The March March parade up Broadway makes everyone smile. I was talking to someone about it afterwards and she said how nice it was to see grown-ups jumping up and down and grinning inanely and what an incredible sense of community an anarchic parade like this creates. Amen! Here’s the evidence.

This fine lady was giving out buttons that said I AM LOVED in lots of different languages

Esther Robinson (a Swami here this year), with Sky Sitney (Silverdocs)

Stephanie Skaff, AJ Schnack, Mark Rosenberg (Rooftop Films) and David Wilson (True/False – whoo hoo!!!) – apologies to all for my over-enthusiastic flash

Natalie Difford (Chicken & Egg), Brent Hoff (Wholphin), and me

The legendary Exene Cervenka busks before Sounds Like Teen Spirit (I was too awestruck to get close enough to take a proper picture)

Me, Jess Search (BRITDOC) and Jamie Jay Johnson after Jamie’s packed screening of Sounds Like Teen Spirit. I’m utterly biased but I enjoyed the screening immensely and I think everyone else did too. Hooray!

Awards are a bit like weddings. You sort of wish that everyone would just get together and throw a party and pay attention to each other just because it’s a nice thing to do but you really have to add a little something extra into the mix to get people to rent hotel rooms and buy toasters and china and, well, I guess my point is that sometimes, although the competition aspect of film award events doesn’t sit so well with me, it is a great way to draw attention to films and filmmakers. And the Cinema Eye Honors, celebrating their second year in 2009, are a breath of fresh air in the awards world, drawing attention to the full scope of documentary filmmaking practice and to all aspects of the craft.

Final nominations will be announced on January 19th in Park City during Sundance. The shortlist is as follows:

AMERICAN TEEN – Nanette Burstein, dir
THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) – Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath, dir
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD – Werner Herzog, dir
THE ENGLISH SURGEON – Geoffrey Smith, dir
FORBIDDEN LIES – Anna Broinowski, dir
IN A DREAM – Jeremiah Zagar, dir
MAN ON WIRE – James Marsh, dir
MY WINNIPEG – Guy Maddin, dir
THE ORDER OF MYTHS – Margaret Brown, dir
ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED – Marina Zenovich, dir
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE – Errol Morris, dir
STRANDED, I COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS – Gonzalo Arijon, dir
TROUBLE THE WATER – Carl Deal & Tia Lessin, dir
UP THE YANGTZE – Yung Chang, dir
WALTZ WITH BASHIR – Ari Folman, dir

The Cinema Eye Nominations Committee was comprised of 15 of the top festival programmers of nonfiction films.  This year’s committee members are:

Meira Blaustein, Woodstock Film Festival
Phoebe Brush, Full Frame Film Festival
David Courier, Sundance Film Festival
Heather Croall, Sheffield Doc/Fest
Sean Farnel, Hot Docs
Tine Fischer, CPH:DOX (Copenhagen)
Tom Hall, Sarasota Film Festival
David Kwok, Tribeca Film Festival
David Nugent, Hamptons Film Festival
Janet Pierson, SXSW Film Festival
Thom Powers, Toronto International Film Festival
Rachel Rosen, LA Film Festival
Sky Sitney, AFI Silverdocs
David Wilson, True/False Film Festival
Brit Withey, Denver Film Festival

Congrats to all the shortlisted filmmakers and to AJ Schnack and Thom Powers and everyone else involved in Cinema Eye for doing such sterling work for documentaries. You are probably already familiar with Schack’s All These Wonderful Things blog but Powers has a great new-ish blog for Stranger Than Fiction so subscribe to it today! The Winter Season of STF runs from January 13th till March 1st at NYC’s IFC Center, and it kicks off on Tuesday with Ben Kempas’ Upstream Battle. See you there!

Oh dear. I’m a terrible blogger. I went back to England for a while over the holidays and fell off the map. Sorry everyone. I just had this very un-American need to go underground for a while and re-charge my failing batteries. AJ Schnack who is definitely NOT a terrible blogger recently wrote a post about all the documentary bloggers who fell silent this year. I have to agree with Agnes Varnum (who is also NOT a terrible blogger) that it is often really difficult to find the time when you are also doing other work to pay the bills. But having said that I am also determined to write more regularly in 2009 because I know it is going to be a tough year and I agree with Creative Capital’s Ruby Lerner who recently said that “Now is the time we have to be more ambitious and more audacious.” I feel like I have been in a permanent recession all my life so this is no time to lie down in the snow. If anything, I think that independent filmmakers should be fully prepped for optimism and ingenuity in the face of financial peril!

