PANELS AND GUESTS - FREE!

Each year, the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival (AmDocs) offers informative Filmmaker Panels conducted by our special guests and industry experts. These panels feature lively discussions, and Q&As, where our filmmakers get to bounce ideas off one another, and focus on multiple aspects of documentary filmmaking.

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Subjects may include:

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• How do you decide whether your film is a short or feature: What is better for the story and the audience?

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• Everything Legal, with AmDocs Advisory Board Member, Attorney at Law, and Filmmaker Paul Szynol

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• Editing your documentary film: The 3-act structure

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• Self-selling versus traditional distribution

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In 2023, AmDocs will host special guests and industry experts:

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​11:30 am
(PROGRAM 8) Bill Plympton (Friday, March 31)
Location: Camelot Theatres
Details: Bill Plympton is considered the King of Indie Animation, and is the first person to hand
draw an entire animated feature film. Bill moved to New York City from Portland,
Oregon in 1968 and began his career creating cartoons for publications such as New York
Times, National Lampoon, Playboy and Screw.   In 1987, he was nominated for an Oscar® for his animated short Your Face. In 2005, Bill received another Oscar® nomination, this time for his short Guard Dog. Push Comes to Shove won the prestigious Cannes 1991 Prix du Jury; and in 2001, another short film, Eat, won the Grand Prize for Short Films in Cannes Critics' Week.
After producing many shorts that appeared on MTV and Spike and Mike's, he turned his
talent to feature films. Since 1991, he's made eleven feature films. Eight of them, The
Tune, Mondo Plympton, I Married A Strange Person, Mutant Aliens, Hair High, Idiots
and Angels, Cheatin', and Revengeance are all animated features.  Bill Plympton has also collaborated with Madonna, Kanye West and Weird Al Yankovic in a number of music videos and book projects. In 2006, he received the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award from The Annie Awards. He also animated 6 opening "couch gags" for FOX-TV's "The Simpsons" and 6 "Trump Bites" shorts using real audio from Donald Trump, which won a 2019 Webby Award.

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​​12:00 pm
(PROGRAM )
Location: Camelot Theatres
Details:
 

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5:00 pm

(PROGRAM 15) Jeff Gibbs Master Class (Friday, March 31)
Location: Camelot Theatres
Details: Jeff Gibbs is the director, writer, and producer of the non-fiction film “Planet of the Humans,”

released on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day 2020, a film that has gained an audience of twenty million on multiple platforms including YouTube, iTunes, and Amazon Prime, and generated worldwide

discussion. Jeff was a producer for the Academy Award-winning “Bowling for Columbine,” the first film he ever worked on; and for the Palme d’Or winning “Fahrenheit 9/11,” far and away the

top box office documentary of all time. His other credits include serving as a consulting producer

for the Dixie Chicks’ film “Shut Up and Sing,” and as a producer for “At the Edge of the World,”

a film about the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He has consulted on a wide variety of other

film projects, served as composer for a number of films, and has appeared on MSNBC, CNN,

and other outlets. His writing has been published in the LA Times, Huffington Post, Alternet,

Mother Earth News, and the Detroit Free Press. Jeff has been invited to speak at

Columbia University, Penn State, and The National Education Association.

He currently is working on a new film, a podcast, and a book. 

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