Documentary, Animation and Film Culture – NFB.ca

CM Magazine, a Canadian publication that reviews books and media, has recommended 6 NFB films for teachers and librarians (click on the titles to read the reviews): The Museum, Wapos Bay, The Strangest Dream, Alanis Obomsawin - 270 Years of Resistance: The Collection, The Necktie and Cure for Love.

Here are the trailers, clips or complete films for the above titles (with the exception of Cure for Love, which is not available online):

(Watch more clips)

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For those of you who are thinking of getting into documentary filmmaking or those of you who just want to brush up on your skills, here are some tips for getting the perfect interview.

Preparation:

• Do research on your topic, and if possible, on your subjects. The better prepared you are, the less time you’ll take and the better equipped you’ll be to handle any curve balls.
• Develop a few themes and come up with 3 or 4 questions for each theme.
• When possible, do a pre-interview with your subject. They’ll often reveal information you hadn’t contemplated before.
• Read your questions out loud, or to a third party, to make sure they’re clear.
• Scout out a location for the interview, taking sound and lighting into consideration.
• Have a basic structure for your film/project sketched out and as well as an idea of how each interview subject fits into that structure. This may change as you go along, but you should have a general idea from the beginning.
• Think about doing some group interviews – they often don’t run as smoothly, but disagreement makes for good content and illustrates conflicting points of view.
• If you’re interviewing several people for one project, you may find 1 or 2 questions you want to ask at each interview. It allows for varying perspectives on a single issue.

The Interview:

• If the interviewer is not included in the film, make sure your questions don’t need to be heard in order to understand the question. You can ensure this by teaching your subject how to incorporate the question into the answer.
• Try not to interrupt when someone is answering a question. People open up and talk when they’re on camera – give this time to happen.
• Stay away from questions that can be answered with a “yes” or “no.” Open-ended questions work best.
• Listen to the answers you’re being given and a) make sure they can stand alone, and b) make sure they’re clear. If not, ask the subject to rephrase.
• Don’t be afraid to stray from your list of questions. Following up on interesting answers is the key to a successful interview.
• Wherever possible, look for anecdotes or stories. Stories make a more memorable impression than simple answers.
• Don’t talk or make noises while the subject is responding.
• Start off with the easier questions, and once the subject is warmed up move into deeper areas. Don’t be afraid to ask hard-hitting or difficult questions.
• At the end of the interview, you can always ask the subject if there’s something they wanted to discuss that you didn’t hit on. There usually is.

Do you have any interview tips you’d like to share? Leave them in the comment section below.

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If you found these tips useful, check out the following links for more information:

Capturing Reality

DV Workshops Newsletter – The Documentary Interview

Videomaker – Documentary Interview Tips

EHow – How to Conduct Documentary Interviews

Student Filmmakers – The Art of the Documentary Interview

Michael Rabiger’s Directing the Documentary, 2nd Edition, 1992

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We’ve just added 2 short films to NFB.ca about the making of Guy Maddin’s short film, Night Mayor (see below).

The film, about a man who is thwarted in his attempt to harness the power of the Aurora Borealis as a means of projecting images of Canada to all Canadians, was commissioned by the NFB on the occasion of its 70th anniversary.

On what inspired the storyline, Maddin said, “Much like the NFB and the CBC and various other organizations that have tried to show Canada to Canadians for the longest time, as soon as this guy gets going he starts feeling the pinch of cutbacks and finally the government just shuts him down. It seems to be the trajectory of all such things and seems to be the one that I’ve heard of for the longest time about the NFB.”

You can read my full interview with Maddin here.

The film will be screening at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 17 and 19. It’s the only NFB film appearing at the festival this year.

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In celebration of Black History Month, take a look at Sobaz Benjamin’s short film, Making It.  The film looks at the career paths of a few Black youths. The subjects – who were first interviewed in 1984 – are now in their 40s, and they look at their journeys to “make it” in the workforce, and the barriers they faced along the way.  “Working twice as hard to go half as far” is a common theme in this film, and it quickly becomes apparent that the subjects are judged in the workplace not as individuals but as representatives of their entire race.

This film was made as part of the first series of Work For All films, a web project about racism in the workplace.  We have also compiled a playlist of films that celebrate and look at Black history in Canada.

UPDATE: Also, there are free Black History Month screenings and activities all month at the the Montreal Cinerobotheque and the Toronto Mediatheque.

Aisling Chin-Yee is a line producer for the NFB documentary project about racism in the workplace, Work For All. You can follow Aisling on Twitter here and Work For All Project on Twitter here.

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Here’s a list of our most popular films on the site last week. We finally put the Oscar-nominated animated short Madame Tutli-Putli online last week and it shot right to the top. Also new, is the glorious The Memories of Angels, a visual paean to the Montreal of the ’50s and ’60s.

1. Madame Tutli-Putli 5840
2. The Cat Came Back 3972
3. The Memories of Angels 2573
4. Log Driver’s Waltz 2503
5. Sexy Inc. Our Children Under Influence 2149
6. Carts of Darkness 1894
7. Cry of the Wild 1784
8. Ryan 1739
9. The Sweater 1521
10. Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows 1192

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