Tag Archives: documentary

Mapping Our Memories: Tributopia Launches Memorial Day

Posted on by

Tributopia, the project inspired by the ITVS-funded documentary The Grove, is a free iPhone app for creating virtual memorials and remembering lost loved ones by posting tributes on an interactive map. Tributopia invites engagement by connecting memories to a specific place. With the augmented reality feature, users looks through the viewfinder and can find virtual tributes overlaying the real world around them. Tributopia launches in conjunction with Memorial Day, just before Gay Pride Month.

tributopia

Filmmaker Andy Abrahams Wilson gives us this inside look at the inspiration behind the app and his take on the changing interactive media landscape:

How did making The Grove inspire your idea for Tributopia?

The AIDS Memorial Grove founders envisioned a nature-based memorial in which individuals could till their grief and find comfort in seeing their own human experience reflected in nature. While the stigma of AIDS created invisible victims and survivors often excluded from traditional rituals of burial and remembrance, having a special place to remember and share was especially important.

While I was in the midst of production on The Grove, I vacationed in Mexico and witnessed scores of roadside memorials adorned with flowers, pictures, and photos. I was mesmerized and wanted to know what happened and whom it happened to. It was as if those shrines wanted to speak to me, to tell me their story. I began to realize how vital the connection was between memory and place, and between community and communication.  Hence, the idea for Tributopia was born: a way to use new media to tell stories of loss – to connect memories to place and join in a community of remembrance.

What was the experience like, going from being a “traditional” documentary filmmaker to working in the interactive media space? Was there a large learning curve?

There was an enormous learning curve. We tend to take for granted our mastery over our own craft. Suddenly I found myself facing a technology, terminology and business model that were alien to me. While we cling to the idea of “storytelling” as a unifying theme and comforting commonality, I really did feel like I was entering a brave new world! Continue reading →

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

It’s #FollowFriday! Here are the TV and film aficionados who made Time magazine’s 140 Twitter feeds to follow of 2013.

Filmmakers of all stripes are encouraged to apply to San Francisco Film Society’s six-month and year-long FilmHouse residencies. Though Bay Area dwellers are given priority, anyone older than 18 with a video budget less than $3 million is eligible! Early deadline: April 22.

The latest installment in MIT Open Documentary Lab’s “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code?” series is an interview with Hugues Sweeney of National Film Board of Canada. He encourages doc makers to team up with techies: “The time is for collaboration—get contaminated. What we call a ‘webdoc’ today is not about putting a doc online but using the web for all its storytelling capacities—its grammar.”

Occasionally, indie filmmakers feel isolated. Abstract painter Agnes Martin has inspirational words for the solitary artist: “The best things in life happen to you when you’re alone.”

Kartemquin just added some ancient gear to its “equipment graveyard”: The Auricon Sound-On-Film Recording Amplifier. “In spite of being obsolete, obscure, and something that Kartemquin never even used, it taught us about one more way filmmakers could record sound on film and fleshed out a little more of Camera #1′s history,” Kartemquin writes.

Relatedly, Kartemquin produced a video ode to its early days of cinema verite, and the penny-pinching camera that made it possible: the custom-made 16mm crystal-sync General Camera No. II.

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

San Franciscans, rejoice! Nick Offerman, who plays the meat-lovin’ libertarian and all-around heartthrob Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation, will be in-person at the Roxie Theatre Saturday for the indie flick he stars in, Somebody Up There Likes Me.

MacArthur Foundation just awarded nine documentaries grants of more than $1 million total. Check out the lucky grantees, including ITVS-funded Cooked by Judith Helfand.

The 42nd edition of New Directors/New Films runs March 20 to 31 in New York City at the MoMA and the Films Society of Lincoln Center. Here are Hammer to Nail’s picks to watch.

Destin Daniel Cretton just won SXSW’s 2013 Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award for Narrative Feature competition for his premiere of Short Term 12. The San Francisco Film Society produced a lovely video interview of Cretton, where he talks about his filmmaking process and his start as a young storyteller, “building forts or making plays to perform to my mom or creating choreographed dance moves.”

