CecchineR's blog

The Independent's Randi Cecchine talks to four filmmakers screening at SilverDocs this month, and with subjects ranging from extreme attempts to reduce a carbon footprint, to a Romanian teenagers run-in with Sacha Baron Cohen, this preview gives a taste of the subjects and variety that SilverDocs has to offer this year. Read interviews with the directors of No Impact Man, Off and Running (view the trailer here), Carmen Meets Borat (view a clip from the film here), and Long Distance.

Blogger Randi Cecchine attends the History Makers Consortium to glean some information on how to begin the distribution process for her latest film The Missile Dick Chicks Take On America (view the trailer here), and brings back some tips from media outlets across the globe, including the History Channel, NBC, BBC and WNET -- as well as some insight from surprise guest speaker, Tom Brokaw. Panelists discuss how history is told through the documentary as well as how to successfully impress commissioning editors.

The Independent's blogger and filmmaker Randi Cecchine, director of The Missile Dick Chicks Take on America (see the trailer) shares her notes from the Independent Documentary Festival Amsterdam's Docs for Sale series with advice from Deborah Zimmerman of Women Make Movies, Diane Wireman of Participant Media (the organization behind An Inconvenient Truth) and filmmaker Franny Armstrong, whose most recent film, Billy the Kid, screened at IDFA. Speakers address how the market for documentaries is shifting and give advice on how to find a place for your documentary in a constantly morphing media.

The Independent's blogger and filmmaker Randi Cecchine, director of The Missile Dick Chicks Take on America (see the trailer), sits down for a dinner table discussion with Fierce Light director, Velcrow Ripper and his business partner and producer, Cher Hawrysh, who reveal what inspired them to make a movie about change, and how filmmakers play an integral role in being a catalyst for that change.

Independent blogger and filmmaker Randi Cecchine, director of The Missile Dick Chicks Take on America (see the trailer), takes on the International Documentary Film Festival and Amsterdam's Docs For Sale informational sessions and boils down the best advice for the distribution and representation of independent films.

Randi Cecchine reports from the 3rd Annual Beyond Broadcast Conference held at SILVERDOCS with a series of interviews with community media leaders: Pete Tridish from the Prometheus Radio Project, Kevin Weston from New American Media, and Ivan Sigal from the United States Institute of Peace.

Hand-picked as a valuable investment by the Ford Foundation, New American Media serves the more than 3,000 ethnic media outlets in the US by hosting conferences and roundtables and by connecting maintream outlets to the outlets run by and for ethnic communities. Kevin Weston reflects on the value of ethnic media and the benefits of multilingual polling.

The Independent's Randi Cecchine, a filmmaker and educator from New York City, is impressed to learn that governments in Europe are eager to come up with policies to promote media literacy among their citizens, particularly young people. But as a European friend suggests, the role of the government in establishing guidelines concerning media literacy and education can be complicated—especially if media makers are cut out of the policy-making loop.

The Independent's Randi Cecchine, a filmmaker and educator from New York City, attended a panel on intellectual property and copyright law at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam. She came away from it thinking that European policy makers have spent more time thinking about ways to avoid disputes over the incorporation of one artist's work into a film created by another. She also likes the legal concept of "moral rights" in terms of intellectual property that prevails in Europe.

At Rotterdam, The Independent's Randi Cecchine checks out Lynch, a mysterious character sketch of a film about the inventive and enigmatic filmmaker David Lynch. In the film, the director says that meditating regularly for 32 years has helped him chill out and focus. If that is the case, Cecchine wonders, how come he seems so tightly wound? And what do his experiences tell us about the process of making a film, and the disappointments that seem inevitable when you collaborate with a group of people on a project? You can watch the film's trailer, or a humorous clip of Lynch taking on the iPhone's cinematic aspirations.

Filmmaker and educator Randi Cecchine is blogging from the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdarm. Today, she writes about an explicit short film from Singapore with the catchy title Allen Ginsberg Gives Great Head. Filmmaker X' Ho is not afraid to take risks, including many long sequences featuring explicit images. Cecchine is somewhat surprised that the film was included in the festival—despite their reputation, the Dutch are a little suppressed, she says—and wonders whether it's easier to watch this kind of film in a theater with an audience, or alone and on DVD.

Filmmaker and educator Randi Cecchine blogs from the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her first film? Staub (Dust), a documentary from Germany the explores the relationship between people and that familiar gray patina. Director Hartmut Bitomsky interviews obsessive cleaners, scientists who study dust to gain insights into the physical world, inventors who have tried to build dust-filtration contraptions, and health experts who worry about the effects of inhaling too much dust. In the end, Cecchine says the film is unexpectedly contemplative. To view a trailer for the film (without subtitles, and in German), check out our Watch page.