An interesting site: The Documentary Interview. It’s always tough to make simple interviews visually interesting. Some great examples of doing it well.
The frog farmer interview from the film Manda Bala
Archive for May, 2011
Our documentary subjects in the news
I’m a little late in posting this, but John Bliss and Stacy Brenner—proprietors of Broadturn Farm, friends, and documentary subjects from Meet Your Farmer—were profiled in the latest edition of Mainebiz:
The CSA makes up the bulk of their income, but another roughly 30% comes from other lines of business they’ve developed, including floral design services and a popular summer camp in which potential “budding entrepreneurs” man a farm stand, Bliss says. “I joke that the farm is an advanced lemonade stand,” he says. Broadturn also hosts eight to 10 weddings a year, with guests noshing on food supplied by the farm and enjoying flowers picked on the property. “They see the cow being milked while they drink their cocktails,” Brenner says.
John & Stacy, in addition to running their CSA and raising lovely children, have a blog! You should read it right now! Our good friend Jon Courtney, timber-framer extraordinaire, is helping renovate their iconic barn, which will become Flora*Bliss at Broadturn Farm: “a farm stand and floral design studio space, selling organic produce, cut flowers and general farm goodness.” Scarborough and southern Maine shoppers, take note!
Also, tune in to see John & Stacy in the broadcast premiere of Meet Your Farmer, Thursday May 19th at 10:00pm on MPBN. Also airing at 11:00am on Saturday, May 21, for those of us who have infant daughters with early bedtimes.
Meet Your Farmer Broadcast Premiere!
We’re excited to announce that Meet Your Farmer, our series of short films about Maine farmers, will premiere on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network on Thursday, May 19th at 10:00pm. It will air again on Saturday, May 21st at 11:00am. More information about the screening is at MPBN.net and MeetYourFarmer.org
Meet Your Farmer is a series of eight short profiles of farms in Maine. Produced for Maine Farmland Trust, an organization that works to preserve farm land in Maine for farming use, the films offer a glimpse at the many different types of farms in the state.
From the potato harvest in Aroostook county, to the innovations of a seventh-generation dairy farmer in Western Maine, the short films remind viewers that farming is more than just a historical feature of Maine; farming in Maine is alive and well.
Meet Your Farmer was directed and produced by Cecily Pingree & Jason Mann, with additional editing and cinematography by Lindsay Mann. Josh Povec edited one of the films and color corrected the whole show. Joe Nelson (of The Toughcats) created the music with Lindsay Mann and mixed the audio.
LEF Foundation supports Betting The Farm
We are extremely grateful and excited to be among the Spring 2011 grantees of the LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund, which is supporting our feature documentary Betting The Farm.
From the full announcement:
Betting the Farm
This character-driven film follows three farm families in Maine as they launch a new milk company, in a desperate attempt to save their farms and their families’ way of life.
LEF has been a generous supporter of our documentary from the beginning, and their continued support if both a practical and psychological boost for our long summer of editing. Check out the other grantees, too. It looks like a great slate of documentaries.