POV

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.

TAGS: ido haar, jacob burns film center, workshops

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For those of you unfamiliar with the D-Word, it is a unique online community of over 2400 documentary professionals from over 78 countries who share information and resources on all things documentary, including creative, business, technical, and social topics.

D-Word was started began as a series of online journal entries by filmmaker Doug Block depicting the joy and angst of making and selling his feature documentary, Home Page. (Doug was also a co-producer of the seminal doc Silverlake Life: the View From Here — which was broadcast on POV in 1993, and is one of my favorite films of all time.)

D-Word has blossomed into one of the best resources for documentary makers interested in sharing resources and connecting with each other. Check out their upcoming online seminar HONEST TRUTHS with Pat Aufderheide (starting Mon 7 Sep 2009 through Mon 14 Sep 2009 ) on the ethical challenges in making documentary film.

Join them now (it's free!!) and celebrate ten years of building a worldwide documentary community.

TAGS: d-word, documentary filmmaking, doug block

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POV's Executive Director Simon Kilmurry interviews Sky Sitney, artistic director of the AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival. Silverdocs will run from June 15-22 in conjunction with the International Documentary Conference. For the full line-up and schedule, visit www.silverdocs.com.

Simon Kilmurry: Can you tell us a little about how films are chosen for the festival? With almost 2,000 submissions, I imagine it's an exhaustive process?

Sky Sitney: The selection process is both a highly intuitive endeavor, and a strategic one. We privilege our emotional and intellectual responses to a film as the ultimate determining factor, but we must also consider many other factors when building the program. We consider every film on its own terms, but then we also step back periodically to examine how the individual films are coming together to form a larger, cohesive program. We try to strike a balance in the final lineup — a balance of themes, of tone, of premiere status (launching new works alongside a slate featuring the "best of fests"), of countries represented — both in terms of origin and interest, and of filmmakers (masters and novices alike). We don't want to find ourselves at the end of the day with a redundancy of subject matter. Nor do we want to find ourselves with a slate that is absent of films that grapple with some of the most topical issues of our time: the global economy, the environment, etc. It's all about striking a balance between the individual films that stand out, while keeping an eye on the program as a whole, while not letting any criteria eclipse the more important visceral, instinctual reaction to a film. Every single film that gets submitted is watched and carefully considered.

Simon: What qualities make a documentary a good fit for Silverdocs?

Sky: First and foremost, we celebrate artistic excellence and a filmmaker's unique vision. Before we concern ourselves with the topics of the films themselves, we are committed to a mastery of the form. Now, by "mastery," I do not mean to say that every film has to have super high production values, or be hyper-slick — in fact, quite the contrary. But we do expect filmmakers to have a bold cinematic vision. Then we look at the various ways this cinematic vision is articulated. It could be a film that addresses a gripping social issue; or a film that showcases an important artist; or a film that is an art work unto itself, pushing the boundaries of what the documentary form can be. But we begin by celebrating the artist and his or her vision.

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TAGS: film festivals, silverdocs

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The 20th Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF) takes place in New York from June 11 to June 25. POV's Executive Director Simon Kilmurry took the opportunity to ask John Biaggi, the director of the festival, about the history of the festival and what's on slate for this year. Check out HRWIFF's website to see the full schedule of films.

Simon Kilmurry: This year Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is presenting its 20th edition of the festival. Congratulations on reaching that landmark! Can you tell us how the festival was founded and how it has evolved over the years?

John H. Biaggi: The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival was created by Human Rights Watch in 1988 and had a year hiatus in '89, hence our 20th Anniversary year in 2009. The impetus for creating the festival was that 1988 marked the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and from the perspective of Human Rights Watch, it seemed that few people outside the human rights community (which was small back then) knew what the declaration was. The thinking was: film was (and remains) the dominant media form, so the best way to educate and activate the general public to human rights was through a film festival. Back then, this was quite a forward-thinking, gutsy endeavor. It has proven to also be a very fruitful decision, as the festival has grown and blossomed, and certainly played a strong role in launching many human rights films and raising awareness of human rights among a broad audience worldwide.

Simon: What have been some particular highlights of the past 20 years?

