The International Documentary Association (IDA) is now accepting proposals for the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, which provides production support for full-length documentary films. Two years ago we hosted The Pare Lorentz Film Festival with IDA, showcasing Lorentz’s landmark documentaries alongside winners of the Pare Lorentz Award.

Named in honor of the landmark documentary filmmaker, this Fund provides annual grants totaling $75,000 to be used in the creation of original, independent documentary films that illuminate pressing issues in the United States. In 2012, grants will be made to up to 5 projects that tell a compelling story and focus on one of Pare Lorentz’s central concerns—the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all or the illumination of pressing social problems.

The Fund supports full-length documentary films that reflect the spirit and nature of Pare Lorentz’s work, exhibiting objective research, artful storytelling, strong visual style, high production values, artistic writing, outstanding music composition, as well as skillful direction, camerawork and editing. Complete guidelines and application are available here.

The Museum of Modern Art has announced its 11th annual Documentary Fortnight festival will be opening on February 16th with film archivist Jim Hubbard’s “United in Anger: A History of ACT UP” and Tatiana Huezo Sanchez’s “The Tiniest Place.” Hubbard and Sanchez will both be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A sessions.

Special events include a retrospective for Paper Tiger Television with two screenings of “Paper Tiger Television: Thirty Years of Alternative Media” on February 24 & 25th and two “Guided Tours to the Interactive Documentary” on February 18th.

Off-site special events include two screenings of D.A. Pennebaker’s “Elizabeth and Mary” at Nitehawk Cinema in Greenpoint and Williamsburg on February 21st.

The festival will close on February 28th with U.S. premieres of Zeljka Sukova’s “Marija’s Own” and Orri Jonsson, Kristen Bjork Kristjansdottir, and Ingibjorg Birgisdottir’s “Grandma Lo-fi.”

For more info and screening times:
http://press.moma.org/wp-content/files_mf/momafilm_docfortnight2012_pressrelease.pdf

The 2012 Jean Rouch International Film Festival is now open for entries. The deadline to submit a film is 15th April 2012. This deadline is for all films completed after 1st January 2011. You will find the online entry form here:

http://www.comite-film-ethno.net/festival-international-jean-rouch/2012/entry-form.html

The Festival Jean Rouch, previously known as Bilan du FIlm Ethnographique, was created in March 1982 by anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch. Over the past thirty years, the Festival’s aim has been to showcase the most innovative and relevant trends in ethnographic filmmaking and visual anthropology, and to promote dialogue between cultures.
Organized by the Comité du Film Ethnographique, this international film festival is held in Paris (France). Each year, it brings together filmmakers, academics, students and producers, in an attempt to promote discussions and debates amongst ethnographic film practitioners and their many public, and to favour the diffusion and the distribution of the films.
We welcome documentary films without restriction to theme and length.

For more information see:

http://www.comite-film-ethno.net

“Contro-Sguardi”, in collaboration with the Anthropological Section of the Department Man and Environment (Uomo e Territorio) of the University of Perugia (Italy), the Comune of Perugia, Informagiovani and the cultural association Macadam, promotes the fourth edition of “Contro-Sguardi: International Anthropological Film Festival”. Theme of the year 2012: “For a culture of work”. With this call we invite to send documentary films, works of fiction and ethnographic, photographic exhibitions, and proposals for theatrical and musical performances related to the topic in question.

From the 2010 the festival, founded to bring together works of anthropological cinema, it is open to multiple supplies Visual character. From this year became biennial, and every edition will concentrate his attention on a specific and central thematic of the socio-cultural dynamics and contemporary policies. Contro-Sguardi 2012 will propose study and discussion meetings on the broad range of phenomena related to the “culture of work”, trying to reflect on the crisis of the economic and social models that progressively shrinking the spaces of work especially of young people with many repercussions for personal and social life. Specifically for “Culture of Work” we mean the multiplicity of social contexts, anthropological, economic, political and emotional that define the job as practice, knowledge, existential status of the human being through it is realized and for self-determination.

The call here proposed intends to gather materials and experiences, national and international, that address the issue in its broader facets and issues: the relationship health/disease, socio-economic inequalities, the protests for the place of work in a precarious world, and including the political uses of music, theatre and cinema. Through the presentation of the materials, try to create a space of comparison beetwen different actors involved in the field of work, such as associations and civil society, political institutions, academia and research, the “virtuous” that despite a strong crisis manage to maintain a standards positive of production, or that, bucking, create employment by investing in cutting-edge work patterns.

In the awareness of social research, which increasingly requires a dialogical and experimental comparison with new techniques and technologies with their visual productions, opens a Call for video aimed at filmmakers, students, researchers and teachers.

More Info: www.controsguardi.com & controsguardi.blogspot.com

We are excited to welcome our friends at Light Industry (along with Triple Canopy and the New York Public School) to the neighborhood at their new space at 155 Freeman Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Their screening of Torse tomorrow (Tuesday, January 24, at 7:00 PM) marks the start of their regular Tuesday evening screenings. Upcoming are screenings of  Yvonne Rainer’s Kristina Talking Pictures on January 31,  Jennifer Reeves’s Chronic + Sadie Benning’s Flat Is Beautiful on February 7 and Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Naked Spaces on February 8.