Live chat with Ashley Sabin, director of Girl Model, and model Rachel Blais March 24th at 7 p.m. EST at POV.

Good news for The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, featured in the documentary Typeface! The collection of “over one million pieces of wood type” has a new location in its hometown of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, but twice the size. (via @Kartemquin)

“Should Filmmakers Learn to Code?” asks MIT Open Documentary Lab as part of its new blog series. In the second installment, documentarian Elaine McMillion (Hollow) said, “As an interactive storyteller, you need to have an understanding of user experience, design and coding, but most importantly you have to understand what makes a strong narrative.”

ITVS Co-Presents Two Films at CAAMFest!

Posted on by

For the next 10 days, the Center for Asian America Media presents CAAMFest, a celebration of film, music, food and digital media form the world’s most innovative Asian and Asian American artists.

btb_caamfest

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2013 CAAMFest, formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and ITVS could not be more excited to co-present two of the films featured in this year’s festival, The Mosuo Sisters and Xmas Without China.

This year, in an effort to transition away from the traditional film festival, CAAM has embraced new forms of artistic expression with a spirit of curiosity and adventure. Come celebrate the festival through various live events, multimedia performances, and expanded ventures into the music and culinary worlds. With such a wide variety of entertainment to choose from, Bay Area participants will be able to enjoy Asian American media in all its various forms.

Be sure to check out the trailers (after the jump)! Continue reading →

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

These 22 storytelling tips by Emma Coates, Pixar’s former story artist, are as uplifting and imaginative as Pixar’s films, and the guidelines are useful for non-fiction and fiction storytellers alike.

If you’re hungry for more storytelling tips, check out this Kickstarter campaign for a “creative advice book” by 50 of the world’s preeminent documentary filmmakers. “Learn from your mistakes,” says James Marsh, director of Man on Wire. “Write them all down and torment yourself with them.”

There are so many interesting transmedia storytelling projects, it seems impossible to keep up. AIR’s Public Media Scan addresses this by featuring five projects weekly “at the intersection of technology, journalism, and blended media craft.” (via @povdocs)

Interested in making a short film? IFP shares how short videos can lift your overall filmmaking career.

SXSW rages on this week in Austin with a host of compelling documentary panels, screenings, and interactive storytelling workshops. Over at Indiewire, meet the filmmakers who are presenting their work at SXSW.

Doc lovers in Chicago have just as much to be excited about. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) 2013 Chicago Conference will unite legendary filmmakers and critics March 6 to 10.

Something for everyone this week! New Yorkers, check out POV Digital, Non-fiction Storytelling presented by the creator of the POV Hacakthon, Adnaan Wasey, March 19 at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. The event features “insights into cross-platform and immersive projects in a completely different way from many of the fiction projects StoryCode has presented.”

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Priceless advice on interactive documentary filmmaking comes from an unlikely source: The Guardian’s Global Development Professionals Network. Emma Wigley, director of the interactive documentary Big River Rising, says to take a holistic approach: “Big River Rising is much more than a media project. It is a long-term educational resource for students and development organisations around the world.” (via @povdocs)

Could this be the first documentary filmed with Google Glass? This latest gadget by Google displays information in front of your eyes — imagine a smartphone strapped to your face. Gizmodo claims to have spotted a camera team filming with the elusive product still unavailable to the public.

For once, filmmakers are seeking guidance on how to transition from the theatrical film world to TV. A panel at New York Television Festival counseled indie filmmakers to invigorate projects that “might otherwise languish in cinematic purgatory.” Indiewire writes: “Over the past few years, television’s begun to challenge film as the preeminent outlet for American storytelling, the breadth of interest and means of distribution at an all-time high for a medium that can no longer be looked at as of inferior artistic merit.”

