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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