Last week LEF took part in a workshop for media grant seekers at New England Foundation for the Arts in downtown Boston. Dan Blask from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MassHumanities’ Hayley Wood and LEF’s Sara Archambault were there to talk about what funding is available for film- and video-makers, demystify the grant application process and field questions from potential grant recipients .
Here are my notes from the workshop (thanks to NEFA for hosting us!)
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INVITATION AND CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
YOU ARE INVITED TO A CONVERSATION WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES IN CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 11.00am - 12.30pm
Cinema Eye invites directors and producers with at least one feature doc credit to participate in this open conversation about key issues impacting our community.
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The Balagan Film Series had its final screening of the season earlier this week with "Our Departed," a program comprised of work from filmmakers who passed away in 2011. As co-curator Jeff Silva noted, it's been a rough year for the film community in terms of losses, and he likened the Balagan program to another take on the "in memorium" section of the Oscars - a flipside to the usual Hollywood tribute since it featured work from very independent filmmakers like George Kuchar, Robert Breer, Owen Land, Karen Aqua (whose film Twist of Fate was screened on a great 35mm print), Ricky Leacock, Raúl Ruiz and Omar Amiralay.
Some of the films I'd heard of and was eager to see - like Leacock's Chiefs, about a police chief convention in Hawaii right after the 1968 riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention - and others, like Owen Land's 3-minute No Sir Orison, were pleasant surprises. ...
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Last week, I lucked out in getting to see and hear 2 presentations by documentary greats: Errol Morris and Frederick Wiseman. Both gave talks within a stone's throw of the LEF New England headquarters in Cambridge.
On Tuesday, Errol Morris spoke at Harvard's Graduate School of Design about "Investigating with a Camera," illustrating his ideas with clips from his films. He's a writer as well as a filmmaker and a very animated speaker, which made for an interesting talk and Q&A about filmmaking as a process of assembling evidence. He was adamant about there being a definte truth and reality to events, a truth that the filmmaker needs to investigate and find out.
He used to be an actual private investigator, but Morris' documentaries are very far from being depositions, and I liked the point that another of the speakers at the event, Harvard professor Elaine Scarry, made about how his films manage to leave room for the unique point of view and unknowable experiences of each of his subjects, even as he's...
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The past few years have seen new energy and investment in thinking about
what’s next for public media. Projects like the Public Radio Talent
Quest and MQ2 have inspired an eruption of creativity and new ideas,
many of them germinating from brain trusts right here in our own
backyard in Cambridge. Nellie recently wrote about Zeega and the
brilliant innovations being cooked up by the likes of Jesse Shapins,
Kara Oehler and James Burns. They have a partner in crime nearby in Sue
Schardt from AIR (Association of Independents in Radio). In her
leadership of the organization, Sue has put AIR at the forefront of
innovation in storytelling and their new project Localore is just
another example of the kind of vision that AIR is contributing to new
experiments in public media.
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As part of the ongoing Frederick Wiseman retrospective happening at the Harvard Film Archive,
this week brings us screenings of the Cambridge-based filmmaker's Belfast, Maine (1999) (Sunday 20 Nov. at 6pm) and Titicut Follies (1967) (Monday 21 Nov at 7pm). Belfast, Maine is "serenely composed of the illuminating routines and intimate minutiae" of a New England town, while Titicut Follies, Wiseman's first film (also set in New England, in Massachusetts), "proved so shocking in its unadorned rendering of a state mental institution that it remains the only American film to have been completely censored for reasons other than obscenity or national security." No matter what slice of American life he chooses to film, Wiseman's documentaries are engrossing - this is a chance to see a part of his panorama of work on a big screen.
In a special event on 2 Dec, the filmmaker will be at the HFA in person to talk about The Last Letter (La Dernier Lettre), his only fiction film. The last movie of the series is State Legsislature on 2 Dec - a film that LEF supported with a Production grant.
The screenings at the HFA coincide with Frederick Wiseman's Phelps Lecture at the Radcliffe Institude for Advanced Study on Dec 1:"Shooting, Editing, and Reading a Documentary Film"
"Frederick Wiseman will discuss—and illustrate with sequences from his films—his approach to documentary filmmaking. He will address choice of subject, fundraising, technical filming
issues, sound recording and editing, analysis of sequences, relation of facts to metaphor and abstraction, and the creation of a dramatic structure. Wiseman will end with a discussion
about how he applies the principles of "close reading" to film."
The lecture is free and open to the public on Dec 1 at 4pm at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden St. Cambridge MA.
- Nellie
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The Center for Social Media at American University has created yet another helpful and informative study examining the work of nonfiction filmmakers. This one is "Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Challenges in Their Work"; a report based on conversations with 45 filmmakers about the ethical challenges they face in the creation of their work and how they handle them.
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The Media, Culture, and Special Initiatives program of the John and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation in Chicago is funding the production and distribution of documentary films with an open call that begins Nov. 1 with proposals due Dec 2. The guidelines are fairly specific, and the deadline will be competitive, but If your project does meet the Foundation's criteria, this is a great chance to apply for some substantial funding!
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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the IFP’s Indie Film Week. It had been years since I had gone and I knew that in just the last year or so, the format had changed dramatically. LEF had one film in the market this year, Banker White’s THE GENIUS OF MARION, and so I took the opportunity to see what was new at the IFP.
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I love Maine. As you cross the border into this fair state, you see the sign “The Way Life Should Be” and you learn in just moments from the fiery hills and the salty fresh air that it’s true, this is the way life should be. I am nothing but grateful that the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) gives me an excuse every year to get up there. CIFF is an amazing festival celebrating the best, brightest, and newest ideas in nonfiction cinema, and it keeps getting better every year.
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