DI Faculty Shoot in Israel
DI Associate Director Cindy Hill films in the Negev Desert
The DI faculty recently traveled to Israel to continue principal shooting on the latest Institute film, The Last Flight of Petr Ginz. In addition to conducting interviews and archival research at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the crew traveled to the Wise Observatory in the Negev desert to shoot Chava Pressburger, sister of Petr Ginz, viewing the asteroid named after her brother.
The faculty will travel to Toronto and South Florida this summer to shoot final interviews for the project.
NEA Funds Ginz Animation
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the Documentary Institute a grant of $30,000 for its production of The Last Flight of Petr Ginz. The film will tell the story of artistic and literary prodigy, Petr Ginz. By 14 Petr had written five novels and penned a diary about the Nazi occupation of Prague. By 16 he had produced 120 drawings and paintings, edited an underground magazine in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, written numerous short stories and had walked to the gas chamber at Auschwitz.
DI Named Top Ten Program
Noting its “outstanding reputation” and its award-winning student films, The Independent recently named the Documentary Institute in its review of the best programs for documentary filmmakers,
The Academics of Documentary: The Top Ten
DI Wins Top Emmy Honor--Again!
For the second consecutive year, a DI student film brings home the top Emmy honor. Standard Deviation, co-directed by 2008 graduates Christopher Brannan and David Randag, was named the winner of the Documentary category at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s 30th College Television Awards black-tie gala in Los Angeles.
Standard Deviation is the story of the troubled, but brilliant, young physicist Billy Cottrell and the events leading to his incarceration as an Eco-terrorist. The film has screened at Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival (awarded Best Student Documentary prize), The Daytona Beach Film Festival (Audience Favorite), and the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. It will also screen at the Buffalo-Niagra Film Festival in May.
Standard Deviation faced its fair share of competition. It went up against two films from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in the final round of the documentary division.
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Pitching to the Pros at Silverdocs
Michael Nichols, co-director of Man Behind the Curtain pitches at Silverdocs
It just keeps getting better every year. That seemed to be the consensus of all involved with the annual student pitch session at Silverdocs. In its fourth year, the “pitch the pros” session allows two graduate student filmmakers from the Doc Institute, NYU’s Graduate Program in Culture and Media, and American University’s School of Communications to present their film projects to a distinguished panel of commissioning editors, distributors and executive producers.
Silverdocs Honors Maysles
This year’s Silverdocs Film Festival offered DI students an opportunity to catch up with some former mentors at an event honoring renowned filmmaker Al Maysles. The festival honored Maysles, who is widely recognized as a pioneer of “direct cinema” and regarded as one of America’s foremost non-fiction filmmakers, at its annual Charles Guggenheim Symposium. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple attended the event to pay tribute to Maysles’ filmmaking career.
DI student Carlos Torres,who spent last summer interning with Kopple’s Cabin Creek Films in New York, welcomed the chance the evening gave him to catch up with Kopple. 2008 DI graduate Michelle Friedline, and former Maysles Film intern, also attended the event. Michelle is one of several students who have interned at Maysles Films and reaped the benefits of learning the craft from one of the industry’s most respected filmmakers.
