Mon 8-23 and Tues 8-24: Spike Lee's Katrina sequel

If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise, the 5-year Katrina anniversary sequel to When the Levees Broke, is airing tonight and tomorrow night on HBO. Produced by Sam Pollard and Spike Lee and directed by Lee, the film has been widely reviewed -- in the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Sam Pollard is among those interviewed in Documentary Storytelling.

History, Documentary, iPod -- a walking tour in Boston

From the July/August 2010 issues of "Humanities" (National Endowment for the Humanities), a report by Craig Lambert on Walking Cinema: Murder on Beacon Hill -- an iPod app offering a walking tour that explores an 1849 murder in Boston. The tour was co-produced by Eric Stange, director of Murder at Harvard, a broadcast documentary (PBS's American Experience) -- which in turn is built around historian Simon Schama's book, Dead Certainties, which looks at the murder and how historians piece together narratives.

The app is available from Untravel Media. (See also Ryan Gilbey's article for The Guardian: "The first film made for the iPhone: Is this the start of a whole new cinematic genre"?)

SAY NO TO THE VERIZON-GOOGLE BLOW TO NET NEUTRALITY

"The Internet and other digital media offer an unprecedented opportunity for creators to reach consumers and for people to watch and read what they want, when they want," notes the Writers Guild of America, East, in demanding that the Federal Communications Commission and Congress NOT allow the Verizon-Google deal to move ahead.

Should it pass, they warn, "the Internet will resemble television and the movies: completely dominated by a handful of multinational conglomerates that decide what the public will watch based, not on the quality of the programming, but on the margin of profit." READ THE FULL ACCOUNT.

Included in Apple's "A Curriculum for Digital Media Creation"

Sponsored by Apple Inc., Marco Antonio Torres and Ross Kallen's 84-page "A Curriculum for Digital Media Creation: Sixteen Lessons, from Storyboarding to Producing a Documentary" (2008) -- see page 10:

"Many books focus on the post-production side of the process. Also, some great reference books exist for documentary moviemaking classes. We recommend two of them, both of which look at the whole picture of documentary moviemaking:
Directing the Documentary, *Fourth Edition (Paperback) by Michael Rabiger
Documentary Storytelling for Video and Filmmakers by Sheila Curran Bernard"

Thanks! (Link: http://images.apple.com/education/docs/Apple-Moviemakingcurriculum.pdf)

Documentary Storytelling for Government Agencies

Documentary Storytelling is one of two books on visual storytelling recommended in the "Do It Yourself Video Guide for Government Agencies" -- available online (January 2010).