This week, we catch up with Rocky from Bronx Princess, get ready for the Cinema Eye Awards, read through lots of year-end and decade-end lists of best docs and more.
CNN’s “Inside Africa” aired a segment on Bronx Princess (POV 2009) and talked to protagonist Rocky Otoo and her mother, Auntie Yaa. The film follows Rocky as she graduates high school and starts college. Today, Rocky is a junior, and in this interview, she reflects on the film, and on what she has learned about her Ghanian roots and traditions since then.
The Reckoning (POV 2009) filmmakers Paco de Onís and Pamela Yates will be the keynote speakers at the Making Your Media Matter conference this year. The conference will take place from February 11-12 at American University. You can register for the conference now.
You can still vote for the 2010 Audience Choice Prize at the Cinema Eye Honors. Vote now, and the winner will be announced at the Cinema Eye Honors ceremony on January 15, 2010.
Ever wonder how grantmakers decide which projects they’ll fund? Diana Barrett of The Fledgling Fund gives you an insider’s peek into the process as she wades through 400 proposals from filmmakers, which must be whittled down to a list of 15 films to fund.
Year-end lists of best docs have been cropping up all over the place over the last few months, and there have been a few “best documentaries of the decade” lists as well. Cinematical says that the 2000’s were a great decade for documentaries, and divided their favorites of the last 10 years into separate categories. Their list features POV alum Jesse Moss (Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story) for his film Full Battle Rattle.
The Documentary Blog also offers its own list of the top 50 documentaries of the decade. POV’s The English Surgeon made it onto the list at number 4, and POV alum Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal) also made it on with her film, Protagonist, at number 46. And POV’s forthcoming Food, Inc. (airing on April 21, 2010) made it onto the list at number 25 made it onto Paste Magazine‘s decade’s best docs list. POV alums Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, whose The Boys of Baraka we aired in 2006, landed in the number 13 spot with Jesus Camp. And Michael Moore, another POV alum (both Roger and Me and Pets or Meat aired on POV in 1992), landed at number 5 for Bowling for Columbine.