For more inforamtion check out Light Industry’s website:

http://lightindustry.org/calendar/

Last year, we packed the house with screenings of short films and features by some fantastic, as-yet-unknown local and international artists. This year, it could be you: Submissions are now officially open for the Northside Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Film Competition, one of the components to Northside Film. You can check out the guidelines to submit your film here. We also welcome our neighbors at Nitehawk Cinema as partners to the festival this year.

The winning feature film will be awarded a $500 cash prize, while the winning short film will be awarded a $250 cash prize. Both films will also receive gift certificates for equipment or services at DCTV.

The deadline for the open call is April 15. See full details here. 

UnionDocs and the Round Robin Collective invite you to join them for a three-month collaborative exhibition of workshops, discussions and screenings in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The idea is to bring a table by from your collective and organization.

The large extended table, which will be created from all of our conjoined tables, will be located centrally in the space and will be instrumental to projects produced throughout the exhibition. The surfaces will be used during the workshops, events, dinners, and activities. Through this shared table project, we hope to create unity and the possibility of exchange amongst NYCs diverse community of arts collectives and organizations.

If your collective/organization is interested in participating with an event, RRC invites you to submit a proposal here.

For more information go to Round Robin website.

Please see details below:

$875 – 1 Room in a House for film & documentary artists –
Available Jan 15 or Feb 1 until August 31. (Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

One quiet bedroom available in a bright, furnished 3 bedroom apartment with a large common space and lots of associated resources. Roommates are emerging documentary artists coming from many different places and a variety of professional backgrounds. Available Jan 15 or Feb 1 through August 31.

This is a great place to live. As a residency for filmmakers and documentary artists, it normally would not be available, except through an application process. The room is in the apartments above the non-profit documentary arts center organization, UnionDocs. Check out www.uniondocs.org. Taking a room will also grant you a pass to all the upcoming events and screenings at the space (a $500 value).

The building has a lot of shared resources and a lot of opportunities for fun while also having adequate privacy and a comfort. There are three floors, a big second story porch, skyline views from the roof, and a grassy backyard on the first floor. The location is close to excellent transportation making most spots in Manhattan and Brooklyn within a short subway ride (L-Lorimer, G- Metropolitan, JMZ – Hewes, & straight shot from WB bridge in cab or on bike).

There are currently 6 residents living in 2 floors. Your roommates will be artists coming from diverse backgrounds who were accepted to UnionDocs Collaborative Program. There’s a lot of energy, inspiration, and community that happens here. The room available will be on the second floor, and the apartment has 3 bedrooms with a living room, kitchen and bath. The apartment has wood floors, get lots of light, and was recently renovated. Bedrooms can be locked, but common spaces on both floors are shared by the six residents. The building also has high-speed internet and a washer and dryer.

The room can fit a single or full mattress, desk, and set of shelves. It has a nice sized closet. You should bring all the contents of your room. Main spaces are already furnished.

The room is available from January 15th 2012 (flexible) till 31st of August 2012. The rent is $875 /month plus split common charges of $65 for electricity, heating, gas, high speed internet (50MB up / 5MB down), free washer and dryer, and bi-weekly professional cleaning of common spaces. A deposit of $1500 required at time of contract.

We will be showing the room this Weds 1/11 from 5pm to 7pm, or visits may be scheduled during the daytime. Please respond with information about yourself, your occupation, and your time frame for moving to info@uniondocs.org.

Please join us for a free screening of Videorover: Season 3 – Program #2 at the IndieScreen CineClub in Williamsburg, featuring artists: Nicolas Carrier, Andrea Chung, Tamar Hirschl, Roy Menachem Markovich, Ruaidhri Ryan, Daniel Spanger, and Daniel Terna + Michael Kugler.

Program #2 features works which show a hightened sense of spectacle by dissecting various elements of filmic tradition. This group, pulling between intimacy and expansiveness, will premier at Indiescreen Cine Club in Williamsburg Brooklyn. This selection will also be presented at other locations as an itinerant program.

Fri. January 6, 2012 – 7pm
285 Kent Ave (at South 2nd St
Brooklyn NY 11211
Free admission

Featured image: Daniel Terna + Michael Kugler, Before After, 2011, video still

The documentary El Sicario, Room 164 directed by Gianfranco Rosi will open at Film Forum on December 28th.

An extraordinary documentary, essentially a one-man show, based on the Harper’s magazine article — “The Sicario: A Juárez Hit Man Speaks” — by Charles Bowden. “Gianfranco Rosi’s remarkable EL SICARIO, ROOM 164 is a concerted effort to reveal the significance of a nonentity, a hooded anonymous ex-sicario or hit man (with a $250,000 contract on his head) for the Mexican drug cartels interviewed in an eerily drab motel room near the border… The sicario’s unadorned mixture of boastfulness, self-flagellation, and willingness to underline Mexican and U.S. bureaucrats’ complicity with the bloodthirsty agenda of the ‘narcos’ (i.e., drug traffickers) possesses a raw power that needs no embellishment… (It’s an) emotional roller-coaster ride that the sicario takes the audience on — from gruesome reenactments of torture to a weepy conversion experience.” — Richard Porton, Cineaste.

For more information, visit the Film Forum website.