In recognition of her many valuable contributions to documentary filmmaking in Switzerland, Jacqueline Veuve has been chosen as the recipient of the 2013 Swiss Film Honorary Award, a lifetime achievement award. She will be honored at a ceremony in Geneva on March 23rd. Read more 
UPDATE: It is with sadness DER learned Jacqueline Veuve passed away April 18, 2013. She was a treasured filmmaker whose body of work will preserve Switzerland’s cultural memory for decades to come. She will live on through her films.
Posted on March 15th, 2013
Read DER board member Karma Foley’s great article on the Smithsonian Collections Blog about the John Marshall retrospective at DocsDF in Mexico City this past November.
Photos courtesy of Francisco Palma. See more photos from the retrospective on flickr.
Posted on February 1st, 2013
In October, DER co-sponsored a panel at The Vermont International Film Festival examining the work and legacy of pioneering documentary filmmaker George C. Stoney. The panel, consisting of Stoney’s collaborators and others who consider their current work to be a continuation of his legacy, discussed his influence on documentary filmmaking practices and ethics, and in the development of early public access media.
Excerpts from Stoney’s groundbreaking films, such as All My Babies, are included. Read more and watch a video at the VIFF website.
Posted on January 24th, 2013
In March 2012, the NEA received 1,509 eligible applications for Art Works requesting more than $74 million in funding. The 832 recommended NEA grants total $22.3 million, span 13 artistic disciplines and fields, and focus primarily on the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing works for the benefit of American audiences. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.
Documentary Educational Resources is one of 832 non-profit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. DER is recommended for a $30,000 grant to support Hossein Omoumi: Classical Persian Music from Isfahan to Irvine.
Congratulations to ALL the Art Works awardees!
Posted on December 14th, 2012
DER is pleased to join DocsDF in honoring the work & legacy of John K. Marshall – filmmaker, activist, and co-founder of our organization – at an upcoming retrospective in Mexico City. This November, DocsDF’s seventh annual film festival will feature a wide variety of documentaries by and about Marshall, including:
The Hunters (1957)
A Joking Relationship (1962)
An Argument About a Marriage (1969)
N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (1969)
N!owa T’ama: The Melon Tossing Game (1970)
Bitter Melons (1971)
A Kalahari Family (1951-2001)
A Forty Dollar Misunderstanding (1973)
After the Game (1973)
Vermont Kids (1975)
Titicut Follies (1967), directed by Frederick Wiseman with cinematography by John Marshall
N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman (1980)
Remembering John Marshall (2006), directed by Alice Apley and David Tamés
We are proud to contribute to this series, and we are excited by the opportunity to present Marshall’s work to new audiences. All the films have been translated and subtitled in Spanish specifically for this event.
For more information, including a schedule of the screenings, please visit http://www.docsdf.org/en/categoria/proyecciones/cine-entre-culturas/.
Posted on October 24th, 2012
Maple Razsa, director of DER’s Bastards of Utopia, reflects on the place of images of violence within activist milieus in his video essay, “Images of Global Militancy,” from the fourth edition of Audiovisual Thinking.
Watch it here: http://bit.ly/R3NHMw
Posted on October 18th, 2012
This fall, the Board of the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) approved grants totaling close to $8 million for nonprofit cultural organizations, local cultural councils, and education programs across the Commonwealth. DER was recently awarded a grant in the Partners category. We thank the MCC for their generous support!
Posted on October 5th, 2012
A new blogpost from the Smithsonian’s Human Studies Film Archives details how the re-discovery of one anthropologist’s films has led to a cultural resurgence in post-Franco Spain.
During the 1960s, American academic Jerome Mintz traveled to the city of Casas Viejas to study the aftermath of a failed and bloody anarchist uprising that took place there three years before the the start of the Spanish Civil War. Recording the daily lives of the city’s inhabitants, Mintz ultimately produced six films – all of which are now available on DVD through Documentary Educational Resources.
Cut off from the modern world by Franco’s totalitarian regime until 1975, the residents of Casas Viejas themselves were only vaguely aware of Mintz’s work. But thanks to the joint efforts of the Smithsonian, Mintz’s daughter Aviva Tavel, and a local history teacher, this community has recently gained access to the films that depict them, allowing them to reconnect with their history and, perhaps, heal some old wounds.
Click the links below for more information about Jerome Mintz’s films:
Pepe’s Family (1978)
The Shoemaker (1978)
Romeria: Day of the Virgin (1986)
Carnaval de Pueblo (1987)
Perico the Bowlmaker (1989)
The Shepherd’s Family (1989)
Posted on September 26th, 2012
Photo by Philip Pocock
DER was saddened to learn of the passing of George Stoney last week at his home. As a documentary filmmaker, activist, and educator, George’s films helped make visible the lives of many individuals who would have otherwise remained unseen. He has been called the father of public access, having provided an opportunity for people of all walks of life to use the media for personal expression. He was also a founding member of Working Films, where he promoted the use of film for social good.
Over his long career, George’s films, often focusing on social change, included works made for the American Cancer Society, the Ford Foundation, Planned Parenthood, and the National Film Board of Canada – where he was Director of the Challenge for Change project from 1968 to 1970. George’s films followed subjects ranging from African-American midwives in All My Babies to indigenous people struggling over land rights in You Are on Indian Land. More than anyone, George saw documentaries and documentary filmmaking as part of the social fabric. In How the Myth Was Made, he examined the long-term impact of Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran on the community in Ireland’s Aran Islands.
In 2009, DER was honored to begin working with George as a keeper of his collection. Sorting out rights holders and finding good quality masters has been a challenge, but we are proud to have over a dozen of his films now available on DVD, including several titles that were previously out of circulation. We will continue to make additional titles available.
On a personal note, I was one of George’s students at NYU – one of many, many students in the Documentary Traditions class at NYU. He was a wonderful teacher; he had an encyclopedic knowledge of documentary and, even more remarkably, seemed to know personally all of the filmmakers of note. He delighted in juxtaposing different approaches to a film topic, which informs the way I experience films to this day.
We remember George, and we look forward to ensuring his legacy lives on by making his films available to a wide public.
— Alice Apley
Posted on July 20th, 2012
Oma (Leon) Tsamxao — grandson of Toma Tsamxao, whose extended family is at the center of John Marshall’s Kalahari films (including A Kalahari Family, The Hunters, and others) — was recently at the United Nations to participate in the 11th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Oma had traveled to NYC as part of the San caucus of southern Africa, the first time representatives of San communities from the region had stood together as a collective group to speak on behalf of the rights of indigenous Africans. In a statement presented by Job Morris of Botswana, the San rejected the doctrine of discovery, and called for the national governments and regional, continental and international bodies to recognize their unique relationship to the environment and rights to land. The visit was documented by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA). Check out their website for links to the Statement by the San Caucus to UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and Statement by the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee to the UNPFII.
I met up with Oma and his colleagues from southern Africa the day after the meeting to hear about their experiences and for a bit of sightseeing. As we made our way past Ground Zero, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and through Chinatown, they shared their delight with the reception they had received and new contacts they made with indigenous people from around the globe; they were moved to learn that many of these groups were dealing with similar issues related to land, food security and water rights. They told me as well that the San in southern Africa had not previously worked across national borders. The experience of traveling together and standing as a single southern African caucus was an important one, and appeared to be the beginnings of a new collaboration.
— Alice Apley
Posted on May 14th, 2012
