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CINE Newsletter - October 2006 IN THIS ISSUE: CINE’s new Web Site
CINE: In addition to a CINE Golden Eagle Award, you recently received a CINE Masters Award. What do these awards mean to you? Jehane Noujaim: It was great to get an award from such a prestigious organization in Washington. And it definitely helps. When people see that a film has won certain awards, they are more excited about seeing it, renting the DVD or going to watch it. And also, with the Masters Award we received a post-production grant [from CINE sponsor Henninger Media Services] and I can’t tell you how important and useful that is. With Control Room we didn’t get any kind of funding or support for the film until it was released at the Sundance Film Festival and there was so much post-production work that had to be paid out of pocket and deferred. So to have a grant for post-production is always very, very important. CINE: Can you tell me how you got started in the film business? JN: I went to Harvard to become a doctor and took I Chemistry 5 which was the end of that idea. So I took refuge in the photography and film department which I loved. And Harvard’s great in this department because it’s small and there’s a lot of attention. When I graduated I was given a grant called the Gardiner Fellowship to make a film in the Middle East. I had taken a lot of photographs and there is a place in Cairo where garbage collectors live. I wanted to make a film about three generations of women that lived there. So I used that grant to buy my first camera which was one of the first professional DV cameras that had come out, it was the Sony VX 1000. I made a short little film and moved back to the States. CINE: You lived in Egypt? JN: My fathers’ family still lives in Egypt. My mother’s American so I’ve always gone back and forth. She has family in Florida and Hartford, in Connecticut, so I went to camp in the US and boarding school in the US. I’ve always been used to going back and forth and having cultures on both sides. But what’s been interesting to be as an adult is the different perspectives you get on world events depending on where you are. If you were to ask be about different events that have occurred in the world in the last ten years I would have very different facts depending on where I was in the world. CINE: After your short film, then what. JN: Then I got a job at something called MTV Unfiltered. The show was exciting because it was really the first show out there, which was viewer made television. Now that’s very popular with YouTube and Current TV. But we were sending out cameras to people who had a story to tell and we would coach them through telling their stories and they would send footage back and we would cut their stories together and do about ten minutes. It was great because you got to work with people and get their stories out there. It was really democratic television. So it was a little like getting gift in the mail every time you got these tapes. CINE: How long did you work there? JN: I worked there for about two years and then I felt like I wanted to make something longer than ten minutes and I’d watched a lot of wobbly camera and coached enough people on how to get cutaways that I was longing to get a camera back in my own hands. At that time I was living with a guy named Kahlil who was starting an internet company and the dot com craze was just starting to build up. It was 1998 and you know cab drivers were asking how to get involved. And here was my room-mate who was managing to hire all of his friends and family from hugely successful careers and great jobs. And we were getting these checks in the mail for tens of thousands of dollars and he didn’t even have a product yet. So I really felt like this would be an interesting film to make, to follow him and his best friend from high school, who was a very different personality than he was. CINE: How did you fund this? JN: I was very fortunate because I was looking for funding and one of the guys in the company knew D A Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus and suggested that I contact them to talk about funding and they had been interested themselves about the internet and they had talked to a number of people to see who they could follow. At that time there were also a lot of interesting music stories associated with the internet because music was becoming free on the internet. So we met and I fell in love with them immediately. They are incredible people, fantastic film makers and for me the possibility of partnering with them as mentors was incredible. So we decided to partner on the film and Chris Hegedus can I became co-directors and we made Start Up Dot Com. CINE: That film had theatrical release, how did you feel about that? JN: It was one of the most incredible feelings I’ve had, sitting in a theatre and watching people react to these decisions you’ve made in the middle of the night. You have no idea how people are going to react in a dark theatre, anonymously. We ended up touring around with the film for about a year. The dot com industry at the time was something interesting to talk about. It wasn’t something my heart was in but it was interesting. CINE: Although you heart wasn’t in it, what lessons did you take away? JN: I thought here is a medium that can get people talking, whether they agree or disagree with what’s in the film, it has the potential to really get people talking. So I had already had this curiosity