Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy!
From the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area docmakers Dawn Porter and Pete Nicks, among others, weigh in on #OscarsSoWhite and the need for diversity:
It's a lesson that Nicks, 47, and other African American filmmakers from the Bay Area say is often left out of the heated conversations about Oscar inclusion: that seeing more genuine, varied versions of ourselves in movies, as Nicks says, "can force people to step inside each other's stories, to see and think differently about themselves and about each other. That's really the crucial thing we're talking about in this need for diversity on screen, and what's lost when our storytellers are homogeneous."
From The Hollywood Reporter, Academy Award-winning docmaker Rob Epstein schools songwriter Sam Smith on who was the first openly gay Oscar winner:
The long road to freedom is so easily forgotten. That was a crack a friend made while watching Sam Smith claim to be the first openly gay person to win an Oscar. By now the blogosphere has made hay of Mr. Smith’s misinformed statement. But the corrections, including blogs published by The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter, have not adequately addressed the specific claim.
Pacific Standard catches up with "The Original Six" female directors who, in 1979, formed the Women’s Steering Committee at the Directors Guild of America to fight for better representation in film and television:
The first member of the Original Six I reached was Lynne Littman, an Oscar-winning documentarian and features director who lives in a bright, high-ceilinged house near the Hollywood Bowl. Her emails were short but to the point: She would talk, but only if she could gather together the women of the "O6" together in one place. They were a unit, she explained: "This fight was central to all of our lives and careers and fortunately, we were products of our generation of feminists who believed in more than our individual ambition."
From Vice, a conversation with filmmaker Arthur Dong about his latest work, The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor:
I quickly learned that the history of that era is so intricate, and there were so many international forces at work in Cambodia at this time. [Making this film] told me how little as an American I know, especially about America's involvement during this period. But as a filmmaker, the emotional story is my job; as an audience member, I am only ever engaged when the story is emotional. When a film starts to get didactic, that's a different type of film and not the kind I am interested in. So I knew from the start that this was a film about Dr. Ngor's life journey, and audiences wouldn't be interested if it was bogged down. I also understood that the hardships that he lived through, the atrocities that he witnessed, and his accomplishments in life wouldn't have the impact if the audience didn't understand what had gone on. So I had to find a really intricate balance between his story and what the audience needed to know about the history at a minimum to really appreciate what he went through.
Although the legendary filmmaker Haskell Wexler left us in December, he left behind a trio of documentaries in various stages of completion. The Los Angeles Times talks to his contemporaries about these projects.
Those who worked with him say that even in old age, Wexler's activism remained strong and sometimes confrontational and that the posthumous documentaries exemplify his commitment to social causes.
From the archives, Spring 2011, 'Chinese Box Set: Arthur Dong's Docs on Asians in America Compiled'
The limited edition Stories from Chinese America: The Arthur Dong Collection, Vol. 2 establishes multi-prize-winning filmmaker Dong as the pre-eminent documentarist of Chinese America. This is not his only specialty; in Vol. 1, Stories from the War on Homosexuality, he released three documentaries that brought to life the historical underpinnings of the recently repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy (Coming Out Under Fire) and examined anti-gay hatred among Christian fundamentalists (Family Fundamentals) and convicts imprisoned for the murder of gay men (Licensed to Kill). The Los Angeles-based Dong's sensitive, well-crafted films fill essential gaps in the people's American history--particularly those who have been marginalized and misrepresented in popular discourse.
In the news:
Tribeca Film Festival Unveils 2016 Competition Slate
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Television Academy Expands Emmy Categories to Include Digital Content
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PBS' Frontline to Release VR Documentary On the Brink of Famine on Facebook
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Van Gogh Documentary to Be First Fully Painted Feature Film Ever Made
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Making a Murderer Creators Plan Sequel
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