American Cinematographer - January 1996 - 22

An old and

lonely man

filmmaking came naturally; his father
was Max Ophuls, director of such cinema
masterpieces as The Earrings of Ma¬
dame De... and Lola Montes.
Asked if films had the power to
alter history, Ophuls demurred: "Excuse
me if I sound vain; I happen to be one of
the few people in the world who [made]

film, at a particular time, that people
changed the political consciousness
of a country. [But] I don't think that's en¬
tirely true. I think that The Sorrow and
the Pity just happened to be made at a
time when people's consciousness
was changing. [Still,] it did have an in¬
one

now,

Charles

Foster Kane's
heart fails him.

say

fluence."

Recently, Ophuls experienced
kind of vindication in France, although
he had to wait almost three decades for
it. In the midst of official commemora¬

a

And with his

dying breath

tions of the Second World War, the
French head of state, Jacques Chirac,
made a speech that acknowledged, for
the first time, French responsibility dur¬

he utters the

ing the war. Chirac conceded that during
the occupation, French police had, with
very little resistance, rounded up Jewish

name

of his

only love,

families and handed them over to the Na¬
zis.
Asked about the future of

documentaries, Ophuls offered a mixed
message to younger filmmakers. Al¬

though his sentiments were generally
bleak, Ophuls admitted that The Sorrow
and the Pity had "taught him a lot about
life and about how people react to life."
Ophuls made a call for per¬
sonal responsibility by adding, "In our
own personal behavior - and I think this
is very much the case if we want to make
documentary films in the schlock capital
of the world, which has become ex¬

tremely repressive

- we do have to
think in terms of resistance or collabora¬

"Citizen Kane" wouldn't have been

the

same

without Orson Welles.

But he wasn't
He

was

a

Hollywood native.

born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

And

today there are plenty of other
great cinema talents living in
Wisconsin. Peter Buffett for

example, whose compositions
appear in"Dances With Wolves" and
"The Scarlet Letter." What's more,
Wisconsin also has plenty of crew
with feature film

experience.

So consider Wisconsin for your next

more information
call 608.267.FILM.

production. For

WISCONSIN

FILM OFFICE

20

tion. And I think resistance is the only
lifeboat."
In offering advice on how to

documentary project, Ophuls ad¬
vised the assemblage against "sending
exposes and cassettes and curriculum
vitae" to executives who are likely to file
the materials away. "Don't give in to
these silly people who think, because
they are vice president of creative affairs
of National Geographic or something,
that they can dictate to you what the
content and the form of your work should
start a

principles and his art, struck
chord. It

was a note

a moral
that had not been

sounded very often at previous panels
and discussions, where films were chill¬

ingly referred to as "product." One pro¬
ducer from ITEL, described as a produc¬
tion and distribution company, sniffed
that he only considered distributing films
with budgets of $200,000 or more -
miniscule by Hoilywood feature stan¬
dards, but

a far cry from the sums raised
by legions of camcorder-diarists.
Even Ophuls is having diffi¬

culties with the commercial world.

Screened at festivals in New York and
Los Angeles, The Troubles We've Seen
has yet to find a distributor because of its

length - 3Vfc hours - and alleged lack
marketability.

of

IDA Awards

On a
IDA rewarded
ers

more

positive note, the

handful of filmmak¬
whose work merited garlands.
a

This year's Documentary Achievement
Awards went to five works (four feature-

length documentaries and one short)
spanning a wide range of documentary
styles - and budgets. The winners, se¬
lected from

more

wide,

FDP, by David Grubin; Crumb,

were

than 200 entries world¬

by Lynn O'Donnell and Terry Zwigoff
(with cinematography by Maryse
Alberti); The Devil Never Sleeps, by
Lourdes Portillo and Michelle Vallelores;
Eternity, by Lawrence Johnston and
Susan MacKinnon (with cinematogra¬
phy by Dion Beebe); and the short
piece 89mm from Europe, by Marcel
Lozinski.

Relying extensively on archival
footage, FDP, Grubin's psychological
portrait of Franklin Roosevelt, was fi¬
nanced in part by the National Endow¬
ment forthe Humanities for

$2 million. A

4 1/2-hour

PBS as
series.

epic, FDP was broadcast on
part of the American Experience

Grubin's resume as a producer
reads like a catalogue of prestigious

awards; his list of achievements includes

eight Emmys (seven as a producer and
one as a cinematographer), the George S.
Peabody Prize, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, a
Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Writer's
Guild Documentary Award. His previous

be," Joe said.

work includes LBJ, a 4 1/2-hour film

This urge to resistance, from a
filmmaker who had struggled all his pro¬

biography of Lyndon Johnson, and Heal¬
ing and the Mind with Bill Moyers, an ac¬

fessional life to avoid

claimed

January 1996

compromising his

five-part series for PBS.
American Cinematographer - January 1996

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