POV

Students in the MFA Documentary Program at Hofstra University in Hempsted, New York, have been screening POV films this semester. MFA candidate Stefani Saintonge shares some of the highlights of the series so far.

This semester, the MFA Documentary Program at Hofstra University is hosting a series of POV screenings. As a student of the program, I have had the opportunity to meet key people involved in the films such as Jason Hamza Pèrez, subject of New Muslim Cool, and Peter Kinoy, editor of The Reckoning.

New Muslim Cool, which screened on Sept. 24th, was followed by a Q & A with Jason Hamza Pèrez. I found Pèrez particularly interesting, because he explained the techniques that the director, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, used to help him feel at ease as the subject of her fillm. He told us that Taylor made an impact on him by respecting his privacy and adhering to his rules on where the camera could and couldn't go. He put the documentary into perspective perhaps even better than the filmmaker could — which makes sense, since it was his life that was spotlighted.

Read more after the jump.

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TAGS: documentary filmmaking, filmmaking, screening

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In 1996, POV launched Re: Vietnam | Stories Since the War. The site was an early test of the potential of the Internet as a vehicle for community building and open exchange. Today, as POV announces Regarding War, an update of the original site that provides a space for conversations about all wars -- current and past -- journalist Sam Meddis, who wrote about Re: Vietnam in 1996, looks back at Re: Vietnam and re-evaluates the site more than a decade later.

"The Web is more of a social creation than a technical one."
— Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web

Think back to the mid-'90s when the Web was young. It was a world without Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed — long before social media became a household term — a time when Web 2.0 was, say, Web 0.2.

I remember those days fondly because, as USA Today's online technology editor then, I had the dream job of being paid good money to surf the Web and write about new and notable websites.

Every single day, wondrous new destinations would materialize in the online landscape. They ranged from art galleries and investment services to personal diaries and digital newsstands. They served up a feast of seemingly endless tips and data about everything from health and careers to entertainment and computers.

There was no scarcity of sites to choose from. Cyberspace was undergoing a virtual Big Bang, with constellations of websites growing explosively — multiplying more than six-fold in a single year, by Yahoo!'s reckoning, from 100,000 sites in '95 to 650,000 in '96. The only challenge for me was to pick out the very best from so many stars.

As Michael Neubarth, then-editor of Internet World magazine, said in his intro to the 1996 "State of the Net" edition, it was a "hectic and breathless" year. The Web propelled "change and adaptation in almost every walk of life, from grade-school students to corporate CEOs," the magazine's report concluded.

Amid all the online commotion that year, one of the sites that got my close attention was POV Interactive's Re: Vietnam | Stories Since the War, which billed itself as a gathering place for personal accounts about Vietnam's legacy.

A companion site to the POV/PBS broadcast of the Academy Award-winning documentary Maya Lin: A Clear Strong Vision, about the creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Re: Vietnam website stood out enough for me to feature it in a Dec. 30, 1996, column entitled "The Net's best year."

Read more after the jump...

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TAGS: re: vietnam, regarding war, soldiers, veterans, vietnam war, war

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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.

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TAGS: barack obama, cory booker, new jersey, politics

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We wanted to share with our viewers that Michael Galasso, one of the composers of our film, whose work has inspired us throughout the years of making Ella Es el Matador (She Is the Matador) passed away in Paris last week, right after the POV broadcast. He left us too soon and with so much talent and generosity. We will never forget when we contacted him to see if he would want to collaborate in our film. His prompt and generous response filled us with joy. His music reveals the humanity and complexity of our characters. We feel very lucky to have met this talented man and to keep his spirit alive through his work in the film. For those of you who want to learn more about his inspirational work please visit: www.michaelgalasso.com.

Thank you Michael. You will be missed.

— Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco, directors of Ella Es el Matador

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Filmmaker Gary Weimberg is a two-time POV alum. His film, Soldiers of Conscience, premiered on POV in 2008. An earlier film, The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez, was on POV in 1999. Gary writes in with a moving update on the lives of the characters from that film and reminds us about the power of documentaries — for subjects, filmmakers and viewers..

Gary Weimberg: On July 27, 1999, our film, The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez, premiered on POV Let it never be said that TV accomplishes nothing. Less than two months later, Ernesto's mother, Dylcia Pagan, received executive clemency from President Clinton and she walked out of the U.S. federal prison, a free woman, after having been incarcerated for 19 years of her 55-year sentence.

