THE WHEAT AND THE CHAFF: NEW DOC AIRED ON TV RUSSIA

Our one hour long documentary about genetic engineering in agriculture has just been successfully broadcasted by the Russian State TV. You are very welcome to watch it, albeit with no English subtitles yet. Throughout these last six months we’ve changed our workflow completely. I hope I will have more time to talk about it in a more detailed way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFbg2HCu5K8

NOT THIS TIME

So we weren’t lucky enough to grab the Emmy, but honestly there weren’t really much hope either. I used the moment to reunite&chat with my Chinese-Dutch-Canadian-US friends. It was also lots of fun to witness the inner mechanics of the prestigious ceremony. Particularly when it came to the nominations for field reporting, which in current obstacles inevitably meant 5-6 poorly executed, extremely biased pieces of tv-propaganda competing for the favor of the ideologically motivated jury. The ultimate vanity fair of media imperialism. This is how I will remember it.

NEW DOC 90% READY

It might be a little premature to announce that but my new film called “PLANET OF BABEL” is in the final stage of production. I’ve just showed the final cut to our channel’s executives and hopefully after some minor revisions it will be aired by RUSSIA-1. We keep our fingers crossed. The film (as it was mentioned in earlier posts) is telling the story of the Great Recession through the eyes of ordinary people all across the globe. It is raising questions of moral and ethical degradation caused by our today’s obsession with material wealth and institutionalized individualism.

We’ve been shooting this doc in collaboration with talented people from Europe, US and Asia. Everywhere we were met with open arms and people’s willingness to contribute. It would’ve been impossible to accomplish such a task traveling as a fully equipped tv-crew (given all the associated expenses), so this was the time when our DSLR techniques paid off well. I switched to Nikon D800 completely while my assistant Oleg Segeev was mostly operating the beautiful tiny (hacked) GH2. In my further posts I hope to share some experience as of how to produce a film comprising over 10 countries (from Greece and US to China and Syria) with only a lightweight bagpack and a tripod.