Guidelines and Applications available now at www.lpbp.org. 

Deadline: June 2, 2008 5 PM
*this is not a postmark date

Open Call is an open invitation to independent producers to submit proposals for a public television program or series on any subject that relates to or is representative of Latino Americans.

Programs should bring new audiences to public television and have a recognizable impact on a broad range of viewers, presenting a range of subjects, viewpoints and forms from a variety of Latino producers across the country that complement and challenge existing public television offerings.

All funding requests must be submitted in accordance with LPB’s Guidelines.

You may submit only one application, for one program or series, per review period. If your proposal is among those advanced to the panel, you may be asked to submit additional supporting materials.

Funding Request

LPB funding will average between $5,000 and $100,000 for programs of most genres, including drama, comedy, animation, documentary, or mixed genre. LPB will consider funding projects at any production stage. LPB Funding for each stage ranges as follows:

• Research and Development $5,000 - $20,000
• Production $25,000 - $100,000
• Post-Production $25,000 - $100,000
• Outreach $10,000-$25,000

Submission Deadline: Monday, June 2, 2008 5PM (This is not a postmark date)

Applications must be received in the LPB office by 5:00 PM on Monday, June 2, 2008. Packages received after the closing date will not be accepted. LPB will not be responsible for postal service delays or late deliveries.

For complete guidelines, applications, application instructions and outreach guidelines, please log on to www.lpbp.org.

Just to announce that Prison Pups will be screening at the Regent Theater on Medford Street, Arlington, on

Thursday, May 22 at 7:30pm.

http://www.regenttheatre.com/events/prison_pups.htm
Prison Pups follows four inmates as they raise and train service dogs for the handicapped and hearing impaired. At Concord Farm, a minimum-security facility in Massachusetts, these inmates learn to take on the responsibility of a puppy and find in themselves not only a sense of confidence but also a capacity for nurturing and affection. This experience is profound as they become empowered by their role as trainers. DVD’s can be purchased at: www.der.org/films/prison-pups.html

Please be so kind as to spread the word, put it in your newsletters, websites, mailing lists etc.  I would really appreciate it.  It is screening as a fundraiser for A-dog, an advocacy group in support of dogs and their owners.

Also, Former Commissioner of Corrections, Kathleen Dennehy will be there to introduce the film and Superintendent Lynn Bissonnette of MCI Framingham will be there for a Q & A afterward.

DER is pleased to announce the latest round of LEF Grant awards for the following projects supported under our fiscal sponsorship program.

$15,000 – Production for For the Price of Freedom by Jeff Silva
$10,000 – Production for Doppelganger Diaries by Joe Gibbons
$20,000 – Production for Into the Light by Robert Fenz
$15,000 – Production for Offerings by Louise Bourque
$5,000 – Pre-production for Can You See Everything From Here? By Abigail Child

These projects clearly push the envelop on the definition of Documentary, sitting more comfortably in the genre of “experimental” film, but in recent years DER has expanded our vision, choosing to support films in our sponsorship program that represent creative approaches to the visual representation of ideas, whether or not they are considered “Documentary.” Decisions are made based on the existing track record of a particular artist, and if that artists previous work supports the current vision we feel there is a good chance for a successful out come as these artists have demonstrated.

We also want to thank THE LEF FOUNDATION for their continued belief in supporting independent artists during a time when there are fewer funding options for experimental creative work.

Friday, May 30th from 9:00 – 6:30 pm at Bentley College, Waltham, MA.

As a participant of this exciting event, I’m writing to encourage you to
attend the Making Media Now conference, a full day of programming and
events dedicated to “The Art & Business of Filmmaking.” Held this year on
Friday, May 30th at Bentley College, Making Media Now will continue its
tradition of bringing film industry professionals, independent filmmakers,
and special guests from around the country together for an intensive day
of cutting-edge learning, networking, and opportunity.