Dylcia was and is a Puerto Rican patriot, and the injustice of her lengthy prison sentence was one of the major themes of the film. Catherine Ryan (my wife and co-producer), myself and Ernesto drove to the gates of the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, California, to pick up Dylcia and travel with her to Puerto Rico for her first 10 days of freedom.

Read an update on Ernesto and Dylcia after the jump...

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TAGS: gary weimberg, puerto rico, update, youth

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Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker's American Tongues was the inaugural film that launched POV when the series began in 1988. More than 20 years later, they continue to produce acclaimed documentary films that take a humorous and critical view of American life. Their most recent film, made with co-producer Peter Odabashian, The Anti-Americans (a hate-love relationship), is a whimsical look at what Europeans think of American politics and culture. Other films include Small Ball: A Little League Story and People Like Us: Social Class in America. (Left to right in the photo: Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker and Peter Odabashian.)

But just because they're great at making funny and smart documentaries doesn't mean that these award-winning filmmakers are resting on their laurels — they continue to push themselves into the digital realm and to explore the possibilities of interactivity. When we last checked in with them, they were busy at work on a prototype of a Web-based game for middle school kids. We asked them to fill us in on their latest project, Past/Present.

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TAGS: american tongues, andrew kolker, education, games, interactivity, louis alvarez, multimedia

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The Way We Get By filmmakers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly have been at SXSW this week to premiere their film, which will air on POV in November 2009. Gita writes in to tell us more about the adventures of two filmmakers in Austin, Texas.

Getting prepared for SXSW was intense for us — we wanted to contact local media and film critics, get our posters, post cards and fliers out there, plus plan an after-party following our first screening! How could we fit it all in? We started by cutting sleep out of our schedule. That seemed to free up some time, but tended to leave Aron a little cranky. Still, the more preparation, the better. This is our first feature-length film, so we're new to the festival circuit and had no idea what to expect.

When we arrived at the Austin Convention Center to register, we were overwhelmed by how large SXSW really is. There were at least 200 people in line ahead of us. We figured we were in for a long wait. We stood there for about five minutes before someone came by shouting "Filmmakers? Filmmakers?" Filmmakers? Was that us? When we raised our hands, she pulled us out of line and told us to go straight up to register. Wow, we were getting star treatment... or so it felt. By this point, we had been up for nearly 36 hours straight and were on zero bars of energy.

Watch a trailer of The Way We Get By:

After registering, we scrambled to put our posters and fliers up and visited the Austin Convention Center venue where our first screening would take place. They were building the theatre when we walked in. It would hold roughly 450 people, and the screen was HUGE... I don't think I've ever seen a screen so large. As Aron and I walked down the red carpet towards the screen, we turned around, took a deep breath, and sighed. We only know about five people in Austin, so it would not be an audience filled with friends. We would need to rely on our film to bring in the crowd. We hoped we could fill the theater on a Sunday morning at 11:30 a.m.

Our stomachs were in knots leading up to Sunday — actually, Aron has just stepped in to say his stomach was just fine. So, really, my stomach was in knots leading up to Sunday. We went out, talked to our friends in town and attended the filmmaker parties. But Sunday was still on my mind. We got to the venue at 9:45 a.m., and Aron did a technical check while I began saying a few Hail Mary's. We were hoping our world premiere at SXSW would be a great launch pad for The Way We Get By to make it easier to market and distribute the film.

At around 10:15 a.m., people began lining up for ticket sales outside of the venue. I asked them what they were here to see and they said, "The Way We Get By." They showed up an hour and 15 minutes early to see our movie?!! By 11:15, we had well over 350 people filling up the seats. Watching the audience watch our film is something I'm not sure I will ever get tired of — you could hear laughs and sniffles throughout the film. There was a lot of emotion in that first screening. It definitely felt like the culmination of so much hard work. I knew there is a lot more hard work to come, but I still tried to take in the moment. Following the film, we had an amazing Q&A and our "special surprise guest" was a hit.

Watch us talk about the film getting on POV in the post-screening Q&A:

We've met a ton of filmmakers here and it's great being a part of this amazing and talented community. And to top off our SXSW experience, on Tuesday night, our film won the Special Jury Award!! We couldn't have asked for a better place to have our world premiere and a better time to kick off our festival run. I think we've earned a nap!

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Earlier this month, filmmaker Leah Mahan shared her memories of Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, the subject of her 2002 POV film Sweet Old Song, in celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday on March 4. Armstrong passed away in 2003. Last week, she received news that John Cephas, one of the musicians featured in Sweet Old Song had also passed away. She asked if she could write a few words about him.

