In an article by Edward Helmore for the The Observer, Michael Moore explains that his new documentary film will, “…examine what has happened to the US since 11 September…[and] the alleged ‘murky relationship’ between Bush senior, controversial defence investment firm the Carlyle Group, and the bin Laden family.” The film is entitled, “Fahrenheit 911.”

While reviewing, “Bus 174,” A. O. Scott of the New York Times writes, “The… [documentary] is so wrenching and absorbing that you can easily lose sight of the sophistication of its techniques. Using a combination of video taken for Brazilian television and ex post facto talking-head interviews, the filmmakers, Felipe Lacerda and José Padilha, have made a deceptively straightforward film that has the force of tragedy and the depth of first-rate investigative journalism.”

Read more about the film in Scott’s review here.

Benjamin and His Brother will be screening at the The National Collegiate Conference on Refugees hosted by Villanova University during the weekend of April 4-6th, 2003.

“The Conference aims to be an encouraging colloquium for students, scholars, professionals, and especially refugees themselves, to exchange information, foster learning, and promote discussion on the various issues surrounding refugees in our current global environment.”

The often superb documentary filmmaker, Bill Moyers, will be airing his documentary, “Becoming American: The Chenese Experience,” on PBS March 25-27. Read about the documentary at TV Barn or at the official PBS site here.

Dwight Garner of the New York Times says in an article about Moyers: “His documentaries and specials roll off the PBS schedule as if from an assembly line, each stamped with the virtues he embodies: they’re thoughtful, upright and high-minded and glow with a kind of secular piety. They’re both fortifying and numbing, the television version of eating your spinach. He’s television’s Al Gore.”

Steve Rhodes writes about the Oscar award for Best Documentary. In his article he mentions some of the controversy surrounding Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and he also points out where one might see the nominated documentary films. Read the article here at TV Barn.

NY Times has a small piece here about how the French documentary filmmaker, Jacques Cluzaud; who appeared on stage with Moore and the other documentary film nominees, “apparently did not understand” or agree with Moore’s vehement anti-war speech.

In an interview with John Marshall at New England Film, Marshall is asked about shooting his documentary A Kalahari Family:

“I know that some academic people seem to think that I make ethnographic films. I have no real idea what that is. What I shoot [in Nyae Nyae] is documentary and it is just exactly the same as I shoot here except, I would say, for the language. That is an obstacle at the beginning.” Marshall went on to explain one other significant challenge that he faces that other filmmakers may not. One must “learn some things that you probably wouldn’t learn if you lived in the city.” For example, as one might expect, John Marshall had little experience hunting big game with poisonous arrows when he first arrived in southern Africa. “It took me a while to learn enough about it so I could hold my end up a little bit, and be a part of what was going on, be one of the group.”

“The basic thing that I think you have to decide if you are going to shoot documentary is who is more important – the person at the other end of the camera or yourself. And if you swish your camera around and take quick shots and don?t let people finish their sentence, that is telling the people that watch it that you think you are the most important thing. If you get close to people… watch what they do, listen to what they say, hold the camera steady, let them finish, get involved with angles, distances, and cuts…get involved with using those things with people themselves – then you are saying they are more important. And that is the lesson I learned.”

Return to Belaye and A Kalahari Family will be screened at The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival happening July 16th – 19th in Eugene, Oregon.

Richard Pettigrew, Director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, says, “Congratulations are in order, as only 20 films out of the 64 official entries from 19 countries were selected for screening and yours are among them.”

Way to go DER filmmakers, we’re very proud of you.

Herdsmen was recently selected for the Heard Museum Film Festival scheduled for June 19-22, 2003.

The Heard Museum Film Festival is a celebration of the art and cultures of indigenous peoples. Festivalgoers will have the chance to view the work of some of the finest emerging and established indigenous film makers in the world. Held on the museum’s spectacular grounds in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, the Film Festival melds art, culture and innovation in an unparalleled experience. The weekend-long event will kick-off with a gala evening celebrating the work of keynote film makers.

The New Hampshire Humanities Council has awarded a DER sponsored film, Mother Ann, approximately $19,000 for production funding and associated costs. Congrats from DER gos out to the filmmaker Jeannine Lauber who was the recipent of the grant.