Panels will feature topics such as:

• Financing Documentaries: What Does the Future Hold?
• Finding Work in the Massachusetts Film Industry
• Story Structure Case Study with the Doc Doctor
• Marketing Film for Engagement & Impact,
• Equity Film Financing
• Music for Film 2.0
• Incorporating Animation into your Feature Film or Documentary
• The Future of Documentary in the Age of Internet Video
• Perfecting Your Pitch

PLUS:
• Trade show with vendor demonstrations — come visit the DER table!!
• Free 15-minute one-on-one consultations with experts (sign-up that
day, first come, first serve):
• Legal Issues
• Tax Incentives
• Story Structure/Trailer advice
• POV Representative
• ITVS Representative
• Technology Consulting
• Animator
• Catered lunch w/ keynote speaker (to be announced)
• Pitch Session - three projects will have the chance to practice
their pitch to a panel of industry experts! (visit the FC website to
apply to be one of the three filmmakers chosen to pitch)

National industry guests so far include:

• Ellen Stanley, VP Communications, National Geographic
• Cynthia Lopez, Vice President of POV
• Suzanne Lyons, Snowfall Films
• Dan Cogan, Impact Partners
• Kathryn Washington, ITVS
• Fernanda Rossi, The Doc Doctor
• Ryan Harrington, Gucci-Tribeca Fund
• Bonnie Abaunza, Participant Media
• Slava Rubin, indiegogo.com
• Roland Tec, Pinkplot Productions
• Scott Kirsner, Author & Boston Globe writer
and more to be announced!

The price between April 26th – May 9th is $125; and after May 9th, $150.
Price includes luncheon and snacks. We have a discounted rate for students
with valid IDs.

Registration is available now at www.filmmakerscollab.org. For more
information, contact Filmmakers Collaborative at 781-647-1102 or
info@filmmakerscollab.org.

Internship with the John Marshall Ju/’hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection

The Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution, is accepting applications for a summer internship with one of the seminal collections of ethnographic film – the John Marshall Ju/’hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection.

Intern will assist in researching information and existing documentation to be used for descriptive cataloging of this unique and important audio-visual collection which documents the Ju/’hoansi of Namibia’s Kalahari Desert from 1950 - 2000.   The intern, under the guidance of the processing archivist, will aid in conforming and improving existing shot logs and content descriptions, and in creating cataloging content descriptions for both outtakes and edited titles in the collection.

This project will involve working with both paper records and film and video elements; certain aspects of the project can be tailored to the intern’s particular interests.  In addition to making the John Marshall collection more accessible for research and use, the intern will gain familiarity with a wide variety of film and video elements and formats, as well as with its fascinating cultural and political content.  No technical experience with film or video is required, only an interest in audio-visual collections, ethnographic film, and/or the history and culture of the Ju/’hoansi.  More information about the Marshall collection is available at:  www.der.org/kalfam  and   www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/whatsnew.htm

Please direct inquiries and applications to:
Pamela Wintle
Senior Archivist
Human Studies Film Archives
Smithsonian Institution
wintlep@si.edu

After winning the top prize (the Golden Bear) at the Berlin Film Festival, and coming from 5 sold out screenings at Tribeca, we were treated to an under the radar screening of Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha’s The Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) at the Harvard Film Archive last night (5/5).

It had been over a year since I last had contact with Jose. He and I had been collaborating on a documentary film about anthropologists, inspired by a very controversial book “Darkness in El Dorado” that caused a near riot at the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting the year it was published. The controversy involved perhaps the most widely studied indigenous group of people in the world, the Yanomamo of the Amazon. Our company (DER) happens to hold the copyright to the largest film record, starting from “first contact”, of those people.
I first met Jose here when his break through film, the documentary “Bus 174″ was screening at the Boston International Film Festival. That film was widely acclaimed, and for a documentary, had the rare honor of being picked up by a theatrical distributor, Think Film. At the time I hadn’t realized it (I don’t think Jose did either) this film has become the first in what he now says, will be a trilogy.

