October 2006 Archives

I'm planning on entering my film Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan to several ethnographic and documentary film festivals next year. I've been searching for information on places to enter, and here's the short list that I came up with. If you have any suggestions or comments, please send them in!

Festival Name
Date
Deadline
Info / Status
Montreal Ethnographic Film Festival Jan 26-28 Nov 1 (2006) www.anthro.umontreal.ca/varia/ffem06/ (2006 festival). Submitted. Withdrawn.
Portland Intl Film Festival Feb 5-17 Nov 15 (2006) Submitted. Dinged.
Through Women's Eyes Feb 23-26 Nov 13 (2006) Submitted. Rejected.
Reel Women's Intl Film Festival Mar 8-12 Nov 15 (2006) Submitted. Rejected.
Ann Arbor Film Festival Mar 20-25 Nov 22 (2006) Submitted. Dinged.
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Apr 12-15 Nov 30 (2006) http://www.fullframefest.org/. Submitted. Dinged.
Nashville Film Festival Apr 19-26 Oct 26 (2006) http://www.nashvillefilmfestival.org/. Submitted. Dinged.
Brooklyn Arts Council May 5-15 Nov 22 (2006) Submitted.
Hong Kong International Film Festival Mar 3-Nov4 Dec 15 /
Jan 7
http://www.hkiff.org.hk/eng/events/entry.html. Did not enter.

United Nations
Documentary Film Festival

Apr 21 - 22 http://www.storiesfromthefield.org. Submitted. Dinged.

Royal Anthropological Institute
Ethnographic Film Festival

Jun 27 - July 1 Jan 12 http://www.therai.org.uk/film/festival/index.html. Submitted. Dinged.
Women's Independent Cinema Oct 1-31 Nov 22 (2006) Submitted.
Women's Independent Cinema Oct 1-31 Nov 22 (2006) Submitted.
Seattle International Film Festival May 24-June 17 Submitted. Dinged.
Margaret Mead Film Festival Nov ?? May 31 http://www.amnh.org/programs/mead/
Submitted.
Society for Visual Anthropology Nov ?? March Submitted.
Mental Health Film Festival (UBC) May 2008 ??
       
Göttingen International Film Festival May 2008 Jan 2008 http://www.iwf.de/giff/
SuperFest: Disability and Culture Film Festival June 2008 Jan 2008 http://www.culturedisabilitytalent.org/

 

Visual Anthropology's list of film festivals: http://www.visualanthropology.net/fest.php

Asian Film Festivals: http://www.jpnfilm.com/festival/

DVD Jacket.jpgI mocked up the DVD jacket cover for my forthcoming film, Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan.

Comments and thoughts more than welcome! Also, let me know if you or your organization would like to arrange for a screening. I'm doing several this semester. The film is still officially still in editing, I'm hoping to open it in January at a film festival.

samson_h4.jpgGizmodo blogs about the new Samson Zoom H-4 field recorder, which seems extremely promising. At only $300, it is about $100 less expensive than either the Edirol R-09 (which is what I have) or the Microtrack 24/96 (which is very popular). The interface for the Samson looks absolutely fantastic and it has two XLR balanced inputs, which none of its competitors have.

The mike placement of the Samson is a spitting image of the Sony PCM-D1, which costs about $2000. The X-Y configuration is designed to give you a better sound field by reducing the possibility of the stereo mics being out of phase with each other.

Samson's product home page is here and they also have a copy of the manual online, which gives some of its specs. After the jump is a comparison of the Samson H4 against the Edirol R-09. The main defect that I can see is the lack of a time/date stamp on the files. This makes it much harder to use as a field recorder -- or as the audio component of a dual-system video recorder.

I'm thinking of picking one up as it seems very promising. No one has it in stock yet though. There are also only a few reviews online, but check the video review on Neo-Fight.tv.

2497187.jpgYesterday, I was interviewed by John Dankowsky for the Where we live show on WNPR (a NPR affiliate in Connecticut) about the Margaret Mead Film Festival as well as my film, Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan.

Sitting to my right in the photograph is Karl Heider, professor of anthropology at University of South Carolina, also an avid visual anthropologist. He delivered the keynote for the film festival on Saturday, titled: The State of Visual Anthropology.

WNPR.org hasn't posted the interview as an MP3 yet, keep tuned and I'll let you know when they do.

WNPR.org has now posted the interview as an MP3 format:

I screened a rough cut of Bethel yesterday at festival in the Peabody Museum at Yale. I'm still in editing and hope to open the film at the Montreal Ethnographic Film Festival in January 2007.

Canon USA and Canon Japan have announced that there is a new firmware upgrade for the Canon XL-H1 camcorder. Version 1.0.3.0 corrects issues with time-code synchronization as well as reducing the granularity of the manual iris control to 1/8 stop steps.

The firmware is available by either bringing the camcorder to a Canon center or by phoning them and asking them to send you the update on an SD card for free. It is not available by download. I phoned them and they are sending the new firmware by Fedex 2nd day. I'll post again when I've updated my unit.

p.s. My camcorder, which is one of the first 100 made, was at version 1.0.0.0. I haven't been able to find out what the minor fixes between 1.0.0.0 and 1.0.2.0 (the last public version) have been.


For more info: http://www.usa.canon.com

For more info about the upgrade from Canon Japan: http://cweb.canon.jp


Canon HD Video Lens 6x Zoom XL 3.4-20.4mm L

Canon has also announced a 6x wide-angle high-def lens for the XL-H1. The new Canon HD Video Lens 6x XL 3.4-20.4mm L has a 35mm equivalent perspective of 24.5 to 147mm, making it ideal for indoor videography. There's a manual iris control ring, which makes many people happy. Unfortunately, focus and zoom are still servo controlled which makes me unhappy. I had to dig around to find the maximum aperture, but it looks like it'll be f/1.6 to f/2.6.

The price is quite reasonable at a MSRP of $3000. When it comes out in November, I want one. This is the lens that should have come with the camera, in my opinion.

For more info: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelFeaturesAct&fcategoryid=175&modelid=12152&pageno=0

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