Posts filed under 'Doc talk'
Next week, FIR goes back to school. For one week, that is.
It’s an invitation from a very interesting new cross-disciplinary research group at Concordia University called GOING PUBLIC*. FIR is doing a series of lectures and screenings all week long, culminating in a public screening on Thursday Sept 24, 6 pm at EV 1.615, York Building.
On Friday Sept 25, I go back to my alma mater, McGill U, for two talks, one in the education faculty, the other in medicine. Both are open to all disciplines though. check out the events and news section for deets.
* GOING PUBLIC is an initiative in Conversational Scholarship exploring public histories, public art practices, public memory and knowledge
September 18th, 2009
FIR is hitting Europe next week. First up, Brussels, for the European Media Event, and then to the pebble beaches of Slovenia, for the third and final re-iteration of the EsoDoc sessions of this year.
Both visits involve mentoring emerging new media doc projects, with talented and experienced creators.
And speaking of emerging projects, we here at FIR are gearing up to announce our new FIR project very, very soon. Its been in the works for over a year, and we are close to a public announcement, so stay tuned.
Meanwhile, watch our events and new page for FIR screenings and events this fall.
September 1st, 2009
Here’s the German press release for our screening In Berlin, July 14.
7 INTERVENTIONS OF FILMMAKER-IN-RESIDENCE
Regie: Heather Frise und Katerina Cizek
Dienstag, 14. Juli 2009 - 20 Uhr
Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb)
Filmhaus - 9. Stock
Potsdamer Straße 2 - 10785 Berlin
Diese Veranstaltung findet in Zusammenarbeit mit der
Media Antenne BB statt, die im Anschluß
zu einem Umtrunk ins dffb-Caffee einlädt
Filmmaker-in-Residence ist ein innovatives Dokumentarfilmexperiment des National Film Board von Canada.
Die Media-makerin Katerina Cizek arbeitet seit 2004 als artist in residence an dem für innovative Behandlungsmethoden bekannten innerstädtischen Krankenhaus St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto. Dieses bahnbrechende Projekt von media intervention integriert Dokumentarfilm, mit video bridging, Photologs und digitalem Geschichtenerzählen. Es versucht eine “kollektive Intelligenz” zu entwickeln, um die Komplexität von sozialen Fragen zu untersuchen und die Rolle von cross-medialer kreativer Zusammenarbeit über die Grenzen der einzelnen Disziplinen und Hierarchien hinaus möglich zu machen.
Das Projekt 7 Interventions ist bereits mehrfach ausgezeichnet: Webby Award 2008 (Oscar des Internets); Canadian New Media Award 2007; Banff Television Award 2008; nominiert: Grierson Award für Innovation und UN Summit Award. www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence.
June 29th, 2009
In another digital twist on the NFB’s challenge for change project, E-cinema comes to the island where it all began:
from cbc.ca
A scene from The Children of Fogo Island, which the National Film Board produced on the island in the 1960s and 1970s. (NFB)
***
A new project promises electronic delivery of films, including documentaries and dramas, to residents of Fogo Island, about eight miles off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.
It’s the first English-language test of a plan by the National Film Board to make thousands of films available to remote communities that do not have access to cinema.
The Fogo Island e-cinema theatre, to be operating by November, is a collaboration with the Shorefast Foundation, a charitable organization that works to promote economic sufficiency on Fogo.
<snip>
Films will be made available electronically from the NFB’s collection of 13,000 productions, as they become digitized. All the NFB’s newest releases are available in digital format.
The films can be delivered overnight via a high-speed internet line, beamed to the Fogo screening room from a server in Montreal.
<snip>
The Shorefast Foundation foresees film clubs or other community associations getting together to choose what they want to see, and setting up a screening night in the e-cinema.
That will initially be a conference room near the centre of the island, but later could be in a new community arts centre.
Fogo Island doesn’t currently have a cinema, Shorefast’s Zita Cobb told CBC News, and it got reliable internet access just a few months ago.
That’s why the foundation was eager to bring islanders this chance to get together and see films, she said.
“Cultural vitality is a key to keeping rural communities vibrant,” she said, adding that the island is facing great transitions as it adapts to disappearing fisheries and today’s economic problems.
It is not the first NFB collaboration in Fogo, which has a population of 2,700 in just 11 small communities.
Back in the late 1960s, a series of NFB films made on Fogo examined isolation and poverty on the island. Filmmaker Colin Low worked with island residents to create 28 short films about their lives in a media program called Challenge for Change.
People can see themselves
Those films led to a groundbreaking process of community development that continues to this day.
“It was a time of great crisis, the provincial government was thinking of relocating the population,” Perlmutter said. “It allowed them to understand common problems and solutions and the fish processing plant was built and it created an economic reliability and it was done through film.”
With the e-cinema set to open in November, the people in those groundbreaking films can see themselves.
“Now we have them all, and they’re beautiful now that they’re digitized,” Cobb said of the Fogo Island films. “It gives us our stories back.”
The film project in the 1960s “provided an opportunity for us to get to know each other and to see the outside world,” Cobb said. She believes the e-cinema will do the same thing for the small communities of Fogo.
The NFB’s e-cinema network began as a pilot project in five French-speaking Acadian communities in 2007.
The NFB plans to build a chain of e-cinemas to provide a forum for showing Canadian films to Canadians.
June 18th, 2009
It’s a 5-day workshop in the beautiful city of Ottawa. The seminar is highly interactive: come workshop your ideas. We’ll talk about using new platforms, the interweb, collaboration and making media that actually matters. We had a great time last year, please join us and spread the word. May 26-31. http://www.cstc.ca/sift/sift-doc.asp#2
April 29th, 2009
It’s almost here!