John: Wow, there have been so many. Here are some of them: hosting the films of SaGA, the Sarajevan film group, in 1994, who brought it to the festival while the war was still raging; presenting the world premiere of Calling the Ghosts in 1996, a seminal film on rape as a tool of war in the Bosnian War; closing night in 1999 when we screened Strike by Sergei Eisenstein with live accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra; hosting a Q&A in 2000 with legendary Black Panthers Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver and Jamal Joseph, following the screening of Public Enemy by Jens Meurer; the festival's remarkable moment as a distributor of the film Jung: In the Land of the Mujaheddin, on the heels of 9/11/2001 — we made the film available to hundreds of organizations, theaters, museums and NGOs to screen and helped put a human face to the people of Afghanistan; the unprecedented crowds and feeling of togetherness at the festival for the 2002 edition, when a post-9/11 America wanted to learn more about the wider world — that year the festival broke the attendance record at the Walter Reade Theater, a milestone that still stands today; that same year, and most fitting for the time — listening to Ziggy Marley sing his father's "Redemption Song" on the Walter Reade stage after the screening of Life and Debt by Stephanie Black; sitting down to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in London with three generations of Van Peebles (Melvin, Mario and Mario's son whose name escapes me) when we showcased Baadasssss! at our 2005 London festival; listening to Michael Gallagher speak so movingly and with such a universal appeal to justice and peace, at our Benefit Night in 2005 following the screening of OMAGH, the dramatic film about his personal tragedy in the Northern Ireland conflict; in 2007, meeting the incredibly brave Malalai Joya, the Afghan women's rights activist and politician who spoke out, defying the warlords in her country — whose story is captured in the film Enemies of Happiness by Eva Mulvad.

Read more after the jump...

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TAGS: film festivals, human rights watch

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Congratulations to filmmakers Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, whose film Made in L.A. (POV 2007) has been awarded a 2009 Hillman Prize. The Hillman Prizes are among the most prestigious awards for books, magazines, broadcast journalism and more that foster social and economic justice. The awards give recognition to journalists and public figures who demonstrate a sense of social responsibility, investigating and telling the difficult stories that need to be told.

This year's distinguished panel of judges include: Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor, The New Yorker; Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large, The American Prospect and columnist for the Washington Post; Katrina vanden Heuvel, executive editor, The Nation magazine; Susan Meiselas, Magnum photographer and author; and Rose Marie Arce, senior producer, CNN. For the full list of award winners, visit the website of the Hillman Foundation.

Made in L.A. will have an Encore Broadcast on August 11th as part of POV 2009 season.

TAGS: awards

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Games for Change is presenting their upcoming Sixth Annual Games for Change Festival, May 27 - 29, in New York City! This is the central event dedicated to the exciting new movement of video games for social change — games about poverty, global conflict, climate change and more. Called "the Sundance of video games" for "socially-conscious game-makers" Games for Change are building a new genre of video game — games to change the world — for the better. This year's festival features an Opening Keynote by Pulitzer-Prize winning author and world-changing New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, who will give a sneak peek into his new book, documentary series and video game! Panels on documentary-makers making games, games for raising awareness, and a hands-on 101 workshop for those new to social issue game-making are features of special interest to filmmakers. For more information visit the Games for Change website.

A recent report by the Pew Center found that 97% of teenagers play games, and also noted that "some particular qualities of game play have a strong and consistent positive relationship to a range of civic outcomes," making games, perhaps, one of the most powerful media of our day for fostering positive social change. The Annual Games for Change Festival brings together the world's leading foundations, NGOs, game-makers, academics, filmmakers and journalists to explore this potential and examine how best to harness games in addressing the most critical issues of our day, from poverty to climate change, global conflicts to human rights. And some of these new games are being played by (literally) millions of people of all ages! The festival is now the biggest game event in New York City and draws people from around the world. It should be a fun and fascinating few days.

TAGS: games, nicholas kristof, pew center, social change

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POV Executive Director Simon Kilmurry has just returned from the Greenhouse Fund seminars in Izmir, Turkey.

