Filmmaker Christina Eliopoulos has spent the past four years archiving film on Asbury Park, New Jersey. As she shoots new footage on the historic sea-side town, she hopes to combine the past and present to put together a 101-minute documentary. Gree-tings from Asbury Park will highlight Asbury Park’s history, heyday and coming age. From the Tri-Town News :

“Asbury Park was one of the most unique places on the eastern seaboard, a place that was world renowned,” she explained. “If you look at all these postcards, people walking the street, they were sharing something bigger.”

It has taken Eliopoulos four years to obtain financing for the film, with most of the funding coming from small private contributions and the sponsorship of Women Make Movies, a nonprofit media arts organization that facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women.

“A documentary film is 50 times more scripted than a narrative film. When you have your subject on camera, youd better know what you are going to ask them, you’d better know how it relates to every other interview in the film, and youd better know how it relates to every other clip, photograph, piece of music that youve got.

Following its fall debut at the Two River Film Festival at Monmouth University on Nov. 4-6, Eliopoulos will enter the film in as many key festivals as she can in order to find a distributor. She also plans to create an eight-part classroom cut with study guides that will be available to schools throughout New Jersey.

Several jobless first time filmmakers recently screened their documentary on homeless life, Hide and Go Homeless, in Victoria, B.C. The film caused a bit of a stir in its criticism of the lack of federal aid the homeless in Victoria were recieving. The filmmakers originially recieved their funding for the film from a federal organization, and against their backer’s wishes, they kept the originally cut film intact. From the National Post :

The young people learned about fighting the establishment and making sacrifices, says social worker Roderick Taylor, who oversaw the project.

However, the federally funded, non-profit Victoria agency that funded the filmmaking project balked at contributing about $1,000 to put the finished product on the screen, he said.

The agency said controversial statements in the documentary about the lack of long-term provincial and federal government commitment to help the homeless could result in funding cutbacks to their organization, Taylor said.

“They felt there was certain content in the film that was politically charged and that would jeopardize their charitable tax status,” said Taylor. “They asked the filmmakers if they would be willing to chop about 20 minutes out of the film, kind of cut it in half.”

The answer was no.

The film has been honoured with several community awards in Victoria. Portions of Hide and Go Homeless are posted on the National Film Board of Canada website.

Set to be released on June 24 at the Coolidge Corner Theater, the film Stolen Childhoods is:

The first feature documentary on global child labor ever produced. The film features stories of child laborers around the world, told in their own words. Children are shown working in dumps, quarries, brick kilns. One boy has been pressed into forced labor on a fishing platform in the Sea of Sumatra, a fifteen-year-old runaway describes being forced into prostitution on the streets of Mexico City, while a nine-year-old girl picks coffee in Kenya to help her family survive.

Directed by Len Morris, Stolen Childhoods addresses child labor globally in eight different countries, proliferating a broader understanding of the detriments of child labor to the global economy and the individual futures of these children.

The film won “Best Feature for Children’s Advocacy” at the 2005 Artivist Film Festival in Los Angeles.

Brit television network, Film Four, offers web space for your short documentary video:

FourDocs is the place to upload or download four minute documentaries. Anyone with a story to tell or an opinion to voice can submit their film to FourDocs. All we ask is that it is four minutes long and complies with our legal and technical standards.

The New Heroes, a four part documentary on PBS, follows twelve social entrepreneurs who have dedicated their lives to making other lives better. The documentary is funded by the foundation of former ebay president, Jeff Skoll, and is narrated by actor Robert Redford. From CBS News :

“These are the people we consider society’s change agents,'’ Skoll said at an afternoon news conference in San Jose. “The reason we created The New Heroes is to show that ordinary people can get involved and make a difference.'’

At the news conference, Redford said he was happy to host the documentary and he hopes that the media attention he brings to the project will translate into a wider audience.

The New Heroes airs on PBS on June 28th. Check out their website for a full schedule.

