Documentary Movies
HomeCurrent ShowsContactAboutArtWritingYouTUBEBooksMedia ClassesPolitics of Portraiture Class at NYU2015 Retrospective NYCShirleyClarkeCollaborationsFilms

Select Documentary VIDEO Works  by Donna Cameron.

PROGRAM 1: CONFIDENTIAL DO NOT DUPLICATE, 1991

webassets/Picture5.jpg

WHO MURDERED PFC. BETH ANN CAMERON?
WE ARE STILL LOOKING FOR THE ANSWER.

webassets/Picture5.jpg

webassets/Picture5.jpg

webassets/Picture5.jpg

click here to play "Confidential Do Not Duplicate" video

click here to download Teleplay of "Confidential Do Not Duplicate" pdf file

 

 

 

 

Confidential, Do Not Duplicate

Directed by Donna Cameron. 1991. 40 min. Color. Sound.

DISTRIBUTOR: THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART CIRCULATING FILM LIBRARY.

Contact: KittyCleary@moma.org

 

This film is a statement of grief at the terrible tragic loss of the filmmaker’s youngest sister, Beth. Beth, a U.S. Navy private, was stationed on the U.S.S. Holland in Charleston S.C. when she disappeared one Christmas. The circumstances surrounding her death were suspect of foul play; the Navy’s investigation of her disappearance was less than adequate. Her gruesome murder remains an unsolved mystery.

“Powerful!”   -Richard Herskowitz, Director, Virginia Festival of American Film.

“A very moving work!”   -Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film & Media, The Museum of Modern Art, NY.

“The very personal topic of the death of a loved one is a difficult subject for one to image...you succeeded, with grace.”    -Charles Mingus III, artist, curator.

“Although it's hard to believe now, this is one of tne of the first videos of the late 1980s'(then new) 8mm video format to so effectively use first person voice over.”   -Deborah Schaffer, filmmaker.

"Donna Cameron's story of the murder and disappearance of her sister is deliberately filmed as a home video. In this film, Cameron, known for her poetic cinema works on her own paper emulsion medium, returns to her photojournalist roots. She summons profound meditative moments in her use of script and camera. She incorporates familiar elements of sight and sound (wind, water, traffic) and makes no attempt to filter them. They are as raw as her voice, probing the strange tangled web of her sister's disappearance. It is a cold case which was never solved. By allowing natural distortion of image and sound, she alludes to the many levels that a person is affected by such a tragedy."   -William Sloan, Chief Emeritus, MoMA Circulating Film Library.

PROGRAM 2: THUNDERBOLT: DR. VIVIENNE THAUL WECHTER, 2001

"Homage to the Camp David Accord"
webassets/prometheus.jpg
20', Forged Steel, by Vivienne Thaul Wechter, Location: George Meany Center, Washington DC

 
Thunderbolt! A Dialogue with Dr. Vivienne Thaul Wechter

Directed by Donna Cameron. 2001. 30 min. Color. Music by Peter Wetzler.

DISTRIBUTOR: THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART CIRCULATING FILM LIBRARY.

Contact: KittyCleary@moma.org

This film is a portait engaging a phenomenal talent, Vivienne Wechter. Wechter, 91 at the time of the filming, sheads her original poetry and discusses her politics. She'd worked and partied with many of the illustrious persons of her age, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Salvatore Dali, Helen Hayes, Robert Penn Warren, Alice Neel, Dorothy Gillespie. This film illuminates her most endearing traits. She is sponaneously fiesty, offsetting, loving and dynamic. Wechter is a gifted painter, sculptor and poet and intertwines her multi media thinking throughout the script. 

 

click here to play Thunderbolt Part 1

webassets/meviv.jpg

click here to play Thunderbolt Part 2

webassets/meviv.jpg

click here to play Thunderbolt Part 3

webassets/meviv.jpg

click here to play Thunderbolt Part 4

webassets/apth4.jpg

click here to play Thunderbolt Part 5

webassets/meviv.jpg

click here to play Thunderbolt Part 6

webassets/meviv.jpg

"A very accomplished work!"   -George Stoney, legendary documentary filmmaker and Professor Emeritus, Department of Film & Television, Maurice Kanbar Institute, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

""Thunderolt..." is a fine, skillful work, and an enjoyable portrait of Vivienne."   -Larry Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art, NY.

"Vivienne Thaul Wechter is an original, intense, expressively lyrical abstract painter possessed of an imagination tha sights the unusual... I am in full support of this project. Donna Cameron is a noted filmmaker, and it is important that this film is made."   -Henry Riseman, Director, Museum NECCA.

"Were Vivienne Wechter a literal or realistic artist the word people would be sorely tempted to put the substance of her communication into words, to see her pictures in terms of words alone. But luckily she is not a realistic artist, she is an extremely subtle abstractionist. As such, she is a most proper stimulant. Though it is well knowthat she has an extraordinary gift for words, she is also able to broadcast to us from areas where words are of no avail. For she has learned the silent language of the artists well. She is highly skilled in the complexities of color, light, line and form and understands the power of their impact on the eye and mind.  And what is more, her wordless messages come to us through the medium of a vital and abundant talent."   - Robert Beverly Hale, the late Curator, American Paintings and Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.