I was so sad to learn that John Cephas, Piedmont blues guitarist and singer with the duo Cephas and Wiggins, died on March 4. I met him when I was making Sweet Old Song. The first footage I shot for the documentary, in 1998, was backstage at a concert near Boston, where Howard Armstrong was visiting with his friends Robert Lockwood, Jr., John Jackson, Phil Wiggins — and John.

I looked at some of that footage this week and it was hard to accept that except for Phil Wiggins, who is a generation younger, the other musicians have since passed away. There's a moment I really enjoyed revisiting, when John is warming up for the concert and offers Howard his new guitar to try out. Howard plays "Good Morning Judge" and John says, "Well alright, Howard!" Later, from the stage, John asks Howard to stand in the audience and introduces him as "a master of his trade."

John Cephas was twenty years younger than Howard, and he'd ask him about the old days, when Howard was a member of the Tennessee Chocolate Drops in the 1920s. In Sweet Old Song, they're talking about that early music with Phil Wiggins and the fact that young African Americans generally aren't into the country blues and string-band music that they play. But, John says, "The music is still there. It hasn't died and it's not going to die. Because it's recorded. And there are people who are interested."

As I think about these musicians and their legacy, I'm heartened by the thousands that I saw turn out to hear them play and by the fact that there are young musicians, like the Carolina Chocolate Drops (named for Howard's band) who are keeping the music alive.

Watch Sweet Old Song in its entirety on the POV website through May 2, 2009.

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In 2001, the hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapulted the town of Farmingville, New York into national headlines. Filmmakers Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini spent a year there so they could capture first-hand the stories of residents, day laborers and activists on all sides of the debate, and Farmingville premiered on POV in 2004. After two recent hate-based crimes against Latinos in the New York area this fall, Carlos wrote in to share his fears for the future if Americans don't "hold back the hate."

"Beaner hopping" is what the seven restless teenagers called their Saturday night sport. They didn't do it very often, say once a week or so. They'd set out to "find a Mexican" who they would taunt, maybe punch in the face.

On November 11, 2008, the hopping turned into a stabbing. A man was killed.

The victim was Marcelo Lucero, an immigrant from Ecuador. The town was Patchogue, just south of Farmingville, New York. (Read an article from the New York Times about the incident.)

Less than a month later, three men screamed anti-Latino and anti-gay epithets as one pulverized Jose Sucuzhanany's head with a steel bat. Mr. Sucuzhanany, an immigrant from Ecuador, had been walking arm-in-arm with his brother in Brooklyn. He died without regaining consciousness. (Read an article about this incident from the New York Times.)

These lynchings — hate-driven, murderous wildings, one next door to Farmingville, the other in my own New York City — have sadly confirmed my reason for making Farmingville (POV 2004). They've also left me despairing of my hope for the impact of the film, and wondering about our future as a nation.

While Farmingville was received as a film about immigration, it was really about fear. I made it because I was afraid that the hate that had led to the beatings of two day laborers from Farmingville would spread like a malignancy, from "illegals" to Latinos. I was afraid that a new generation was about to become entrapped in the cycle of non-acceptance and condemned to the corrosive sense of low esteem that comes from being identified as the "other" — just as I and generations of Latinos before me had been.

I hoped that a film that attempted to listen to all sides might become a bridge for dialogue. To be sure, Farmingville triggered lots of discussions. But now, eight years after Catherine Tambini and I started our small, quixotic crusade to hold back the hate, hate seems to be oozing from more and more places... and intensifying.

Fear has grown into a daily fact of life among Latinos. Some of us are telling our children to play inside to avoid trouble. Others are avoiding going out alone after dark. Yet others walk with cell phones at the ready. And with reason. According to FBI statistics, hate crimes against Latinos grew four years in a row from 2003 to 2007. Nearly one in 10 Latinos — including citizens and legal immigrants — has been stopped and asked about their citizenship status, according to one recent study.

As a result, I am again feeling as fearful as when I began Farmingville. However this time, it's not just for myself, or the Latino community for whom I fear. I fear for the welfare of the nation.

The Latino population is a demographic force. It's predicted that we will constitute nearly one-third of the country's population by the year 2050. We are rapidly becoming the young workers upon whom an aging population depends.

Put another way, the economic welfare of the country will soon rest on a population that we currently run the risk of alienating through fear, of isolating through intimidation, of limiting through unseen barriers that erode the sense of self, and the sense of polity.

