My Page: Seonaid B. Campbell

international wildlife film festival

The climate is changing. Not only is Earth’s atmosphere transforming, but the atmosphere among television broadcasters like the BBC, Animal Planet, and PBS is changing too. Slowly they are admitting the necessity of producing conservation films.

At this years International Wildlife Film Festival (IWFF), the topic of an environment in crisis dominated talk between filmmakers. Ten years ago, Festival delegates may have openly discussed their deep concern for nature, but the climate within the wildlife and science film industry was inhospitable to broadcasting stories with a conservation message. The tide has turned. This year, the IWFF celebrated its 30th year by choosing a BBC film about global warming, entitled Climate Chaos, as the best of festival winner. “I think the judges were sending a message,” said Climate Chaos producer Nicholas Brown.

The Festival became a weeklong clarion call to filmmakers to address the global environmental crisis. [more]

At the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

"What do you think the title should be?" Les Blank asked the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival audience after the Saturday night screening of The Tea Film. The film, Blank's 40th, chronicles an American importer's pursuit of the finest teas in China, and is a work in progress. So too is Les Blank. At 71, the legendary filmmaker continues to challenge himself with new digital technologies, an ever-expanding cast of quirky film characters, and a travel schedule that would exhaust the most die-hard jet setter.

Audience members, giddy at being queried by the filmmaker, shouted out suggestions like "Tao of Tea" and "Steeped in Tradition," but I preferred Blank's own choice, "For all The Tea."

The cool man with a white beard and black cap listened closely to all the suggestions and criticisms, no matter how outlandish. Audience reaction is important to Blank's creative process, so on Sunday afternoon he held a workshop to screen his most recent works: Being There, about legendary documentarian Richard Leacock, and Butch Anthony, which profiles an outsider artist from Alabama. Both are short works designed to woo investors, who would provide the funds to turn them into feature-length films.

Click here to listen to Seonaid B. Campbell's interview with Les Blank.

Art in the West

At the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming last week, a tony crowd of art collectors dressed to the hilt in neo-western garb pursued the work of the artists they admire. For the artists present, the 19th annual Western Visions: Miniatures and More Show was not only a fundraiser for the museum but a chance to leave their solitary studios and visit with their artist peers.

"This event is the only time I feel like an artist," joked Tina Close, a longtime participant in the show and Jackson local. Sculptor Margery Torrey laughed and added, "We should exchange numbers. I don’t have much interaction with other artists." Close, dressed elegantly in a long black embroidered jacket, and taxidermist cum rancher Torrey, who wore a cowboy hat and buckskin shirt, met this year at the Wild West Artist Party.

The following night at the invitational Miniatures and More Show, the work -- in dimensions less than nine by twelve inches -- of one hundred and fifty painters and sculptors was exhibited. The board chairman emeritus, Bill Kerr, described the event as a means of "bringing together the collecting world with artists." [more]

Film Tax Incentives

A Plumm Summer, the independently-financed feature film currently being shot in Livingston and Bozeman, is heralded by its producers as the start of a new era of filmmaking in Montana.

Governor Brian Schweitzer made Fairplay Pictures feel as much, enticing them to the state with extra incentives, like office space and surplus state furniture -- on top of the 12 percent tax rebate on Montana labor and 8 percent rebate on in-state expenditures offered by the governor-championed Big Sky on the Big Screen Act.

Schweitzer is promoting A Plumm Summer as the first success of the act. Look a little closer, however, and you see that what appears to be a ray of hope is little more than a flicker. [more]