Ken Burns Loses GM Financial Backing

There's a report in the Huffington Post this morning that a recent result of the economic crisis is that General Motors is ending its long-time sponsorship of Ken Burns's documentary work.

Great Speeches

New York Times review here.

Australian Documentary

Williams, Deane. Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors. Intellect Ltd, 2008. (Distributed in the United States by University of Chicago Press)

Brave New Films as Video Debate Site

Brave New Films is carrying a number of links to videos both original and captured from various sources.

The political organization of access to video is still just getting started. It is an interesting and potentially important development.

Here's one, for example, on Senator Joseph Lieberman, "Still Lying after All These Smears." The link contains some rebuttal of Lieberman's claims in a Fox News interview.

Soviet Documentary

The Chronicle of Higher Education carried a notice today of this new book on Soviet documentary --

Manufacturing Truth: The Documentary Moment in Early Soviet Culture, by Elizabeth Astrid Papazian (Northern Illinois University Press; 267 pages; $39). Describes how documentary approaches in film and literature helped redefine the role of the artist in the wake of revolution.

First Thirty

From Penn State Newswire --

Big Ten Network to air '1st Thirty' episodes on Dec. 4

"1st Thirty," Penn State's online video series about the first 30 days of college life, will have its Big Ten Network debut at 5 p.m. Dec. 4 and will be rerun at 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8, and 11 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10. "1st Thirty" is the true story of four strangers, living together by chance, who have their life videotaped. A student camera crew from Penn State's College of Communications worked with an outside multimedia production company to record about 85 hours of real-time events of four women students, identified only by their first names.

Read the full story on Live: http://live.psu.edu/story/36035/nw4

Hacking Democracy

You can watch Hacking Democracy here.