The third year of the Greenhouse Fund seminars concluded last week in Izmir, Turkey. Greenhouse is a professional initiative devoted to the development of documentaries from across the Mediterranean region. It is funded by the European Union, and features a series of intensive training and mentoring seminars aimed at supporting the next generation of documentary filmmakers.

Ten projects in development from countries bordering the Mediterranean are matched up with mentors, experts and editors to develop their stories, hone their pitching skills and build a network of filmmaking peers. They meet three times through the year with ongoing support from mentors — this year’s experts included Han Robert Eisenhauer (ZDF) and filmmakers Lucinda Broadbent and John Appel — all under the expert guidance of Greenhouse managing director Sigal Yehuda. Read more about the mentors here.

The seminar ended with a pitching forum and one-on-one meetings with reps from broadcasters and festivals around the world — Jane Ray (BBC), Patricia Finnernan (Sundance Doc Fund), Claire Aguilar (ITVS) and Sonja Heinen (Berlinale) — and many more. Pitching forums can be pretty intimidating venues, especially when you are doing it for the first time and in English, which for all of these filmmakers is a second or third tongue. The panel was tough, but not quite as ruthless as other industry panels such as IDFA.

Filmmakers from Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Palestine and Turkey presented their films — the full list can be seen here. Standout projects for me included:

Voice of My Father, directed by Zeynel Doğan and produced by Melisa Őnel. The film, which won a $15,000 pitching award from ITVS, tells the story of Zeynel's desire to connect with his late father through the audio letters his father had sent home when he was a migrant worker in Saudi Arabia. The intensely personal film is full of longing and mystery.

Borderline, by Shirli Nada Michalevicz and produced by Claudia Levine, is a funny and touching portrait of the Kafr Shaul Mental Health Center in Jerusalem, which treats Palestinians and Jews side by side.

Tűlay German: The Black Box of the Plane Which Never Crashed, directed and produced by Didem Pekűn, explores the life and legacy of seminal Turkish singer and political activist Tűlay German. I had never heard her music until last week, and it’s been hard to stop listening to her deeply melancholic and emotional songs.

Look out for these films and the others at festivals in the next couple of years.

TAGS: greenhouse fund, itvs, pitches, sundance, turkey

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POV Executive Director Simon Kilmurry unveils the exciting line-up for the 22nd season of POV on PBS.

It's always an exciting day when we finally get to announce the upcoming POV season. We've spent hundred of hours screening nearly 1,000 films, countless hours debating and arguing, and we've had to make some difficult choices along the way. What's emerged is a series of films by new and veteran filmmakers that have a number of things in common — great storytelling, compelling characters, and a group of films that look at the world through a very particular lens — one that you won't see elsewhere.

Like all good cinema, documentaries should take you on a journey, they should evoke empathy, surprise you and make you question your assumptions. These films do all that and more. So (drumroll please), the 2009 season of POV is:

The POV team is busy producing websites and support materials and setting up community engagement screenings for all the films. We'll be putting up trailers for all of the film in the upcoming days, and in the meanwhile, you can sign up for email reminders for each 2009 film.

To keep up with everything POV, sign up for our newsletter. You can also follow us on Twitter and join us on Facebook. A full press release for the season can be found in our pressroom.

Thanks to all those who have helped make this season possible!

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POV Executive Director Simon Kilmurry is in Adelaide, Australia this week attending a conference and film market.

The annual Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) in Adelaide is the only documentary marketplace and pitch market in this huge and very distant continent. Conference director Joost den Hartog is a veteran of the esteemed IDFA documentary forum in Amsterdam, and he has managed to corral an impressive range of influential documentary supporters from channels in North American and Europe as he tries to internationalize opportunities for Aussie "doco" makers (that’s what they call documentaries here). Some of the finest commissioning editors in the business gathered to attend the “Meet Market” with filmmakers from the region, including: Cynthia Kane (ITVS), Sarah Jane Flynn (Canwest Mediaworks), Barbara Truyen (VPRO) and from the U.K., Greg Sanderson (BBC Storyville) and Tabitha Jackson (More Four).

Running concurrently were a series of panels, workshops and discussions, including a master class with Peter Gilbert, sessions on cross media projects with Sandi DuBowski as a mentor and a panel looking back at 25 years of Skylight Pictures with Pamela Yates and Paco De Onis moderated by Peter Wintonick.

