Documentary
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POV’s Third Nonfiction Transmedia Hackathon
The most encouraging aspect of POV’s third hackathon, which wrapped with a public presentation Sunday night, was the social commitment of the five projects. When they hit close to home, events like Monday’s bombing in Boston can make you step back and reevaluate your work, its purpose and meaning. So it was gratifying, a day earlier, to see how committed the hackathon teams were to remedying some kind of societal problem, including some situated half a world away. Over two days the participants worked together to use new technologies to make real strides against issues like homelessness, war, and the […]
by Randy Astle on Apr 17, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Brett Gaylor
In the sixth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Brett Gaylor, Senior Director of Mozilla’s Webmaker initiative (including Mozilla PopcornMaker and Popcorn.js) answers our questions. Gaylor has previously been a member of the EyeSteelFilm documentary production company, the founder of Open Source Cinema and the web producer of Homeless Nation. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you become a digital […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Apr 11, 2013 -
Kathleen Hanna, Sini Anderson and Tamra Davis Talk The Punk Singer
Originally published following The Punk Singer‘s premiere at SXSW, this interview with director Sini Anderson, subject Kathleen Hanna and executive producer Tamra Davis is being rerun today as the documentary opens in New York at IFC Center. Hanna will be doing Q&A’s with Lizz Winstead of The Daily Show and signing copies of her new Julie Ruin record. Check the IFC page for times. In Greil Marcus’s punk-rock critical opus Lipstick Traces, the writer describes a kind of magic created by the sneering music of the Sex Pistols: “… the pop magic in which the connection of certain social facts […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 9, 2013 -
The Full Frame Film Festival, Part Three
Several of the films from this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival dealt with themes of community. Two films in particular that focused on question of community were Patrick Creadon’s If You Build It and Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman’s Remote Area Medical. In both cases, we are introduced to both the pleasures and the complexities of providing resources — medical or educational — to rural communities that have been neglected in recent years. If You Build It depicts the efforts of Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller to introduce a design-oriented curriculum to rural Bertie County, North Carolina, and to […]
by Chuck Tryon on Apr 8, 2013 -
The Full Frame Film Festival 2013, Part One
The opening day of this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has once again provided attendees with an eclectic offering of choices, including a number of timely films that touch on important political issues and a curated series organized by Amir Bar-Lev, Stories About Stories, that focuses on documentaries who engage with the question of narrative itself, as well as a tribute to the innovative documentary storyteller, Jessica Yu. But this variety of choices speaks to the vibrant work being done by documentary filmmakers and the programmers who organized this year’s festival, not to mention the vital questions that documentary […]
by Chuck Tryon on Apr 6, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Mark Harris
Mark Harris is a filmmaker and software architect. Mark writes software for gameplay, storytelling, and transmedia. Mark was a mentor at the first StoryCode StoryHack, and creative technologist on Lance Weiler’s Pandemic 1.0. Mark is also an alumnus of the IFP Narrative Lab. Mark’s transmedia project, The Lost Children, had its New York City premiere in Jan 2013 at Film Society of Lincoln Center, with a feature film and live immersive experience. In the Fall of 2012, Mark wrote his first immersive play for Epic Theater Ensemble, and in Spring 2013, Mark joins the hybrid studio/technology company Murmur. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 4, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Kamal Sinclair
The Senior Manager at the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab, Kamal Sinclair came to interactive via an unlikely, but, in many ways, appropriate route. While many in the interactive and new media fields hail from technology and filmmaking, Sinclair began her career in a medium where she received direct feedback from audience members every night — the theater. A trained dancer, choreographer and actress, Sinclair joined the Off-Broadway production STOMP at only 18, spending the next six years on their stages. In the below interview, Sinclair describes how she went from nightly performing to Sundance, a journey that also […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Mar 28, 2013 -
Hands on a Hard Body Director S.R. Bindler On His Documentary’s Unlikely Broadway Adaptation
An odd, homemade blend of Garrison Keillor and Jackass, as filtered through an early Errol Morris-like lens, S.R. Bindler’s 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body is now having one of the most unexpected independent film second lives ever. Hands on a Hard Body the film has led to Hands on a Hardbody the Broadway musical, starring Keith Carradine, directed by Neil Pepe, with a book by Pulitzer-Prize winner Doug Wright and a score by Phish’s Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green. It opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theater last week, and Charles Isherwood wrote in the New York Times, “…this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 28, 2013 -
IFP Masterclass: How to Fund Your Documentary
Louise Rosen is a media executive with more than a quarter-century of experience. She formed Louise Rosen Ltd. in 1996 “to specialize in setting up international television pre-sales and co-productions on behalf of independent documentary and non-fiction producers.” She has done everything from research and budgeting to distribution and management. Among her credits are Oscar, Emmy, Sundance, Prix Italia, and International Emmy award-winning projects. Suffice to say, she knows a thing or two about documentaries and getting your film made. Luckily for filmmakers without Rosen’s breadth of experience (or those who do, but can still learn a thing or two), […]
by Billy Brennan on Mar 14, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Elaine McMillion
Last week, Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab kicked off their collaborative series of interviews with digital storytellers with a conversation with Zeega. (For an introduction to this entire series, read “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin.) In the second part in this series, Elaine McMillion talks about her work, mainly focusing on her interactive documentary Hollow, a “hybrid community participatory project and interactive documentary” that uses HTML5 to depict a West Virginia community via video, photography, soundscapes and interactive data. From her website, McMillion describes herself thusly: Elaine McMillion is a documentary storyteller […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Mar 14, 2013