about al-Jazeera because when I left Egypt all I saw on television was state run television and when I came back after graduating in 1996, I had gone back to work on the short film with the Gardner fellowship and I watched al-Jazeera launching in 1996 and satellite dishes just suddenly blanketing the city. In this area I told you where I was filming these women, people who sleep seven to room and can hardly afford the next month’s rent and yet they were pooling money together to get a satellite dish to watch issues being debated and discussed that had never been talked about before, that had previously been considered taboo. Issues of religion, women wearing the veil and whether religion should be a part of government and lot of conversation about governments running the Middle East and corruption and what’s happening within the government, topics that were never discussed, the local television stations had never dared to touch. So they were hated by governments across the Arab world and after 9/11 they were called the network of Bin Laden and they were heavily criticized by the government in the U.S. So I was very curious about who was running the channel and who these people were and who their influences were. CINE: So how did you proceed? JN: I had written a bunch of letters to al-Jazeera but hadn’t gotten a response and the Iraq war was about to start, and I was back in the States and felt we were getting a very narrow range of opinions. Those from the State Department and the Pentagon and journalists embedded with troops and it didn’t feel like we were getting the other side. What were local Iraqis thinking? We were getting the Iraqis in the United States, but we didn’t have people on the street in Iraq, we didn’t have the view that I got when I would go back to Egypt and there was a completely different view of what was going to happen. There were a lot of questions. Sure the US was going to win militarily, but what was going to happen afterwards. And of course these were people who knew Iraq well, many had lived in Iraq. So I thought this was the perfect time to make a film about al-Jazeera. CINE: What did you do then? JN: When I found out that Central Command was located about ten minutes away (from al-Jazeera in Qatar) and you had al-Jazeera broadcasting to a huge population in the Arab world and ten minutes away you had Central Command broadcasting to the rest of the world it was a perfect opportunity for a film maker who had no budget. CINE: Did you feel that al-Jazeera had been demonized in the West? JN: All sides tend to demonize the other. I definitely think it’s been demonized. There have been instances where al-Jeezera has been accused of lying and I’ve been in the control room when the footage has come in and I know that is not the case. I’ve also heard the American administration has said things like it riles up the Arab masses and in a way that’s true. Although what al-Jazeera would say Åeis it us that’s making people upset or what’s actually happening?’ It’s a hard question. CINE: What are you working on now? JN: How are people supposed to even begin a conversation when their understanding of certain events and history is completely different? I guess what I say is there is more than one narrative on the situation and I have to be accepting of another narrative. It’s kind of led me to the work I’m doing now. I’m working with and incredible organization called Just Vision and I just executive produced their film called "Counterpoint" which is about Israeli and Palestinian families who have both lost a family member in the conflict and are now working together for peace. And it’s a very powerful film because these people who have lost something most precious to them say I don’t have to agree with the other perspective, but I have to work with them to figure out how we’re going to work together in a peaceful manner without using violence. What Just Vision has on their website is the two narratives and they’re working on a textbook that has both narratives. CINE: How will the film be distributed? JN: The film is currently being screened in theatres; it hasn’t been picked up by a distributor. It opened at the TriBeca film festival and then they pushed the film for the Middle East because they thought with all that was happening in the Middle East this summer it should be shown, a film about people who had lost so much working together for peace. Now, they’re looking to qualify the film for the Academy and their looking for a distributor. Their website is www.justvision.com CINE: You entered Control Room in the Sundance Film Festival and it was selected. What effect does entering the film in Sundance make? JN: It’s an incredible festival, there are a lot of buyers there and so if you can get it in it’s a great place to show your film. We had offers to buy the film there after the first showing because it was such a fantastic screening. The hall was packed and the discussion lasted about two hours. CINE President on Broadband and Mobile Formats
