Today I received an email from the National Film Board of Canada. It seems they have started a new socially conscious content website.
"We are compiling media about cycling issues and social change - in a dossier called Critical Mass: Wheels of Change. I saw your short doc on Youtube (Put the Fun Between Your Legs: Women Who Ride) and loved it!! I immediately thought that this video would make a great addition to our Critical Mass: Wheels of Change dossier."
This is very exciting because this is first hand the future of filmmaking and relaying ideas to the mass public, best of all it is completely participatory.
The most integral aspect of documentary filmmaking is getting to know your subject(s), really getting to know them. Spending time together, without cameras, gaining trust, forming relationships. Roman Safiullin did this when he shot his film, Outside Orlando. The story goes back two years ago. We had shared an intro to production class at the University of Central Florida. He saw my attention to detail in my editing and it stuck with him when a year later he asked me to edit his Documentary Workshop film about the homeless of east Orange County, FL.
Roman began volunteering with a group of young people whom I and my friends started called East Orlando Food Not Bombs, a horizontally structured anti-war, anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-capitalist organization dedicated to the redistribution of food with the mantra "Food is a right, not a privilege" This is where Roman met his subjects and spent time with in their camps in the woods surrounding suburban east Orlando.Completed in the Spring of 2007, the run time is 7 minutes as screened at the UCF end of the year film screenings.
