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Hartley Film Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to cultivation and support of documentaries on world religions and spirituality. This non-profit organization supports filmmakers through seed grants with fiscal sponsorship. The foundation is located in Westport, Connecticut, and has a staff of two and board of eleven members.
Hartley Film Foundation, incorporated in 1971, was the vision of founder Elda E. Hartley. She had a long career in filmmaking. Elda married filmmaker Irving Hartley, with whom she partnered to make newsreels and travel films from the 1930s through the 1960s. Some of the images that now illustrate American history were shot by Irving Hartley, including the explosion of the Hindenburg zeppelin in 1937. He and Elda also produced a series of Pan Am travelogues, a prototype for travel shows on television today.
Elda worked as North Carolina State's Director of Visual Education and, in the 1930s, she helped found the Documentary Film Association, which exhibited at the first New York World's Fair.
Elda's vision of the future foundation began in 1965, while on a vacation tour to Japan with Alan Watts. She decided to make a film on Zen and Watts volunteered to narrate the film. At the age of 56, Elda Hartley was on her way to producing documentary films on world religions and spirituality – the beginning of her third career.
She completed films about the world's spiritual and religious traditions (including documentaries such as Requiem for a Faith and The Sufi Way),and collaborated with Margaret Mead, Joseph Campbell, Edgar Mitchell, Jean Houston, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Huston Smith and Larry Dossey, among others.
Hartley often said that the goal of her work was greater than simply making films, and so she founded the Hartley Film Foundation. She died on her 90th birthday, March 6, 2001.
Hartley Film Foundation continues to honor her legacy through its support of established filmmakers who travel the world to document stories that further global and interfaith understanding. The Foundation strives to reach the widest possible audience with films such as Hiding and Seeking, A Jihad for Love, Love Free or Die, God's Next Army, Praying with Lior, Taking Root and Little White Lies. The non-profit foundation sells on its Web site those documentaries that fulfill Hartley's mission and message. Hartley sponsors the Full Frame Inspiration Award annually at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. The foundation also provides audience outreach consultation support to its fiscal sponsees through Active Voice, communications specialists who use media as a catalyst for social change.
Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy is an American documentary filmmaker. Kennedy has made documentary films that center on social issues such as addiction, her opposition to nuclear power, the treatment of prisoners-of-war, and the politics of the Mexican border fence. She is the youngest child of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel.
F for Fake is a 1973 docudrama film co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles who worked on the film alongside François Reichenbach, Oja Kodar, and Gary Graver. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Far from serving as a traditional documentary on de Hory, the film also incorporates Welles's companion Oja Kodar, hoax biographer Clifford Irving and Orson Welles as himself. F for Fake is sometimes considered an example of a film essay.
Barbara Jean Hammer was an American feminist film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer. She is known for being one of the pioneers of the lesbian film genre, and her career spanned over 50 years. Hammer is known for having created experimental films dealing with women's issues such as gender roles, lesbian relationships, coping with aging, and family life. She resided in New York City and Kerhonkson, New York, and taught each summer at the European Graduate School.
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is an annual international event dedicated to the theatrical exhibition of non-fiction cinema founded by Nancy Buirski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor of The New York Times and documentary filmmaker.
Monica Furlong was a British author, journalist, and activist. She was born at Kenton near Harrow, north-west of London and died at Umberleigh in Devon. An obituary called her the Church of England's "most influential and creative layperson of the post-war period."
Project Rebirth, Inc. is a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization created to support victims and early responders to catastrophic events through documentary footage recording the rebuilding at the site of World Trade Center following the September 11 attacks and seven years in the lives of people directly affected by the event. It also intends to create a Project Rebirth Center to help educate responders and the public about dealing with such events. The organization was created in honor of the victims of the September 11 attacks and those who responded to the attacks. Founded by producer Jim Whitaker, the organization is supported by dozens of corporate donors, including Aon Foundation, OppenheimerFunds Inc., and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. All profits from its documentary film Rebirth, officially released in January 2011, go to the support of the Project Rebirth Center.
