Through our Production & Production Support programs, DER serves as fiscal sponsors, consultants, and executive producers on important projects being made in the Boston area and beyond; and we initiate activities to bring awareness to new ethnographic and documentary media achievements. With your help, we can expand our programs and better support documentary filmmaking in 2016!

In 2015 DER:

– initiated a new Executive Producing program! Available to select projects that meet our mission, we play an active role as creative producers and decision makers. DER’s 2015 Executive Production projects in the works include:

– Techung: Bone of the Heart, dir. Marilyn Pennell. A one hour documentary film following the complex artistic and cultural negotiations of legendary Tibetan refugee musician, Tashi Dhondup Sharzur (Techung).

– Headhunt Revisited: With Brush, Canvas And Camera, dir. Michele Westmorland. A feature-length documentary about artist Caroline Mytinger that explores the role of art in documenting cultures and complexities of ethical cultural representation.

“I was in search of a fiscal sponsor who would be engaged with my film Headhunt Revisited – and then I discovered DER. I think the best part of becoming one of DER’s projects was the their ability to collaborate and provide support in grant applications, distribution outlets and guidance in bringing the film out to the right audiences. The entire team at DER, especially Alice Apley, has been a key ingredient to the momentum in completing this production. I look forward to our continued relationship.” – Michele Westmorland, director, Headhunt Revisited

– supported the following fiscal sponsorship projects through to completion:

Circus Without Borders, dir. Susan Gray
Exit Zero, dir. Chris Walley & Chris Boebel
Our Mockingbird, dir. Sandy Jaffe
Harry and Snowman, dir. Ron Davis

Congratulations to all our fiscal sponsorees!

– Served as consultants on new works, providing assistance regarding fundraising, production and/or distribution. Our 2015 production consulting includes Daughters of Anatolia, dir. Hale Sofia Schatz.

– participated in panels and workshops at major documentary industry and visual anthropology events:
Camden International Film Festival – “Being There” panel; introduced films in “Being There” program
Hot Docs – One-on-one filmmaker consultations for “Distribution Rendezvous” program
RIDM – One-on-one filmmaker consultations for “Face-à-face de la relève” program
Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival – Presentation on the works of Jorge Preloran
American Anthropology Association/Society for Visual Anthropology – “Past as Prologue” Panel

– launched the John Marshall Award for Contemporary Ethnographic Media! We presented the award to Anna Roussillon’s film I AM THE PEOPLE at the Camden International Film Festival in September, and are pleased to announce DER will be releasing the film in 2016!

“DER has been a longstanding supporter of the Camden International Film Festival and Points North Documentary Forum, playing a critical role in the development of our Points North Pitch Award for early-career filmmakers. This year we had the wonderful pleasure of expanding our partnership, as we introduced the first annual John Marshall Award for Contemporary Ethnographic Media. DER’s legacy of championing ethnographic film, and their vision of where the form is going make them a wonderful partner for this award, and we’re honored to partner to highlight new voices in ethnographic documentary media.” – Ben Fowlie, Founder & Executive Director, Camden International Film Festival

Help us expand our programs and better support ethnographic and documentary filmmakers in 2016! Your tax deductible donation means so much to us and the independent filmmaking community. We are so grateful for your support!

If you haven’t heard our big news yet, DER was thrilled to present the first John Marshall Award for Contemporary Ethnographic Media at the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) this fall! We initiated the award to reinvigorate the conversation around the genre’s rich history, and to foster dialogue about the past, present and future of works that seek to document culture or engage issues related to the efficacy of film and media as a means of doing so.

Named in honor of DER founder, John Marshall, this year’s award was presented to Anna Roussillon for her debut feature, I Am the People (Je suis le peuple), as it spoke directly to Marshall’s contributions to documentary filmmaking. In works such as N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman, Marshall was one of the first filmmakers to allow non-western characters to speak directly for themselves. Marshall skillfully illustrated the larger social, political and economic forces without losing focus on the lives and relationships at the center of the story.

In the spirit of Marshall’s work, I Am the People portrays a rural Egyptian community’s responses to the revolution in Tahrir Square and the political aftermath. Intimately shot over three years, the film provides a rural perspective on national events. We are shown how the community follows national politics – through communal television viewing, radio and newspaper – presenting an alternate experience of the revolution, one overlooked by mass media. What emerges is a story of the experiences of those in the periphery and a complex picture of the relevance of national politics for rural lives; Roussillon masterfully captures her subjects’ personalities, opinions, and relationships with one another, while showing the community’s ties to a national economy. True to the history of the genre, the film offers insight into lives often left out of mainstream media while affording them great dignity and humanity.

