July/August 2005

Dear Doc Doctor:
I’m planning to make a documentary abroad. Am I better off bringing my own crew or hiring there?

I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I did not know exactly why I was to meet the actress Bai Ling at Playboy Enterprise headquarters to conduct our interview for this issue. Although somewhat less embarrassed to say that neither did I know she was in the final Star Wars installment, which opened in May amid shameless commercial promotion.

Distribution. The Deal. That’s the goal of any independent producer after finishing production within budget and on schedule. Ideally, a filmmaker would want to have the film or program distributed by a single company with a reputable track record that would handle distribution in every market.

And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumors, so dense a commingling of the improbable and mundane!

— Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

The concept was to bring five human rights activists from around the world to New York City for an intensive video workshop—each activist would receive their own camera. We would all brainstorm on what stories they wanted to tell about their communities and how to tell them. My task was to train the activists and later interweave their visual stories into a coherent feature-length documentary. It sounded simple enough. I had done video training workshops with grassroots activists in the past and had conducted them in different parts of the world.

The International Public Television (INPUT) conference was hosted this year by Independent Television Service (ITVS). Held in a different country (and hosted by a different public media outlet) each year, INPUT serves public television executives and

independent producers from around the planet through screenings and discussions about some of the most innovative and controversial programming being done today.

As I start writing this, I’ve just ejected from my VCR the 349th entry for this year’s Revelation Perth International Film Festival and…well…it looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

I love programming the event. It’s always fascinating to see how distance and borders melt under the influence of common themes. It’s a powerful thing, and this year it’s more noticeable than before.

Nick Fraser’s career has been a constant battle between “what I will and won’t do for television,” says the 57-year-old series editor of the BBC’s international documentary showcase “Storyville.” A kind of documentary filmmaking godfather, Fraser is able to fund dozens of films each year, but he’s waged a war on media bias—whether that’s what he se