I saw Water Warriors in February, just a month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, during its world premiere at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. The short film and multimedia photo exhibition provided an element of much-needed hope at a time when the environment is increasingly imperiled by big business interests. But rather than focusing on dire statistics and predictions about climate change, Water Warriors highlights a rare success story of ordinary citizens — including members of the Mi’kmaq Elsipogtog First Nation, French-speaking Acadians and white, English-speaking families in New Brunswick, Canada — who fight to protect their water from the oil […]

The documentary Tower recounts the day in 1966 that a sniper on the University of Texas Tower killed 14 people and wounded dozens more. The film includes archival footage, interviews with those who were present and animated recreations of the event. In this interview, director/producer Keith Maitland and DP Sarah Wilson talk about the making of the film which receives its broadcast premiere on PBS on Tuesday, February 14th. Filmmaker: How did you become filmmakers? Maitland: I started off in narrative filmmaking, working on other people’s movies, and right around the time I met Sarah — we’ve been together 13 years […]

When you announce to the world (or at least on social media) that you’re making a short documentary, you’re bound to be asked the obvious question: “What’s it about?” As any documentary filmmaker can tell you, there’s a short answer to that question and a long answer, depending upon who is asking and how much time they have to spare. In the case of my short documentary film in-progress, Sole Doctor, the short answer is, “It’s about George, an African-American shoe cobbler who has owned a business in Portland for over 50 years and is getting ready to retire and pass […]

After exploring a teenager’s odd obsession in Thumbsucker and helming the semi-autographical Beginners about his father coming out of the closet late in laugh, in his third narrative, Mike Mills returns to deeply personal material from his own life. 20th Century Women has been hailed as his best work yet and earned him an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. The film is a coming of age tale about a teenage boy raised by three women from different generations in 1979 Santa Barbara. It’s a portrait of the city in a quieter, simpler time, as well as an ode to his steadfast mother […]

Dubbed the “Hippie Mafia,” the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a collective of people in Orange County in the ‘60s and ’70s that grew from a spiritual commune to the largest distributors of LSD at that time in the world. For the first time, their story is told in-depth on film in William A. Kirkley’s riveting documentary Orange Sunshine, the name of their most famous strain of the psychedelic drug. Founded by John Griggs and collaborators Mike and Carol Randall, brothers Rick and Ron Bevan and Travis Ashbrook, the Brotherhood sought to change the planet with a cultural and spiritual […]

So I’m making my first short documentary. Tentatively titled Sole Doctor, it’s an observational-style film about George, an African-American cobbler who, after keeping shop for 50 years in Portland, Oregon, plans to retire and pass the business on to his son, Joshua. As I’ve chronicled in previous journals for Filmmaker, as a first-time filmmaker, I knew enough to seek advice from the pros before proceeding, and then I made sure to hire a good DP and sound mixer. But, of course, as much as I planned ahead, I still hit some bumps along the road — like our first shoot, when we planned to film […]