The Briefing Room

A diverse slate of films share a common commitment to powerful storytelling and outstanding use of news and archival footage

New York, NY – ABCNEWS VideoSource, the news and stock footage licensing arm of ABCNEWS, announced the nominees for this year’s IDA ABCNEWS Award for Best Use of News Footage in a Documentary. ABCNEWS VideoSource, in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA), has presented the Award for Best Use of News Footage in a Documentary annually since 1997 to a film or video that best uses news footage as an integral component of the work. This year’s winner will be honored at the IDA Awards Gala, which will take place on December 7, 2007 in Los Angeles.

A vision of history as individual human experience is a common theme uniting the eight films nominated for the 2007 VideoSource Award, which otherwise vary widely in both style and subject matter. In interviews, diary excerpts, letters and historical testimony, it is the voice of the survivor, the eyewitness and the participant that provides the portal through which the larger historical narrative can be entered and understood. These are often stories of great suffering and even greater resilience, interwoven with exceptional, deeply affecting and sometimes horrifying archival images, resulting in documentary storytelling of enormous power, impact and immediacy.

“The documentary films nominated for this year’s award were all very strong and diverse in their story selection and execution, as well as being very deeply researched,� said David N. Sheehan, Director of ABCNEWS VideoSource. “Watching them, I was deeply moved while learning more about these incredible events and incredible people.�

The nominees for the 2007 award are:

AMERICAN/SANDINISTA by director/producer Jason Blalock (University of California at Berkeley). Using a mixture of home video, news footage and contemporary survivor interviews, the film recounts the history of a group of young American engineers who defied US government warnings and traveled to war-torn Nicaragua in the 1980s to help the Sandinistas pursue their socialist experiment.

HALF-LIFE: A JOURNEY TO CHERNOBYL by director/producer Phil Grabsky and co-director David Bickerstaff (Seventh Art Productions). Based on Mario Pertucci’s book-length poem for Chernobyl, Heavy Water, the film weaves together Pertucci’s poems with revealing archive and evocative location footage to tell the story of the people who dealt with the world’s worst nuclear disaster at ground level: the fire-fighters, the soldiers, the liquidators and their families.

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT by director/producer Amir Bar-Lev and executive producer John Battsek (Axis Films, Passion Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, A&E IndieFilms). The film tells the story of 4-year-old Marla Olmstead, who became an overnight international celebrity when she sold $300,000 worth of abstract paintings. But when the paintings’ authenticity was questioned, Marla’s parents turned to a documentary filmmaker to clear their name. The result is a spellbinding film about art, filmmaking and the elusive meaning of truth itself. The film uses contemporary news clips to frame and punctuate the hype and sensationalism that threaten to engulf the family.

NANKING by co-directors Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman and producers Ted Leonsis and Michael Jacobs (Agape Multimedia Partners, LLC; THINKFilm; HBO). As part of the campaign to conquer all of China, the Japanese subjected the city of Nanking to months of bombing, and when the city fell, unleashed murder and rape on a horrifying scale. In the midst of the rampage, a small group of Westerners banded together to establish a Safety Zone where over 200,000 Chinese found refuge. The film tells this story through deeply moving interviews with Chinese survivors, chilling archival footage and photos of the events, testimonies of former Japanese soldiers and a filmed stage reading of the Western letters and diaries.

RAPSODIA DO ABSURDO by director/executive producer Cláudia Nunes uses existing footage shot at two major worker uprisings in Brazil to produce a short “poetic documentary.� Scenes of the workers’ struggle for land at Santa Luiza Farm and Parque Oeste Industrial provides a lens through which the universal conflict between the world’s poor and the concept of private property is framed.

SPUTNIK MANIA by director David Hoffman, producer Eric Reid and executive producer Jay Walker (Varied Directions International) tells the story of the launch of Sputnik and what happened to America during the following year. Initially regarded with wonder and awe, Sputnik was soon widely viewed as a step closer to nuclear world war. Sputnik Mania incorporates a wealth of archival material, including previously lost footage from the 1950s, as well as an extraordinary collection of interviews and recently declassified insights into the high-level decisions that gripped the world.

STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME by director/producer Michele Ohayon and producer Theo Van De Sande (Diamond Lane Films Inc., Red Envelope Entertainment) is a compelling feature documentary about the power of love and the ability of humankind to rise above unimaginable suffering. This true story about three improbable survivors of the Holocaust transcends the grim reality of the concentration camps, and is touchingly told through cinema verite and love letters. It is underscored with rare archival footage and intimate interviews.

WHITE LIGHT/ BLACK RAIN by director/producer Steven Okazaki
(Farallon Films/ HBO Documentary Films, HBO) is a comprehensive, straightforward, moving account of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the point of view of the people who were there. With a calm frankness that makes their stories unforgettable, the survivors bear witness to the unfathomable destructive power of nuclear weapons. Their accounts are illustrated with survivor paintings and drawings, historical footage and photographs, including rare or never before seen material. In some cases we see footage of extensive physical damage suffered by a victim and then cut to that same person 60 years later.

Press Contacts:

David W. Seevers
President
Thriving Archives
474 Alvarado Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
Phone: (415)839-7333
Email:davidseevers@thrivingarchives.com
Website:www.thrivingarchives.com

David N. Sheehan
Director
ABCNEWS VideoSource
125 West End Avenue
New York, NY 10023
Phone: (212)456-5424
Email: david.n.sheehan@abc.com
www.abcnewsvsource.com