Watch the 22-minute “broadcast tv” documentary on Machinima, a genre of story telling where directors use video game graphic engines to create stories.

One of my favorite machinima is the comical Red vs Blue – especially funny if you’re a fan of Xbox’s Halo, but still intriguing if you’re not a Halo fan.

Rich Rosell of Digitally Obsessed interviews documentary filmmakers Bruce Sionfsky and Joe Berlinger about their involvment with documentary filmmaking:

Rosell: When Brother’s Keeper came out theatrically in 1992, you two didn’t necessarily earn the adoration and admiration of your fellow documentarians. I believe on the disc’s commentary track one of you refer to the fact the they “pissed all over it.” Why do you think they had such a problem with that film, or was it with you guys?

JB: I’m not sure. We always scratched our heads because the film community really embraced this film.

Rosell: It was very well received, in terms of awards.

JB: Except the documentary community. They did not like the film. I guess in order to market the film, and go from having zero reputation, and being unknowns, to sort of overnight turning Sundance into a platform for us, maybe we were a little arrogant.

BS: Maybe.

JB: Maybe we patted ourselves on the back too much back then, and it alienated a few people. However, we’re still mystified. At the time this film came out, we were pioneers in self-distribution, and it did $1.5 million with Joe and Bruce schlepping the print from city to city. That’s pretty damn good. Creatively, we feel we sort of pushed the definition of what is a non-fiction feature film. We talked a lot about how we wanted to create a non-fiction feature film that would have all the qualities of fiction, in the sense of a beautiful score, beautiful cinematography, a certain editing style, and one that unfolded in the present tense. We wanted to have all of these things, and I guess the documentary community took that as an insult, as if we were saying the traditional way of making documentaries is bad. And maybe back then we did say that just to pat ourselves on the back, but in hindsight, 10 or 12 years and dozens of film projects later, looking back, we were just two young guys who wanted to make a lot of noise and were proud of our work. On the other side, I’m sure there was a little jealousy over what we achieved, because we went from being nobodies to very commercially viable documentary filmmakers.

The Royal Anthropological Institute awarded A Kalahari Family: A Far Country the prestigious Basil Wright Prize, the top prize for documentary in their festival. Duka’s Dilemma won The Royal Anthropological Institute Film Prize. Congratulations John and Jean!

The Chicago Black Harvest Film Festival will be screening four DER films this year. The date and times are below:

African Dance
Monday, August 4 at 8:15pm
Thursday, August 7 at 6:15pm

Benjamin And His Brother
Saturday, August 9 at 7:45pm
Tuesday, August 12 at 6:15pm

A Kalahari Family
PART 1 and PART 2: Saturday, August 2 at 2pm
PART 3 and PART 4: Monday, August 4 at 6:15pm
PART 5: Wednesday, August 6 at 6:15pm

Of Men And Gods
Friday, August 8 at 6:15pm
Monday, August 11 at 6:15pm

For more information, please call 312.846.2800 or 312.846.2600

An amazingly affordable piece of software for those shooting documentaries hand-held: Steady Move

SteadyMove works by studying the images to calculate the relative camera movement from one frame to the next, it then uses this to remove unwanted movement.

A Kalahari Family, Part 5: Death By Myth won the Best Film award, selected by a Jury as well as the Audience Favorite award at the The Archaeology channel International Film and Video Festival.

A Kalahari Family, Part 2: End Of The Road won Honorable Mention as the fifth-ranked film, selected by a Jury, in the Best Film competition as well as Honorable Mention as the third-ranked film, selected by the audience, in the Audience Favorite competition.

We’re back from vacation – was the news missed?

Explore Dance reviews African Dance:

African Dance: Sand, Drum, and Shostakovich is both a documentary and a presentation of filmed stage dance. This film provides a compelling introduction to African dance, and to the challenges faced by African choreographers and dancers when they try to create contemporary African dance. Their work asks the question, “What does it mean to dance today while also staying true to my own rich African roots?” The film contains many powerful images of African dance which are worth seeing, but more importantly, presents a number of ideas about what makes African dance so rich. Dance is a part of all life. When one dances, one should move all parts of one’s body. Drummers are an essential part of the dance, and are not just embellishment. Dance can heal people in different ways (including one admirable dance project where the choreographer is trying to give back to his country by teaching street kids how to dance and in the process help them develop skills and hope). Choreography can embody both doubt and faith. Traditional African dance contains precision of rhythm and movement which contemporary African choreographers can build upon. Collaboration across cultures is difficult, but possible. In the work highlighted in the film’s title, African dance is set to music by Shostakovich. From the excerpts shown in the film, it looked like Shostakovich is naturally supposed to be accompanied by African dance. This dance made very creative use of sand, both to dance upon and as part of the movement itself, as well as metal briefcases. This was just one of many works shown in the film that looked like they might very well be worth viewing in their entirety. Choreographers included in the film were Zab Maboungou, Mathilde Monnier, Sylvain Zabli, Vincent Mantsoe, Clara Andermatt, Beatrice Kombe Knapa, Salia Sanon and Seydo Boro, Susanne Linke and Avi Kaiser and Germaine Acogny. The dance companies were Nyata-Nyata, Compagnie Mathilde Monnier, Compagnie Slyvain Zabli, Companhia Clara Andermatt, Tchetche, Compagnie Jant-Bi, Cie Salia ni Seydo, Vincent Mansoe. The film was directed and produced by Ken Glazebrook and Alla Kovgan. The film was shot in performance at Montreal’s Festival de Nouvelle Danse. The film was ably edited by Alla Kovgan from Ken Glazebrook’s extensive footage. The dances selected were drawn from West and Central Africa. As anyone who has spent any time in Africa knows, Africa is an immense and diverse place. While it is legitimate to talk about “African Dance”, African dance is far more diverse and worthy of in-depth consideration than many people realize. In light of this, we hope that Ken and Alla will find a way to produce a sequel highlighting dance in other parts of Africa. USA, 70 minutes, 2002.

Documentary Educational Resources John Marshall will be awarded the Society of Visual Anthropology’s Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 102nd Annual Meeting being held in Chicago, Illinois. Along with Marshall’s award, his 5-part series, A Kalahari Family will be shown at Thursday, November 20th.

Including Marshall’s films, five other DER documentaries will be shown at the event. More details below.
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Herdsmen and Benjamin And His Brother were accepted into the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute Film Festival. This year’s festival will be held October 24th — November 2, 2003.