October 2002

“At this moment, my biggest dream is
to find the source of our HVAC leak without having to shut theaters and tear into walls,” says Karen Cooper, executive director of New York City’s Film Forum. “There’s nothing less glamorous than a broken machine.”

As anyone who has been to many festivals or film school screenings can attest, for most independent and student filmmakers, title design is a rushed process at the end of a busy editorial cycle.

For almost half a century, 100 people who work in the independent media world, from academics to underground filmmakers, have gathered each year to passionately discuss and often argue about cinema in all its forms at the Robert Flaherty Seminar. The seminar eschews film festival markets, film school academicism, production training instrumentality, art cinema elitist consumerism.

If one thing can be said about Athens it is that it has proved time and time again to be a true breeding ground for creativity. Given that reputation, it is no wonder so many artists call Athens home. “It really is only in Athens that you can find the type of person who has the heart of an artist, the soul of a geek, and the mind of an academic.

In the past, documentary filmmakers making issue-oriented films that promoted social change had to pound the pavement to pull together activists, educators, and the average moviegoer, as well as tell an engaging story. But the web changed all that. A filmmaker can now reach a wide audience, provide a forum for discussion, direct viewers to organizations, and even make educational guides available online. But it’s not just the web’s inherent ability to promote social change that has filmmakers exploring its capabilities.