The Film Panel Notetaker

The  Woodstock Film Festival, one of my very favorites, announced today their full lineup of nearly 150 fiercely independent films, panels, performances and special events, kicking-off Wednesday, September 29 through Sunday, October 3.

I am particularly honored to have worked with Woodstock Film Festival Co-Founder and Executive Director Meira Blaustein in co-programming what we hope will be a very informative and inspiring panel discussion, “Environmentally Speaking: Improving Our Planet with the Power of Film.”

The panel will answer the following questions and take a deep look at these important issues:

Can film make an impact on how we take care of our planet? Do we need to be more environmentally responsible in how we make our films to get our messages across? Where is the intersection of making films about the environment and making films that are environmentally conscious? Join us as filmmakers, industry leaders and environmental experts discuss the impact films have on our planet.

Moderating the discussion will be Lydia Dean Pilcher, President of Cine Mosaic and producer over 28 feature films. Pilcher is a Chair of the Producer’s Guild of America Green Committee (pgagreen.org), and is a presenter for The Climate Project, Al Gore’s climate change leadership program.

Our panelists include:

Jon Bowermaster is a six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council. Bowermaster’s 2007-2008 Antarctic expedition was the final in his OCEANS 8 project. He is a producer of a dozen documentary films including SOLA, which screens at local colleges and WFF in conjunction with the Hudson Valley Progragmmers Tour.

Larry Fessenden is the writer, director and editor of the award-winning art-horror trilogy “Habit,” “Wendigo” and “No Telling.” His recent film, “The Last Winter” premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival (IFC). Fessenden has produced a diverse array of independent films including “Wendy and Lucy,” The House of The Dead,” “I Sell The Dead,” “Stake Land,” and “Bitter Feast.” In 1991 Fessenden wrote Low Impact Filmmaking: A Guide to Environmentally Sound Film and Video Production and to this day maintains a website on Global Warming, www.RunningOutofRoad.com.

Eva Radke has worked in film and commercial production in NYC for 15 years, concentrating on the art department. In 2007 she formed ArtCube, an online group that facilitates collaboration within the industry. In 2008, she founded Film Biz Recycling to help the film industry address the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit.

Environmental Producer and Green Production Consultant Katherine Carpenter is an award- winning documentary producer specializing in environmental subjects. She was trained as a climate presenter by Al Gore and The Climate Project, and now works also as a carbon-re- duction consultant for film and TV productions with Green Media Solutions of New York (see www.greenmediasolutions.net).

Joe Berlinger is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and photographer. His films include “Brother’s Keeper,” “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills,” and “Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster.” His most recent film, “Crude,” debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and received numerous accolades including Best International Green Film at Berlin’s prestigious Cinema For Peace.

Mari Jo Winkler is currently executive producing David Koepp’s Premium Rush starring Joseph Gordon Levitt. She also Executive Produced the soon to be released Doug Liman’s Fair Game starring Noami Watts and Sean Penn, as well as “Away We Go,” “Dan in Real Life” and “No Reservations” and has Co-Produced “Lucky You,” “In Her Shoes” and “Shall We Dance.” She is currently executive producing David Koepp’s “Premium Rush.”

Read after the jump the complete descriptions of all of the panels, workshops, and talks.

[Read more →]

Telling Their Own Stories: The Individual as Documentarian and The Impact of User-Generated Media

(Preceded by Screening of Jennifer Arnold’s A Small Act)

Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentaries

A Joint Program of IFP and the United Nations’ Department of Public Information

TheTimesCenter

New York, NY

July 10, 2010

After a lunch break following the “Education Obstacles and Solutions in Africa – The Power of One” panel at Envision, a panel of representatives from human rights organizations with media programs that train and equip individuals around the world with cameras to document and tell stories about the issues affecting their lives and communities, was presented with clips shown from each of their respective video programs. [Read more →]