The conference has had a history of moving around Australia from year to year. It is now set to stay in Adelaide for the next few years and the state government seems to be making a strong commitment to supporting film and filmmaking. Premiere Mike Rann announced a number of initiatives to expand support for the conference and to help regional filmmakers reach international audiences and retain more income from their films at the conference opening.

Running separately and starting just as AIDC ends is the Big Pond Adelaide Film Festival, which features fiction films and a pretty impressive lineup of docs, a lot of which will be familiar to those who follow the doc circuit.

It may be far away, but along with Hot Docs, Sheffield and IDFA, this is a market and region to watch for some interesting stories and films.

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Woodrow A. Wickham, 1942-2009

It is with deep sadness that we mark the passing of Woody Wickham, a man who played a deep and crucial role in POV's success for many years.

As a vice president at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Woody was an advocate for public media and independent documentary film. In that role, he provided early and consistent support for POV and other iconic series and films such as PBS's Frontline and the landmark documentary film Hoop Dreams.

Woody believed that independent filmmakers were in a special position and had a particular responsibility to shine a light on the issues of the day and to engage audiences with the power of storytelling. He helped us see beyond the broadcast, and that it was essential to actively engage communities to give films a long life and an exponentially greater impact. The great flourishing of documentary film over the past 20 years is due in no small part to the impact of Woody's work.

POV and independent documentary filmmakers have had no greater friend and champion. He'll be sorely missed.

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We have just concluded a wonderful and exciting POV season, and now it's time for films on Independent Lens, from our pals at ITVS.

They have announced a fascinating and wide-ranging line-up of films that will be coming to PBS over the next few months starting with the festival favorite Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen. There are too many films to list them all here, but there are some highlights that you should be sure to watch out for:

Wonders are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic by Jon Else — a lyrical and intense film following the creation of the opera by John Adams and Peter Sellars. Who could have guessed there would be so much art in a nuclear bomb?

Milking the Rhino by David E. Simpson is the latest film from the folks at Kartemquin Films, whose track record in producing great documentaries is unmatched. From Hoop Dreams to In the Family, this shop keeps churning out great stories. Milking the Rhino takes us to Africa, where communities are trying to get a piece of the eco-tourism pie.

Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors by Gonzalo Arijon and Marc Silvera is just beginning a theatrical run with a slightly different sub-title — Stranded: I've Come From a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains, and has won the jury prize at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam. As you can probably guess from the titles(s), the film tells the grueling and disturbing story of people trying to survive after a 1972 plane crash in the Andes.

Helvetica by Gary Hustwit — believe me, you'll never look at a typeface the same way again.

There's lots more, so check out their program guide on the Independent Lens website.

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We were deeply saddened to hear the news of the passing of filmmaker Richard Kassebaum. Richard was an award-winning producer and director who worked on many projects for PBS including serving as a co-producer on Woodrow Wilson for American Experience, and the four-hour PBS special Kingdom of David.

In 2004 we had the pleasure of presenting Richard's film Bill's Run on POV As the son of the noted and much admired former U.S. Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, and the grandson of Alf Landon, the former Governor of Kansas and Republican presidential nominee, Richard grew up in a family steeped in politics and public service. So it was only natural that when his brother Bill decided to run for a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives, Richard's filmmaking and political instincts kicked in. He knew there was good story in the race of a rancher/lawyer and moderate Republican challenging the entrenched conservative incumbent.

Bill's Run followed the candidates as they made the circuit of county fairs, community picnics, door-to-door canvassing, and candidates' nights that make up the political rounds in rural Kansas, and also introduced us to a cast of wonderfully candid characters who revealed just how up close and personal rural politics can be. Richard tackled the subject with unfailing good humor, respect and warmth for the people of in the film. Bill's Run was truly an independent documentary with Richard serving as producer, director, editor and cinematographer.

Richard said at the time, "In Bill's Run, we wanted to track the real, everyday issues that can divide even as politically homogenous an area as rural Kansas. We also wanted to capture the flavor of small-town plains democracy in action." His deep affection for those small Kansas towns was palpable in the film.

