Six Days Until Screening

On November 10th, 12th and 14th my short documentary "Hanging Downtown" is screening at the San Francisco Documentary Festival.

Don't think, however, that you only get my film for the price of your ticket. All three screenings are paired with a really exciting documentary called:

“Without A Net.”

It's made by director Kelly J. Richardson, and I encourage you to come and see it.

(It's the same ticket, see ... so come see both.)

Above: check out this episode of Ondi Timoner's B.Y.O.D. (Bring Your Own Doc) show, which features Ms. Richardson speaking about the film.

Wiseman's "La Danse"

I've mentioned Frederick Wiseman as an influence a few times previously. I was fortunate enough to see him speak in 2006, and I think his body of work is monumental.

Great short article on his latest in today's NYT:

Creating Dialogue From Body Language

In “La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet,” his 36th documentary in more than 40 years, Frederick Wiseman takes his camera into the stately and elegant Palais Garnier in Paris, observing rehearsals, staff meetings and, finally, performances of seven dances, including classics like “The Nutcracker” and spiky new work by younger choreographers. To say that the film, sumptuous in its length and graceful in its rhythm, is a feast for ballet lovers is to state the obvious and also to sell Mr. Wiseman’s achievement a bit short. Yes, this is one of the finest dance films ever made, but there’s more to it than that.

Congrats James Longley

A new round of geniuses. Don't have to put that in quotes, really.

For MacArthur Grants, Another Set of ‘Geniuses’

...other winners in the arts who have received public recognition are the documentary maker James Longley, 37, who explores Middle East conflicts with portraits of communities under stress;...

First, Check Her IMDB Page

One of the most common questions my students ask is about rates for video production. I tell them it can vary greatly, depending on many factors.

For example, are you sleeping with a presidential candidate?

For John Edwards, the Drama Builds Toward a Denouement

"The prosecutors are also examining some $114,000 paid by the Edwards campaign to Ms. Hunter for a series of short campaign videos she produced. About $14,000 of that money was paid to her well after the videos were produced, some through transfers from accounts and listed as for furniture purchases."

Maybe it really is A Golden Age For Shorts

Cory Kelly on POV Blog

We enjoyed seeing "Ars Magna" at the 2008 International Documentary Challenge finals in Toronto. The film has since gone on to an Emmy nomination, and now PBS has a good interview with its director, Cory Kelley.

Interview with "Ars Magna" Director Cory Kelley

There are some upsides to only having five days. It is much easier to get talented people to commit themselves wholeheartedly to a five-day production as opposed to a documentary schedule that goes on and on. We had a great team of very dedicated people and most people filled multiple roles. Another benefit of the short time period is how quickly decisions have to be made. There is little time to deliberate and dwell on ideas. This creates a certain energy and spontaneity that can come through in the final work if you harness it.

You can see the film here.

Happy 10th

Happy 10th Anniversary to documentary forum The D-Word.

I've only become a member recently, but so far it seems incredibly valuable. My brief experience with the site has given me the impression of a very positive, generous community, so I'm looking forward to the next 10.

And Then The Sequel to "The Civil War"

Well, we know what Errol Morris has planned next.

And we know that PBS will be showing Ken Burns' 12-parter: The National Parks: America's Best Idea in September. But these days, you can't just rest on your laurels: sure, making 12+ hours of TV is fine, but what's going to keep him busy once that's out?

Documentary film maker Ken Burns has a sequel to 'Baseball' in the works

But as he prepared to throw a strike to the Marlins' mascot before Florida faced Atlanta, he couldn't contain his excitement about one of his next projects, a sequel to his Emmy Award-winning 1994 series, Baseball.

"We just started editing what we're calling The Tenth Inning," he said of the project that he hopes will air on PBS in September 2010 as a pair of two-hour episodes. There's so much that's gone on and we're going to really tell the story, good and bad. There's been enough water under the baseball bridge since 1992, (which) was the last action we described.''

Brett Gaylor and Pay-What-You-Want

Wired has a good article on "RiP: A Remix Manifesto" director Brett Gaylor -- and the all-of-the-above release of the film. That includes a pay-what-you-want online model. It will be interesting to see what this shows for the future of documentary releases online....

Want a Remix Manifesto? Name Your Price, Says RiP Director

Wired.com: The pay-what-you-want initiative makes perfect sense for this film, but I’m betting it wasn’t easy to pull off from a business perspective.

