The other day I heard someone express concern because her son used the term “that’s so gay” to convey disgust. A friend of mine recently was frustrated by the continued used of the word “retarded.”Because of the potential reach of our films, as storytellers we tend to be particularly sensitive to how words and images […]
One of the best parts of being a documentary filmmaker is that everyday work can take you on incredible trips and connect you with inspiring people around the globe. Recently, one of our field producers, Mark Jackson, embarked on one such trip from his home in Cape Town, South Africa, to Bangalore, India. His goal […]
There’s no place like home. Except, that is, for immigrants trying to reestablish a sense of self, community, and purpose amidst an entirely changed landscape. For them, home can be as disorienting and uncomfortable as the journeys that led them there. Gladis Alarcon shares her story of immigrating to America from El Salvador and discusses […]
When I was studying journalism in graduate school, Pulitzer-prize-winning professor Dale Maharidge had us read a bunch of Tolstoy. Not his essays or journals, but his fully-fledged fiction. Interesting, don’t you find, for a journalism class? I don’t remember which novels we had to read or the details of the course, but I do remember […]
Sometimes people have a hard time appreciating the great differences between commercial and documentary approaches to video production. Part of the difference stems from the historical need of the documentary filmmaker to adapt to the realities of working within limited budgets – budgets that simply wouldn’t work within a traditional commercial approach. Since much of […]