January/February 2004

Over the course of two generations, Detroit has gone from a symbol of American industrial pro-wess to a shorthand term for the worst of American urban decay. The city’s hardest days are over, though—the days when commentators were calling Detroit a third-world city or, as Diane Sawyer once said, “the first urban domino to fall”—and there are real signs of recovery.

Dear Doc Doctor:

Is a short film the obligatory starting point of a filmmaking career? If so, what can I do with it when it’s finished? It doesn’t seem to make financial sense to make a short.

What is the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media?

It is a fund that gives grants to video, film, and radio programs.

How long has it been in existence?

At 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night, more than twenty teams of filmmakers gather at a local film center or bar. In a random drawing one member of each team picks a film genre out of a hat. Every team is then given the same character, prop, and line of dialogue they’re required to include in a film—a film they will write, shoot, and edit in less than 48 hours.

Filmmakers are often touted for their “vision”—their singular sense of how a movie should look, sound, and feel. But every film starts on paper, with a screenplay or even just an idea for a character or a mood. A director must partner with a cinematographer, a production designer, and others to translate that idea into a compelling, visually sophisticated narrative. Below, how three filmmaking teams on tight budgets brought their stories to the screen using film, digital video, high def, and anything else they could get their hands on.

Aaton, the innovative French camera and audio manufacturer, has recently released two new and remarkable products—the Cantar digital audio recorder, and the A-Minima Super16 film camera. The A-Minima is a film camera built to operate like a DV camera, while the Cantar is a digital audio recorder that operates much like a standard reel-to-reel recorder, but records to an internal hard drive in a way that surpasses other digital means like DAT or DV cameras.

Marc Henry Johnson, executive producer and chief visionary of the newly premiered public television series Colorvision, is a passionate advocate for fair and balanced representation of minority cultures on our airwaves and movie screens. Disarmingly affable, Johnson is also politically savvy, articulate, and inclusive-minded. With Colorvision, an interesting, if at times overly ambitious, showcase of short films and their filmmakers, Johnson has found a place and a way to apply his unique sensibility.

Oftentimes an independent filmmaker requires the support of an army of many—actors and crew—to nurture his or her film into fruition. In the case of director-producer Sam Chen’s computer-animated short film Eternal Gaze, a biopic on the life and art of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, the required support came down to an army of one.

Nestled next to majestic Mt. Tamalpais and filled with four-star restaurants, fine watering holes, and numerous natural wonders, the small city of Mill Valley nestled in Northern California’s Marin County provides a great backdrop for a relatively small but exceptional film festival. Without the frantic energy of Sundance, Cannes, and other higher profile film festivals, the Mill Valley Film Festival mainlines accessible panel discussions, informal social gatherings, and a down-to-earth environment designed to support artists.

On October 22, 2003, the FCC held a hearing on localism in Charlotte, NC. FCC chairman Michael Powell probably wished he’d stayed home.