Maryland

About this column: Many filmmakers ponder in anguish, How do other people—celebrated people—do it? Am I taking too long to make this documentary? Does everybody spend as much money as I am spending, or am I spending too little? And when filmmakers share their lessons learned in interviews in the glossy trade magazines, their tales seem to follow the arc of otherworldy heroes rather than real documentary makers, i.e. human beings like you and me. So each month, the Doc Doctor will go out into the world (this real world) of filmmakers who are successful and find out how they made it. The "Anatomy of a Film Column" is a chance to learn from filmmakers' hits and misses in real life examples. —Fernanda Rossi, story consultant a.k.a. the Documentary Doctor

Prince Among Slaves, which aired in February on PBS as part of public television's Black History Month programming, is the story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima, an African prince who was captured by slave traders in 1788. He completed the Middle Passage in shackles, and ended up sold to a farmer of modest means in Natchez, Mississippi.

Languishing in the shadows of bigger-shouldered cities like Washington and Philadelphia, Baltimore is burdened with something of a municipal chip on its shoulder, exposed in reasonless civic sloganeering like the much-scorned recent campaign proclaiming it “the greatest city in the world.” Likewise, when, say, three studio films locate here over a one-year stretch, newspaper columnists will rush to christen Baltimore “Hollywood East.