Education Obstacles and Solutions in Africa

Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentaries

A Joint Program of IFP and the United Nations’ Department of Public Information

TheTimesCenter

New York, NY

July 10, 2010

By Erin Essenmacher

This panel directly followed the screening of Jennifer Arnold’s documentary  A Small Act.  The film follows the parallel stories of Chris Mburu, a UN worker from Kenya and Hilde Back the Swedish woman who sponsored his secondary education and paved the way for law school and a degree from Harvard.  30 years after Ms. Back’s small act of generosity transformed his life, Chris is a UN Official and has founded the Hilde Back Education Fund, which offers scholarships to a new generation of Kenyans so that they, too, may be able to attend secondary school. This sponsorship is not simply a means to education, but a lifeline that can lift these young people from poverty and allow them to reach their full potential in the world.

The panel that followed was moderated by Stephane Dujarric, Senior Advisor and Spokesperson, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and featured the subject of the film, Chris Mbutu, now the Chief in the Anti-Discrimination Section, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations

Other panelists included:

Penny Abeywardena, Senior Manager of Education/Girls and Women, Clinton Global Initiative

Allison Anderson, Scholar, Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution

Michael Gibbons, Education Partnership for Children on Conflict at the Council on Foreign Relations and International Training and Education Program, American University

Heather Simpson, Senior Director, Education and Child Development, Save the Children [Read more →]

Keynote Speech: Harry Belafonte

Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentaries

A Joint Program of IFP and the United Nations’ Department of Public Information

TheTimesCenter

New York, NY

July 10, 2010

By Brian Geldin

Photo by Erin Essemmacher.

The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) and the United Nations Department of Public Information (UN DPI) presented its second annual “Envision: Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries” forum yesterday at TheTimesCenter in New York City. The event combined film presentations with substantive, live-audience discussions on pressing global issues. The U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) served as the focal point. The Spotlight Focus for was exploring creative solutions to our global education crisis, specifically focusing on the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal primary education. World-renowned actor, musician and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Harry Belafonte (who my generation might best remember his song “Day-O, The Banana Boat Song” in the famous dinner table dance scene of Tim Burton’s 1988 classic, Beetlejuice,”) presented the keynote address. More of my notes (and fellow contributor Erin Essenmacher) from further panels and discussions at Envision will be posted soon here on The Film Panel Notetaker. [Read more →]

Two years ago, I visited the United Nations building for the very first time for an event to benefit renewable energy and awareness of climate change where I didn’t get to meet Leonardo DiCaprio.  My friends at IFP have alerted me to their event in which they’ve hooked up with the UN called ENVISION: Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries. The event takes place this Saturday from 9am-7pm at the TimesCenter (not at the UN, but an equally cool place). See details below.

For the second year IFP is collaborating with the United Nation’s Department of Public Information to present ENVISION – a forum uniting the filmmaking community, civil society organizations, activists, journalists, public policy makers, NGOs, and the general public in the shared goal of envisioning a better world for all and achieving impact through media. The Spotlight Focus in 2010 from the UN’s Millennium Development Goals is the goal of universal education. Screenings of Jennifer Arnold’s A Small Act (HBO Documentaries) and Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman (Paramount Vantage) will be accompanied by discussions on challenges to achieving education globally, the impact of individual action and philanthropy, and current issues around the U.S. education crisis. To purchase tickets and for details on the program, to be held Saturday, July 10 at the TimesCenter, click here. Tickets are only $25 with the code IFPENV.

WFF Woodstock in the City Series Presents

FutureStates

92Y Tribeca

June 30, 2010

By Brian Geldin

A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), FutureStates is a compilation of science fiction short films by acclaimed filmmakers that poses the theoretical question: What could possibly happen in America within the near future that might reshape humanity, the environment, the economy and other pressing issues? Five of the films in the series screened last Wednesday at the 92Y Tribeca during a presentation by the Woodstock Film Festival’s Woodstock in the City Series. WFF Co-Founder & Director Meira Blaustein made a few opening remarks and handed over the mic to Woodstock in the City Series programmer Sabine Hoffman, who introduced the films for the evening.

