March 2008

Video blogs, vodcasts, YouTube -- in many ways it seems that independent filmmakers have taken the internet by force.  But what about independent films picked up for distribution?  In many cases, they are notably missing from the online arena.  Companies like Zipporah Films, Women Make Movies and Davidson Films still stick with their tried-and-true model of

With a call for shorts for Independent Exposure 2008 open through the end of the month, The Independent wanted to talk strictly shorts with Microcinema’s founder, Patrick Kwiatkowski.

Dear Filmmaker, I just got off the phone after talking to you. You had called our company asking to speak to someone about our potential interest in distributing your film. When I asked you if you had visited our website, you seemed slightly confused and said no, but that you had a few questions for me anyway.

About this new column: Many filmmakers ponder in anguish, How do other people—celebrated people—do it? Am I taking too long to make this documentary? Does everybody spend as much money as I am spending, or am I spending too little? And when filmmakers share their lessons learned in interviews in the glossy trade magazines, their tales seem to follow the arc of otherworldy heroes rather than real documentary makers, i.e. human beings like you and me. So each month, the Doc Doctor will go out into the world (this real world) of filmmakers who are successful and find out how they made it. The "Anatomy of a Film Column" is a chance to learn from filmmakers' hits and misses in real life examples. —Fernanda Rossi, story consultant a.k.a. the Documentary Doctor

Filmmaker Alex Karpovsky is sure to leave reviewers scrambling for a dictionary in an attempt to define the hybrid genre of his latest film, Woodpecker.

Prince Among Slaves, which aired in February on PBS as part of public television's Black History Month programming, is the story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima, an African prince who was captured by slave traders in 1788. He completed the Middle Passage in shackles, and ended up sold to a farmer of modest means in Natchez, Mississippi.