The protests rocking Greece have reached the cultural industries. Workers from Greece’s Ministry of Culture took over the Acropolis twice last month in protest over severe cuts to cultural funding. As part of the “austerity measures” being imposed on Greece as a result of recent economic turmoil, there have been deep cuts to the national cultural budget. More than 40 museums and ancient sites have been closed. The workers were demanding over a year’s worth of back pay and the creation of permanent jobs rather than contract work.
In other news from Athens, two of the largest labour unions in Greece ADEDY and GSEE, marched on Saturday to protest against planned pension system reform. About 2000 protesters braved heavy rains in front of the parliament building, holding banners and chanting slogans against the reform and other austerity measures the government has introduced to overcome the country’s debt crisis.
And yesterday, a crowd of 3,000 marched through Athens to demonstrate gay pride and protest against discrimination. “We’re everywhere” read one banner at the parade. The country approved civil unions in 2008, but the gay community has been seeking the approval of full gay marriages.
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Interesting, isn’t it, how women tend to get short shrift in recorded history. Who knew that the eminent John Grierson, considered by many to be the godfather of documentary, had two sisters, Ruby and Marion, who were documentary directors in their own right? What of Charlotte Zwerin, long-time collaborator with the Maysles brothers and the other “fathers of verité” like Drew, Leacock and Pennebaker on such landmark documentaries as Salesman and Gimme Shelter? And who has heard of verité documentaries like Geri Ashur’s Janie’s Janie and Madeline Anderson’s I Am Somebody that came out around that same time? It makes one wonder: what makes a documentary mainstream and celebrated and who is doing the deciding?
Heading south of the U.S. border you realize other countries had their pioneering documentary women directors as well, like Venezuela’s Margot Benacerraf, whose documentary, Araya, shared the 1959 Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Critic’s Award with the more celebrated Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, mon amour. From Colombia there is Marta Rodríquez’ (Chiracles, 1972) who inspired generations of documentary filmmakers when she returned home after studying with Jean Rouch in Paris and has continued to direct, releasing Soraya: Amor no es Olvido in 2006.
Debra Zimmerman, executive director of Women Make Movies (Pictured above is a still from a WMM documentary, The Sari Soldiers, by Julie Bridgham) has championed, promoted and distributed films made by women from all over the world for twenty-seven years. She says that at a recent awards ceremony she attended she found it extraordinary to hear everyone talking about how much easier it is for women directing documentary than it is in fiction. Given that women documentary directors are still dogged by a continuing misperception that women’s subjects are “niche” or “too soft,” a predominance of white male programmers and jurors at festivals and the tendency of the big bucks to still go to male filmmakers, she found it a rather facile analysis of the situation.
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Last week the filmmakers of the documentary CRUDE—a film that looks at the nefarious activities of Chevron in Ecuador and the ensuing court case around the company’s misdeeds—were told by a US court that their footage (600 hours of it) must be handed over to Chevron’s lawyers to possibly be used against the very people the filmmakers sought to help with the film in the first place. This unprecedented decision could have profound ramifications for documentary filmmakers, and completely elides the notion of “journalistic integrity” afforded to those working in the news media. Art Threat received this communiqué from the filmmakers this morning:
CRUDE Filmmakers Subpoenaed by Chevron. Join the fight for the First Amendment rights of the makers of CRUDE and documentary filmmakers everywhere!
As many of you may have seen in the press, the makers of CRUDE were recently served with subpoenas by Chevron, in an effort to gain access to the nearly 600 hours of raw footage accumulated during the making of the film. Our attorneys filed a response, stating that our footage is protected by the journalist’s privilege and forcing us to hand it over to a third party (either Chevron, the plaintiffs’ lawyers, or anyone else) is a violation of our First Amendment rights. A hearing was held on Friday, April 30th in New York. But on Thursday, May 6th, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled in Chevron’s favor.
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Hot Docs has careened down the path of screening outstanding documentaries, facilitating frenetic networking and busting out boozy social gatherings for a 17th time this year. One of the largest documentary film festivals in the world, it is an understatement to say that the festival is intoxicatingly exhausting. Five days in to the ten day extravaganza, I do have some notes to share on the parties, the people, the films and the ethics of the festival itself.
First the parties: The opening night fundraising extravaganza at the ROM was a delightful treat. Plenty of incredibly delicious food, tasters of tequila, music and energetic attendees kept things fun until the wee hours. The social gatherings are the unofficial networking orgies—an aspect of the festival I once harangued for its cold uber-business quality—but this time around I found to be more amicable, sincere and constructive. There are artists and industry-types from all over the world, stumbling around looking down to mid-torso level to check out everyone’s info on the passes dangling from necks sore from staring up at screens. And where in the past I was met with a cool and cruel aloofness once I had declared myself as a programmer for a “grassroots non-profit media arts organization,” this time around people didn’t scoff and scuttle away to the next potential deep-pocketed ego, but instead engaged in meaningful conversation. Aside from the opening gala, the “Get Tipsy” gathering, along with the Scottish and Irish film party, all proved to be excellent spaces for sharing knowledge and forging new collaborations.
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A new biography of the great 20th century journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski is causing a stir. His biographer Artur Domoslawski accuses Kapuscinski of making it up — of making some of it up, anyways. And his accusations have reignited the controversy over truth’s inviolability in the work of professional journalists.
Kapuscinski is like Canada’s Farley Mowat who some years ago was the target of a similar complaint — in fact, a rather savage attack that also accused him of making it up (Mowat’s face appeared on the cover of a widely circulated national magazine with an enlarged Pinocchio nose). And there is the recent reputational crucifixion of James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces and memoir-writer-cum-reluctant-novelist who made too much of it up for America’s apparently (and selectively, one might add) fact-hungry public, not to mention Oprah and her fans.
The idea of the ‘lie’ in journalism can still provoke a certain kind of righteous outrage. But what gets lost in the excitement is the conversation about truth itself. More specifically, outraged critics hardly ever suggest just what the unimpeachable approach to the truth might be.
Growing skepticism about journalism runs deeper than doubts about a few erroneous facts. An increasingly media savvy public has begun to suspect that the truth always arrives in the mouth of a speaker — that is, always from within language, culture, experience. The more serious problem isn’t the inviolable truth of this detail or that, but what will happen to a profession that hangs all of its hats on the peg of truth when the possibility of truth itself is up for grabs.
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