I just saw the very successful Canadian-produced documentary ‘Up the Yangze’ and was very impressed. This is a first film, by a young Montreal-based director of Chinese origin, Yung Chang. It tells an epic story, with grand visuals of the transformation of the Three Gorges and the Yangze river valley, but it tells it through a touching and closely filmed story mainly of one family. They are poor uneducated farmers, and they cultivate a small plot of land by the river. As the plans for damming the river move ahead, they know their land will be flooded and they will be displaced along with 2 million other people. Unable to pay for her education, they send their oldest daughter to get a job on a touristtour boat which travels up the river to the dam, in the final stages of construction. This provides terrific opportunities for showing the encounter of two worlds, and for cutting back and forth between the obsequious tour guides who are prepared to say anything to please the authorities and make a buck, and the struggling farm family for whom this whole development is a disaster. The filmmakers mine this rich vein for all it’s worth, to great effect. The numerous ironies and the poignancy of the situation steers the film away from any kind of simplistic analysis. And far from romanticising the old ways, they contrast the hardships of the age-old poverty with the glitter of a new shamelessly promotional commercialism. Through the story of one family you get a portrait of all of China and its dilemmas, economic, environmental, human. It’s also beautifuly filmed and edited. What an accomplishment ! I encourage you to go and see this film on the big screen, we need to show that there’s a place for theatrical screenings of docs.
A month ago I talked about several lists of ‘best documentaries’ on this blog, and seem to have started quite a discussion. Good, because these lists - all of course subjective - need to be discussed. And as always when you do something you learn someting, One of the many resources brought to my attention over the last few weeks is Lois Siegel’s terrific web site, which includes a list of documentaires. Lois has no particular pretensions with her list, but it’s one good source for people looking for good docs. I spoke to Lois about it:
How did you come to start your list ?
The Documentary Film List is part of my website Film Fanatics: The site has all kinds of information on it: acting, animation, documentary films, feature films, filmmakers, funding, history, screenwriting, schools..anything that I think might be of interest to someone and it serves
as a good reference for me. and my video students at the University of Ottawa also have access to it and young filmmakers I mentor.
What are your criteria for including a film?
When I see films that I like, I often add them to the list.
I haven’t had time to add every film I like to the list. I add a bit at a time. I have a list of almost 200 films that I used to show in my classes at John Abbott College, and now at the University of Ottawa.
I still have to add films that appear on my Documentary Filmmakers site:
This is a work in progress. I need more hours in a day. I’m working as a freelance photographer, a musician and I teach, so my time is limited.
Sometimes the films I like reflect my personal interests… e.g. Model by Frederick Wiseman. I really like this film… I’m a photographer, so this film interests me, and I’m a filmmaker, and there’s a section on filming a
commercial in Wiseman’s production. I also like his film The Store because I grew up in department stores. My father owned them. Other people wouldn’t see this film the same way I see it because of my background.
We bring to films who we are, how we see the world, and what we understand about it. No two people have the same background. I like films about chess players because I played chess as a child. If you didn’t, then these films might bore you.
I have over 1000 pages on my main website now.
I have many interests. and I work on the pages a bit every day.
Lois Siegel
Do you try to find all films that correspond to your criteria, or you just
go with films you happen to see ?
I include films I see, but I’m always looking for interesting films. I view films all the time. And I went to the Montreal World Film Festival for years.
As a filmmaker, I wanted to see as many films as possible. When I worked at The National Film Board, I used to take 16mm films home to screen all the time, then it was VHS tapes. Now I borrow films from the Ottawa Public Library and the University of Ottawa library (VHS, DVD).
Teaching allows me to see films I might not otherwise have access to. I can request films for purchase or for viewing. I also see films at the Bytowne Cinema - press screenings, because I write reviews for my website
and for The Glebe Report (Ottawa).
Your site attracts a lot of traffic, do you know who visits?
My complex of web pages attracts 55,000 hits a day. (not just the documentary page).
People from all over the world visit my site.
Last October there were 1.5 million hits.
Raging Grannies at their last Unconvention. Photo Simon Bujold.
For the last three years I have been working on a film about the Raging Grannies. This film is about a Canadian movement which has become international. It’s about using humour to fight for peace, social justice and the environment. It’s about learning how to grow old and remain an active citizen. It’s about a voice in society for older women. We have a French-language broadcaster but there is little interest among English-language ones. That’s why we - our producers at Island Filmworks and our team - are launching a private fundraising drive. We want to collect some of the money needed for the film, and we want to build momentum.
My desire to make a film about the Raging Grannies stems from many years of seeing these wonderful and inspiring women in action, at rallies and demonstrations for peace, environmental protection and social justice. The theme that runs through all my work is that of people standing up for their rights. And whenever there’s a David fighting a Goliath, the Grannies are never far away! I even remember seeing them singing, one of them in a wheelchair, against the background of clouds of teargas at the Quebec City Summit of the Americas.
Over the last three years I have been privileged to meet and get to know Raging Grannies across Canada and the U.S., including the founding Grannies in Victoria B.C. I filmed their 20th anniversary celebrations (see my previous post on the Victoria Grannies shoot), as well as several other events we didn’t want to miss – the arrest and trial of 20 grannies arrested for their anti-war protests in New Yorkwas one of them. It was a little unfortunate that so much of the travel and other expenses had to be charged to our credit cards – but the footage is in the can, that’s what counts.