But before we get down to business and apropo of absolutely nothing (for this is one of the joys of having your own blog), here are some photos of statues of politicians outside Westminster that I took on a bright and freezing day in London just before New Year.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the quote below from C.P. Scott’s A Hundred Years essay, written in 1921. Scott was Editor of the Manchester Guardian (now just The Guardian) for an extraordinary 57 years from 1872 until 1929 and he wrote A Hundred Years to celebrate the centenary of the paper:

Comment is free, but facts are sacred. “Propaganda”, so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal. Achievement in such matters is hardly given to man. We can but try, ask pardon for shortcomings, and there leave the matter.

I keep getting all twisted up trying to work out where the line should be drawn when it comes to documentaries supporting social change which are often presenting facts for a cause (and often a very good cause at that). I’ll have to come back to this later as I don’t have time to really flesh out this argument now – but any comments would be welcome. Documentaries are not the same thing as journalism after all. And yet sometimes they are. So how does the audience know the difference? Argh, back down the rabbit hole I go!

Well, yes of course it does. But this is a sticky, tricky issue that the independent film community is going to have to grapple with as new sources of funding become available and new partnerships are sought. I just finished writing an article for MovieScope Magazine in the UK about the possibilities for outreach around documentaries, focusing on the productive partnerships that Third Sector funding (NGOs, charities, social enterprises, voluntary organizations etc.) can help foster. However a couple of recent Guardian articles (click here and here) have highlighted the ethical issues involved when financial support is given by organizations with a particular agenda. Who has editorial control if a film is funded by Amnesty or Oxfam? The Guardian quotes Chloe Baird-Murray, Amnesty’s director of creative relationships: “If the film-maker wants to tell both sides of the story, they can do that. We support … freedom of expression. Any storytelling is positive for us if it shines a light on what is happening in the world. We get involved to tell our side of the story correctly. Documentaries can be overwhelming if they do not contain a solution to the problems they highlight. NGOs can give that. Al Gore’s film ended with an example of what people can do. People are ripe for that kind of activism.”

The Good Pitch at BRITDOC opened many people’s eyes to the possibilities of Third Sector and commercial funding (see also the work that the Channel 4 Documentary Film Foundation did in bringing the non-profit world together with filmmakers last year at The Media Conference). Just take a look at the list of observers – many will not be folk you would consider “the usual suspects” when it comes to documentary funding:

Fledgling Fund
IMPACT PARTNERS
ITVS
C4BDFF
Sundance Institute
AOL True Stories
Participant
CBA-Dfid
Christian Aid
Oxfam
Avaaz
Amnesty
NCVO
RED
Gucci Fund
The Sunday Telegraph
Hartley Film Foundation
One World Broadcasting Trust
Vice Magazine
JRRT
Gulbenkian Foundation
Channel 4 (Corporate Affairs)
No2ID
Oak Foundation
Ecostorm
Greenpeace UK
British Beekeepers Association
Camfed
MySpace
World Development Movement

There is definitely a need for funding outside of television/government in the UK but filmmakers will have to be alert as they navigate this new landscape. There is a longer tradition of this kind of funding in the US (much of it necessitated by the profound lack of government/public service funding here) but the recent Nike/Beautiful Losers deal on this side of the pond has led to much debate about the ethics and politics of big corporations giving support to independent films. As Spout’s Karina Longworth put it: “Beyond the knee-jerk “corporate=bad” response, what should we think about indie documentaries looking to multinational giants for the kind of support that studios are no longer willing to give?”

Transparency is clearly key in all these instances. I’m inclined to agree with the Frontline Club’s Vaughan Smith who says: “I can’t think of subjective journalism that I have a problem with, if it is marked as subjective and clear. Most journalism is already subjective, even if it is labelled as objective. I am suspicious of all organisations, including news organisations. There always needs to be proper controls to protect editorial integrity.”

Thank you to Mark Rabinowitz/Docsider for the heads up about the Guardian articles.

The team behind Black Gold at The Media Conference in 2007

We are continuing to improve our WATCH FILM tools on Shooting People with lots of exciting new developments to help our members upload and share their work. We have just introduced an embed tool and to show you how lovely it is here is the trailer for We Are Together made by Shooters Paul Taylor and Teddy Leifer, a wonderful documentary about a group of AIDS orphans from South Africa who form a choir.

UPDATE: We’re working on this RIGHT NOW so this video may go through a few different versions and look a bit different each time. This is beta baby!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Ok our player IS lovely but it is also HUGE and it was eating up my whole blog so I have taken it down while we continue to work on making it awesome.

UPDATE MARK 2: Ok let’s see if we’re at awesome yet. Hooray, I think we did it!

