October 1999

Documentary filmmakers often struggle for years doing whatever it takes to finish our labors of love, only to find one roadblock after another thrown up between the completed work and the audience we know is out there.

Winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for his hugely entertaining documentary American Movie doesn't seem to have changed Chris Smith--or his reputation as a Very Nice Guy From the Midwest.

University of California extension
2000 Center St., 4th fl., Berkeley, CA 94704;
(510) 642-1340 or 643-2788; fax: (510) 643-9271;
cmil@uclink.berkeley.edu; www-cmil.unex.berkeley.edu/media/;
contacts: Dan Bickley and Kate Spohr

What is the University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning (CMIL)?

Mary Katzke got both the idea and the money for her latest documentary unexpectedly: via a life-threatening illness.

www.kilima.com/usa.html

In the olden days (three or four years ago) producers in search of film footage of a particular subject--say, Alfred Hitchcock--would call a series of archives to find out if they had any. If so, the producer/researcher would go to the archive to look through hours of videotape.

What is the Open Society Institute and what is your relationship to it?

During the Q&A after the first screening of American Movie at Sundance, director Chris Smith hailed his subject Mark Borchardt as "the ideal independent filmmaker"--which, in many ways, he is.