Why should Latinos who are being intimidated out of the public square care to support those who make them feel unwelcome? How — in the not-too-distant future — can we ask them to underwrite our social welfare costs, let alone our bloated national debt, when they will remember that we let them be killed in the streets? And how, as journalist Jesse Trevino has so pointedly asked, will they even have the skills to help sustain America's economic preeminence when we have alienated them so much that they are dropping out of schools at record levels?

Let it be known that the violence we allow to be reaped today will come back to haunt us tomorrow. And if we're not careful, it will stalk our "beaner hopping" teenagers... and their children.

Farmingville is available for purchase from Docurama.

Carlos Sandoval's new documentary "A Class Apart" premiers on PBS's American Experience Monday, February 23, 2009.

TAGS: farmingville, immigration, latinos, politics, race, update

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If you missed the premier of two great P.O.V films this week, you have a chance to watch the full films online! In the Family is streaming online until October 31, 2008 while Critical Condition is streaming until November 11, 2008.

Both films document intensely personal journeys and stories, and both are engaged with the issue of health care in America. During an election season in which health care reform has become one of the nation's most hotly debated issues, Roger Weisberg's Critical Condition tells the story of four families living without insurance. The film lays out the human consequences of an increasingly expensive and inaccessible system.

In The Family is also a story of struggle and survival. Filmmaker Joanna Rudnick tells her story of testing positive for the BRCA gene (the "breast cancer gene") at age 27. In trying to answer her own tough question about whether or not to take the irreversible step of having her breasts and ovaries removed as preventative measure, Joanna's reaches out to other women and faces her deepest fears about her future. In the Family portrays the difficult choices that face these women, how families deal with grief and the relationships that are formed during trying moments in our lives.

After you watch the films online, you can browse the other sections of the In the Family and Critical Condition websites to learn more about issues raised in the films and to get an update on what has happened since filming ended. And from now through October 8, you can talk to a genetic counselor on the In the Family discussion board, or compare the health reform plans of presidential nominees McCain and Obama in terms of how they might have affected the characters in Critical Condition.

So point your browser over to the POV website, sit back in front of your computer with a box of tissues, and watch In the Family and Critical Condition.

Maggie Owsley is a student at NYU and an intern at POV Interactive.

TAGS: healthcare, healthcare reform, online video, politics

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Sonjia Hyon is the Festival Director of the Asian American International Film Festival, the longest-running festival devoted to the works of Asian and Asian American filmmakers. This year the Festival celebrates its 31st year in New York from July 10th to July 19th.

I started working in Asian American film as an intern at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival in 1999. At the time, my interest in Asian American film was an extension of my interest in subculture and independent media — I was an avid reader of zines, listener of college radio, and a patron of small art house theaters. What I mostly appreciated was that I belonged to a society that advocated difference instead of conformity, and believed in unity, not uniformity. For me, this was the transformative quality of Asian American cinema: it wasn't about affirming my identity as an Asian American woman; instead, it continually unraveled what Asian American identity meant — making it more complicated, more indefinable, more ambiguous. Films by Christine Choy, Jon Moritsugu and Rea Tajiri provided a lens to challenge assumptions and question the obvious.

Almost ten years later, I've become the director of the Asian American International Film Festival in New York, and like the Festival, I've also just entered my 30s. Turning 30, you start to reprioritize, evaluate what's important and let go. Here at the Festival, it's the same. We see our 30s as a moment to break from the film festival model that embraces glamour and celebrities, and instead honor films and their filmmakers. At AAIFF, we are inspired by our founders Daryl Chin, Tom Tam and Fern Lee, all of whom believed in the importance of independent filmmakers in mobilizing different ways to imagine how to live.

In honor of officially entering our 30s, we're bringing back veteran filmmakers such Wayne Wang, director of the festival's opening night film, The Princess of Nebraska, and introducing many new vanguards such as Malaysian filmmaker Sang Tat Liew, documentary filmmakers Risa Morimoto and Derek Shimoda, and our exciting line-up of shorts directors.

I am also thrilled to announce our new series of conversations on culture and ideas — New Landscapes: Media and Its Adaptations. This series has become a pet project of the staff and our collaborators at Asia Society and the Asian/Pacific/Institute at NYU. Collectively, we wanted to put together a conference that encouraged interdisciplinary thinking and talking. The panels range in topic from an intimate conversation between female documentary filmmakers moderated by POV's own Anne del Castillo, to a discussion on Asian aesthetics between some of the world's top artists such as architect Billie Tsien and playwright David Henry Hwang.

