rachel grady Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Economy is everywhere. It's in the classrooms, through the world, and even on the bookshelves. If you haven't read Steven D. Levitt and and Stephen J. Dubner's bestselling pop culture economy book, Freakonomics, you've probably at least heard of it, or have spotted the apple-orange cover to the right. After making the waves in the reader world, using economics to discuss mundane and controversial topics, Variety reports that an excellent collection of popular documentary directors are coming together to film a doc based on the book.

Under producers Chad Troutwine (Paris je t'aime) and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong), Freakonomics will bring together Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing from Jesus Camp, Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), My Country My Country's Laura Poitras, Eugene Jarecki of Why We Fight, and finally Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) -- each of whom will film a section of the book. Most of the directors are still finalizing topics, but Gibney is said to be filming a segment on cheating teachers and sumo wrestlers, while Jarecki will tackle one of the most controversial segments -- that a drop in crime can be attributed to Roe v. Wade. But it's not just politics under the microscope -- other issues covered in the book include Adam Vinatieri's football career as a field goal kicker.

Each segment will be 15 minutes long, and will then come together into a feature-length documentary that includes an intro and interstitials from Gordon. Producer Troutwine says: "I stalked the authors for a year because I saw cinematic appeal to the book as soon as I read it. It showed that conventional wisdom should always be tested and never trusted, and that is what documentaries are all about." Are you ready to get freaky with economics?

Perusing my rss feed today, I came across an interesting scanned article over at Jennifer Venditti's Billy the Kid blog. First, if you've been lurking around Cinematical Indie, it's no surprise that I love Venditti's feature documentary debut. I reviewed the film from Hot Docs, have mentioned Venditti in a few posts, and had a chat with her about her take on indie film. Now she's got a Filmmaker Magazine article up, which was written by Arne Johnson the co-helmer of another favorite 2007 Hot Docs film, Girls Rock!

In the piece, Johnson tackles the extreme pressures documentary filmmakers face when it comes to the troubles of truth. He cites his own struggles with the kick-ass tykes in Rock!, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's challenges with Jesus Camp, and Venditti's struggles with Billy criticism -- focusing on the Variety review I posted about in May. It hits a lot of bases, from the need to edit quotes in interviews, or be faced with a terrible-in-text sea of "ums" and awkwardness, to the discussion of whether documentarians taint their source material, or just present a truth that some viewers aren't appreciative of.

Johnson includes a quote from Judy Irving about subjectivity that I found particularly interesting: "When someone throws that at you, like that your film does not have journalistic integrity, or it's not objective, what they're really saying is "I don't agree with you. My subjectivity is different from your subjectivity and I wish you had portrayed what I feel about the subject rather than what you feel." It's a worthy thought -- complaints always come from those who disagree, so do those who agree turn a blind eye to subjectivity, or think that a film covers the bases? And overall, what do you think of this whole argument over truth, subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking?

This week on Coming Distractions, a special podcast -- an interview with Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, co-directors of the controversial documentary Jesus Camp. Grady and Ewing spoke with Cinematical from New York, where they're currently prepping the Jesus Camp DVD -- and talked about how odd it can be when a marginal figure in your film becomes front-page news, as well as the reactions their subjects had to the finished film, and much much more. You can download the entire podcast here.


Related Stories:

Review, Jesus Camp
Netscape Video: More Jesus Camp Controversy

The controversy just won't stop swirling around documentary Jesus Camp, about children attending an Evangelical Christian camp. Just last week, we reported that Pastor Becky Fisher, who ran the Kids on Fire Christian Camp featured in the film, had shut the camp down after attacks of vandalism in the wake of the film's release. Yesterday came the more shocking news that Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the 30,000,000 strong National Association of Evangelicals, had placed himself on administrative leave from his church and stepped down from his position as president of the Association, in the aftermath of a stories on Denver talk radio and in the Denver Post that alleged the good pastor -- who has openly spoken out against homosexuals -- had been caught buying meth from a gay escort.

Haggard, who had recently attempted to distance himself from Jesus Camp (see the filmmakers' response to Haggard), at first vehemently denied the accusations made by Mike Jones of Denver in interviews on Denver talk radio and to the Denver post that he had had monthly sex with Haggard, who is married with five children, over a course of three years, and that Haggard used meth during their encounters. Just yesterday, Haggard's coworkers at his New Life Church were supporting him and declaring Jones' accusations to be patently untrue. Today, though, Haggard admitted to reporters that he had contacted Jones about purchasing meth, and that it is, in fact, his voice on the voice mail tapes that Jones had produced as evidence, but denied using the meth (see video of Haggard admitting to some of the allegations).

An email sent out by acting pastor of New Life Ross Parsley, printed in the Denver Post today, said in part, "the board of overseers has met with Pastor Ted. It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true."

More Jesus Camp:

Netscape Video: More Jesus Camp Controversy
Evangelical Camp Featured in Jesus Camp Shuts Down
Jesus Camp Not Pulled from Moorefest
Michael Moore Won't Taint Jesus Camp

[via Movie City Indie ]

Jesus Camp, a documentary about kids attending evangelical Christian camps made by filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Boys of Baraka), has already weathered one controversy about whether or not it would play at Michael Moore's Moorefest. As we reported in July, Magnolia Pictures acquired the film and wanted to pull it from Moore's festival, fearing that screening it there would mark the film as a Liberal touchstone, but Moorefest denied the request to pull the film and showed it anyhow.

Now another controversy is brewing around the film: It's not playing to the evangelical market the way Magnolia had hoped. In this video, Netscape's Karina Longworth interviews the film's directors, explores the film and why evangelicals might be turning away from it. You can watch the film right here, or download it over on Netscape.

What would happen if you took a group of middle-school boys from a tough, inner-city school district in Baltimore, and transplanted them to a boarding school in Kenya, in the middle of nowhere? That’s the question the Baraka program asked, and for seven years the program, funded by a private foundation, picked a group of boys from Baltimore public schools each year to enroll in the Baraka school. The boys accepted would get two years of free tuition, room and board in Kenya, in an environment where they had one-on-one attention from teachers for the first time in their young lives.

Filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing spent over three years chronicling the experience of four such boys: Devon, Montrey, and brothers Richard and Romesh - boys they came to think of as The Boys of Baraka. When I spoke with Rachel Grady on the phone for this interview, the thing that struck me most was the passion with which she spoke of these boys she set out to film, and ultimately befriended. The insight Grady has gained from working with the boys and their families, she says, has forever changed her perspective on life in our society, especially for poor kids growing up in the inner city.

(interview below the fold)