Special Event: THE STATE OF THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY
Join us for an intimate and invigorating conversation about the art of the documentary with two of North America’s most accomplished documentary filmmakers, Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) and Connie Field (The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter). What makes a documentary film great? What raises a film from the ordinary to the extraordinary? In a time of overwhelming media saturation, what does it mean to make moving images and sounds charged with poetry and passionate rage? How does one begin, and how does one remain open to the potential that is always present?
Canadian Jennifer Baichwal is best known for her 2006 Genie-winning Manufactured Landscapes. This and her other feature-length documentaries, Let It Come Down:The life of Paul Bowles; and The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia, explore the work of artists encountering alien social landscapes.
San Francisco-based Connie Field gained international attention with The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, which documents the changing roles of women during WWII. Freedom on My Mind, her film on the civil rights movement, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1995. Her latest project, Have You Heard from Johannesburg?, is a ten-part series on the struggle to end apartheid.
Rudy Buttignol is President and CEO of BC’s Knowledge Network. Before arriving in Vancouver he was creative head of programming at TVOntario for 13 years, working with many of Canada’s most distinguished filmmakers.
Baichwal and Field are in Vancouver as mentors for the 2008 Art of the Documentary workshop, an intensive development session for twelve filmmakers from across Canada. This will be their only public appearance together.
8 pm Sunday 25 May
Vancity Theatre 1181 Seymour St.
Reception to follow.
Tickets $10 general; $7 students/seniors.
Cash only.
To reserve, email praxis@sfu.ca, subject: “DOC ART”