We love movies here at AAIFF, and if you do too, you should come visit us at the Asia Society from July 10 to 19 and watch some great cinema.

You can see our full schedule and programs at AAIFF.org.

TAGS: asia, filmmaker, media

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IN THEATERS

Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World opened in limited release on June 11. The film follows Herzog's travels in Antarctica, from the 1,100-person community of McMurdo Station, to the Ross Sea, to the Erebus volcano, capturing as many of nature's sights as possible. Encounters at the End of the World has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. The New York Times says "few filmmakers make the end of days seem as hauntingly beautiful as Werner Herzog does," and the Newark Star-Ledger calls Herzog "cinema's poet of empty spaces."

If you're in New York City from June 13th to June 26th, you should check out the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival at the Walter Reader Theater (Lincoln Center). This year, the festival showcases twenty documentaries, including opening night feature, Peter
Raymont's A Promise to the Dead: the Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman. In the film, author Dorfman (Death and the Maiden) reflects on his life as writer, activist and exile, and talks about Chile's transition from Salvadore Allende's socialist government to Pinochet's repressive regime. Also screening at the festival are four POV films: Katrina Browne's Traces of the Trade (2008), Roger Weisberg's Critical Condition (2008), Anthony Giacchino's The Camden 28 (2007) and Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath's Nerakhooon (The Betrayal) (2009).

ON DVD

Ted Braun's Darfur Now follows six individuals who try to bring light to the genocide in Darfur. The Boston Globe calls it "slick, impassioned and guardedly upbeat."

Also recently released on DVD are The Business of Being Born by Abby Epstein and Rob VanAlkemade's What Would Jesus Buy?, two films previously discussed on Doc Roundup.

TAGS: darfur, environment, healthcare, healthcare reform, war, werner herzog

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Robert Bahar was the producer and writer of Made in L.A. (POV 2007). He represented POV recently at the Film Your Issue awards ceremony in Los Angeles to present the prize to the winner of the POV award.

Last week I had the privilege of presenting the POV Award at the Film Your Issue awards ceremony in Los Angeles. Film Your Issue is a competition that invites teens and young adults ages 14 to 24 from around the world to submit short films about issues that they are truly passionate about. The hope is that the competition will catalyze dialogue among young adults, and encourage potential future leaders to engage in civic discourse.

The ceremony was held at the Cary Grant Theater at Sony Pictures Studios and featured stars such as Kirk Douglas and Bill Maher, as well as business leaders including the publisher of USA Today, Craig Moon. But despite the star power, the real stars of the evening were undoubtedly the young filmmakers whose films and speeches came straight from the heart. I was there to present the POV Award to the film New Orleans for Sale, by Brandan Odums and Nik Richard (both 22) and their collective, 2-Cent Entertainment. In just 87 seconds, the film is a sharp, perceptive look at the actual paid tourism, and by extension, the voyeurism that represents a part of our national emotional response to Hurricane Katrina and the devastation left in its wake. It poses questions about why neighborhoods are not being rebuilt, and about whether there are disincentives for reviving the city as it once was. The mixture of documentary and performance techniques makes for a striking short piece:

The 2-Cent team actually brought 10 people out for the awards ceremony, so the podium was rather crowded for the awards presentation. And they got to stay up there for a while, as New Orleans for Sale also received three other prizes including the jury award, the NAACP award and the Silverdocs award! The prizes are fitting, and I'd love to see the film take off as a viral phenomenon. People absolutely need to see it, and these young voices do need to be heard.

I made my first documentary at 19, and I have always believed that films, media and especially documentaries can make a difference and lead to social change. So it was thrilling to spend an evening watching films made by young filmmakers who are fighting so hard to make a difference through these creative, powerful short pieces.

You can view all the winners at http://www.filmyourissue.com.

TAGS: filmmaker, media, youth

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On October 7, 2008, POV will air Joanna Rudnick's In the Family. When Joanna tested positive for the "breast cancer gene" at age 27, she knew the information could save her life. She also knew that she would have to make heart-wrenching decisions about whether or not to remove her breasts and ovaries, or risk developing cancer. In the Family is a moving document of one young woman's struggles, and her efforts to reach out to other women while facing her deepest fears.

On May 1st, Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) bill. On this momentous occasion, Joanna writes in to talk about why the GINA bill is so important, and to introduce us to In the Familiy.