UK doc-makers now have more opportunities to receive funding for their films. The BFI Film Fund will accept pitches twice a year, when selected applicants will give a 10-minute pitch to an expert panel.

This psychedelic short video by Dutch designer and director Mischa Rozema is an homage to the 1990 space shuttle Voyager 1, combining real-life NASA footage, sci-fi animation, and experimental orchestration. (via @brainpicker)

This could be the first year a YouTube video wins an Emmy, according to Mashable. With Arrested Development on Netflix, it’s clear that some of our greatest shows are no longer confined to cable.

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

The real reason we watch the Oscars: the surprising gaffes. Here are the best and worst moments of the Academy Awards ceremonies since 2008.

First-time documentary filmmakers, apply by March 8! You can get mentorship when you sorely need it through IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs, which guide low-budget films (less than $1 million) through completion, marketing, and distribution.

New York doc lovers should check out the Documentary Fortnight 2013 showcase at MoMA, Feb. 15 to March 4, and enter at POV to win free tickets to MoMA Selects: POV screenings.

Now in its third year, the upstart Open City Doc Fest in London rages on June 20 to 23. Late deadline for submissions is March 4!

If you haven’t seen it already, watch a snippet of the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague and learn about the filmmaker’s original inspiration. (via @TheBayCitizen)

Recovered Super 8 footage of President Nixon in the documentary Our Nixon will cap the New Films/New Directors festival on March 31.

Kungfu Celebrates Black History

Posted on by

Airing on public television throughout February, The Black Kungfu Experience traces the unexpected rise of black kungfu in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, and culminates with the positive impact kungfu continues to have in African American communities across the country today.  

At the heart of The Black Kungfu Experience lies the incredible journey of four respected African American kungfu masters: Ron Van Clief, Dennis Brown, Don Hamby and Tayari Casel. The film underscores how the focused, mindful experience of kungfu has been a vehicle for these men as they challenge political and social persecution, and as they mentor future generations in this centuries-old practice. Their stories illustrate how kungfu was – and still is – a unique crucible of the black experience, which is less about flash and style, kicks and punches, than it is about community, identity, and cross-cultural bridges.

Directed by Martha Burr and Mei-Juin Chen, the filmmakers also behind Shaolin Ulysses: Kungfu Monks in America (Independent Lens 2003/2004), The Black Kungfu Experience premieres on public television February 2, 2013 (check local listings).

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

More documentary films are being made now than ever. To make sense of their impact, social scientists are using Big Data to measure cultural shifts within social media.

People of all professions go through quarter-life crises, but young filmmakers have a specific set of anxieties. Raindance ticks off the fears of twenty-something directors, including financial insecurity and getting into the “inside track.”

“If you don’t know who’s funding you on day one, do not start your campaign,” said Indiegogo founder Slava Rubin at DOC NYC. Learn other invaluable crowdfunding tips from Vimeo’s synopsis of DOC NYC’s online fundraising event. Continue reading →

Don’t Miss the Deadline for the 2013 CPB/PBS Producers Academy

Posted on by

The deadline for the 2013 CPB/PBS Producers Academy at WGBH is Friday, December 14, 2012. To apply for this intensive training program in public broadcasting, please visit the official website.

For the past 11 years, CPB and PBS have offered a Producers Academy that provides intensive training in public broadcasting production. Many talented individuals have emerged from this workshop, finding success on various public broadcasting platforms.

25 individuals will be offered the opportunity to go to this year’s workshop at WGBH-Boston from Saturday March 30 through April 5, 2013. The goal of the Producers Academy is to encourage a diverse and talented group of producers to create new and greater programming achievements in public broadcasting. The firm deadline for interested applicants is Friday, December 14, 2012.

This weeklong seminar is free and open to media makers nationwide who want to develop skills and connections in public broadcasting. Over the seven-day period, participants can expect to attend intensive courses that cover a wide range of production skills, building on the expertise that has made PBS a well-known and respected American cultural outlet. Continue reading →