After last year’s late-to-the-party love affair with This American Life (which still continues I should add – I would never jilt Ira Glass!), my 2008 paramour is Re:Sound, a radio show presented by the Third Coast Festival on Chicago Public Radio. It’s a collection of radio stories from around the world, stories that “you can’t hear anywhere else, unless you live everywhere else.” I’ve been listening to the podcasts and have discovered some real treasures, fantastic stories, mainly documentary, about everything from a very personal account of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (The Lemon Tree, June 3 2006), to stories about the mysterious Theremin and the origin of break beat (The Music Show, April 8 2006), to a very funny story about Richard Shepherd’s experience selling The Matador to Harvey Weinstein at Sundance (The Hollywood Show, September 23 2006).

If you love the art of storytelling then have a listen. You’re in for a treat.

I have been so caught up with work that I have completely failed to go to any of the screenings at the MoMA Documentary Fortnight. This weekend you can see some of the films that Joan Churchill has been involved with. Churchill is probably best known for her work with Nick Broomfield but she has an impressive body of work behind her as a cinematographer for other noteworthy directors, from Peter Watkins’ extraordinary Punishment Park to Gimme Shelter and the Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. MoMA is screening Punishment Park along with films Churchill collaborated with Broomfield on: Juvenile Liaison, Soldier Girls and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.

Unfortunately I’m going miss them all because (fortunately) I’ll be at True/False this weekend. Whoo  hoo! (I can’t believe WaMu co-opted that expression by the way. Bastards!)

Punishment Park, Dir Peter Watkins, 1971

Yesterday AJ Schnack announced the launch of a new nonfiction filmmaking awards event to take place at the IFC Center in NYC on March 18th this year. Readers of Schnack’s blog will know that he has been a very vocal critic of the Oscar shortlist for being too issue-based and not recognizing the importance of the craft of filmmaking and storytelling. These new awards are designed to correct this and the lovely folk at Indiepix have come on board to support the endeavor. The awards will be co-chaired by AJ Schnack and Thom Powers, Documentary Programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival and the nominating committee included programmers from North America’s top film festivals, all of whom are champions of documentaries in all their many and wonderful forms:

Thom Powers (Chair), Documentary Programmer, Toronto International Film Festival
Phoebe Brush, Director of Programming, Full Frame Film Festival
Matt Dentler, Producer, South by Southwest Film Festival
Sean Farnel, Director of Programming, Hot Docs
Tom Hall, Director of Programming, Sarasota Film Festival
David Kwok, Director of Programming, Tribeca Film Festival
Cara Mertes, Director of Sundance Documentary Film Program, Sundance Film Festival
David Nugent, Director of Programming, Hamptons International Film Festival
Rachel Rosen, Director of Programming, Los Angeles Film Festival
Sky Sitney, Director of Programming, SilverDocs
David Wilson, Director, True/False Film Festival
Brit Withey, Artistic Director of Festivals, Starz Denver Film Festival

It’s also really nice to see that filmmakers will not have to sell their children to be included in this list and that films are not being excluded for rogue foreign broadcasts and other Academy misdemeanors. I’m so glad to see The Monastery on this list for example as it was definitely one of my favorite films of last year. You can read more about the genesis of these awards and about the eligibility rules on Schnack blog. This is the shortlist of films for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking which certainly includes more of my favorites than the Academy shortlist although I wish The King of Kong was on here and I’m sure I’ll start thinking of other films when my coffee kicks in:

BILLY THE KID
DEEP WATER
THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK
GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON
INTO GREAT SILENCE
LAKE OF FIRE
MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)
THE MONASTERY – MR. VIG AND THE NUN
NO END IN SIGHT
SICKO
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
THE UNFORESEEN
ZOO

Good work AJ and everybody else involved! It makes me really happy when discussions in the documentary community turn into tangible results like this. It makes you realize that we’re not all just farting in a jar and that is very inspiring. Makes me want to DO SOMETHING DO MORE this year.

Esther Robinson’s documentary about her uncle Danny Williams is currently screening at Cinema Village and has been getting some rave reviews. I haven’t seen it yet but I’m really looking forward to it, mainly because I am such a huge fan of Esther. She was instrumental in setting up the amazing Creative Capital Foundation and is also the woman behind ArtHome, an organization that helps artists buy homes and get on top of all things financial. Esther has spent a lot of time thinking about community and about how to provide artists with the tools that they need to create a sustainable career and I don’t think the importance of this work can be underestimated. The Creative Capital retreat I attended became a seismic shift for me as I started to think differently about strategic development, financial planning and the valuable role that artists play in culture and in the economy. It really did change my life in that sense. You can hear Esther talk about her background and her philosophy in this Workbook Project podcast – along with Doug Block who produced A Walk Into The Sea.