Judy Irving is an American filmmaker. She directed the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, about writer Mark Bittner's relationship with a flock of wild parrots. The film won the Genesis Award for "Outstanding Documentary Film" in 2005, and is one of the 25 top-grossing theatrical documentaries of all time with over $3 million in box-office receipts. On May 29, 2007, Parrots was featured on the PBS series Independent Lens.
Elda VoelkelHartley was an American stage and motion picture actress. Following a brief career as a Hollywood actress, which lasted from 1930 to 1932 and during which she accumulated four screen credits, Voelkel married filmmaker Irving Hartley, with whom she produced numerous documentary films on a wide range of subjects. In 1976, she created the Hartley Film Foundation, which was dedicated to promoting greater understanding of religion and spirituality.
International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmmaker Services, Education, and Public Programs and Events.
A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or tourist attractions without recommending particular package deals or tour operators. A travelogue film is an early type of travel documentary, serving as an exploratory ethnographic film. Ethnographic films have been made for the spectators to see the other half to relate with the world in relative relations. These films are a spectacle to see beyond the cultural differences as explained by the Allison Griffith in her journal. Before the 1930s, it was difficult to see the importance of documentary films in Hollywood cinema but the 1930s brought about a change in the history of these films with the popularity of independent filmmakers.
Aviva Kempner is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.
Aryana Farshad is a writer, director, and film producer born in Tehran, Iran.
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers from all over the world. At the core of the programs is the goal to introduce audiences to the artists' new work, aided by the institute's labs, granting and mentorship programs that take place throughout the year in the United States and internationally.
Documentary mode is a conceptual scheme developed by American documentary theorist Bill Nichols that seeks to distinguish particular traits and conventions of various documentary film styles. Nichols identifies six different documentary 'modes' in his schema: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. While Nichols' discussion of modes does progress chronologically with the order of their appearance in practice, documentary film often returns to themes and devices from previous modes. Therefore, it is inaccurate to think of modes as historical punctuation marks in an evolution towards an ultimate accepted documentary style. Also, modes are not mutually exclusive. There is often significant overlapping between modalities within individual documentary features. As Nichols points out, "the characteristics of a given mode function as a dominant in a given film…but they do not dictate or determine every aspect of its organization."
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The Munich International Film Festival is the largest summer film festival in Germany and second only in size and importance to the Berlinale. It has been held annually since 1983 and takes place in late June or early July. The latest festival was held from June 23 to July 2, 2022. It presents feature films and feature-length documentaries. The festival is also proud of the role it plays in discovering talented and innovative young filmmakers. With the exception of retrospectives, tributes and homages, all of the films screened are German premieres and many are European and world premieres. There are a dozen competitions with prizes worth over €250,000 which are donated by the festival's major sponsors and partners.
Marion Lipschutz is an American documentary producer, writer, and director. Lipschutz has directed and produced award-winning documentaries, including BEI BEI, The Education of Shelby Knox and Young Lakota.
Cynthia Hill is an American director and producer. She is most famous for creating, directing, and producing the television show A Chef's Life (2013–2018), as well as the documentary films Private Violence (2014), “The Guestworker” (2006), and “Tobacco Money Feeds My Family” (2003).
Pearl Bowser was an American author, collector, television director, film scholar, film director, producer, filmmaker, independent distributor and film archivist. Along with her peers Mel Roman and Charles Hobson, Bowser researched and curated "The Black Film" retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 1970. This prompted a new wave of public interest into "exhibiting, producing, and engaging with African American cinema beyond borders". Most of her exalted career was spent traveling the globe in order to cultivate audiences for marginalized filmmakers. An example of her efforts, and also her most groundbreaking work, manifested in her research on "early-1900s Black film pioneer Oscar Micheaux". This research can be seen in her book on the first ten years of the career of Oscar Micheaux, an African-American who directed 40 "race pictures" between 1918 and 1940. She is thus credited for having helped rediscover some of Oscar Micheaux's rare surviving films. She is the founder of African Diaspora Images, a collection of visual and oral histories that documents the history of African-American filmmaking. Part of her journey included teaching young people film in the 1960s and 1970s.
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