The Doc Doctor’s Anatomy of a Film: “Kiran over Mongolia”
About this new column: Many filmmakers ponder in anguish, How do other people—celebrated people—do it? Am I taking too long…
Documentary
Airing Your Dirty Laundry
Doug Block wasn’t sure he had a film yet. His mother had passed away and he was videotaping his father’s…
A Conversation with Les Blank
In his new film All In This Tea, director Les Blank operates at the far extremes of technology, using digital…
Blurring the Lines
Ohio-based filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s 3-hour and 45-minute documentary A Lion in the House follows five families with…
AIVF: And What it Meant to Me
I first became aware of AIVF when Martha Gever was editor of The Independent. I marveled at this national organization…
Is documentary the new memoir?
I am a sociologist who conducts historical research on race and social policy, so my work has something in common…
Docurama on the Rise
At the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, Steve Savage and Susan Margolin, the two minds behind New Video, a New York-based…
The Many Meanings of “Fair Use”
So your documentary has commercial interest and high revenue earning potential. And you’ve secured all of the agreements, releases, and…
What if nobody “gets” my film?
Dear Doc Doctor: Nobody seems to like my film—they say it’s unclear and hard to follow. Why aren’t they getting…