DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW
P.O.V. News
Want to intern for P.O.V. this fall and get an inside look at the world of independent documentaries? We're looking for people with excellent communication and writing skills and who pay keen attention to detail to assist in the areas of production/programming, research and development, community engagement and education, Web, and communications and marketing. Interested candidates are strongly encouraged to visit the P.O.V. website to learn more about us.
Interns must commit to a minimum of 10 hours per week. Internships are unpaid; college credit can be arranged. Travel stipend available. All interns are required to attend a one-hour orientation session, date TBD.
To apply, please submit the following materials to internships[at]pov.org:
- resume
- writing sample
- cover letter detailing your availability and your interest in P.O.V.
Good luck!
The results of our News Hunt for good journalism on the 2008 elections are in! From July 1 - 14, P.O.V. and PBS Engage joined forces with NewsTrust.net, a nonprofit social news site devoted to finding good journalism, to review current news stories about the 2008 elections with a focus on the voting process from the perspective of the American man and woman on the street. Over this two week period, reviewers examined articles on election reform coverage from a wide range of sources, from The New Yorker and The New York Times to The Nation and The Huffington Post. See the top stories and a summary of what reviewers found over on the NewsTrust.net blog.
The News Hunt was one of the special features for the Election Day website, and while it's now closed, the hunt for good journalism never ends. Check out NewsTrust.net for more opportunities to review news stories and to participate in the effort to highlight quality journalism.
Election Day shows us that many stories about the American voting process and the need for election reform slip beneath the radar of mainstream news coverage. Now that we're just a few short months away from Election Day 2008, we want to take a close look at how
these issues are being covered today.
For the next two weeks, P.O.V. and PBS Engage are partnering with NewsTrust.net, a nonprofit social news site devoted to finding good journalism, to review current news stories about the 2008 elections with a focus on the voting process from the perspective of the American man and woman on the street. We invite you to participate in this "news hunt" — think of it as a scavenger hunt for good journalism — by signing up on the NewsTrust site and evaluating the media you're already consuming every day.
To get started, simply sign up for an account on the NewsTrust.net site. Then you can rate as many articles as you like, using NewsTrust's easy-to-use online tools. From the site's homepage, click the "Politics" tab, then under "Topics>U.S. Elections," click "Presidential Election 2008." On that page, you can click any article title to go directly to the full article on the website where it was posted so you can read it thoroughly. When you're ready, go back to NewsTrust; a review form will appear in a separate window, inviting you to rate that story — you can answer as many or as few of the questions on the form as you like. For more tips on how to join this news hunt, check NewsTrust's New Member Welcome page.
Throughout the news hunt, you can see the top-rated Presidential Election 2008 stories as reviewed by NewsTrust users. You'll see where the articles were published, a brief user summary/commentary on each article and links to other reviews. You'll also see a direct link to the review page so you can contribute your own evaluation of a story's coverage — you can choose to rate a story either with an overall recommendation or according to specific criteria, such as fairness or accuracy. If you see an article online that isn't available on the NewsTrust site, you can submit it by using their bookmarklet, which makes it easy to submit news stories from your Web browser.
At the end of our two-week news hunt, we hope to have a better idea of the state of today's news coverage on the presidential election, especially coverage of election reform. We're anxious to see the results: Are the media doing a good job covering this topic? Are there areas that are not being addressed? What can we do to raise the bar for journalists covering these issues today? We want to know — so let your voice be heard and review some stories today!
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 P.O.V. 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 P.O.V. 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 (P.O.V. 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 P.O.V. 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 P.O.V. 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/.
Robert Bahar was the producer and writer of Made in L.A. (P.O.V. 2007). He represented P.O.V. 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 P.O.V. 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 P.O.V. 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.
It often surprises people that a "TV show" like P.O.V. has a project like Youth Views, which works with youth, educators, and youth-serving organizations to use documentary film as a tool for youth engagement. Irene Villaseñor, P.O.V.'s Youth Views Manager, tells us more about what she does, and how to get films "out of the screening room and into the streets."
When I first joined the Youth Views Project, other youth media and youth-serving organizations told me they were curious about P.O.V.'s interest in working with young people. Quite simply, Youth Views was created to carry out P.O.V.'s mission to explore the potential of independent media in public life by utilizing the power of storytelling as a catalyst for thought, discussion, and action among young people.