We work with a lot of filmmakers at POV, and we demand a lot from them as we prepare for their national broadcast. Working on press, outreach and the websites — all at the same time — can be overwhelming and very stressful. But Richard was always a delight to work with. Modest and kind, enthusiastic and warm, Richard was in possession of a deep empathy which shines through in the very human aspects of his work.

Shortly before his death, Richard emailed me to let me know that he was working on a film about his mother and his illness — he had been a diagnosed with a malignant glioma. As he described it, the film was the final part of a trilogy about family and politics. He promised to send a rough cut in a few weeks and was enthusiastic about working with POV again. Unfortunately, Richard passed away before the film could be finished, but a remarkable circle of long-time collaborators who deeply admired Richard are committed to finishing the film — so keep an eye out for Journey With My Mom, and remember one of the true gentlemen of the documentary film world.

To watch an interview with the charming, self-effacing and very smart filmmaker please visit the website for Bill's Run.

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Two major festivals have been taking place over the past two weeks, making June a time for a real feast for documentary lovers in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas.

The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival runs through June 26 at Lincoln Center. The festival showcases films from the U.S. and around the world that address critical human rights issues. But these are not just advocacy and social issue films — they are well-crafted, engaging and artful documentaries that will make you indignant, sometimes angry, but more often hopeful and inspired to action. The festival schedule is at: http://www.hrw.org/iff/.

Highlights of the festival include three upcoming POV films. Traces of the Trade has already had one screening to a packed house and sparked an emotional audience discussion on the contemporary legacy of slavery. Critical Condition by Roger Weisberg takes an unflinching look at people living without health insurance. In this election year, it's interesting to note that these issues are being addressed with more substance and nuance by documentary makers rather than mainstream news media.

Also screening is The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Pravasath which will be featured on POV in 2009. This film is garnering major acclaim and is well worth the big screen experience. Two other films to check out are The Dictator Hunter by Klaartje Quirijns and Project Kashmir by Senain Kheshgi and Geeta V. Patel.

In Silver Spring, Maryland, the sixth edition of SILVERDOCS has just come to a conclusion. Presenting over 100 films from 68 countries, SILVERDOCS has quickly risen to become one of the finest festivals in the U.S. Under the leadership of festival director Patricia Finnerman and director of programming Sky Sitney, SILVERDOCS features a mix of favorites from the festival circuit like Man on Wire and Up the Yangtze (POV 2008) with films new to U.S. audiences.

One of the difficult things about SILVERDOCS is that there was just so much to do that I didn't get to see as many movies as I wanted to. The SILVERDOCS conference (run by the dynamic Diana Ingraham) runs parallel to the festival and is chock full of panels and presentations looking at all aspects of the industry from fundraising, marketing and distribution — including a pitching workshop with POV honcho Cynthia Lopez. With so much going on at the same time, I occasionally had the feeling that I wanted to be in too many places at once — but that just speaks to a plethora of choice.

Highlight films this year included winners The English Surgeon by Geoffrey Smith, whose subject, Dr. Henry Marsh, came in from London to charm the audience at the Q&A. The Garden by Scott Hamilton Kennedy generated a lot of excited talk, as did The Red Race by Chao Gan. Megan Mylan's Smile Pinki is a lovely and very tender short. And I finally saw Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, which is a lyrical feast of a film.

Joanna Rudnik's In the Family had its world premiere, and I had the pleasure if moderating the post-screening discussion with a sterling set of panelists. Stay tuned to POV for the film's television premiere on October 1, 2008.

The full list of this year's winners can bee seen at: http://silverdocs.com/festival/award-winners/.

TAGS: ellen kuras, film festivals, healthcare, healthcare reform, silverdocs

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POV executive director Simon Kilmurry attended DocAviv, a documentary film festival in Tel Aviv. He writes in with a report.

DocAviv, Israel's premiere documentary festival, wrapped up a remarkable 10th anniversary edition on April 12. I attended the festival for the first time this year, and had the pleasure of serving on the jury for the Israeli documentary competition. The festival opened with welcoming remarks by Shimon Peres, the current President of Israel, who emphasized the importance of documentaries in a democratic society. In particular, he noted the emergence of Israel as a source for some very important work.