Watch the trailer for the film:

In 2001, at the age of 27, I decided to take a genetic test to find out my odds of getting breast and ovarian cancer. As I pondered what a positive test result would mean to my future, one of my main concerns was the potential for losing my health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

Even though a positive test result is only a predictor of risk and not a diagnosis of disease, I wasn't confident that the insurance companies would see it the same way. So I tested anonymously, paying out of pocket for the blood test.

It came back "positive for a deleterious mutation," and I worked hard to keep the information out of my medical records, often leading to confused and uninformed conversations with doctors about my future care. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be living in fear solely because I inherited some bad DNA.

During the process of making In the Family, I hooked up with an incredible group called The Coalition for Genetic Fairness that was working tirelessly to try and pass legislation to protect individuals from genetic discrimination by insurers and employers. This legislation, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), would offer more than just legal protections; it would conquer the culture of fear that had grown around genetic testing.

After a nearly 13-year battle to pass GINA in some form of another, the bill passed both houses of Congress a few weeks ago and President Bush has promised to sign it into law.

I cried as I watched two hours of the Senate hearings on C-SPAN, during which Senator Ted Kennedy referred to the bill as the most important civil rights legislation passed in the new century. I could see the hundreds of faces of all the women and their families I encountered on the road the last few years and know that they no longer had to live in fear that their genetic information would be used against them.

Instead, we can now focus our energies on early detection and prevention, and living full lives despite our predispositions.

In the Family airs on POV on Wednesday, October 1. You can sign up to be reminded of the film's broadcast on its preview page.

TAGS: healthcare, politics

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Katy Chevigny is the filmmaker behind Election Day (POV 2008) as well as the co-founder of the non-profit media organization Arts Engine, whose production arm, Big Mouth Films, has produced eight feature-length documentaries. This week, Arts Engine celebrates its 10th anniversary with a series of screenings at the Paley Center for Media in New York. Katy writes in to tell us more about the occasion.

It was a little over 10 years ago when Julia Pimsleur and I started our own production company in New York to make documentary films. Our plan then, as it still is now, was to establish a creative, collaborative environment to make documentaries on a range of topics, working with a number of different directors.

Julia had just spent seven years living in Paris, where she learned how to be a producer at the French National Film School. As a result, she was inspired to borrow from the model of many French documentary production companies, in which producers bring a creative vision to their slate of films and work collaboratively with a select group of filmmakers to achieve that vision.

We started Big Mouth with a simple business strategy of developing long-form documentaries for production (our first film was Kirsten Johnson's Innocent Until Proven Guilty) while also producing work-for-hire documentary projects for European production companies. And while our production department was steadily plugging away making this eclectic roster of documentaries, we developed into a non-profit organization called Arts Engine, eventually launching the website MediaRights.org and the Media That Matters Film Festival.

Over the course of the last decade, we have completed eight feature-length documentaries by six different directors. Our two latest films were both lucky enough to find themselves a home on POV: Andrew Walton's Arctic Son was part of POV's 2007 season, and my film, Election Day, will have its broadcast premiere on POV on July 1, 2008.

Later this week, as part of our 10th anniversary celebration, the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio) here in New York City will be showcasing our work in a special four-day (May 1 - 4) retrospective and workshop series. For the first time ever, all eight Big Mouth films will screen, along with highlights from several years of our Media That Matters Film Festival. In addition, on Thursday, May 1, we are offering a special workshop to educators on the uses of social justice media. All screenings and events are open to the public, and the full schedule can be found on Arts Engine's website.

None of us here can really believe that it's been 10 years since we started — but we're looking forward to seeing what the next 10 years have to offer. Marking this decade of work by sharing these films with an audience is a great privilege for us, and we hope that some of you will join us at the Paley Center this weekend!

TAGS: film festivals, media

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Felix Endara is the Filmmaker Services Coordinator at Arts Engine, an organization that produces and supports independent media — including Arctic Son (POV 2007), and the upcoming 2008 POV film Election Day. Felix is also the coordinator of DocuClub, a screening series which provides the opportunity for filmmakers to receive feedback while they're in the process of completing their documentaries. He guest blogs today to tell us more about the newly relaunched DocuClub, which has its first session tonight in New York City. If you're working on a film, and you'd like to hear feedback from a supportive group of peers and viewers, read on to find out how you can submit your film for DocuClub!