In the spirit of building community and fostering social responsibility, Youth Views trains young people to use media to creatively and effectively reach their educational and community-based goals. Last fall, I wrote an article for the Youth Media Reporter about how we have collaborated with youth organizers and media producers.
It takes more than just showing up with a film and doing a Q&A afterwards if you want to make a deep impact with viewers — especially the local community. Young people need to go beyond simply making and screening a film. They need to learn how to engage an audience, present community issues for social change, and partner with affiliated organizations. They must effectively use their products as resources for education and action — an approach that fosters both the long-term growth of young producers and the youth media field itself.
This is what Youth Views does — it trains young people in using media for social change.
Read the rest of the article to find out about how P.O.V. films have been used to bring youth communities together.
Befriend Youth Views on MySpace.
This spring, WGBH Lab and P.O.V. have partnered to fund 10 independent producers, helping each of them realize ideas for a three-minute short documentary about a 2008 election story. We evaluated almost 100 pitches that reflect a wide range of filmmakers' experiences with the coming election. Everyone at the Lab and P.O.V. was impressed with quality of pitches, and though we had intended to choose five winners, you can see that the number was doubled — congratulations to all 10 producers! We wish them the best of luck, and can't wait to see what they bring back.
The winning entries are listed below. For more information on each producer and their film, click the images; to follow the production process, visit the WGBH Lab Election 2008 site and check back often. The filmmakers are in production through June 6, and rough cuts will be online for review by the Lab community by June 9.
Election Fatigue
Teralyn Wade - Jackson, MI
The Decision of Whether and How to Vote
Chris Metzler and Josh Kurz - San Francisco, CA
Back Home and Voting
Anthony Tenczar - Concord, NH
Uncle Sam Lives!
Jean Nagy - Boston, MA
Liberia??? Check!
Lisa Russell - Brooklyn, NY
See more of the winning pitches after the jump....
Ready for some good television that will enlighten, challenge, and inspire you? P.O.V. returns to PBS on 10 PM Tuesday evenings this summer. Take a sneak peek at the films that are coming up in our 2008 season preview:
View the full schedule to see the full lineup, but check your local listings because broadcast times may vary.
Did you know that Earth Day was first officially observed throughout the United States in 1970? Thanks to Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, more than 20 million Americans organized massive rallies and demonstrations for a healthier, sustainable environment, protesting against massive oil spills, industrial pollution, and the loss of wilderness areas in what would become an annual tradition across the world. So where are we on Earth Day 2008 — 38 years later?
It seems safe to say that awareness of environmental issues has become much more widespread today — things like recycling and conserving energy are second nature to us now in a way that would have been quite novel just a few years ago. And over the years, P.O.V. has showcased a number of docs — including The Chances of the World Changing (P.O.V. 2007), Maquilapolis: City of Factories (P.O.V. 2006), and In the Light of Reverence (P.O.V. 2001), featuring different angles on environmental issues, from conservation to land use to consumption — in addition to our Borders | Environment site, which looks at the way we interact with the earth, air, and water around us.
Last week, President Bush said the U.S. was on track to meet its goals on global warming. I came across an interesting Bloggingheads debate reacting to his speech on the New York Times site, in which Heather Hulbert and Eric Posner discuss whether politicians can effectively encourage Americans to "go green." Their conversation brings up some issues about the role of politicians in shaping both public opinion and public policy. I think it's clear that overall, the environment is one of the issues on which voters want to know where their candidates stand (see the Pew Forum on Religion & Life's summary of each candidate's position). But how much do we — as citizens and consumers — want our government to dictate how we "go green"? Should we have more government intervention in the form of new policies? Is it possible to stem the tide of global warming if the government doesn't get more involved?
This year, P.O.V.'s Why Vote? site is dedicated to exploring the issues that matter most to citizens during this election year. What issues are you most passionate about? Is it the environment? The need for better monitoring of polling centers on election day? Campaign issues? Or maybe immigration and border issues? We'd love to hear from you — so grab a video camera and start shooting, and we may feature your video on the Why Vote? site. And if you submit a proposal through the WGBH Lab Open Call, your idea for a short film may even be eligible for some cash for development and the opportunity to have the finished video aired along with a P.O.V. broadcast this summer.
What are you waiting for? Tell us what candidates have to do to get your vote and send it in.
Andrew Catauro, production assistant at P.O.V., is the newest addition to our staff. He shares his tips for filmmakers who are considering submitting their work for the Call for Entries for P.O.V.'s 2009 broadcast season.