The opening gala featured the film My Beetle by Yishai Orien. The film has some elements that appear staged, thereby opening up the question of what constitutes a documentary. It also has a tongue-in-cheek quality, which the audience seemed to enjoy, but caused some dissent amongst regular festival-goers. Some questioned whether the film had sufficient "weight" to be an opening film, while others liked the film's Spurlock-esque tone. My Beetle was preceded by a hilarious tribute video that summed up the festival's programming as consisting solely of films on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust, and films by Avi Mugrabi. It was a nice light moment in a field that tends to take itself too seriously.

Of course, the reality of Israeli documentary is much more diverse and complex — reflecting the diversity of the region. There have been some remarkable films coming out of Israel over the past few years: Souvenirs, The Cemetery Club, Checkpoint, Stalags, Shayda, and Ido Haar's 9 Star Hotel (POV 2008, airing on July 22). While I did hear a little grumbling that some of this year's films were not up to those standards, there were some terrific films. I personally think the grumbling reflects the exceptionally high standards we have come to expect of documentaries from Israel. And certainly, the winners were some very distinguished films. Not to mention that the consistently sold-out screenings indicate that there's a real thirst for more high quality docs.

The grand jury winner, Brides of the Desert by Ada Ushpiz, is an exceptionally intimate look at a Bedouin community and some of the women who struggle with the practice of polygamy. It was exquisitely photographed by Danor Glazer.

The winner of the Young and Promising Award, Yideshe Mama by Fima Shlick and Genadi Kuchuck, is a touching, painful and often humorous family story about Genadi's choice to marry an Ethiopian woman and his mother's fierce resistance to the marriage.

Other winners were:
My First War by Yariv Mozer — Special Jury Award
Adama by Iftach Shevach (one of my personal favorites) — Cinematography
Sixth Floor to Hell by Jonathan Ben Efrat — Editing

My fellow jury members were: Thom Powers (Toronto International Film Festival and Stranger than Fiction programmer and Cinema Eye Awards founder), Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz (a remarkable writer, producer and editor-in-chief of Keter Publishing), Laurence Hertzsberg (general director of the Forum des Images, Paris), and Eytan Harris (filmmaker of Abe Nathan: As The Sun Sets, and one of Israel's finest cinematographers).

Jury processes can be grueling, but this one was stimulating, exhausting and genuinely fun. Quite frankly, this team was one of the must stimulating groups of people I've had the pleasure to spend time with. Special mention must go to Thom for what was one of the most entertaining awards presentations in recent memory.

In the International competition, festival founder and director Ilana Tsur showcased some highlights from the international circuit: Up the Yangtze by Yung Chang (POV 2008), Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go by Kim Longinotto, Manda Bala by Jason Kohn, and Wings of Defeat by Risa Morimoto, among others. The winners in the international competition (which I have yet to see, but heard great things about) were:

Grand Jury Prize: Ironeaters by Shaheen Dill-Riaz
Special Jury Award: A Father's Music by Igor Heitzmann

Sidebar events at the festival included a tribute to Nicholas Philibert (Etre et Avoir) and a presentation by Diane Weyerman of films produced by Participant Productions (Chicago 10, Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains). Also featured was a screening of Made In L.A., the recent POV film by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, and a panel conversation between me and David Fisher, filmmaker and head of the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema & T.V., on POV and U.S. public television.

One other film in the festival that struck a chord with me was Esther Hoffenberg's Discorama — Signé Glaser, an elegiac tribute to one of France's most influential figures during a classic period of French pop music. The archival footage of Glaser with Francois Hardy, Juliette Greco, and Serge Gainsbourg is breathtaking, and the performances are out of this world.

Non-festival highlights of the week included fascinating and disturbing side trips. The first, organized by the aforementioned David Fisher, was a trip to Nazareth to meet with some filmmakers working out of Alarz TV. While the company focuses mostly on reportage for outlets such as Al Jazeera and Lebanese news, they are also producing longer-form creative projects. It was fascinating to see some of the work that is being produced by Israeli Arab and Druze filmmakers. Some of this work is being supported by The Green House Fund, which mentors filmmakers from across the Middle East. Particularly promising was a work-in-progress by Osnat Hadid which I'm eager to see more of.

