By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

STRAIGHT SHOOTING A Conversation With World-Class Documentary DPs

Posted Thursday, April 7th, 2011 - Comments Off on STRAIGHT SHOOTING A Conversation With World-Class Documentary DPs
Be Sociable, Share!

The International Documentary Association Presents
STRAIGHT SHOOTING
A Conversation With World-Class Documentary DPs

Monday, April 25, 2011

Doors Open: 7:00pm
Discussion & Audience Q&A: 7:30pm – 9:00pm

Wine Reception to Follow

The Cinefamily
611 N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036

The documentary filmmaker/cinematographer faces many complex challenges, from keeping abreast of the latest camera technologies to following the subtle clues of a developing story even as it’s just beginning to reveal itself in ways often invisible to everyone but the person looking through the camera. What are some of the ethical problems unique to documentary filmmaking? How do we gain the confidence of our subjects so that they will open up to our cameras without ultimately betraying their trust when we leave? How have lightweight digital video cameras changed not only how we shoot but what we shoot? How does each one of these filmmakers work to push the boundaries of their craft every time they begin a new project?

Join moderator Richard Pearce (Hearts and Minds; Food, Inc.) as he engages Joan Churchill, ASC (Aileen Wuornos: Life & Death of a Serial Killer; Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing), James Longley (Iraq in Fragments; Sari’s Mother) and Haskell Wexler, ASC (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) in a rich conversation about the unique POV of the documentary shooter.

Panelists:
Joan Churchill, ASC
James Longley
Haskell Wexler, ASC

Moderator: Richard Pearce

Joan Churchill

A graduate of UCLA Film School, Churchill began her career doing camera work on a series of music films – including such seminal classics as Gimme Shelter, a Maysles film, No Nukes, directed by Haskell Wexler and Barbara Kopple and Hail, Hail Rock and Roll, directed by Taylor Hackford.  Churchill also directed and photographed Jimi Plays Berkeley, now a cult classic, and spent seven months shooting on the PBS series, An American Family. She was cinematographer on Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park.  She has co-directed several projects with Nick Broomfield, including the BAFTA Award winning Soldier Girls.  Other collaborations with Broomfield include the award winning Aileen Wuornos: Life & Death of a Serial Killer.  Recent work includes Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing; Bearing Witness; Home of the Brave; Rain in a Dry Land; and HBO’s  Bastards of the Party.  Recently completed is Snow Blind, directed by Vikram Jayanti, about Rachael Scdoris, a blind Iditarod racer & her team of dogs.

James Longley

James Longley’s college documentary, Portrait of Boy with Dog, about a boy in a Moscow orphanage, was awarded a Student Academy Award® in 1994 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  He made his first feature documentary, Gaza Strip, in the early months of the second Palestinian uprising. In 2002, began pre-production work on his second documentary feature, Iraq in Fragments. The film was awarded jury prizes for Best Documentary Directing, Best Documentary Editing, and Best Documentary Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival.  Iraq in Fragments went on to win the top documentary film awards at major national and international festivals, garnered an Emmy Award nomination for Best Documentary Cinematography, and an Academy Award® nomination for Best Feature Documentary. James’ short documentary film, Sari’s Mother, received an Academy Award® nomination.  Longley was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009 and is currently researching a new film project in Pakistan.

Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler is considered to be one of the most important cinematographers working in the film industry today. Wexler has photographed a wide range of films that have earned him five Academy Award® nominations and two Oscars® for Best Cinematography. His nominations came for his work on his first feature documentary, The Living City; a short film T For Tumbleweed; Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; John Sayles’ Matewan and Touchstone Pictures Blaze.  He took home statuettes for his work on Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory.  Wexler has worked with Norman Jewison, George Lucas, Michael Moore, John Sayles, and in the IMAX format:  IMAX:Mexico, and IMAX:Hail Columbia.

He directed two features, Medium Cool and Latino.  Both films broke the mold of conventional story telling by using the immediacy of documentary-style filmmaking. He is the first Cinematographer in over thirty-five years to receive a “Star” on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Richard Pearce

Richard Pearce began his professional career in the late 1960’s as a documentary cameraman. His early credits as a cinematographer include four Oscar-winning films: Woodstock, Marjoe, Interviews with My Lai Veterans and Hearts and Minds. Pearce made his feature directorial debut with the period drama Heartland which won the Golden Bear at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival and opened the New York Film Festival’s first “Showcase of American Independents.”

He has directed numerous narrative projects for both film and television.  Recently, Pearce has also returned to making documentaries, including The Road to Memphis which he directed and photographed for the Martin Scorsese PBS series on the Blues; The Judge and the General which he executive produced; and the recent Academy Award® nominated feature documentary Food Inc, which he co-produced (with Eric Schlosser) and photographed.

Pearce has served on the Board of Governors of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Doc U is the International Documentary Association’s series of educational seminars and workshops for aspiring and experienced documentary filmmakers. Taught by artists and industry experts, participants receive vital training and insight on various topics including: fundraising, distribution, licensing, marketing, and business tactics.

For more information on IDA’s Doc U: documentary.org/doc-u

Special support provided by:

Los Angeles County Arts Commission
Axis Pro
HBO Archives
Indie Printing
Members and Supporters of IDA

– 30 –

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on STRAIGHT SHOOTING A Conversation With World-Class Documentary DPs

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon