Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Charlie LeDuff of the New York Times debuts September 2nd on the Discovery Times Channel series Only in America . The series will take a whirlwind tour of America, visiting the country’s myriad of subcultures and unique locales. From Yahoo :

From fight clubs to battlefield reenactments, with stops along the way that include a gay rodeo in Oklahoma City, arena football in Amarillo and male fashion modeling in New York City, LeDuff uses his unique reportorial skills (and no small measure of charisma) to get inside these often closed or secretive societies. By participating as well as observing, LeDuff gains unique insight into some of the passionate pursuits in which Americans engage.

Check out the Discovery Times Channel website for more info.

VH1 will air the documentary Tracking the Monster on the AIDS crisis in Africa. This documentary features singer/songwriter India.Arie, and actress Ashley Judd, as they visit separate countries in Africa. A touching scene is when a 14 yr-old, orphan girl, whose parents died from AIDS, had told India.Arie that if there was one thing she wanted in the world, it would be to go home with her to America. To read the interview with India.Arie go to AIDS documentary

Elaine Dutka of the Los Angeles Times reports on Documentarian Robert Greenwald’s success in home video distribution:

The Web, Greenwald found, is a powerful tool for fundraising and information gathering. So far on Walmartmovie.com, he’s raised $750,000 — of which $50,000 came from donors online. (Anyone giving $30 or more gets a free DVD.) The director also used the Internet to sign up 600 field producers, novices as well as professionals, and elicit footage, photos and tips about Wal-Mart. The title of the movie was the winner of an online popularity contest.

“This is my universal studio,” said the 61-year-old filmmaker, pointing to a computer in his Culver City office, once a motel at which, legend has it, MGM executives across the street held their lunchtime trysts. “Through our website we’ve reached hundreds of thousands of people without a multimillion-dollar marketing push.”

CCTV, the principal source of news in China, is set to produce a new documentary series titled Rise of Nations, aimed toward examining how today’s global powers climbed to success. One primary place of production will be around Boston in areas that were integral to the Revolution, including Cambridge and Lexington. From The Lexington Minuteman :

In addition to Lexington, the crew will also be filming in Boston and Cambridge as well as Mount Vernon and Monticello in Virginia, San Francisco and parts of the West, documenting the westward expansion toward California.

CCTV maintains 16 channels in China and is the principal source of news. The Rise of Nations series is intended to help broaden the nation’s world view and provide a global perspective. Along with the United States, the series will also chronicle the history of Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, Germany, Japan and Russia.

Reuters reports that March of the Penguins is now playing in 1,867 theaters in the United States and Canada this weekend, an usual number of theaters for a documentary.

The film, which follows a pack of Emperor Penguins during an arduous mating season, had grossed $18.4 million through Wednesday and was poised to surpass the $21.6 million for Michael Moore’s anti-gun documentary “Bowling For Columbine.”

Moore’s 2004 anti-Bush film “Fahrenheit 9/11″ is the No. 1 box-office documentary with $119 million. “Bowling for Columbine” ranks No. 2, excluding box-office figures for large-format Imax films and concert movies.

Brandon Gray, president of boxofficemojo.com, said “Penguins” probably would pass “Bowling for Columbine” by Friday.

A hang-glider disguised as a giant butterfly will soar with the famed Monarch Butterflies on their 3,415 mile journey from eastern Canada to central Mexico. The glider will crew two at a time, from pilots to filmmakers to photograhers, in order to document the amazing migration. From Yahoo News :

Their aim is to raise awareness about the need to better conserve the Monarchs’ fragile habitats. Illegal logging is thinning and toppling the fir forests west of Mexico City that protect the butterflies from rain and cold.

Carlos Galindo, forest director for the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico, said no one has followed the butterflies in the air for their entire transcontinental journey. Doing so can teach scientists how they cope with changing wind patterns, temperature shifts and difficult weather, he said.

During one of the worst droughts in Orissa, one of the poorest areas in India, first-time filmmaker Rupashree Nanda is getting recognition for filming the crisis, her documentary entitled Harvest of Hunger. It won two National Film Awards for Best Investigative Film in the non-fiction category and best editing. Nanda comments on whats happening in Orissa

the camera in the movie follows the villagers as they turn to labour contractors to take loans and then to repay these loans, migrate as bonded labourers to the brick kilns of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. They are subject to one of the worst forms of exploitation, working almost 18 hours a day in the brick kilns and subsisting on a diet of broken rice for a period of eight months…They battle hunger, succumb to starvation and sell off children to survive. Many committees come to enquire and investigate the cases of starvation deaths but they only serve to mock the people's sufferings and further alienate them from the state.

To see the article with the filmmaker go to Harvest of Hunger

Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell reports on the United States cover-up of extensive color documentary footage of the devastating effects of the bombs dropped on Japan. Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern had responsibility for safe keeping the film:

“I always had the sense,” McGovern told me, “that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force — it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn’t want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. … They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done — at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn’t want the material out because … we were sorry for our sins.”

Recently, some of that footage has surfaced in Carey Schonegevel’s documentary film, Original Child Bomb:

“Original Child Bomb” went on to debut at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, win a major documentary award, and this week, on Aug. 6 and 7, it will debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage will finally reach part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended. Only then will the Americans who see it be able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race — and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today.

Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia’s documentary The Future of Food is winning praise at festivals across the country. The film analyzes the history and current use of genetic engineering in farming. From AgriNews :

As the project was conceived, Garcia said she knew a film on agriculture would be an interesting challenge, but was led down her ultimate path when a farmer friend told her the big thing is now they genetically engineer plants so you can spray them with Roundup and they wont die

That just seemed really bizarre to me, and I started researching, Garcia said. I felt like I was a pretty informed consumer, and I didnt know anything about it. Still, most people in the United States still dont realize theyre eating genetically engineered food. What I tried to do was give people an understanding of how system works and how the system is changing.

The film, which has won awards from a number of festivals, presents critical views of industry suing farmers, the technology review process and the environmental ramifications of the inability to control the behavior of GE products used on a commercial scale.

Check out some clips from the film as well as more in-depth info at their homepage

The Washington Post reports that box office revenues of the critically acclaimed documentary, Murderball, fall short of initial expectations due to the audience feeling’s about the film. ThinkFilm hired a market research firm to test audiences’ reactions.

Their conclusion? The wheelchairs are scaring filmgoers off. “We have a film that is about men who’ve had either terrible injuries or illnesses,” [ThinkFilm’s head of domestic theatrical division Mark] Urman says. “I think people assume — incorrectly — that it will be emotionally draining as opposed to emotionally uplifting. I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, I’ve heard good things about it, I just don’t know if I’m ready for it,’ or ‘I don’t know if I’m in the mood.’ ” (Coincidentally, the Screen Actors Guild last week released a study concluding that actors with disabilities are routinely discriminated against in Hollywood.)