Through predictive statistics and interviews with space-industry officials, the new documentary Gaia Selene proposes that a move to the moon could save humanity. Director Chip Proser explains that even though he isn’t a scientist, films such as this are integral to increase public interest in space exploration. Wired Magazine comments:

The moon, the film argues, will provide the Earth with infinite clean, cheap energy. Our ailing globe will stabilize. Wealth and good fortune will spread throughout the planetary system.

As with most get-rich schemes, the one proposed by Gaia Selene is probably too good to be true. Still, Proser has created a provocative what-if film, with more meaty ideas than the typical Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.

Gaia Selene might help push space exploration, but an increased focus seems likely to happen anyway. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plans to use the Paul Allen-Burt Rutan indie spaceship model to provide paid outer space tours by the end of the decade.

Finding Balance: Forests and Family Planning in Madagascar is a 9 min documentary on the rising problem of deforestation on the island of Madagascar.

Deforestation occurs because lack of birth control give rise to large families. These large families need resources and turn to clear cutting forests to make room for farming. All of the women that were interviewed said the same thing; deforestation would stop if women could control how many children they had.

Madagascar’s rainforest is home to many resources, plants, and exotic animals. The film shows how poverty, lack of education, and population growth in third world countries affects not only people but also earth. It becomes a vicious cycle where the people need the earth to live but are destroying it due to lack of supports, supplies, and health care. Doctors have started a project called Voahary Salama that brings contraceptive education and supplies to Madagascar. Now, other places around the world are trying to create similar projects. You can watch the film at www.population.org.

The Washington Post reports:

A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government’s financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children’s educational programs as “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” “Arthur” and “Postcards From Buster.”

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which passes federal funds to public broadcasters — starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB’s budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

In all, the cuts would represent the most drastic cutback of public broadcasting since Congress created the nonprofit CPB in 1967. The CPB funds are particularly important for small TV and radio stations and account for about 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry’s total revenue.

MoveOn Petitions Congress to save Public Broadcasting.

Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting Executive Director, Jerold M. Starr, wrote in December of 2004:

PBS is in trouble. Government funding has not kept pace with rising costs, especially those associated with the digital transition. Worse, public support is on the wane… In an attempt to meet expenses, PBS and its member stations also have followed this path to greater commercialism. Five-second underwriting acknowledgements have expanded into 30-second commercials, including pitches on children’s programs for junk food and theme parks. There are more co-production deals with commercial partners looking for lucrative back-ends. Such programs typically are designed for export and, consequently, are less local or even national in character.

Morgan Spurlock, creator of the 2004 Oscar nominated documentary Super Size Me is set to debut his new creation, 30 Days, on cable TV. Like in his McDonalds critique, 30 Days makes use of self-inflicting situations, placing people across the country in unfamiliar environments. From the New York Post :

In each episode, a person from one walk of life tries to spend a month living as the polar opposite: a devout Christian from West Virginia lives as a Muslim in Dearborn, Mich.; a squeaky clean soccer mom becomes a binge drinker; a conservative, former youth minister who says that family values are under attack in the U.S. moves in with a gay roommate in San Francisco.

Spurlock’s approach to somewhat grim subjects is to investigate human suffering with humor and irony. The result gives viewers access to serious subjects without being heavy-handed or preachy.

30 Days debuts on the FX network on Wednesday night (June 15th).

The documentary Mardi Gras: Made In China was a selection at The Sundance Film Festival and will be showing at The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival on June 12-14th, with the filmmaker, David Redmon, to present the film.

Mardi Gras: Made In China reveals the origin of the well known beads thrown at Mardi Gras festivals. The filmmaker interviews the bead makers; four chinese women in a bead-making sweatshop in China. This sweatshop is one of the largest bead distributers in the world and yet the factory workers, who are mainly women, work in highly intolerable labor conditions.

Redmon also cruised the famous Bourbon Street in New Orleans with his camera searching for people, especially women who expose themselves to obtain these beads, to see if anyone knew where the beads come from. Read more about the film at www.mardigrasmadeinchina.com Also, if you’re in New York, attend The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival to view Mardi Gras: Made In China and other powerful documentaries.

