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!
At Indiewire, film critics discuss how the film world will respond to Trump's election.
"Perhaps the most important thing we need to do is survive. Trump is about to declare a holy war on the press, and while he's definitely thinking more about David Fahrenthold than he is about David Ehrlich, we nevertheless have to make ourselves valuable. We can't just be glorified publicists, we can't just carry water for corporations, we can't just tell people how to spend their Friday nights. We need to have purpose, we need to curate and shape the creative world that is going to exist in Trump's shadow, and we need to ensure that the light is pointing in the right directions."
At Filmmaker, Audrey Ewell reports on archival footage tips gleaned from a DOC NYC master class.
Rotondi had a surprising tip about approaching sources: sometimes calling yourself a documentary filmmaker can be a bad thing. While working on Inside Job, she called the Federal Reserve to get a copy of a paper written by a subject of the film. She initially identified herself as a documentary filmmaker. They hung up on her. A few days later she called back and just said she was looking for a paper because she was researching the subject and his work, and she was immediately directed to an obscure internal website that had published the paper.
At Modern Times, Thomas Logoreci interviews the activist found-footage prankster Craig Baldwin.
"I'm not rejecting fiction, but rather trying to use fiction for my own ends. In other words, a critique about history, about language, about power. Rather than going out and recording real world instances of abuses of power, I might take material from the archive, be it fiction or non-fiction. To use something that is fanciful and arty to actually make a comment on a real world situation. But the actual imagery does not necessarily have to come from documentary. Though it could."
At The Hollywood Reporter, Raoul Peck discusses his James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro
"I knew [Baldwin's] words since I was 15 years old. I knew how powerful they are. I knew that Baldwin is also a very controversial personality, and for me it was not about that, it was about his words and how important and impactful those words are today. I didn't want any talking heads, I didn't want anybody to interpret him, to speak for him. I wanted to be inside his head."
At Dogwoof, Robert Greene shares five films that have influenced his own work.
"Chantal Akerman's News From Home is minimalist, personal and affecting. Shots of New York, expressionistically out-of-sync city sounds and letters from Akerman's mother. That's it. Extension of time and space and depth of feeling; the personal as political."
"I thought about picking up my Super-8 movie camera to record the immediate aftermath, but the camera just felt too heavy, and I spent the day alternating between shock and sadness. As a source of comfort, my profession failed me—or did I fail it? Nearly two months later, I still wonder, and so I asked fellow filmmakers to share their experiences of that terrible day and what, if anything, they have done in response."
Independent Lens Announces New 2016-2017 Season
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The Film Collaborative Launches Collaborative Releasing
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Introducing the Class of 2017 Women at Sundance Fellows
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Patrick Hurley Appointed as Head of Marketplace at Sheffield Doc/Fest
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