Brett Gaylor: It’s been a peculiar road to get to the point where we could release the film as a download, because obviously this is something we wanted to do right from the get go. But since we have so many partners that helped us make the film, including theatrical and television distributors, it was a delicate balancing act to make sure the good faith they showed in making the film would be rewarded, that we wouldn’t undercut their efforts to promote and recoup on the film by giving it away. So we waited a while before launching the various online permutations.

SUNfiltered

Profluence shows up in the darndest places.

This time it's in a story on filmmaking contests -- a topic we know well -- and where they might fit into the future of filmmaking.

The future of storytelling - from Soderbergh to YouTube

"I used to roll my eyes … how could this serious life pursuit be reduced to a contest? Why would makers play directly in to the hands of needy promotional types? But years later, I’m starting to see the opportunities, and how it’s grown far beyond simple commercialization. In posing story as game, isn’t there value in simply inviting broader creativity? Aren’t there new types of opportunities for collaboration?"

Check out the full post, as it's the first column by Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson on Sundance Channel's new "SUNfiltered" blog.

Sublimation

Besides Depends commercials, what is Errol Morris making next? Variety knows.

Errol Morris tries icy tale

Documentarian Errol Morris is taking on a narrative feature for his next project. The "Fog of War" helmer will direct the Untitled Cryonics Project, which Zach Helm is writing. Mandate Pictures and Steve Zaillian's Film Rites are producing the dark comedy, which was inspired by both Robert F. Nelson's memoir "We Froze the First Man" and a story that aired on "This American Life" this week titled "You're as Cold as Ice."

Heddy Honigmann

One of my favorite documentaries is Heddy Honigmann's Forever. So I'm glad to see that her new film is out.... Indiewire has a good interview about the film and her process.

Interview | “Oblivion” Director Heddy Honigmann: “I need more than one lifetime…”

Some years ago, I visited my mother in Lima. We went to a chic restaurant. When the waiter came, I recognized him. He was still working in the same restaurant after forty years. “So,” I asked him, “have you seen many coups, have you served presidents and ministers, and have you suffered because of the continuos corruption, inflation and violence in Peru?” The waiter nodded smilingly and every time he served us he told us bits of what he remembered. And although I was on a vacation, a “film idea” was conceived.

Ondi Timoner

I'm a big fan of Dig! -- and I'm definitely looking forward to We Live in Public. In fact, I'm slowly beginning to think the "available same day as theatrical release" model will win out -- when I hear about a film I want to see, I'm ready to see it immediately.

The "Public" Life of Ondi Timoner

So I set out to document all of life. I shot 2500 hours of footage [for “Dig!”]. I didn’t realize that would make me be in the edit bay for three and a half years. I was more economical with “We Live in Public,” only this time, my subject was obsessed with documentation -- he documented thousands of hours of footage. Suddenly, I’m with 5000 hours of footage again. And thank God because it’s all viscerally told and when I wasn’t filming, Josh [started] WeLiveinPublic.com with his girlfriend. I should give surveillance cameras main [cinematography] credit on the film.

Errol Morris, Greatest Ever? Depends

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Hello, My Name Is

This may be -- technically -- the worst photograph I've ever made. Just pulled out my iPhone and snapped. Still, it's of a famous person and in focus, which Warhol said was enough.

You Can Call Him Al

Saw Albert Maysles speak today. As always, inspiring.

Al Maysles at AIPAD

Went to the AIPAD Photography Show today to see the exhibition and to attend two panel discussions. Seemed like a bigger turnout than last year.

The first panel was a rather uninspiring discussion on The Art of Fashion Photography. Very few images were shown, and nothing new or interesting was said. To be frank, what was said was vague and at times just factually incorrect. One repeated theme was the strange idea that museums haven't paid enough attention to fashion photography, which is just not true. (I won't bother making a list of shows here, but search for yourself -- every few years there's been a large fashion-related show.) There's been too much attention to fashion as art. How about some art as art?

The second panel, however, was much more to my taste: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Albert Maysles were in attendance for a panel on Photographers as Filmmakers. Both artists made some great points about making documentaries, and both showed some of their stills as well.

Above: Al Maysles arrives.

Maysles in the Gossip Pages?

Yes. Because he hangs with Fall Out Boy.