in Portsmouth, NH on August 11, 2009. Credit: aflcio2008, Flickr

A few years ago, POV presented our documentary about a Northwest Montana town that was deeply divided over local issues. When we started filming in 2002, I began to see some disturbing patterns that made me see how quickly democracy could break down when social and political divisions were combined with a heated media atmosphere.

Read more after the jump...

Filmmaker Ido Haar in New York

2009-10-07T21:48:17Z

POV's Executive Director Simon Kilmurry shares some exciting news about POV alum Ido Haar.

For those of you close to Westchester County, New York, POV alum Ido Haar, the filmmaker of 9 Star Hotel (POV 2008), will be featured as the third International Filmmaker-in-Residence at Jacob Burns Film Center's Media Arts Lab in Pleasantville.

Ido is a graduate of Jerusalem's famous Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, and his films follow a vérité, observational style. He says that he was drawn to filmmaking after a stint in the Israeli army. In a review of 9 Star Hotel, the New York Times wrote that "...Ido Haar draws us into the precarious world of young Palestinian construction workers scrabbling to survive in and around the Israeli city of Modi'in." You can watch 9 Star Hotel in its entirety online.

Ido will be teaching a course at the Burns Center: "The Israeli Documentary," for teens and adults starting Oct. 13. Two of his films will be screening as well: the aforementioned 9 Star Hotel (Oct. 12 at 7:30), and Melting Siberia (Nov. 3 at 5:00), which documents the trip that Ido and his mother took to Siberia in search of her father, a Red Army hero who abandoned his wife when she was pregnant.

Find out more about Ido Haar at the Jacob Burns Film Center and Media Lab on the organization's website.

Doc Soup: Foundations and Documentary Funding

2009-10-05T21:08:49Z

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.

Everyone has less these days. Money is disappearing. Doc distributors like ThinkFilm, Warner Independent Pictures and Paramount Vantage are vanishing. And the recession continues to roll on.

In this climate, where does a doc filmmaker turn for financing?

In the past, one of the best go-to resources was the diverse realm of foundations. The big film-friendly arts foundations, like the Jerome Foundation, the Sundance Documentary Film Program or New York State Council on the Arts have been invaluable to filmmakers. But there's also a whole world of specific issue-focused foundations. And despite the fact that many of their endowments have plummeted some 30% (or perhaps because of the lack of funds), foundations are finding new ways to collaborate in quid pro quo relationships with filmmakers: in exchange for doling out money, additional credibility and connections, they get the word out on a particular cause.

I discussed this phenomenon with Dan Cogan, the executive director of Impact Partners, a consortium of private investors that fund documentaries. Cogan recently partnered with the Fledgling Fund to create Impact Philanthropic, an effort to match filmmakers and foundations with similar goals.

Read more after the jump...

"Congo in Harlem" Film Series and Events This Month in NYC

2009-10-01T17:14:39Z

I just got an email from the filmmakers of Lumo (POV 2007) that there will be films and events celebrating Congolese culture and raising awareness about the conflict at the Mayles Cinema in New York City all this month. Three of Lumo's producers — Louis Abelman, Lynn True and Nelson Walker — were involved with programming the series, which will include screenings, special events, panel discussions, performances and receptions.

According to their website, Congo in Harlem will not only offer New Yorkers the chance to see some great films, but it will also offer opportunities to discover Congolese culture, learn about the ongoing humanitarian crisis, engage in dialog and get involved. Sounds great to us!

This week's events include screenings of Soul Power (10/1, 7:30 pm) and Lumumba (10/2 7:30 pm) with panel discussions, and a screening of "Yole!Africa short films" (10/3, 7:30 pm) and a Q&A with the directors.

Get the full schedule at the Maysles Institute website. For more information please contact the planners at (212) 582-6050 x206 or email congo[at]mayslesinstitute.org. Volunteers needed throughout the month of October.

A Video Interview with Thom Powers, Part 1

2009-10-01T16:34:23Z

POV's series producer Yance Ford interviews Thom Powers, filmmaker, documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and the founder and curator of the Stranger than Fiction documentary series in New York.

I sat down recently with Thom Powers — filmmaker, documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and the founder and curator of the immensely popular documentary series Stranger than Fiction, also known as STF. Since 2005, STF has run three 10-week seasons (Spring, Fall and Winter) for an ever increasing audience. Powers and his finely curated series have established Tuesday nights at the IFC Center as the time and place for New York City-based documentary filmmakers and fans to view new and classic work and interact through vibrant Q&A's and post-screening gatherings, where the conversations continue.

The Fall 2009 season opened this week with Ahead of Time, the directorial debut of cinematographer Bob Richman. Richman has shot a laundry list of fine documentaries including Constantine's Sword by Oren Jacoby, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, and recently The September Issue by RJ Cutler. The new STF season also features some other great films — check out the calendar on the STF website.

In part one of my interview with Thom, he breaks down the history of STF, his curatorial approach and what it means to bring folks out from behind their computers and into the theater. Stay tuned for part two next week, when we discuss Toronto and some broader issues like distribution and the documentary landscape.

Reminder: Website Cost Survey

2009-09-30T15:37:14Z

Our own Amanda Hirsch, who writes the Outside the Frame column here on the POV Blog, has been exploring great documentary film websites (read Part I and Part II of her analysis). She's also interested in how much it costs to make a website for a documentary film, and we wanted to remind you that this is the last week to participate in our survey about that very topic!

If you're a documentary filmmaker who has made a website for your film, we'd love it if you'd take the survey now!

We're accepting responses through October 4. Amanda will post results and analysis soon after that.