The 2005 documentary Shape of the Moon chronicles three genetrations of a Christian family living in the primarily Muslim Indonesia. Though its characters and themes are said to be interesting, it has recieved the most festival acclaim in its unique and beautiful cinematography. The film is to be screened at the upcoming Nantucket Film Festival, June 15-18. From Filmthreat.com :

Shape of the Moon is a documentary of such stunning visual grace that while watching it at Sundance, I occasionally wondered if I was mistaken about its category and the film was actually an entry in the dramatic world cinema competition that had very naturalistic actors.

The most beautiful and dizzying moment follows a man as he crosses a train bridge on its side platform. There are no hand rails on the narrow plank, yet some of the most amazing camera angles are in the sequence, leaving me with the feeling that someone was about to plummet to their death or that they were using a helicopter around to shoot a documentary.

A documentary to keep a look out for is This Divided State directed by Steven Greenstreet This young filmmaker chronicles the controversy on filmmaker, Michael Moore, who was invited to speak at Utah Valley State College. What ensued was a large community uproar and school debates that led to protesting Moore’s arrival and liberal politics. I have not seen the film yet, because it has not been distributed nationwide. There have been screenings at various colleges across the U.S. and all are getting great reviews. So it will probably be in theaters soon. Check out the film’s website and watch a trailer!

I’d like to bring the Maasai Project to attention. It is a narrative documentary about East Africa’s Maasai tribe, with the mission of creating awareness of the unique culture as well as helping to support their community. Helmed by filmaker Brad Minnich, the Massai Project is currently in a fundraising phase. From the project website :

Throughout the course of history, cultures are born, thrive and then become extinct. The Maasai way of life and their traditions are nearing their end as the modes of modernization slowly infect their land. Now is a critical time when the Maasai have to hold on to their heritage, embrace the coming wave of change or find an acceptable medium.

With unprecedented access, help from the Academy Award winning editor, David Brenner, the Maasai Project will create awareness around the world through film festivals and screenings, increase donor relations and generate revenue that will help build a secondary school, dig a water well and fund educational services to a primary school.

Sounds like a good cause.

Hello, I’m David Rothschild, another intern here at DER with another documentary recommendation.

Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr commends the new documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, by first time director Marilyn Agrelo. The film docments a youth ballroom dancing tournament in New York City.

Watching these pint-size Astaires and Rogerses practice the fox trot, tango, rumba, and swing is the immediate hook to ‘’Mad Hot Ballroom,” which became an audience sensation at the Slamdance alterna-fest this past January for just that reason. But Agrelo and Sewell go deeper by showing the effect the program has on the toughest kids.

Better, the filmmakers go to the kids themselves, for long, rambunctious, often unexpectedly sober discussions about dancing and life. These children are 10 and 11, so they’re just figuring out what they may someday want from the opposite sex.

Not only does the film entertain with the suspense building up to the final competition, but it also provides an informative picture of the children’s cultural identities, gender relations and general urban lifestyles.

Catch Mad Hot Ballroom at select theatres now or check out their website for more information.

Hello, my name is Vanessa MacEachen and I’m an intern for Documentary Educational Resources. I am currently working on a documentary dealing with the issue of foster care children aging out of the foster care system and the limited supports they have after exiting. Having this personal interest on such an important issue, I recommend viewing the documentary Aging Out directed by Roger Weisberg and Vanessa Roth. Enough of the hype. Here is what its about:

The film follows young people as they exit foster care and become parents, battle drug addiction, face homelessness, and even end up in jail. Despite their struggles, the film also shows these teenagers using the resiliency they developed during their years “in the system” to take control of their lives. It also forces us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the public systems that serve these youth, as well as the roles that private citizens and organizations can play.

Studies of these youths four years after leaving foster care show that fewer than half of emancipated foster youth have graduated from high school, compared to 85 percent of all 18-to-24-year-olds. Fewer than one in eight has graduated from a four-year college. Almost two-thirds have not maintained employment for a year and fewer than one in five is completely self-supporting. More than a quarter of the males have spent time in jail and four of 10 have become parents.

Check you’re local listings of when it will air on WGBH. It was broadcasted nationwide this past May. It will broadcast on channel 2 at 6:30pm on Sun, June 19th in the Boston area.