Five of the films in the FutureStates series were presented:

• Mister Green – A parable about change. Directed by Greg Pak (Robot Stories) [present].
• The Rise – A story in the not-so-distant future about a generation letting go of the American Dream and a new generation adapting to life on the edge. Directed by Garret Williams [not present].
• Silver Sling – In the polarized economy of the near future, corporations offer financial incentives to their high-ranking female employees to pay for chemically accelerated surrogate births. Directed by Tze Chun (WFF alum – Children of Invention) [present].
• Tent City – Unemployment is in the double digits, and block after block of businesses and homes have been foreclosed and abandoned. Only the powerful few live in homes, while the rest must survive in the tent cities cropping up everywhere. Directed by Aldo Velasco [not present]
• Tia And Marco – In the year 2025, all U.S. citizens in good health are now required to serve one year in a government job, placed by lottery in to schools, soup kitchens, highways and borders. Directed by Annie J. Howell [present]. [Read more →]

The Austin Connection
Saturday, May 8 2010 @ 2:15pm, Curtis Theatre, George Eastman House

(L to R: Jim Healy, David Lowery, Bryan Poyser, Alex Karpovsky)

Moderator: Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, George Eastman House

With: David Lowery, Director, St. Nick
Bryan Poyser, Director, Lovers of Hate
Alex Karpovsky, Director, Trust Us, This Is All Made Up

The Austin Connection followed a three-fer screening at The Little Theatre the previous evening: St. Nick, Lovers of Hate, and Trust Us, This Is All Made Up. Healy was quick to point out the connection to the three films: Lowery directed St. Nick, and also did cinematography for Lovers of Hate, directed by Poyser, which stars Alex Karpovsky, who directed Trust Us, This Is All Made Up. [Read more →]

Q & A with Family Affair Director Chico Colvard

Silverdocs

June 24, 2010

By Erin Essenmacher

Family Affair starts with the memory of a shooting. Director Chico Colvard, who narrates the film, explains how in 1978, as a ten year-old boy emulating scenes from his favorite show the “The Rifleman,” he shot his sister with one of the many guns his father kept in the house. Blessedly, she didn’t die. But she thought she was going to, which led her to confess a shocking and horrible secret: her father had sexually molested and physically abused her and her two sisters on a regular basis, for years.  The fallout from that revelation tore the family apart.  The father did jail time.  The children’s mother, who supported her daughters when the allegations came to light, couldn’t deal with the aftermath and abandoned the children soon after.  Flash forward twenty years: The girls are all grown up, some with children of their own, all with emotional scars that continue to manifest in their adult lives.  Their mother is still more or less absent save for a recriminating letter she sent the family.  And the father whose actions caused the destruction?  He was freed after less than a year in jail and now comes over for Thanksgiving dinner and sees his daughters on a regular basis. [Read more →]

Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You, Mommy)

Q&A with Director, Stephanie Wang-Breal

Silverdocs

June 22, 2010

By Erin Essenmacher

Stephanie Wang-Breal’s Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You, Mommy) provides incredible emotional access into the complex world of transracial, international adoption.   The film is equal parts heartwarming, laugh-out-loud funny, uncomfortable and at times, viscerally upsetting (the woman next to me, who I had never met before, leaned over at one point during the film to express her anger and incredulity at one particular scene.)

Here’s the brief synopsis:  Donna Sadowskyy and her husband Jeff have 3 children – 2 biological teenage boys and a younger daughter, Darah, who they adopted from China when she was 14 months old.  Still they feel like their family is not yet complete, so they decide to adopt another daughter. This new child also comes from China, but with one critical difference: Fang Sui Yong (now known by her American name, Faith) is 8 years old at the time of he adoption. To complicate things further, Faith speaks no English and Donna speaks only a few very basic words of Mandarin.  The film follows Donna as she journeys to China to meet Faith and bring her home, and chronicles the next 18 months in the family’s life, including Faith’s struggles to learn English and to reconcile her new life in America with her Chinese upbringing and heritage. Oftentimes, especially during tense emotional moments between mother and daughter, filmmaker Wang-Breal, steps in and serves as translator. [Read more →]