At Harvard last night, there was a line of people that had to be turned away from the theater. Standing room only. I spied Jose, wearing what looked like the same faded blue baseball cap he wore when he was shooting interviews in my living room a few years ago. He was leaning against the wall, waiting to be introduced. I waved at him, he came over and hugged me, whispering that he had met with someone in NY who had promised to give him the money to finish our film. I felt a wave of excitement, anticipation and gratitude that I was lucky enough to know one of the most brilliant, young filmmakers in the world today.

The audience understandably consisted of a large number of Brazilian students and academics. This was HARVARD after all. There was a loud din with the hum of Portuguese being spoken all around me. The film is subtitled. It has gotten a huge amount of press, in the NYTimes and everywhere it has screened so far. Jose is articulate, but says few words in the intro saving his incise intellect for the Q & A after.

The theater darkens and the total assault on our senses begins. The core of the film is about BOPE, an elite squad of police trained to the level of Navy Seals in our country. They are intended to counter the corruption and collaboration between the regular police and the drug lords in the favellas of Rio. The audio track is masterful as we feel sucked into the world of bullets and mayhem that epitomizes the “war on drugs”. There is blood, a lot of blood. There is torture that made me reflect immediately on Abu Ghraib. But above all there is moral ambiguity. The questions that ask who is responsible for all this when apparently none of the characters seem to be in control. None of them have what philosophers call “free will”. They are all trapped in a system that we can identify as “the State”.

Theoretically, we should find most of the characters in Jose’s film reprehensible, but we don’t. They are sympathetic, we feel for them, even as they kick and beat and twist plastic bags over the heads of the punks and thugs they are sent out to hunt down and destroy.

The film has been misconstrued as an “action film” in the manner of Bruce Willis. It is anything but. It is an ode to our elemental inhumanity, our powerlessness when the policies of governments create environments that we have to evolve to fit, in order to survive. It is a complex structure that rises to the highest level of “Art” with a capitol “A”.

By the end of the on-rushing two hours I was limp as a dish rag. Stunned, I sat in my seat wondering what to make of what I had seen. Two academics, (whose names and specialities I have forgotten) start the dialogue about the film with Jose. He is thoughtful and respectful of all reactions. He has heard it all by now. He tells how he originally started to make a documentary about this subject, an outgrowth of his work on BUS 174. But soon he realized he could get himself killed, following BOPE on their excursions into the slums. So, based on his many interviews with police and with the Bope, he constructed the narrative script for the film. Before it actually was released the Brazilian government and the cops sued him to prevent the film from screening, but the public had already seen pirated copies of the film and demanded it be shown. It was released, to wild acclaim, and the lawsuits seem to have faded away.

Jose is fearless. Like all greatest artists, he takes risks that no others dare to do. His intellect seems to be able to embrace far reaching ideas and weave them together in a coherent whole. The resulting work may be approached and perceived at many levels. For some, it may always remain simply an action film. For others, it is a meditation on what it means to be human.

Elite Squad is sceduled for theatrical release in this country in September 2008. Go see it if it appears in a theater near you.

Coding Culture color, 85 minutes
The Indian software outsourcing industry has emerged as a key node of the global economy. The series of ethnographic films, Coding Culture, explores the cultures of outsourced work and the moulding of a new workforce to cater to this global high-tech services industry. Each of the three films focuses on a single company, representing one of the major types of software company found in Bangalore: a medium-sized Indian-owned company software services company; the offshore software development centre of a U.S.-based IT company; and a small ‘cross-border’ startup company that produces its own software products and markets them to global customers.

