Filmmaker Profile
Laura Keller – NB Premieres on FUTURESTATES
Directed by Mo Perkins the film will be available to stream for free at futurestates.tv and simultaneously on pbs.org. An online social screening of the short will take place here this Friday, April 13 at 11AM PT / 2PM ET.
With global population at an extreme high, federal fertility lotteries now determine who can and can’t reproduce. When one woman learns that she will be permanently sterilized, her faith in the system is shaken. Learn more about Laura Keller – NB from filmmaker Mo Perkins in a recently conducted Skype interview, after the jump.
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Filmmaker Marco Ricci Discusses The Reconstruction of Asa Carter
By Kate Sullivan Green
ITVS Broadcast & Distribution Manager
Filmmaker Marco Ricci
ITVS’s Kate Sullivan Green sits down with Marco Ricci to talk about the documentary The Reconstruction of Asa Carter.
Hundreds of thousands of readers have loved The Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter’s memoir of his life as a Cherokee orphan. It turns out, however, that the book was written by an infamous white supremacist, Ace Carter, who penned George Wallace’s “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech (among others).
Directed and produced by Marco Ricci, Douglas Newman, and Laura Browder, The Reconstruction of Asa Carter takes viewers on a journey through Asa Carter’s multiple lives to explore questions of race and identity in America. The documentary will air on public television starting in April. Check local listings.
When did you first learn about the secret lives of Asa/Ace/Forrest Carter?
In the early 1990s, Douglas was a student at college (where he met producer Laura Browder) and was assigned the book The Education of Little Tree. He’s reading it and his father is telling him the book is untrue while his professor is saying “No, no, no. That’s a rumor.” This is just as it was breaking in the national press. Douglas actually did a short documentary about it while in school too, then left it alone for 10 or 15 years. At that point we were working together on another project and he brought up the story. I thought it was incredible from both a film perspective and historical perspective. › Continue reading
A Filmmaker’s Embrace of Nonlinear Storytelling
By Musa Syeed
Filmmaker, 30 Mosques
Musa Syeed is one of the hottest up and coming filmmaking talents in the U.S. His work includes documentaries such as A Son’s Sacrifice, Bronx Princess, and a narrative feature, Valley of Saints — which is currently on the festival circuit. He has also been experimenting with new, interactive forms of storytelling, and we asked him to write about his experiences for BTB.
For most of my life, I’ve been something of a technophobe. Maybe it was that I watched The Terminator at too young an age or perhaps it was my father’s insistence on the superiority of the microwave, but either way, an epic struggle with artificial intelligence and subsequent robot armageddon has long seemed to me not only possible but imminent.
And I felt that as a filmmaker, I had reason to fear technological advancements in the field. New media/interactive/transmedia was making a medium I revered as a child seemingly obsolete, banishing motion pictures from the majestic big screen to pathetic, paltry iPhones.
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FUTURESTATES Season 3: Online Press Conference
Join us on Thursday, March 22 at 11AM PT / 2PM ET for a live, online press conference to discuss the upcoming, third season of FUTURESTATES. Moderated by series manager Karim Ahmad, the panel will include
• Jennifer Phang, Filmmaker (Advantageous)
• Jacqueline Kim, Actor (Advantageous)
• Mo Perkins, Filmmaker (Laura Keller — NB)
• Amber Benson, Actor (Laura Keller – NB)
ITVS Alumni Score a Win at SFIAAFF
By Michael Kinomoto
Four filmmakers previously funded by ITVS received a $5,000 award at this year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) for a work-in-progress about international LGBT politicians.
From L to R: Johnny Symons, Brittney Shepherd, Eva Moss, and S. Leo Chiang
Filmmakers S. Leo Chiang (A Village Called Versailles) and Johnny Symons (Daddy & Papa, Ask Not), along with co-producers Eva Moss and Brittney Shepherd, were awarded a $5,000 research and development award at the Ready, Set, Pitch! panel held on Sunday, March 11 at the 30th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival for their project Out Run (working title) – a feature length documentary project that follows openly-LGBT political candidates in parts of the world that are most hostile to their cause.
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Oscar Nominated Filmmakers Visit Talk of The Nation
Filmmakers Danfung Dennis (Hell and Back Again) and Marshall Curry (If A Tree Falls) appeared separately on NPR this week to discuss their respective films — both of which have been nominated for an Academy Award. Listen to the interviews with host Neal Conan, below:
Hell and Back Again
“After so many years of war, society’s become numb to pictures of conflict, and so I felt like I had to move into a new medium to try to shake people from their indifference.” — Danfung Dennis on Hell and Back Again (the documentary will premiere on Independent Lens on May 24 and nationwide on Memorial Day). LISTEN TO FULL INTERVIEW HERE.
A Determined Filmmaker Returns to Open Call
Filmmaker Judith Helfand’s latest documentary Cooked was one of a dozen projects accepted into ITVS’s latest round of Open Call funding. She offered BTB this roundup of the producer’s orientation, held last week in San Francisco.
I started writing this amidst the din of the one week orientation for filmmakers funded through ITVS’ most recent Open Call. I’m finishing it from the relative “quiet” of my Upper West Side apartment, save for the garbage trucks way below on 84th - otherwise known as Edgar Allan Poe Street, the two-year-old running on the bare wood floor above me in 11B, and the hammering from somewhere in my pre- WW1 building.
The “din”: the walla walla of 20 independent producers, each in a different state of disbelief, gratitude, relief, giddy nervousness, tenacious “I can handle anything that comes my way” and “thank you but don’t touch my digital rights”. It has since turned into a low comforting roar/buzz/oral memory playing in the background as I write up these reflections.
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Independent Filmmakers See ITVS as New Family
Twenty filmmakers rallied in San Francisco this week to participate in ITVS’s latest producers orientation for Open Call funding. Among the crop were filmmakers Jamila Wignot and Sierra Pettengill, whose documentary Town Hall examines three personalities who become emblematic figures of the Tea Party Movement. The pair offered BTB this recap of their experience at orientation.
Filmmakers Jamila Wignot and Sierra Pettengill (Town Hall)
In the late spring and early summer of 2010 we made a leap of faith. With a bit of savings, a borrowed car, and friends/family to provide us shelter, we abandoned the highly structured and familiar world of commissioned television documentaries and struck out on our own, on a journey to understand an emergent new breed of American conservatism. We were guided only by our own personal curiosity and belief that the contours of this emerging political movement were about something deeper than left and right, republican and democrat, red state and blue state.
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Filmmaker Sharon La Cruise Discusses Daisy Bates Biopic with Hari Sreenivasan
The documentary Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock will air Thursday, February 2 on Independent Lens to kick off Black History Month. Recently, PBS NEWSHOUR’s Hari Sreenivasan caught up with filmmaker Sharon La Cruise to discuss the project.
Filmmakers of “The House I Live In” Respond to Sundance Premiere
By Steve Goldbloom, Reporting for PBS and BTB at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival
The House I Live In premiered last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival. The film weaves together director Eugene Jarecki’s personal narrative with America’s war on drugs. Here, producers including Sam Cullman, Melinda Shopsin, Danny Glover, and director Eugene Jarecki — reflect on the film and its Sundance premiere.
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