The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) announced the launch of the Building Bridges Documentary Fund at IDA's Getting Real '24 conference on April 18, 2024, at the Japanese American National Museum Tateuchi Democracy Forum. This pioneering initiative, generously funded by the Doris Duke Foundation, is designed to support and elevate the voices of Muslim filmmakers across the United States, promoting a deeper understanding of the Muslim experience through the powerful medium of documentary film. Applications for the 2024 Building Bridges Documentary Fund are open now through June 17, 2024.
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Kirsten Johnson has been a cinematographer and director since the 1980s. Her acclaimed films as a director include The Above (short, 2015) , Cameraperson (2016) , and Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020), all of which grapple with the meaning behind making images, their utility in conveying reality, and the strength of documentary images as visual evidence. For this interview, Documentary asked longtime archival producer and producer Stephanie Jenkins ( Muhammad Ali , 2021) to catch up with Johnson via Zoom. As a co-founder of the newly formed Archival Producers Alliance, whose other organizers are
Over the years, Jemma Desai’s writing, programming, research, and practice have intersected with institutional critique. Through investigating film institutions’ languages of colonialism, she’s brought renewed attention to hierarchies, systems, words, and ways of relating that are often taken for granted. Born out of a combination of rigorous research, firsthand experience working in institutions such as the British Council and the BFI, as well as testimonies by other arts workers, This Work Isn’t for Us (first self-published in 2020) was a crucially timely study of the fundamental problems
An interview with two organizers of the Archival Producers Alliance on how AI will shake up the nature of archival footage For the first decades of this century there was, relatively speaking, intermittent media coverage of Artificial Intelligence or how deep learning and related technologies were creeping into aspects of work, culture, and society. But then in late 2022, OpenAI released the large language model ChatGPT to the public—and stories about AI exploded. Subsequently, the coverage around AI in the last year or so has reached a point of fatigue, even satire: “It’s AI” has become a
Stephen Maing is an Emmy-award winning director and cinematographer based in New York City. His most recent film, UNION (2024), which he directed, filmed, and edited, is an immersive cinéma vérité account of the historic efforts by workers to unionize the first Amazon fulfillment center.
As IDA prepares to convene hundreds of documentarians and storytellers from around the world at Getting Real ’24, we must acknowledge the ongoing violence and intimidation aimed at journalists, documentarians, and media workers across numerous world crises.
“In a time when public interest media is in jeopardy—from market forces, from big tech, from political pressures—we need to organize,” declares DISCO , a network of documentary organizations in the first volume of their new endeavor, the Independence Project, which was unveiled during the industry program of CPH:DOX, Copenhagen’s prominent documentary festival (which ran March 13-24). For DISCO, the Independence Project and the “independent” label are needed to “reclaim our identity,” according to the report. “Only then and only together will we be able to make the case for the resources and
Bitchitra Collective: Indian Women in Documentary announces the second cohort for the Bitchitra Collective Documentary Film & Media Fellowship. Each will receive a $2,000 grant for an ongoing short or feature-length documentary project and a year-long mentorship with an established filmmaker. New this year, in partnership with Brown Girls Doc Mafia (BGDM), Bitchitra Collective established the inaugural Sriyanka Ray Grant, named after a founder of Bitchitra and a beloved community-based artist and organizer within BGDM. The recipient of the Sriyanka Ray Grant will receive $4,000. Awarded
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Anna Moot-Levin and Laura Green’s Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s , the second film in the co-directors’ trilogy spotlighting individuals living with degenerative diseases. The first, Matter of Mind: My ALS , debuted on PBS’s Independent Lens last year. Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s will follow on Independent Lens on Monday, April 8, 2024, at 10 p.m. local time on most stations (check local listings). On the clip, the co-directors write, “In this clip, we meet Veronica Garcia-Hayes, who was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s at the age
Filmmakers Asmahan Bkerat , Cherish Oteka , and Sharon Yeung are selected out of 76 nominees to receive $30,000 each supporting their feature-length journalistic documentary films. Made possible by the Jonathan Logan Foundation , the Logan Elevate Grant provided $380,000 to support 17 filmmakers in addition to story consulting for grantees since 2018. IDA’s Director of Funds, Keisha Knight , said, “The purpose of Logan Elevate is to amplify the voices of women identifying or nonbinary nonfiction filmmakers of color. We are thrilled to be able to award 30k in unrestricted funds to these three