Interviews

As an award-winning director, producer and camerawoman, Jennifer Fox is certainly well-versed in all the conventions of ‘proper’ documentary filmmaking – introduce the camera slowly, don’t talk about your own life, “create a neutral plane they can project on,” as she says.

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.

Immy Humes is adept at bringing a light touch to dark subject matter as she did in her Oscar-nominated 1991 short A Little Vicious, about a dangerous pit bull and the family who loved him, and 1996’s Lizzie Borden Hash & Rehash, about the abiding fascination Americans have for the New England spinster who was accused of being an ax murderer.

An examination of how the Iraq War went so wrong, Charles H. Ferguson’s documentary No End In Sight is by turns forensic and surreal, a synthesis of devastating facts, damning archival footage, and poignant interviews with well-placed Iraqis and Americans who tried in vein to keep catastrophe at bay.

He’s most recognized for his menacing role as Ethan Rom on Lost, most respected for playing the cheated-on, threatening husband in In the Bedroom, and most pitied as an innocent victim in The Grudge.

King Corn is a slightly apocalyptic documentary that explores where we come from—or where our food comes from, at the very least. By interweaving a filmmaker-as-subject story of two guys, a cornfield, and some ammonia fertilizer with disparate elements, the film expertly tackles the complicated overarching issues related to farming subsidies in the United States.

The first time Pamela Valente, 37, set foot in Tokyo, she was instantly swept away. The Brazilian-born filmmaker, who’d been living in France for more than a decade, loved Paris, but longed to return to live in a city where the pace was more frenetic. So in 2003, she up and moved to Tokyo.

Grassroots filmmakers are always looking for mainstream distribution, and short films often have a particularly tough time gaining exposure. Which is why the success of the Logo Network’s short-film programming is welcome news. Two years ago, Logo, which is basically MTV’s gay cousin, launched The Click List: The Best in Short Film, a weekly show featuring an eclectic mix of stories.

As a young girl, Hope Dickson Leach dreamed of becoming a painter. She attended boarding school in England from the ages of 9 to 17 and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. But after interning for the likes of Mario Kassar and Todd Solondz, she convinced Columbia University's film department to give her a chance.

It's no ordinary day when a 90-year old grandmother sets out on a walk across the United States to make a point, and Doris "Granny D" Haddock is no ordinary woman. The protagonist of Run Granny Run spent 14 months in 2000 on her cross-country journey to bring attention to campaign finance reform.