The second trip included a tour of the separation barrier and a visit to Hebron, organized by Oren Yakobovich, video department director of B'Tselem. B'Tselem, an Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, is the leading Israeli organization training people to use video and citizen journalism to monitor and document conflict and improve human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The situation in Hebron is very tense and far too complicated for me to explain, but it is eye-opening to witness it first hand.

TAGS: arab, awards, film festivals, holocaust, israel, middle east, palestinian, war

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We've received notice that South Carolina ETV has been awarded a contract by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to provide a limited number of Input 2008 Professional Development Fellowships. The travel grants will assist qualified U.S. applicants with airfare to attend Input on May 4-10 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The deadline for applications is Friday, March 21, 2008. For more information and application guidelines, visit www.myetv.org/input.

TAGS: filmmaker

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After the hectic pace and hype of Sundance, it was a treat to go for the first time to the Big Sky Film Festival in Missoula. In fact, it was my first time in Montana — and I'll be back. I was a juror in the documentary feature category along with the delightful Skylar Browing (Arts Editor of The Missoula Independent) and Deborah Barkow (filmmaker and editor). The winner of the feature competition was Jimmy Rosenberg: The Father, The Son, The Talent by Jeroen Berkvens — an elegant and richly layered film about a guitarist who should be known better in the U.S. A special jury award for artistic vision was given to When Clouds Clear by Anne Slick and Danielle Bernstein (lovely cinematography!). For full festival results, see the festival's website.

The festival's artistic director is Doug Hawes-Davis (Libby Montana, POV 2007), and in just five years the team there has built Big Sky into a festival with a deservedly good reputation. The home is the wonderful historic Wilma Theatre — a lovely specimen in downtown Missoula with a main house that holds an audience of 1100 and a smaller second theatre for special programming — this year, they'll feature a retrospective of the great work by Hart and Dana Perry.

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TAGS: film festivals, sundance

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked at Sundance with two special events. The first was a panel discussion moderated by Orlando Bagwell (Ford Foundation) with panelists U.S. Rep. John Conyers (Chair of the House Judiciary Committee), Dedrick Muhammad (scholar and researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies), and Katrina Browne (director, Traces of the Trade).

I'll say from the outset that the time allotted to the panel was way too short. A discussion on the legacy of slavery and the myths of history deserves far more than one hour. In fact, by the time people got settled, heard introductions and watched some film clips, there was only half an hour for presentations and discussion — shamefully short for an emotional and very important topic, and a bit of a disservice to moderator, panelists and audience.

That said, despite the short time, the conversation was illuminating. Traces of the Trade painfully excavates the legacy of the slave trade through the story of the De Wolf family — the largest slave trading family in the U.S. Katrina, a De Wolf descendent, was shocked when she discovered this legacy. So, to cut a long, fascinating and brave story short, she invited relatives to go on a journey to examine the legacy of the trade and the inherited complicity that has seeped through subsequent generations.

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Steven Sebrings's film Patti Smith: Dream of Life premiered at Sundance on Sunday. Steven is a fashion photographer and he has been working on the film for the past twelve years since meeting Patti on a shoot for Spin magazine. Shot entirely on 16mm (unheard of these days), the film is an impressionistic portrait of an artist, a far cry from the standard artist bios one is used to. Full of Smith's poetry, vintage performance and themes of loss and life, Steven brings a visual style that complements Smith's own work. The overall tone is elegiac, and ultimately hopeful. Patti pays tribute to artists who have been a part of her life and an inspiration to her work: Rimbaud, William Burroughs, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bob Dylan, William Blake, Jim Morrison and, of course, her late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith.

During the Q&A Smith and Sebring talked about their collaboration. According to Smith and Sebring trust is the essential element in their relationship that has developed through their many years of working together. The film was enthusiastically received by the audience. Patti's son Jackson (now 25) who was sitting behind me, had the loudest laugh in the theater as he watched himself as a thirteen year old on screen wearing a knight's helmet (you had to be there!) that had been given to him by the band on his birthday.

