Harry Shearer's Katrina Documentary

In our recent item about documentary filmmakers who become Hollywood moviemakers, we speculated that someday the trend might reverse itself -- and, as though on cue, we were reminded that Spike Lee's sprawling If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise premiered last week on HBO. It's his second four-hour documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, following 2006’s Peabody Award–winning When the Levees Broke.

This month the airwaves have been deluged with fifth-anniversary Katrina documentaries, ranging in tone from retrospective to investigative. On Monday, for one night only, Harry Shearer's own post-Katrina expose, The Big Uneasy, will screen in theaters nationwide.

Shearer is a man of many talents -- satirist, radio host, novelist, journalist, fine artist, and more. You've heard him as the voice of many Simpsons characters over the past 20 years, and have seen him perform in a comedic film genre he helped pioneer -- the mockumentary (Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration).

But there's nothing funny about The Big Uneasy, which features Shearer interviewing New Orleans residents and officials to reveal that "some of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the new New Orleans from future peril."

The Big Uneasy is laced with computer imagery that takes you inside the structures that failed so catastrophically, and boasts never–before–seen video of the moments when New Orleans began to flood and the painstaking investigations that followed. The Big Uneasy marks the beginning of the end of five years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation’s most treasured cities — and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America.

Look for theaters near you, and show times, here.

HBO Documentary: 'Reporter' Nicholas Kristof Takes Us to Congo. Can He Make Us Care?

HBO is airing a documentary about one of our favorite videojournalists this Thursday (2/18, 9:30 p.m.). It's called "Reporter" and it's about the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning Nicholas Kristof. You get to see him in action as he mentors two American proteges on a 2007 perilous and heart-wrenching reporting trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) -- a wartorn country whose ongoing tragedies he has aggressively documented for years.

The documentary follows them to Congo's villages, refugee camps, and dangerous jungle hideouts for Tutsi leaders who have imported their violent form of warlord justice from Rwanda.

Kristof famously focuses on stories of individual victims as a means of shining a light on -- and calling international attention to -- the unfathomable 5.4 million Congolese who have been killed in the past decade, and to the suffering of countless more Africans who have been raped, tortured, orphaned and uprooted.

"Reporter" was made by Eric Daniel Metzgar, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker with two previous documentaries under his belt. Writes Kristof: "It conveys the texture of the kind of reporting I often do." It also incorporates commentary from his professional colleagues and admirers.

"Nick knows that statistics deaden his readers' interest and compassion. So to get the world to care, he goes in search of individuals whose stories will reflect the country's desperate crisis and mobilize readers worldwide. He journeys through ravaged villages and displacement camps, and makes a harrowing visit to Congo's reigning rebel warlord, General Nkunda, at his jungle hideout."

Metzgar appeared on PBS Now last Friday to discuss "Reporter," in an engaging interview with host David Brancaccio, "Caring About Congo."



Listen for the fascinating discussion of the morally ambiguous role of journalist as intervener in individual catastrophic situations, with footage of a particular scenario that raises significant ethical questions.

Even with the recent outpouring of support for earthquake victims in Haiti, Americans' attention span for global crises is usually very short. But is there a way to keep American audiences from tuning out important global issues of violence, poverty, and catastrophe far beyond their backyards?

Kristof also brings news of his bestseller, "Half the Sky," co-authored with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, on his 'On the Ground' blog:

Sheryl and I taped an evening called Half the Sky Live, in honor of International Women’s Day, and it will air in theaters around the US and Canada on March 4. You can find a local theater at halftheskylive.com. The show includes an amazing new song by India Arie; the premier of a short film about an Ethiopian girl named Woinshet who is in our book, and a brief panel discussion with various eminences...

LINKS:

Nicholas Kristof's 'On the Ground' blog

"Reporter" Website

"Reporter" trailer

"Reporter" HBO info

More HBO documentaries

Nicholas Kristof on KobreGuide.com

MediaStorm Is First Web DuPont Winner

The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for excellence in broadcast journalism are usually won by prominent TV and radio organizations. Yesterday, for the first time, a duPont Award went to a Web-based entry.

Among such recipients as CBS, HBO, PBS and NPR was Brian Storm's MediaStorm, the Brooklyn-based multimedia production studio that has partnered with news organizations and NGOs around the world to create pioneering videojournalism (as proudly showcased on KobreGuide).

MediaStorm's winning entry was Intended Consequences, "a moving multimedia presentation about Rwandan children born of rape," with photographs and interviews by Jonathan Torgovnik.

In painfully intimate interviews photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik explores an unfathomable question: can a mother love a child born out of rape. The women profiled in this haunting multimedia presentation were caught in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when mass rapes resulted in the birth of an estimated 20,000 children. It spotlights an issue which had not been as widely covered as other war crimes in Rwanda, and is the first Web-based production to win a duPont Award. The women speak simply about their brutal experiences, their isolation and suffering, and the way forward. The producers made excellent creative choices that contributed to the impact of the reporting without resorting to sensationalism.

Jonathan Torgovnik; photography and interviews; Chad A. Stevens, producer; Jules Shell, on-location video; Bob Sacha, Chad A. Stevens, studio video; Pamela Chen, Sherman Jia, composers; Tim Klimowicz, graphics; Brian Storm, executive producer

Well deserved kudos to Brian and his MediaStormtroopers!

DuPont details and other winners here.

Descriptions of winning programs here.

Int'l Documentary Ass'n Awards Announced

The 2009 International Documentary Association's Awards ceremony will take place on Friday, Dec. 4 in Los Angeles.