Like all markets [look at America’s NATPE] it is undergoing transitions and transformations. From a relatively small and clubby group of people who landed on the famed Croissette years ago, it has grown to much larger numbers, approximately 12,000 plus this year. And yet that is down a bit from its halcyon days in the late 1990’s. It is a fundamental shift in the way television is perceived. Discovery Networks USA is beginning to organize itself around "content areas" rather than networks. The WGA is agitating for greater compensation for work by its members on content for additional platforms beyond television. ABC has been blazing the way for broadband exploitation of linear content, beginning with the ability to download complete episodes to creating intricate content around its series LOST, which has become the poster child for content in the "post television" universe. How to cope with all this change, this expansion of definition of "content" is an issue facing all producers of all kinds of programs. CINE is in conversation with the PGA and the producers of the REAL SCREEN conference in D.C. to see if it is possible to produce a panel that addresses these issues for individuals working in the non-fiction world for that conference. It is a Wild West sort of content world out there where some projects are being conceived for the web, so that they might be tested to see if they can make it to the larger screen. It is now possible to push content out to mobile phones all around the world from one source, marrying content and advertising in a "New York minute" designed to appeal to the youthful consumers who are the biggest demographic contingent of mobile video content consumers. YouTube.com, Break.com and Heavy.com are internet examples of content aggregators that are seemingly successfully exploiting this thing called "user generated content," the explosion of content created by anyone with a digital camera or camera phone, catching extemporaneous moments of life from Oprah attempting to fill her car with gas to the results of mixing Mentos and a liter of Coke. All interesting… These services are also providing other opportunities — including a failed pilot for one network that ended up on YouTube and found its way to another network which was encouraged by the positive response on the net. Political discourse is being changed by the dynamics of video file sharing from "non-professionals" as is advertising and seemingly everything else in Western Civilization. It is, as Dickens famously noted, "the best of times and the worst of times." The business and content creation challenges and opportunities for producers are enormous, rapidly evolving and being influenced and shaped by countless users who are defining what will be visually and intellectually arresting content. There are those who work in television who feel they are living in a land as ungovernable as DEADWOOD and as confusing as the plot of LOST. MIPCOM will probably provide no answers but certainly will give clues as to the direction of the world in which we live and by which we hope to make a living. CINE will continue to support its constituents as
they explore this New World by organizing conferences such
as the one being explored by us, by Real Screen and the PGA. We
are exploring expanding the Awards to include new content
on alternative platforms and are also exploring ways we can
use the web to highlight such content.
CINEMATOGRAPHER STYLE is non stop talking heads, and is definitely a must for any would be producer, director, or dare we say, DP, in the business. Done over four years, it captures some of the world’s greatest as they explain their art, technology and passion. Vittorio Storaro, Gordon Willis, Laszlo Kovacs, Ernest Dickerson, Caleb Deschanel, Haskell Wexler, VilmosZsigmondare all there, as well as plenty of lesser known but no less articulate artists. Occasionally, a few even tell thedoc's cinematographer’s how to light them. And while no film clips are included, you do hear some amusing stories. Willis, for instance, didn’t happen upon his look for THE GODFATHER until the cameras were about to roll. Storaro also does a great bit with a single light bulb illuminating him to start the doc. Director Jon Fauer conducted some 200 hours of interviews with the cinematographers to make the film. With so much good content in CINEMATOGRAPHER STYLE you wonder what he left in the Avid bin. Among the nuggets of wisdom in the film: Cinematographers are visual psychiatrists … You have to decide how you visually want to represent a story … We light, compose and create… There is no formula —style comes out of you. CINEMATOGRAPHER STYLE is making the rounds of festivals right now, and will be available on DVD soon. You can find more information at: www.cinematographerstyle.com.
The Fall 2006 Competition is now underway!
Contact Information
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CINE’s web has a new look and new features to better serve
those in the film and video community. Visitors to www.cine.org
can now view clips of all six of our 2006 CINE Masters Series
Award winners. 
Jehane Noujaim directed Control Room, winner of a 2006 CINE
Masters Award. She was interviewed by Leslie Sewell, producer/writer/director
of Government Girls of World War IIand a CINE Board member. 
"We are painting pictures in the dark." 
It’s been an exciting start to the fall at Henninger Media
Services, one of CINE’s long term sponsors. Henninger
is pleased to announce their recent purchase of a SPIRIT
DATACINCE film transfer machine. This acquisition marks
the arrival of the first SPIRIT in the Washington, DC
metropolitan area. Henninger is excited to realize this
longtime goal of putting such a fantastic piece of equipment
into the hands of our world-class technicians. 
If you have an entry in the Fall Competition and you have not
received instructions on where to send your tape or DVD,
contact the CINE office at 202-785-1136 as quickly as possible.