Each year, P.O.V. holds an open call for submissions, welcoming any filmmakers who are interested to send us their nonfiction films for possible broadcast. As I've joined P.O.V. very recently, this will be my first experience with the Call for Entries. We usually get about a thousand films for the 12-15 slots that are available in a season. So I'm bracing like Noah before the flood that is headed my way, and I'm writing to help you build an ark for your film to help it sail it successfully towards consideration for the 2009 broadcast season. (We're even asking for two DVD copies of every film. Who would have guessed my first blog post would have all this biblical symbolism?)
P.O.V. has four submission categories:
Standard: Films that are at rough cut or fine cut stage and will be ready for broadcast in 2009.
Completion Fund: Films that are in rough cut or assembly stage and may not be ready for broadcast in 2009, and are seeking completion funds.
Shorts: Films that are at rough cut or fine cut stage whose running time is 20 minutes or less.
In the Works: Films that are not ready for standard submission, but that a filmmaker would like to introduce to us.
All films must be submitted through P.O.V.'s online submission system, and the deadline for entries this year is Friday, June 27. Start by going to http://cfe.pov.org, and follow the instructions to complete an entry form.
Read more about how to submit your film after the jump...
P.O.V.'s Community Outreach and Education department participates in a range of conferences and workshops throughout the year. In an effort to explore using media in classrooms — even those where you might not expect to — Jessica Lee and Irene Villaseñor attended the Radical Math conference at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY last week. Jessica reports that the event was a great success.
Last week, Irene Villaseñor and I presented a workshop at Radical Math's Creating Balance in an Unjust World conference. Radical Math is the brainchild of educator Jonathan Osler, who, in 2006, started the website as a way to encourage and support math teachers who wanted to incorporate issues of economic and social justice into their curriculum. The conference was attended by nearly 400 people from 26 states and 37% of its workshops were facilitated by youth.
Since math isn't exactly the most obvious subject to be showcased in a social issue documentary series, it was very heartening that the conference organizers accepted our workshop proposal. Their decision reflects a positive trend: more and more educators are looking to engage their students by using media in their classrooms — and they look to programs like P.O.V. to help them make that transition.
Math teachers discussed how to inspire students to study algebra with Roger Weisberg's Waging a Living at the Radical Math conference in Brooklyn.
Though math isn't really an overt element in many of our films, we have broadcast many films that showcase injustice. In the Community Engagement and Education Department, we want educators to be able to use our films as examples of academic concepts embodied in real life. Irene and I decided to show our workshop participants clips from Roger Weisberg's documentary Waging a Living (P.O.V. 2006), which is about hard-working Americans struggling to make a living wage. Irene and I showed clips from the film and presented the companion lesson plan and discussion guide. Given that we're not math teachers, we wanted to give the group ample time to brainstorm with each other. In our department, we strongly believe that organizers, educators and those who borrow our films know their constituencies best and like to think of ourselves as a resource that can help meet community needs. As we were getting breakout groups together, one teacher said, "I think this would be a great introduction to algebra for my students. Does anyone want to talk about how we can use the film to talk about algebra?" Several teachers joined her group and they began a lively discussion on how concrete mathematical skills could be drawn out while still emphasizing the film's social justice message.
It's easy to assume that social issue media might be better matched to subjects like Language Arts and Social Studies, but the enthusiasm that we saw at the Radical Math conference proves that there is a diverse group of educators out there willing to further develop their teaching techniques and expand their repertoire. It's a natural fit for our films, too — in a sense, it's a pretty logical idea. Documentary filmmakers are educators, illuminating information deemed relevant and necessary, and they want audiences to learn something new each time they tune in. And it's fun for us to be part of process, too!
Now that it's mid-April, we're finally beginning to get a taste of spring here in New York. And that means that summer — and P.O.V.'s 21st season — are just around the corner.
Today we're taking a sneak peek at Election Day, which will have its broadcast premiere on Tuesday, July 1 at 10 PM (but check your local listings). Filmmaker Katy Chevigny wants you to forget the pie charts, color-coded maps and hyperventilating pundits. What's the street-level experience of voters in today's America? In a triumph of documentary storytelling, Election Day combines 11 stories — shot simultaneously on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight — into one. Factory workers, ex-felons, harried moms, Native American activists and diligent poll watchers, from South Dakota to Florida, take the process of democracy into their own hands. The result is an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes unsettling story of citizens determined to vote on one fateful day.
For more previews of 2008 P.O.V. films, check out our TV Schedule.