The Museum of Modern Art is presenting the The Ax Fight during its second annual Festival of Film Preservation, which takes place June 13-30, 2003. For more information about this festival, we hope you’ll find it here.

Last year, more than 60 films were presented. This year the festival plans on including Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Charles Chaplin’s Limelight,and Claude Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes, and “DER’s ethnographic film classic, The Ax Fight” (MOMA’s words).

The British newspaper, the Independent, reviewsAuthur Howes documentary film Benjamin and His Brother: the Lost Boys

Benjamin and His Brother is an extraordinary piece of film-making: a story which is both “true” in the ordinary sense that it actually happened (and continues to develop), but also true in the deep sense, with the force and weight of myth. Shortly after we meet Benjamin, his life is hit by yet another calamity: William is due out of Kakuma on the next airlift, but there has been a bureaucratic cock-up, and Benjamin is left behind. The film follows William to Houston, Texas, where he gets a minimum-wage job in a supermarket and discovers he has a grandmother and cousins, alive and well in Kansas City. Benjamin waits on in Kakuma, where he is waiting still.

Chris Fujiwara writes in the Boston Phoenix, “This exceptional documentary series covers 50 years in the lives of a group of Ju/’hoansi - Bushmen of the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari desert in what is now Namibia… Exposing the arrogance, ignorance, and fear of the foreign conservators (with their gentle gray vocabulary and their tangled disclaimers), “Death by Myth” is lucid, relentless, and passionate.” Thanks for a great review Chris!

If you’re in the Boston area March 15th - 30th, you’ll do no wrong by checking out parts or the whole of the entire series of A Kalahari Family at the MFA. Buy tickets online from here.

The Register reports that independent media covering war in Iraq will be shot at. The article implies US military forces will not specifically target journalists, but “…they have been warned.”

Does limiting the number of reporting perspectives on the impending war harm our understanding of this event or does the US military merely want to limit the number of “collatoral damage” that may occur if journalists report from near military objectives.

The Register article is available here. And in other news, the military decides to resurect Movetone newsreel-style reporting so that they can “put together a short film that combines the commentary of real-life soldiers with the kind of footage civilian journalists would be unable to get.” Read the Wired News article here.

“…ethnographic film and video have reemerged as powerful tools for practicing anthropology, as ‘windows on the world’ of peoples and cultures and as transformative forms of intercultural communcation,” writes Marcelo Fiorni in the March 2003 issue of Anthropology News.

“The Society of Visual Anthropology recieved 65 new entries for its 2002 Film Festival at the 102nd AAA Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Nine films were awarded. They comprise some of the best work in documentary/ethnographic film in 2001 and have convincingly shown that the genre has indeed vindicated it’s promise,” continues Fiorni.

We’re proud to hear Fiorni’s praise as DER had 10 films selected for screening at the festival with several taking home the big awards. Duka’s Dilemma won the Award for Excellence while To the Land of Bliss, Friends in High Places, Keep The River on Your Right , and Cowboy and Maria in Town all won awards of commendation. Go DER filmmakers, go!

“We are far from The Real World or The Family. This is straight-up European psychodrama, but it takes little elitism and no dense Europhilia to enjoy it. Cirque du Soleil Fire Within is saturated with pathos, a story about earthbound people who produce spectacles in the air. In keeping with their show, their troubles are Icarian in nature: They fly, and they fall. There is hubris and comeuppance,” writes Virginia Heffernan of Slate.

Bravo commands some respect for airing this sort of fun, yet weird documentary series. Read more about the program here.

The Boston Premiere of John Marshall’s A Kalahari Family will be screened at the Museum of Fine Arts from March 20th to March 30th. For more information about the screenings please visit the MFA calander of film screenings here or contact the MFA by telephone at (617) 369-3306. For online ticket purchases, please visit the MFA ticket web site here.

"Come meet the Greater Boston community’s acclaimed filmmakers, tour production facilities, try out a class, screen recent work, attend a panel discussion, bid on auction items, and get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Greater Boston’s thriving film and video industry. Animation, Audio, Commercial, Community Media, Digital, Documentary, Experimental, Feature, Interactive, Music Composition, Replication . . . it’s all here and it’s all free! Bring yourselves and bring the kids to an action-packed weekend of events for filmmakers and film-lovers and the just plain curious!" For more information about the filmmakers open stuidos please go here.