And here is a short video which gives you an idea of what kind of situations you might find in the film:
I have the privilege of working with some veteran filmmakers who are also good friends on this project, Martin Duckworth, Carole Royand Terre Nash among them. It seems all the conditions are there for making a great film. My personal hope is that we will succeed in doing just what those wonderful Grannies do: use humor, irony and creativity to entertain an audience while making it think about important issues.
One of our main characters, Muriel Duckworth, is now preparing to celebrate her 99th birthday. The founding Grannies in Victoria are still active but frail as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movement. It is high time to make this film. If the broadcasters won’t support us, we’re convinced the public will.
I am fortunate to have an excellent coordinator for the fundraising campaign, Dijana Lazar. I’ll let her tell you how it is organized:
We have decided to launch a private on-line fundraising campaign to help finance theGranny Power project, using an internet fundraising platform called GiveMeaning.Com
With the help of a Montreal based NGO called Alternatives and our interns from Montreal and Toronto, we are aiming to raise 25000$ to kick start the project and prove we have popular support. We need your help to achieve that!
You can contribute to this campaign in many ways : by voting for our project (voting process lasts for another week), by supporting it financially (fundraising starts on February 12th and all donations over 5$ are tax deductible), by spreading the word amongst your friends and contacts, by posting a link for our web page on your blog or web site…
Your support will be greatly appreciated!
Team Beijing Dreams From China - behind the scenes of award-winning Lao Shan Lao Yin - Jakob makeup
I am amazed how many people are able and willing to make films without funding. A couple of years ago I chaired a competition called Green Camera ( Caméra verte) and we received 135 short films although the deadline was tight. There are also a number of competitions where teams make films in 48 hours of a week. One of the better established ones is The International Documentary Challenge which returns to Hot Docs in April 2008. Registration for the 3rd annual Doc Challenge held from March 6 to 10 2008, is now open. I put a few questions to the producer of the event Doug Whyte.
Doug Whyte, Doc Challenge Producer.
1. Where did the idea come from?
I work for KDHX Community Media (www.kdhx.org), a non-profit community media organization in St. Louis, MO. (Though I am now based out of Portland, OR.) I produce the St. Louis 48 Hour Film Project (www.48hourfilm.com) for them and after seeing how the fiction filmmaking community has embraced the 48 Hour Film Project, I figured I’d try and launch a similar event for non-fiction filmmakers. Of course, I wasn’t sure how this would work for docs since it often takes years to make a decent one. But the results have been tremendous! The films are so good that Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival (www.hotdocs.ca) came on board to be the Presenting Partner and host the premiere of the finalists and the awards ceremony. Other screening partners include SILVERDOCS, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, the International Documentary Association, the Documentary Organization of Canada and the 48 Hour Film Project.
2. And how many times have you done this?
This will be the third year of the Doc Challenge and the second year at Hot Docs. This year we will be doing more regional screenings in cities with clusters of participants, including (most likely) Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, St. Louis, Washington DC, Missoula, and Toronto. These screenings will showcase the locally made films as well as some of the international winners.
3. Is there a theme, or constraints? When do the contestants learn what they are?
On Thursday morning March 6 each team is given the choice of genres for its film, be it Character Study, 1st Person, Music, etc. In addition, all filmmakers will be given a broad theme (such as “Freedom”) that must be addressed at some point in their film. To ensure the films were made within the required time frame, each team must prove the date the film was made by adding a time element to the film or credits (such as the main subject holding a newspaper.)
Then the film must be sent to Doc Challenge headquarters with a postmark no later than Monday, March 10.
4. It seems more and more people are willing to contribute audiovisual pieces for free, to competitions and web sites. Do you think established people with a production company or whatever have an edge here, or that it’s really a pretty equal playing field given how accessible new technologies are?
I would say in a competition like this it is a fairly equal playing field. With such a short time frame, it comes down to engaging characters and story (as it usually does.) That’s not to say that very professional camera work and editing doesn’t give a film an advantage, but it must have the story first. Some of our finalists in the past 2 years have ranged from established filmmakers like Doug Hawes-Davis (Libby, Montana on POV) to first-timers that found extremely engaging and unique subjects. The Doc Challenge is an event that appeals to both novice and professional filmmakers alike: novice filmmakers have the opportunity to go through the whole filmmaking process in less than a week, learning the art of documentary production in a trial by fire situation, and professionals have the opportunity to work on a creative, personal project without having to commit years of their life. One thing I would like to say about this event is that filmmakers are doing much more than just entering a festival. First, we limit the number of entries (250) where festivals do not. (Sundance just had over 8,000!) Second, by registering, they are in the competition, not just “considered” for it. We work toward getting the films screened and distributed, no matter if they are winners or not. At a festival you get one screening (maybe two.) In the last 2 years we worked all year on getting the films screened many times and we actually got more TV distribution for non-winners than winners! And if we find distribution for a film, the split is 75% (filmmaker) to 25% (Doc Challenge.) Also, we are a non-profit organization and all proceeds go back into the event to make it better.
Thanks to Steven Ladouceur for the help with this blog.