Karl Heider - Dani Films color, Special Edition two-DVD set
In 1963, under the auspices of the EDC curriculum project Man: A Course of Study, an elementary social studies curriculum, Karl Heider went to the central highlands of Irian Jaya (West New Guinea). He spent the previous two years in the Grand Balim Valley with Robert Gardner’s Harvard-Peabody exhibition, and his intention was to return from this second trip with material to be used to teach American grade school students about digging-stick horticulture and house construction. However, after producing the Netsilik Eskimo series, the EDC curriculum project fell victim to the political climate of the time. Heider spent the following years presenting the Dani material himself, eventually producing the ethnographic classics, Dani Sweet Potatoes and Dani Houses.

This Special Edition two-DVD set contains the two films along with commentary by Karl Heider, and a narrated pictorial history of Heider’s career in archaeology and anthropology.

Those With Voice (Los Con Voz) color, 55 minutes
Indigenous video makers, media activists and anthropologists explain the importance of community-oriented media to indigenous populations in Mexico and the world.

Young Arabs color, 25 minutes
Muslim and Christian boys attending an elite preparatory school in the heart of Cairo offer thoughts on God, pop culture, terrorism, marriage, the Middle East, and more.

By Story Consultant Fernanda Rossi, The Documentary Doctor

(Reading time: 5:15 minutes – 468 words)

Click here to download a printable PDF of this issue.
Missed March’s issue? print version

Voice-over is the technique of adding narration to images, i.e., voice over images. Lately, however, I feel compelled to re-name it voice-all-over because of its overuse. Or voice-over-again, because how many times it’s re-written.

Filmmaker Gino Del Guercio, with a dozen documentaries under his belt, has no problems writing, directing, and editing good narration. But his latest film, Abandoned in the Arctic, presented a particular set of new challenges. So we decided to work on it together in his South Easton, Mass. studio along with his executive producer, Jeff Clark.

It took a thorough scene breakdown and analysis to find the miniscule glitches that were putting the rest of the film out of balance. And it was only on the second day that it struck me: the double function of the voice-over was adding extra weight to the already complex story.

The film has two storylines: that of James Shedd retracing the steps of his great-great-grandfather Lt. Adolphus Greely’s exploration of the Arctic; and that of the original exploration itself and how Greely was forgotten both by history and the government that was supposed to pick him up at the end of his expedition, an oversight that resulted in desperate yet heroic attempts at survival.

Through narration James himself intertwined these storylines separated by 120 years and four generations. But, alas, that forced him into two almost opposing functions: on the one hand, present-day explorer coming of age; on the other, omniscient historian. Can one single character do both? Sometimes; but after thorough consideration we all concluded it wasn’t possible in this film.

The obvious solution was to have talent narrate the historical events. Of course, Gino had thought of that and tried it already. Professional talent and James didn’t mix well. Who else could it be? Gino quickly blurted out, “The aunt! The aunt!” Yes, the aunt, who appeared in only one scene in the opening, was the family custodian of Lt. Greely’s memorabilia.

This sparkly old lady would be perfect, better than talent. Rather than making history a separate entity passed on from a disembodied narrator to the audience, it would be integrated more deeply into the film, with James’ aunt passing the family’s oral tradition to the next generation, as though a wise ancestor were guiding young James through his adventure in the Arctic. It made mythical sense!

In retrospect, the solution, like all good solutions, seems obvious. And the answer might seem too easy, but it was only easy because we found the right question. It was not whether to have less voice-over or different content or more scenes or use cards instead: the true issue was to understand the function of characters and voice-over in the overall story structure.

Conclusion: Voice is made of air not ink and paper..

The Doctor will see you now: The Doc will be offering her signature workshops on structure and fundraising trailers in Denver, May 17-18. She’ll also be at the Boston Market on May 30. For details check www.documentarydoctor.com.

Voice Over and Over – Case Study: Abandoned in the Arctic by Gino Del Guercio.
Article by Fernanda Rossi | edited by Marcia Scott | photo by Tania Retchisky
published by Documentary Educational Resources

Fernanda Rossi, 2008. All rights reserved. This article can be reprinted in its entirety for educational purposes only, as long as no charges of any kind are made. Partial reproductions or modifications to the original format are strictly prohibited.