Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints: category

Guinea pig detectives cover page. Illustration by Pierre Durand.
Together with my friend and colleague Patricia Bergeron I spent last week in intensive consultations about cross-platform documentaries - meaning documentaries which aren’t just a film or a TV program but also play themselves out on the web, including in the social networks. ( Cross-platform or transmedia [...]

Béthièle when she was five.
A documentary filmmaker in Canada today might be forgiven for being discouraged. The combined impact of the crisis of television, the more general economic crisis, and the Conservative government’s policies are having a devastating impact on our traditional sources of funding. There is definitely a ‘paradigm shift’ underway. New models of [...]

Ebbe the movie by Jane Magnusson and Karin af Klintberg
The nominations for the Swedish Guldbagge, the equivalent of Quebec’s Jutras were very interesting. In the documentary category Ebbe the movie by Jane Magnusson and Karin af Klintberg is a fascinating film about Publisher Ebbe Carlson, a larger-than life character whose social climbing and political manipulations [...]

Ebbe the movie de Jane Magnusson et Karin af Klintberg

Plusieurs films intéressants étaient en nomination pour l’équivalent des Jutras en Suède, les Guldbaggar.
Dans la catégorie documentaire, Ebbe the movie de Jane Magnusson et Karin af Klintberg est un portrait fascinant de l’éditeur Ebbe Carlsson qui a monté les échélons de la politiques suédoise grâce [...]

We are all of course terribly sad about the tragedy in Haiti – our family not the least since we have a daughter who lived her first years in Port au Prince. I of course encourage everyone to contribute money to the relief and reconstruction efforts.
Among the many film crews now in Port au Prince [...]

I just saw the film The Informant! labeled a dark comedy, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Matt Damon, based on the 2000 non-fiction book by the same name by journalist Kurt Eichenwald. It tells the story of a bumbling whistleblower who takes on the management of the giant agribusiness corporation he works for, but who [...]

Still from the film ‘Final Offer’ directed by Sturla Gunnarsson
I recently had the opportunity to co-direct a 25-minute video for the Canadian Auto Workers with my wife Jocelyne Clarke. This is one of the very few commissioned pieces I have worked on in my 30 years of doing audiovisual work, but the Auto Workers [...]

An image from Lech Kowalski’s ‘Hey! Is Dee Dee Home?’
Last week I saw the most creatively radical documentary I have ever seen, East of Paradise (2004) by Lech Kowalski. It breaks every convention of story development. The first half of the film is made up of an interview with Kowalski’s mother, about the horrors [...]

Manifestation en août 2006, réclamant que Exxon nettoie les plages et qu’il paie pour les dommages.
Un des meilleurs films que j’avais vu aux Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal au mois de novembre sera aussi présenté cette semaine au Festival des Films sur les Droits, aussi à Montréal, et sera également diffusé à Radio-Canada [...]

I am screening a ton of rushes, not much time for writing. But I thought I’d pass on a couple of interesting links.

An image from the documentary ‘The Age of Stupid’
First, about the ‘crowd-funded’ documentary The Age of Stupid, by British documentarian Director Franny Armstrong and Producer Lizzie Gillett. Film completed, their aim over [...]