DER’s 2015 award jury sought to recognize a work that built on Marshall’s contributions to the genre, particularly the humanizing and respectful relationship of filmmaker to subjects; the integration of local dynamics within a larger socio-political framework; and the innovative presentation of social and cultural content. While we at DER are in the fortunate position to be viewing new works throughout the year, convening the jury and taking the time to identify an award-winner was a unique moment for reflecting on the state of independent filmmaking, and how filmmakers today are building on the early lessons of ethnographic filmmakers.

And we couldn’t have asked for a better festival to premiere the award at than CIFF. Especially this year, as the festival featured “Being There,” a special program on foundational ethnographic and documentary works. Seven screenings were held during the program, featuring historical works from the cannon including titles from The Hunters to Cannibal Tours, and the works of filmmakers from Robert Gardner to Trin Minh Ha.

DER board member, filmmaker, and curator, Ilisa Barbash and I introduced these important works and fielded discussion. We also moderated a panel with contemporary filmmakers Olivia Wyatt, Dominic Gagnon, and Turner Ross, who are working in, or in dialogue with, the ethnographic film tradition. It was immensely gratifying to meet filmmakers and cineastes young and old who were excited for a chance to see these works again after many years, or for the first time.

It was an honor to be part of CIFF’s programming in this rich and new way. We look forward to continuing the dialogue about ethnographic and documentary filmmaking, and to next year’s award nominees and winners!

– Alice Apley, Executive Director

2013 Points North Pitch. Photo by Ben Krebs, courtesy of CIFF.

At this year’s Points North Forum of the Camden International Film Festival, my fellow panelists and I decided the prize for best pitch would go to the film with the combination of best pitch and best project. Criteria related to the pitch had to do with the clarity of the presentation, how engaging the clips were, and whether the filmmakers were open to the panel’s questions and concerns.

Best project? This is perhaps more subjective, but some of the things that were raised during our discussion had to do with offering an untold story, having amazing access to your subjects, having done your research (e.g. what other films have been made on the topic? How is yours unique?), offering sufficient — or better yet — fabulous technical and artistic quality, and the potential of the filmmaking team to pull it off. The latter includes criteria
such as having a realistic understanding of the scale of the project, an appropriate budget, and the right team in place.

The Points North Pitch offered a mix of new and veteran filmmakers, with a wide range of subject matter and styles. The prize – including a $1000 cash prize from Documentary Educational Resources, 60 hours of sound mix or color correction services from Modulus Studios, worth approximately $10,000, a $3,000 tuition scholarship to the Maine Media Workshops and three consultations with the Tribeca Film Institute – went to Drew Xanthopoulos for The Sensitives.

Alice Apley of DER and Sean Flynn of Points North Forum present the Points North Pitch award to Drew Xanthoupolous. Photo by Ben Krebs, courtesy of CIFF.

As described on Drew’s website, “The Sensitives is a feature-length documentary about ordinary people swept out of the mainstream by mysterious and toxic reactions to everyday stimuli. Be it household soaps, cellphones or even sunlight, those afflicted have traveled endless trails of loss and suffering, managing to survive, and some even recover, on the outskirts of society through a combination of reinvention and the will to live. Through several character groups scattered throughout the US at various stages of illness and recovery, The Sensitives will illustrate how a complicated and misunderstood phenomenon has radically changed the course of life for those afflicted.”

What made Drew’s project stand out? For me, it was that he took us on a journey into the lives of his subjects. Before we saw a single frame of footage, we were already caught up in the physical and emotional isolation of this group of people, whose poorly understood sensitivities to a plethora of everyday materials has left them struggling to survive and alienated from family and friends. Whatever else Drew does, I know that he is going to stay close to his subjects, their concerns, their world; and rather than go down the familiar path of whether these are psychosomatic illnesses or can be blamed on pollutants, he offers a universal story — one that has resonance with the experiences of people with chronic pain or a whole host of reasons why we can become detached from society — and it is sure to be moving.

All that in seven minutes.

— Alice Apley