CecchineR's blog

Randi Cecchine reports from the 3rd Annual Beyond Broadcast Conference held at SILVERDOCS with a series of interviews with community media leaders: Pete Tridish from the Prometheus Radio Project, Kevin Weston from New American Media, and Ivan Sigal from the United States Institute of Peace.

Hand-picked as a valuable investment by the Ford Foundation, New American Media serves the more than 3,000 ethnic media outlets in the US by hosting conferences and roundtables and by connecting maintream outlets to the outlets run by and for ethnic communities. Kevin Weston reflects on the value of ethnic media and the benefits of multilingual polling.

The Independent's Randi Cecchine, a filmmaker and educator from New York City, is impressed to learn that governments in Europe are eager to come up with policies to promote media literacy among their citizens, particularly young people. But as a European friend suggests, the role of the government in establishing guidelines concerning media literacy and education can be complicated—especially if media makers are cut out of the policy-making loop.

The Independent's Randi Cecchine, a filmmaker and educator from New York City, attended a panel on intellectual property and copyright law at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam. She came away from it thinking that European policy makers have spent more time thinking about ways to avoid disputes over the incorporation of one artist's work into a film created by another. She also likes the legal concept of "moral rights" in terms of intellectual property that prevails in Europe.

At Rotterdam, The Independent's Randi Cecchine checks out Lynch, a mysterious character sketch of a film about the inventive and enigmatic filmmaker David Lynch. In the film, the director says that meditating regularly for 32 years has helped him chill out and focus. If that is the case, Cecchine wonders, how come he seems so tightly wound? And what do his experiences tell us about the process of making a film, and the disappointments that seem inevitable when you collaborate with a group of people on a project? You can watch the film's trailer, or a humorous clip of Lynch taking on the iPhone's cinematic aspirations.

Filmmaker and educator Randi Cecchine is blogging from the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdarm. Today, she writes about an explicit short film from Singapore with the catchy title Allen Ginsberg Gives Great Head. Filmmaker X' Ho is not afraid to take risks, including many long sequences featuring explicit images. Cecchine is somewhat surprised that the film was included in the festival—despite their reputation, the Dutch are a little suppressed, she says—and wonders whether it's easier to watch this kind of film in a theater with an audience, or alone and on DVD.

Filmmaker and educator Randi Cecchine blogs from the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her first film? Staub (Dust), a documentary from Germany the explores the relationship between people and that familiar gray patina. Director Hartmut Bitomsky interviews obsessive cleaners, scientists who study dust to gain insights into the physical world, inventors who have tried to build dust-filtration contraptions, and health experts who worry about the effects of inhaling too much dust. In the end, Cecchine says the film is unexpectedly contemplative. To view a trailer for the film (without subtitles, and in German), check out our Watch page.