The 3-disc Box Set of everything that is Filmmaker-in-Residence.
We sent it off to the printing presses yesterday, after a year in the making. A new feature film, and eight hours of bonus material, with in-depth interviews and resource materials.
Watch this blog for updates on the release, screenings and launch events!
***
Filmmaker-in-Residence: The Complete Collection
Everyone participates – everyone has a voice – and the message is revolutionary.
Take one dynamic filmmaker; add a team of nurses, doctors and community members on the front lines in urban and global health; then introduce interventionist media—and you have Filmmaker-in-Residence, a new model for collaboration now recognized worldwide as a blueprint for positive change in the digital age.
The National Film Board of Canada placed media maker Katerina Cizek “in residence” at Toronto’s inner-city St. Michael’s Hospital, renowned for innovation in patient care and research. The result is a collection of multi-platform documentaries that prove digital storytelling can work as a tool for social action.
Young, homeless mothers problem-solve through “videobridging.” Community-based care saves lives in southern Africa. Suicide intervention therapy and film animation intertwine. Throughout, doctors, nurses and media-makers work together to create transformative tools.
Filmmaker-in-Residence: The Complete Collection includes two DVDs and a CD-ROM edition of the web-doc www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence and over eight hours of bonus material.
FEATURING:
• 7 Interventions of Filmmaker-in-Residence: an 80-minute documentary film + special features
• Filmmaker-in-Residence: The films + related special features
The Bicycle, The Interventionists, Hand-Held, Drawing From Life
• Filmmaker-in-Residence web-documentary CD-ROM + resource materials
April 18th, 2009
Congrats to our pal producer Martin Potter in Australia, who has just launched a great new project, Big Stories, Small Towns.
I quote:
Big Stories, Small Towns is an innovative online film project and a true Australian first. Developed and produced by the Media Resource Centre (MRC) in partnership with Screen Australia and the SA Film Corporation, its aim was to create an opportunity for experienced filmmakers to work with residents of a regional town to bring their personal stories about living in the community to the screen. The resulting films are presented in an online format only via a specially created website.
Award-winning documentary makers Jeni Lee and Sieh Mchawala (see bios below) lived in Port Augusta for several months last year - making films with the locals to create an inspiring portrait of the town. The project has been shaped through extensive
consultation and the resulting stories reveal what the community knows as its hidden truths.
“This was the first time a filmmaker residency of this type was conducted in Australia and we were thrilled it took place in regional South Australia,” says MRC director, Gail Kovatseff. “We’re especially delighted with the quality and content of the films which have been produced. Instead of sensationalised stories about rural decline and dysfunction, these are moving personal insights into a community which is diverse in age, race and economic fortune – but bound by an amazing sense of spirit.”
The international online premiere of Big Stories, Small Towns will take place at the Mercury Cinema on Thursday February 19 – with the films launched by legendary, independent Canadian filmmaker and former Adelaide Thinker in Residence, Peter Wintonick.
“The model for Big Stories, Small Towns came from Canada, in fact from Katerina Cizek – who was Peter’s co-director on Seeing Is Believing – so it’s great Peter can be with us as we share these amazing tales with the rest of the world for the first time via the Internet,” says Ms Kovatseff.
Following the launch, the films will be available for viewing online by people around the world at either www.bigstoriessmalltowns.com.au or www.bigstories.com.au
March 3rd, 2009
Filmmaker-in-Residence is on the road. a very long and winding road.
First stop was Montreal, to finish the sound mix on Drawing from Life, the film about the group therapy for recurrent suicide attempters. I don’t think I’ll ever hear it sound so good again - the sound theatre at the NFB is incredible.
Ottawa was a three-day thing, teaching a session on Interventionist and Participatory Media at the fantastic SIFT school, now 28-years in the running. Had an awesome group of engaged and passionate participants. Drawing from Life was a hit, methinks. It really was one of the first screenings outside of the field. And it was received very, very well, so I am getting really excited to release it to the bigger world. I also shed a tear as Sarah Polley accepted the first ever Anthony Minghella Memorial Award.
Now I’ve just arrived at the Novacello monastery in Italy, where I’ll be mentoring and presenting FIR to a ESoDoc, a collection of mid-career media-makers from all over europe. I”ll have a day or two in Venice workshopping a friend’s script, and then it’s off to NYC to pick-up the Webby statue on behalf of the FIR team and Subject Matter.
Whirlwind or what. I’ll post photos of this magical monastery in the mountains soon.
June 3rd, 2008
Check out this site where you can map your brain, and brainstorm with others. It’s called Mindmeister. The image above is my breakdown of Filmmaker-in-Residence. Check out other people’s maps on the site - someone has plotted out their happiness, others create their “to do” lists, others have elaborate schemes of how the universe works. It’s a great visualization tool.
May 26th, 2008
All week long, we’re at the Gladstone Hotel, shooting interviews with all the Filmmaker-in-Residence partners to talk about and reflect on our many collaborations. We’ll weave this material together into the FIR compilation DVD, that will include ALL the films, ALL the special features, ALL glued together with these “Gladstone interviews.”
Pictured above is my 260 degree (or so) view of the drawing room earlier today. So great to get a chance to hear people’s points of view on all the films we’ve made together. And sooooo great to have a real crew - two cameras even. I feel like I’ve died and gone to FIR heaven.
And lunch was not bad either:
Monica (DOP) had the near north salad, Chris (Second Camera and super-tech whiz) had the Gaspé Tourtière, Tim (sound) had the risotto, Heather (director, editor and long-time FIRer) and I split the veggie burger. But I digress.
May 22nd, 2008
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