DocuClub is a monthly film screening series of works-in-progress documentaries, with a facilitated discussion afterwards. Filmmaker Susan Kaplan started this film series fourteen years ago as "a year-long festival of guiding the filmmaker's process." It is in this spirit that Arts Engine re-launches DocuClub in 2008.

As DocuClub's newest coordinator, I'd like to welcome back loyal DocuClub members and reach out to all documentary aficionados as we gather again to watch rough cuts of films made with intelligence and passion.

Our first session for 2008 will be tonight — Thursday April 3rd, at 7:30 pm, at Goldcrest Post (799 Washington Street, between Horatio and Gansevoort). We will watch Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons, the story of "a brotherly rivalry between a man and a woman...and Orson Welles." Reed was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2007. Our moderator will be DocuClub founder Susan Kaplan. Seating is limited, so if you are planning to attend, please RSVP at: docuclub[at]artsengine.net.

A new and exciting feature of our DocuClub website is "Talk Back." In this interactive section, discussions started at our screenings can continue with comments from those who were not able to attend a session (or those who did attend and have a lot more to say!).

DocuClub is a tool for filmmakers to help them in the process of completing their documentaries. The call-for-entries for upcoming sessions is now open. Past films that have been screened at DocuClub include Born Into Brothels, The Boys of Baraka (POV 2006), and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

We are looking for films that are in the rough cut stage (How to define "rough cut"? Not so "raw" that it would be hard to make sense of the footage, nor too fine a cut that the filmmaker is unwilling to revise her work post-session). Filmmakers must have a specific challenge with their film for which they'd like honest and supportive feedback, and films should be no longer than 120 minutes and no less than 45 minutes.

Those interested in submitting their projects can email me at docuclub[at]artsengine.net. In addition, for all DocuClub membership questions, please contact me as well.

I'm looking forward to sharing a new season of DocuClub! See you there.

TAGS: education, filmmaker, music

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Earlier this month, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar hit the road with Made in L.A. (POV 2007), visiting organizations and schools throughout Northern California. The film was received enthusiastically by standing-room-only crowds from Santa Cruz to San Diego. Almudena wrote in to share the experience with us and to encourage other filmmakers to tap into the strength of local community organizations.

We've just returned from an extraordinary week-long screening tour in Northern California with our documentary Made in L.A. It has been an intense and invigorating experience, and I wanted to share the story in case it can be helpful to other filmmakers and organizers.

The tour evolved organically — several groups in the area had contacted us after Made in L.A. was broadcast on POV on September 4th (the day after Labor Day) to invite us to come present the film in their community, university or school. The idea of a regional tour started to emerge as we heard from several groups in Northern California. In addition to the groups that had reached out to us, we contacted a few additional universities, and ended up with a five-day, seven-screening itinerary: in San Francisco at the Brava Theater, Palo Alto with Progressive Jewish Alliance, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford, Sacramento State University, UC Davis, and at the United Students Against Sweatshops High School Conference.

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TAGS: filmmaker

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POV correspondent Kris Wilton spent the day with cinematographer-turned-documentary-director Ellen Kuras at the Sundance Film Festial on Sunday, January 20.

Ellen Kuras is a legendary director of photography who has worked with an impressive array of directors, including Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Michel Gondry on some of the most stunning films of the last twenty years. She's the unprecedented three-time winner of the Best Dramatic Cinematography award at Sundance — for Swoon (1992), Angela (1995), and Personal Velocity (2002) — and she's back in Park City in a big way this year with some exciting new projects. She's here to premiere her directorial debut, the feature-length documentary Nerakhoon (The Betrayal), which was co-produced by POV | American Documentary, and will air on POV in 2008/2009. She is also busy promoting one of the festival's hottest tickets, Gondry's latest effort, Be Kind Rewind, which stars Jack Black, Mos Def and Mia Farrow, for which she was the director of photography. (This is Ellen's third collaboration with Gondry: she also shot his music documentary Block Party and the Academy Award-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.)

You might think a day in the life of this dynamic, award-winning cinematographer/director would be a non-stop whirlwind of parties and business meetings, but half of this day was actually spent shepherding family and crew members around Park City and worrying whether everyone was having fun. Over the course of the several hours I spent with Ellen, her colleagues and family described a person who is focused and driven, who can juggle multiple projects and get the impossible done, but who is above all, kind, generous and devoted to taking care of the people around her.

