Archive for February, 2007
For 40 years, Yves Saint-Laurent reigned as one of the most influential fashion designers of our times. However, the controversial documentary “Celebration” tells an unexpected and disturbing version of the truth about the man and his psyche.
In the film, Yves Saint-Laurent is portrayed as a man troubled by his demons and manipulated by his helpers and associates. “He will never be rid of his demons, never be happy, and so much the better. He is like a sleepwalker and we must not wake him up. I set in place all the right conditions to keep him in this trance,” says Pierre Berge, Saint-Laurent’s former lover and business associate, in the film.
Continue reading ‘New Yves Saint-Laurent documentary screens in Berlin’
Arab broadcast journalists and filmmakers are invited to apply for an all-expenses-paid workshop to be held in Dubai in May. The “Arabic Documentary Workshop” (ADW2007) is organized jointly by the Al-Arabiya news channel and the Dubai-based O3 productions company.
Of 25 participating film projects, five will be chosen to be produced and aired on Al-Arabiya. The workshop is also a good opportunity to hook up with O3 which has made a number of documentaries and current affairs programmes on issues affecting the Arab world and the Middle East.
Documentary proposals can be submitted until March 15, either in Arabic or English. For more information, visit O3 Productions.
Production is currently underway on a new documentary about the Dalai Lama. “Dalai Lama Renaissance” follows a group of 40 Western thinkers, including two quantum physicists, who travel to the Himalayan mountains to meet him.
Producer/ director Khashyar Darvich has spent 6 years working on the film, and even got Harrison Ford on board to narrate. The director says he has also assembled a world-class music soundtrack that includes original music from leading sitar player Roop Verma. The European Documentary Portal recently spoke to the American director about his experiences.
Q: How did you get started on the project?
Initially, my company (Wakan Films) funded the project alone. I found a professional crew (18 people) that was so interested in the subject matter and the opportunity to spend time with the Dalai Lama that they paid their own way to India. Once the footage was filmed, we received a non-profit grant as well as smaller individual donations. Co-Producer David Mueller, who had previous experience with fundraising, helped bring in some funding for the film during post-production. Many people volunteered their time on the film, or are working for deferred pay. The rest of the post-production I paid for myself because I believe that it is an important project that can positively impact audiences.
Continue reading ‘New Dalai Lama documentary in production’
Swiss director Eric Bergkraut’s documentary “Coca: la Colombe de Tchétchénie” was given the prestigious International Human Rights Movie Award last night at the 6th Cinema for Peace Festival in Berlin. The film tells the story of a Chechen militant woman, Sainap Gaschaiewa.
The film has already screened at over 20 international festivals, including Tribeca, Amsterdam, Montreal, Tallinn, Tehran, Warsaw and Prague. The French newspaper Télérama has described it as a “militant documentary with a rare intensity [which] denounces the unsupportable inertia of European democracies”. Currently on release in Germany and France.
Just one week after it appeared on YouTube, a 5 min. short film on the history of the web has become one of the world’s top internet videos. Michael Wesch, who teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, created the compelling film “The Machine is Us/ing Us” to chronicle the evolution of the internet as a visual aid to use in class.
The video (available here) traces the development of human communication from handwriting, through digital text and HTML to technology that currently allows anyone to publish and share whatever they want without knowing the code. Wesch celebrates human achievement but also reminds us that we need to rethink issues such as “authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, and ourselves.”
For more info, read an interview with Wesch on The Daily Reel, and check out the creator’s Digital Ethnography blog.
Audiences at the Berlin Film Festival were shown “I Have Never Forgotten You”, a new documentary about the life and legacy of Simon Wiesenthal. The film was made as a non-commercial project by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, and was directed by the center’s Richard Trank, and co-written by Rabbi Marvin Hier.
Production on the high-profile film, narrated by Nicole Kidman, began after Wiesenthal’s death in 2005. The film was shot in nine countries and features interviews with Wiesenthal associates, government leaders, family members and friends. The Center hopes for a theatrical release in the spring.
There is more on this story in the International Herald Tribune. To follow the film’s journey, check its IMDB page.
The good news is that BBC and Google Video are in talks about a content deal allowing BBC content to appear legally on the video sharing pages. The details of the agreement should be released any day now.
BBC’s plan is to use Google Video as a vehicle to generate a larger international audience for its popular content, and it’s also likely that the deal will provide for a solution to the problem of illegal uploads.
According to a Guardian report, the BBC will get its own channel on the site, and revenues generated from contextual advertising would be split between the two companies. While hit shows like “Mr Bean” will be the main beneficiaries of the deal, it is widely hoped that some documentary programmes will also be included.
Read more about the copyright infringement debate on the BBC blog.