We were excited to find out this morning that we've been nominated for a Webby Award! P.O.V.'s website was nominated in the Movies and Film category — winners will be announced on May 6 and honored at a ceremony in New York on June 10. In the meantime, if you'd like, you can show your support by voting for P.O.V. in the People's Voice Award Movies and Film category (registration required)! Check out our nominee page.
This is the third year in a row that P.O.V. has been nominated for a Webby. We've received a total of five nominations over the last five years, and in 2004, P.O.V.'s Borders | Environment won a Webby in the Broadband category.
During the 2007 season (for which we were nominated), we created a number of special features that we're very proud of for our film websites. Here are some of our favorites.
Anthony Giacchino's The Camden 28 recalled a 1971 raid on a draft board office by Catholic Left activists protesting the Vietnam War. The website for the film featured transcripts of two of the most powerful testimonies at the Camden 28 trial, from the mother of one of the accused and from historian Howard Zinn. The transcripts were previously unavailable on the Internet, and we were pleased to make these historical documents accessible to more people.
P.O.V.'s 49 Up website
For Michael Apted's 49 Up, the latest installment in a series of films that has profiled a group of English children every seven years, we created a photo gallery showing each participant growing older through the years. We also commissioned artists to create collages representing each of the seven years that the films were shot; the results were vivid and thought-provoking.
The Chances of the World Changing, by Eric Daniel Metzgar and Nell Carden Grey, dealt with the question of rescuing and preserving endangered animals through the story of one man, Richard Ogust, who shares his Manhattan loft with 1,200 turtles. For a special video for our Chances website, filmmaker Metzgar talked to George Amato, the director of conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, about the issues raised by the film. Metzgar and the film's composer also talked extensively about the technical and artistic issues involved in collaborating on a soundtrack in our Production Journal.
Lumo, by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III, co-directed by Louis Abelman and Lynn True, is the devastating and yet ultimately hopeful story of one young woman who was the victim of violent rape in the Congo. For our website for the film, we invited playwright and activist Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues to talk about the horrors of sexual violence and its aftermath in a special podcast interview.
Zach Nile and Banker White's Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars showcases a group of refugees fighting back with the only means they have — music. Since the film wrapped, the All Stars have become a force to be reckoned with in the music world, and for our website for the film, we teamed up with video-mixing website Eyespot.com to give fans and viewers the opportunity to mix and mash up footage from the film with the music of the All Stars to create their own music videos.
These are just some of the features we created for our film websites in the last year, and we couldn't have done all this, and much more, without the support of the filmmakers we work with!
Congratulations also to our fellow public television producers over at ITVS and Frontline World. ITVS was nominated in the Best Games category for their excellent "World Without Oil" alternate reality game, and Frontline World was lauded for their amazing online videos, with a slew of nominations for Best Documentary Series and Individual Episode, Best News & Politics Series and Individual Episode. We're thrilled to be in their company, and we'll keep our fingers crossed for the announcement on May 6. In the meantime, don't forget to vote for us in the People's Voice Category. We'd really appreciate it!
Get ready to park yourself on the couch on Tuesday nights this summer (or, set up your Tivo to record), because P.O.V. has just announced our 2008 schedule, and as usual, we'll be presenting a slate of insightful and thought-provoking documentaries.
We're back on your local PBS stations starting Tuesday, June 24 at 10 PM (always check your local listings) with films that explore election-year issues including war and peace, health care, border issues, and race relations. This year's P.O.V. films also take you on journeys into family burdens of the not-so-distant past, into the weirdly familiar backrooms of Japanese politics, and up one of the world's most fabled — and fast disappearing — waterways: China's Yangtze River. Plus, the best Johnny Cash documentary ever.
Check out our full 2008 T.V. Schedule.
Today, we're previewing the first film on our schedule, which airs on June 24. In Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North, first-time filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery — her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana and sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, Traces of the Trade, an Official Selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide.
For more previews of 2008 P.O.V. films, check out our TV Schedule.
P.O.V. 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 P.O.V. | American Documentary, and will air on P.O.V. 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.)
Ellen Kuras being interviewed at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
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.
Read more after the jump...
We hosted our annual P.O.V. 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 Smith family — Jesse, Patti and Jackson — with filmmaker Steven Sebring
The brunch is a chance to catch up with P.O.V. friends and filmmakers whose work will or has been a part of P.O.V. in the past. P.O.V. 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 P.O.V.'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).
Read more after the jump...
