“We want to encourage people to make good documentaries because we feel like there’s not enough good explaining in the world.” That’s The Economist Film Project’s editorial director, Gideon Lichfield (pictured right), about the recently announced partnership between the British weekly and the PBS News Hour. Beginning April, that “good explaining” will arrive in the form of segments on the PBS News Hour that will include six-to-eight minute clips from full-length and short documentaries as well as related discussions by the anchors, outside experts and, sometimes, the filmmakers. The Economist Film Project is currently in the midst of a submission […]

This article, written by Bergen Swanson, originally appeared in our Winter, 2002 issue. YOU’VE DONE IT! The screenplay you’ve been slaving over for months has finally been optioned by an edgy production company noted for offbeat films. Or, the movie that has consumed your life for the past two years has been picked up by a noted distributor. Emptying out your savings, selling your comic book collection, sleeping on friends’ couches – it’s all been worth it. But then the unthinkable happens. The company that bought your film or script files for bankruptcy, and your project gets thrown into legal […]

Initially it might appear that filmmakers Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi) and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) have little in common with directors Kelly Reichardt or Rob Epstein. Caouette’s intensely self-referential experimental documentary footage or Reggio’s dreamlike visual-image essays differ considerably from Reichardt’s well-received narrative feature Old Joy or Epstein’s award-winning political documentaries. Behind the scenes, however, these filmmakers and nearly 500 more have obtained funding and support from the nonprofit organization Renew Media (formerly known as National Video Resources), established in 1990 by the Rockefeller Foundation to administer the annual Media Arts Fellowships. In 2003 Renew Media assumed full responsibility for managing the […]