Gosh I love American University’s Center for Social Media! Not only did they help to create the guidelines for Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Practices in Fair Use but now they’ve established a “Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.” In collaboration with a wide range of folks, including sociologists, legal scholars, video makers and video watchers, the Center has worked to “to create something that reflects the law, practice and future of fair use for video remixing and sharing online.” [boing boing]

Read the rest of this entry »

On March 10th, the 2008 International Documentary Challenge wrapped up their timed filmmaking competition! 122 filmmakers from 16 different countries participated in the challenge ” to make a documentary film in five days. Each documentary filmmaker was assigned a different genre, including music, politics and character studies, all embodying the theme of “Change.”

The 2007 Doc Challenge was a big success, with ten of the twelve filmmaking teams attending the sold out screening in Toronto. Additional screenings took place this year at the Northwest Film Forum and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Check out what some of the filmmakers had to say about their experience from last year’s event.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last month’s Human Rights Watch International Film Festival featured “The Axe in the Attic,” a poignant and thoughtful documentary about both the natural and human costs of Hurricane Katrina. Filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small spent 60 days on the road exploring New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky in their efforts to collect post-storm footage and interviews, but broke with documentary tradition by deciding to include themselves in the story. “When you’re two white northerners heading South,” they said in their directors’ statement, “remaining behind the camera just doesn’t feel like an option.”

The title of the film is a gloomy reference to those who sought refuge in their attics from the flood, but had to chop their way through the roof when the water failed to recede. The documentary itself focuses on how evacuees have had to adjust to their new environments, some achingly alien to them, as both subject and filmmaker take on such controversial topics as class, race, and the government’s failure to provide for those who have lost everything.

Read the rest of this entry »