{"id":1811,"date":"2014-05-05T14:04:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2014-05-06T21:56:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T04:56:35","slug":"the-documentary-and-sustainability-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/?p=1811","title":{"rendered":"The Documentary and Sustainability Awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last weekend of April I attended the conference, What Is Documentary: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow <\/em>at the University of Oregon\u2019s Portland campus organized by Gabriela Martinez and Janet Wasko of the School of Journalism and Communication.\u00a0 As noted in a previous blog post, it was an extremely interesting two days and three evenings of presentations and film screenings. Best of all, I had the opportunity to interview the ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall<\/a>.\u00a0 The interview is in two parts: David MacDougall on Filmmaking<\/em><\/a> and Children in India: Three Places of Learning<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is Documentary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the interview David reminds us there are two kinds of documentary.\u00a0 Some are made based on pre-existing knowledge and prior research while others are the research process itself, a process using video to discover and explore. He notes with the latter “what you end up doing is a product of what you learned during the making of the film.\u00a0 The process “often shifts you into an entirely different direction so it’s quite open ended.”<\/p>\n

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David MacDougall<\/p><\/div>\n

Documentary Takes Money
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Organizations that fund research and explorations, foundations in particular, might follow the lead of early adopters such as The Ford Foundation and their initiative, JustFilms.\u00a0 JustFilms “focuses on film, video and digital works that show courageous people confronting difficult issues and actively pursuing a more just, secure and sustainable world<\/strong>.” Initiative funds are distributed through three distinct paths, two of which point to support of both kinds of documentary cited by David. They are:<\/p>\n

Research<\/p>\n