

Thank you to all who have supported this project and thanks to those interested as well. I will keep you updated on the status of the project as developments occur.


Thank you to all who have supported this project and thanks to those interested as well. I will keep you updated on the status of the project as developments occur.
Groundswell Films is looking for an intern this summer to help research philanthropic and sponsorship leads for The Robben Island Singers, a 360 Media Project. Fundraising is not the most glamorous part of filmmaking, but it is an absolute necessity if you want to make independent work. We are looking for a mature student, with excellent research and written communication skills to work in our downtown Chicago office. Candidate must be well organized and able to meet deadlines. Position is two to three days per week and is unpaid, but includes a stipend to cover your expenses.
Please email Jennifer@amdurspitz.com if you are interested. Thanks.
Synopsis:
Shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006, this film breaks the silence surrounding the tens of thousands of women and girls who have been kidnapped, raped and sexually tortured in that country’s intractable civil war. The filmmaker, herself a survivor of gang rape, talks with activists, peacekeepers, physicians and with the rapists themselves. She travels to remote villages to meet rape survivors who have been shamed and abandoned, providing a piercing, intimate look into the horror, struggle and ultimate grace of their lives.
The filmmaker, Lisa F. Jackson will be in attendance at a Human Rights Watch International Film Festival on Thursday, June 18th at 5:30 in the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago. Here are the details:
Benefit Screening and Reception
Thursday, June 18, 2009
5:30 PM
Museum of Contemporary Art
(220 East Chicago Avenue, Education Center Entrance)
Featuring a screening of
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
Winner of the Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2008
With special guest Lisa F. Jackson, director
STUDENT – ticket(s) at $25 each
Check out the selection of new courses for the Documentary Program.
24 – 2806 Documentary Research
Comprehensive overview of documentary research and pragmatic documentary writing. Critically analyze and evaluate sources and evidence. Develop research protocols and methodology. Conduct primary research resulting in a working hypothesis and leading to a proposal premise. Apply legal and ethical elements to documentary preproduction and preparation.
24 – 2807 Documentary Storytelling
Begins with an overview of the relationships between story and discourse in narrative storytelling. Includes narrative voice and perspective, temporal and spacial arrangements of events and mutual influences between plot and character. These principles are then applied to documentary film. By studying excerpts from existing works, students develop an understanding of narrative approaches to documentary and apply that knowledge to a personal project they wish to develop.
24 – 3820 Topics in Documentary
This production course for advanced documentary students will study and engage in various subgenres of documentary filmmaking. Such topics have included Visualizing the Documentary, The Nature Film Documentary and Cinema Verite. Students may repeat this course as topics change.
This Fall
Sports Documentary
The Family and Home Movie
The following are one credit, two whole day (Friday and Saturday), nuts and bolts classes
24 – 2809 Documentary Production I: Basic Field Production
This intensive workshop gives you a solid grounding in basic documentary field production including a variety of hand-held camera moves and essential three point lighting techniques with minimal equipment. You will develop basic wired and wireless sound recording techniques.
Additional topics include set protocols and crew coordination strategies; checklists and preparation; logging and labeling.
24 – 2815 Documentary Production II
This intensive workshop gives you additional grounding in intermediate documentary field production in a variety of visual strategies, sophisticated three point lighting techniques with advanced equipment.
Additional topics include advanced sound recording techniques, one person crew strategies and production problem solving.
24 – 2811 Producing and Directing the Interview
This intensive course gives you a comprehensive advanced approach to producing and directing interviews in assorted scenarios and venues. You will prepare question banks based on pre-interviews and research. You will practice friendly, adversarial and investigative techniques.
Additional topics include booking, scheduling, visualizing the interview, crew communication, coordination and creative directing for specific styles. Ethics and legal aspects of the interview will be explored.
24 – 2812 The Interview: Lighting, Shooting and Sound Acquisition
This intensive course uses practical hands-on application; you will explore intermediate and advanced approaches to shooting, lighting and acquiring sound for both formal and alternative styles of on-camera interviews

This Thursday, May 14th, come join us for the free screening/discussion of the Oscar nominated documentary, “Trouble the Water” at Columbia College Chicago.
“Trouble the Water”, is the story that was never told about Hurricane Katrina.
The producers Tia Lessin and Carl Dean will be at the screening to answer questions and raise awareness.
Check out the website, www.troublethewaterfilm.com
Date: May 14th
Location: 623 S Wabash (1st Floor in the Hokin Hall)
Time: 6p.m.- 9 p.m.

Friday night, May 8th, North Racine at Margaret’s house, Viva doc gathered together and
1. thanked for the past board members for their awesome job,
2. welcomed the new board members for their coming year,
3. threw a surprising congratulation party for Mario’s wedding, or mourned his end of bachelor life,
4. filled empty stomachs,
5. peeping in Margaret’s sweet home,
6. and so on whatever can happen with 4 packs of wine, bottles of vodka, two ice boxes of beers and foreign name hard liquors….
what a great way to wrap up the semester and relax for the new plans for summer!
good job, Margaret! good job, viva doc!
SNAPSHOTS
Rare Cinematic Shorts, Out-takes and Commercial Work by
THE MAYSLES BROTHERS
A special program curated for STOP SMILING
STOP SMILING presents a selection of work by the documentary pioneers
behind Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens and Salesman. This one-night-only
program of Direct Cinema portraits and explorations will span both the
myriad subjects that have caught the attention of the Maysles’ lens, as
well as the five prolific decades since the brothers’ first film.
Taken out of the context of longer works, these excerpts become
self-contained narratives and singular artworks. Farm workers in
revolutionary Cuba move from shack to chic, Truman Capote introduces
Kansan friends to New York’s Fifth Avenue, and Marlon Brando flirts his
way through a spree of female interviewers, all through the Maysles’
poetic eye.
The program will also include selections from the Maysles’ impressive body
of commercial work, which they undertook in order to finance their feature
films. These commercials extend the conversation about cinema beyond the
screen, which masks the process and cost of production, to create simple,
poetic snapshots of everyday consumers. These clips exhibit the same
empathy, technique and care apparent in all Maysles films, and stand in
stark contrast to the exhaustedly produced, focus-group-oriented
television ads one sees today.
Many of the shorts, out-takes and commercials in this special program have
never before been screened in Chicago, and rarely even around the world.
Read an excerpt from the STOP SMILING interview with Albert Maysles, from
the Documentary Issue here.
Receive a copy of the STOP SMILING Documentary Issue at the screening with
a $5 donation.
++
SNAPSHOTS
Curated by Beth Capper and STOP SMILING
This screening was made possible by Maysles Films Inc.
Tuesday, May 12, 7:00 p.m.
at the STOP SMILING Storefront
1371 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL
Program run-time: approx. 1 hour
audio on two channels from chris nelson on Vimeo.
Many of us at the Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary Film at Columbia College Chicago know grad student Chris Nelson, who used to manage the equipment cage there. Chris recently made a short experimental documentary out of found footage: old Doc Center test tapes, specifically. Here’s how Chris describes it:
A nostalgia piece, made entirely from camera “test tapes” once used at the defunct equipment cage in the Michael Rabiger Documentary Center, Columbia College Chicago. Students would “test” the camera by running it for no more than a couple seconds. The piece is made mainly for those who worked there from 2004 on.