At the end of a panel hosted by Women in Film on Sunday afternoon, fellow speaker and actress Patricia Clarkson showed the audience that she was wearing an extra festival badge that Ellen had given her that said "Ellen Kuras." "How cool would it be to be Ellen Kuras for a day?" Clarkson asked. The answer, I found out after spending some time with her, was "Very exhausting, but very cool!"

Here's a rundown of a day with Ellen Kuras at Sundance.

7:30 - Ellen is sharing a house with her brother Jeffrey Kuras and sisters Carolyn Landolfo and Pam Kuras (who was the accountant for Nerakhoon) in Park City. As soon as she gets up, she makes coffee for everyone and spends some time chatting with her sisters. She makes sure that everyone knows the plan for the day before getting in her car to pick up Nerakhoon co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath.

10:00 - Ellen and Thavi are interviewed live by the Sundance Channel about Nerakhoon. Following the interview, she goes back to the house to mobilize the troops. Everyone gets into the car and Ellen plays chauffeur, dropping family and friends off on Main Street, the heart of the festival, before rushing onto her next stop.

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On December 12th, POV aired Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock's latest film, Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Viewers wrote in with questions about the film for Ms. Mock via email and via blog comments. You can read Part I of Ms. Mock's answers here. The following is Part II of her answers to viewer questions.

Question: First of all, I thank you for your film; it was outstanding! I laughed and I cried. As a resident of Wisconsin and a teacher, I struggle with the lack of exposure to the arts that we see in our state. (The same lack of exposure holds true for many other areas - basically any state not on the east coast.) While it is true that many works can be accessed electronically, it is impossible for both children and adults to experience the immediacy of live theater that presents the works of Tony Kushner and others like him. Do you feel it is the responsibility of artists to bring their work to a larger audience? Could this be realistically done in a way that would be financially advantageous to the artists? Or will the majority of the country continue to be forgotten by the important artists of our time?

Freida Lee Mock: I feel that it's the responsibility of the artist to tell the truth and to be true to himself. How that translates to an audience, and the size of that audience, is dependent on many factors. Certainly we all recognize that the mass media — movies, television and now the Internet — are vehicles for reaching a larger audience than can be done through live theater (which include drama, opera and ballet). I don't feel that the majority of the country will be "forgotten" as long as local organizations support the arts and seek ways to bring works to their communities. In other words, regional and local theater can often draw wonderful talent to mount "great works of art." That has certainly been the case in the past, the present and I hope it will continue to be so in the future.

Question: I wonder if you could share some suggestions for younger playwrights that you and Mr. Kushner would point to for younger audiences who are interested in seeing plays written by people of our generation speaking to issues relevant to us today.

Mock: All artists need an enthusiastic audience to sustain themselves. If younger audiences want to see and hear works that are resonant, a great start would be to seek out emerging playwrights and artists in your community and volunteer to become part of the team to help bring the work to the community. There are infinite things a devoted fan can do to help produce a play or project. Volunteer!

TAGS: academy awards, behind the lens, filmmaker, freida lee mock, playwright

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Last week, POV aired Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock's latest film, Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Viewers wrote in with questions about the film for Ms. Mock via email and via blog comments. She'll be answering a selection of those questions on the POV Blog this week.

Question: Wrestling With Angels is about the life and work of Tony Kushner, a playwright who addresses topics like war and peace, gay rights, terrorism, American foreign policy and race relations in his plays and screenplays. How do you see Kushner's political point of view play out in his work? How do you express your political views in your documentary films?

Freida Lee Mock: The question of art and politics has come up often in the discussions surrounding the film. A recent project I worked on demonstrates some of the ways I think about the connection between the two.

Adel Hamad is a Sudanese man who had been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly 5 years without a court hearing. I heard about Adel's case, and I worked together with actor Martin Sheen on a video about Adel's case, and about the need for transparency and open hearings for detainees.

I'm happy to report that Adel Hamad was released in December 2007, and has been reunited with his family in Sudan. You can watch a video of Adel being reunited with his daughter at the Project Hamad Blog (footage courtesy of Al Jazeera). This is the result of all that hard work — a good man goes home to his family. However, Adel was only one of the many detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and many others are still in custody, still in legal limbo. You can find out more about Adel Hamad and the necessity of habeas corpas at Project Hamad.

Other viewers of Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner have also asked me about the relationship between art and politics in Tony Kushner's work, and in my work. You can watch me talk about this topic in the video below.

Read Part II of Freida Lee Mock's response to viewer questions.

TAGS: behind the lens, freida lee mock, maya lin, politics, war

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