[Mark Rabinowitz] As Public Enemy one said: What goes on? Well, first up is a piece from The Independent on some of the top school programs specifically for docs. Then we move on to a couple of pieces from AJ Schnack: One about the history of Paul Newman's involvement with documentaries and a second about another vacancy at a doc festival. Carry on, faithful readers!

Top Doc Shops
The Independent (Yes, that Independent) Magazine has a recent post in which Caitlin Graham writes about the top schools for documentary studies, writing "Although many of the best programs present opportunities to learn a bit about non-fiction filmmaking, it is rare to find one that focuses solely on the craft." Her list includes the Duke Center for Documentary Studies, The Documentary Center at George Washington University, The New School - Documentary Media Studies and the Maine Media Workshops' Documentary Filmmaking courses. The list of ten is presented un-ranked and rather artificially (it seems) split between university degree programs and non-degree instiututions. Why not top ten of both? I mean, does un-ranked mean that Graham picked the top 5 of each type? From what I can see, there are 7 programs located at universities/colleges and 3 that are not. My relatively minor criticisms aside, it's nice to see someone doing the research and maybe kick-starting a more in-dept listing.

Paul Newman and Docs
AJ Schnack wrote a piece that I missed last week wherein he went into Paul Newman's long history of being involved with documentaries (many of them progressive in tone or subject, natch!) including many that I was unaware of. Of course I am not surprised at some of the films to which he lent a hand and his passing leaves voids in so many segments of our lives as to be virtually unmeasurable. I, for one, will miss him immensely.

Brush Leaves Full Frame
We got Schnack to thank again, as he posts about the departure of Phoebe Brush, the director of programming at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. This follows on the heels of the departure of fest founder Nancy Buirski 10 months ago. Yikes.