The evening culminated in an amazingly intimate concert by Patti and her band at the overheated Kimball Arts Center — probably the coolest event of the festival (more photos). She gave a dynamic performance including "Gloria" and a wonderful cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which she called a "great American folk song." The film now goes on to screen at the Berlin Film Festival and should have a theatrical release later this year. The film will have its television premiere on POV in 2009.

TAGS: film festivals, music, nirvana, photography, sundance

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We hosted our annual POV brunch on Sunday — a welcome relief from the hectic pace of screenings, parties and general mischief that seems to be the Sundance routine. First to arrive was Steven Sebring and Patti Smith — an artist who changed my life at a formative stage. Steven's film Patti Smith: Dream of Life is an elegiac composition that beautifully integrates Patti's life as a mother, rock musician, artist and poet, activist and ultimately, as she says, "as a worker." It's been a highlight to meet Patti and spend a few minutes with her. Some of the band — Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty — arrived a little later. The band members have yet to see the film, so the premiere will be the first time. (More on that later.)

The brunch is a chance to catch up with POV friends and filmmakers whose work will or has been a part of POV in the past. POV alums in attendance included Thomas Allen Harris, Yvonne Welbon, Paul Stekler, Tasha Oldham and Alex Rivera. Alex's debut feature Sleep Dealer is creating a buzz at the festival.

It was a thrill to be able to announce that Traces of the Trade, Katrina Browne's wrenching examination of the legacy of the North's leadership in the slave trade, through her own family's complicity, will be part of POV's 2008 lineup. Katrina brought her production team, including Elizabeth Delude-Dix and Jude Ray, and several members of the family including Tom DeWolf, who has written a new memoir based on his experience in the film, Inheriting the Trade (Beacon Press).

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I was intrigued and troubled by David Poland's recent blog post about the Writers Guild of America (WGA) awards. In his critique of the awards, Poland says:

"Third, has anyone outside of the WGA seen the top doc vote-getter, The Camden 28? The film was release [sic] by First Look in July on 1 screen and earned under $10,000. How in God's name did this movie end up being the biggest vote getter at the Guild?"

He raises a number of issues that trouble me. First, in the spirit of full disclosure, The Camden 28 was included in POV's 20th anniversary season with a broadcast premiere on 9/11/2007 — and I like the film! I don't need to spend too much space here defending the film despite Poland's snide dismissal. For that, check out the review in The New York Times which says: "The Camden 28 is a brilliant merger of political outrage and filmmaking chops, and the most suspenseful movie in theaters right now." A simple Google search comes up with dozens of other notices both praising and criticizing the film — including the Grand Jury Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The film has been featured in dozens of other festivals internationally and had a limited theatrical run through the first class distributor First Run Features.

What Poland's post raises, I believe, is the more problematic issue of equating box office success with the importance of a documentary — a crude measurement. Let's get real here, the vast majority of docs have a very limited box office appeal. I can't believe that other WGA nominees made millions at the box office — despite how much I might admire The Rape of Europa and the excellent No End In Sight. Most of them make little or no money. (As far as I'm aware, the WGA does not take box office in account in their awards, God bless them.)

Sure, there is a terrific festival circuit that has evolved so that filmmakers can reach hundreds, and occasionally thousands of people. Theatrically, a tiny percentage of docs will reach major audiences. At POV, we wholeheartedly support filmmakers who want to pursue these options through festivals and theatrical releases. It's an important part of the whole life of a film. But that's not where the major audience is for most films. So, where is that big audience and where does that leave doc filmmakers? Well, it may sound old fashioned, but television is still where doc filmmakers are going to reach their biggest audience, and it means that doc filmmakers (as most do) need to seek out all their audiences — not just the hyper-engaged festival and theatrical audiences.

Case in point: The Camden 28. The film has had a long festival life, and a modest but acclaimed theatrical life. But the real audience was television — over 700,000 people watched its premiere on the POV broadcast on PBS. Thousands more have watched and will watch re-broadcasts of the film. So, it seems to me that The Camden 28 is, in fact, pretty successful.

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