Winners were announced today in several major categories, including Limited Series (Sundance Channel’s Architecture School); Continuing Series (PBS' POV, in its 22nd season); and Music (Anvil! The Story Of Anvil).

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil also competes against Afghan Star, Diary Of A Times Square Thief, Food, Inc. and Mugabe And The White African for IDA's top feature prize, which will be revealed at the event.

More winners:

The IDA/Humanitas Award, a new prize established this year and recognizing a film that strives to unify the human family, goes to Mai Iskander’s Garbage Dreams, which follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, on the outskirts of Cairo. Here, the Zaballeen, Arabic for ‘garbage people,’ are suddenly faced with the globalization of its trade.

The IDA/Pare Lorentz Award, in homage to the pioneering filmmaker’s legacy, goes to Irene Taylor Brodsky’s Oscar nominated short The Final Inch, about a vast army of health workers who go door-to-door in some of India’s poorest neighborhoods, ensuring every child is vaccinated for polio.

IDA continues to recognize the next generation of documentary filmmakers with its prestigious David L. Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Award. This year’s prize has been awarded to Stanford University’s Peter Jordan for his short documentary The First Kid To Learn English From Mexico, the story of 9-year-old Pedro's reluctant journey through elementary school in pursuit of the American Dream.

Errol Morris will receive a Career Achievement Award. This American Life host/producer Ira Glass (a former IDA Award recipient) returns as host.

More info at Documentary.org .

David Simon Blasts Citizen Journalism, Prescribes Non-Profit Newspaper Model

We listened to articulate, qualified, high-minded participants in Sen. John Kerry's subcommittee hearing on the bleak future of journalism this week (as his hometown paper, The Boston Globe, struggles to stay afloat).

One who impressed most was longtime Baltimore Sun cop reporter David Simon, who parlayed his journalism experience into a thriving career as a top TV drama producer. His venerated shows (including HBO's "The Wire") often investigate thorny journalism issues.

As Sen. Kerry noted, newspapers are an "endangered species," and Simon brilliantly took to task both old and new media: "A plague on both their houses... High-end journalism is dying in America."

Simon's reasoned rant was both diagnostic and prescriptive. He shares our disdain for the anti-professional notion of "citizen journalism," which he eloquently lambasted -- and every word is worth savoring:

I’m not making a Luddite argument against the internet and all that it offers. But you do not, in my city, run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at City Hall or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars where police officers gather. You don’t see them consistently nurturing and then pressing sources. You don’t see them holding institutions accountable on a daily basis.

Why? Because high-end journalism is a profession. It requires daily full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out. Reporting was the hardest and, in some ways, most gratifying job I ever had.

I’m offended to think that anyone anywhere believes American monoliths, as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives, can be held to gathered facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they’re lying to or who they’re withholding information from.

Indeed, the very phrase “citizen journalist” strikes my ear as Orwellian. A neighbor who is a good listener and cares about people is a good neighbor; he is not in any sense a citizen social worker, just as a neighbor with a garden hose and good intentions is not a citizen firefighter. To say so is a heedless insult to trained social workers and firefighters.

But Simon also endorsed a solution:

A nonprofit model intrigues, especially if that model allows for locally based ownership and control of news organizations. Anything the government can do in the way of creating nonprofit status for newspapers should be seriously pursued. And further, anything that can be done to create financial or tax-based incentives for bankrupt or near-bankrupt newspaper chains to transfer or donate unprofitable publications to locally based nonprofits should also be considered.

SEE VIDEO / READ TRANSCRIPT

NYTimes.com Videojournalism Nabs Peabody Award

The Peabody Awards annually celebrate excellence in traditional TV broadcasting. Its recipients generally include the likes of HBO, PBS, CNN -- and it has lauded groundbreaking classics from The Ed Sullivan Show and Edward R. Murrow's See It Now series to The Wire and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Guess who just received one this year? The New York Times. Not the paper, the NYTimes.com Website. Specifically, its online videojournalism.

According to its citation: "Aggressively and imaginatively adding sound and moving images to the news that's fit to print, the 'Gray Lady' became a leader in the emergence of new journalistic forms."

Well deserved, we say! And this clearly represents a recognition of the tidal change in the content, tone, genre, and delivery platform of video storytelling. (Other online recipients: YouTube and TheOnion.com!)

Peabody director Horace Newcomb: "The list of winners this year clearly indicates a changing media environment."

See what the fuss is about, on the New York Times channel on KobreGuide.

'Media That Matters' Film Fest

KobreGuide welcomes a new channel: The Media That Matters Film Festival. Now in its eight year, the festival showcases short films on the most important topics of the day:

Media That Matters engages diverse audiences and inspires them to take action. From gay rights to global warming, the jury-selected collection represents the work of a diverse group of independent filmmakers, many of whom are under 21. The films are equally diverse in style and content, with documentaries, music videos, animations, experimental work and everything else in between. What all the films have in common is that they spark debate and action in 12 minutes or less.

Every June, Media That Matters presents a new collection of twelve shorts. The festival launches in New York City with a World Premiere at the IFC Center and an Awards Ceremony at HBO where every filmmaker is honored and many receive cash awards sponsored by major foundations and corporations. Previous presenters include Tim Robbins, Al Franken, David Cross, Woody Harrelson, Barbara Kopple and Peter Yarrow.

Our first entry is Perversion of Justice, a closeup look at harsh mandatory Federal sentencing guidelines, and their impact on a young first-time drug offender and mother of three, who's facing life in prison.

Look for more worthy entries from Media That Matters in the weeks ahead on KobreGuide.com .