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 Realscreen, Kevin Ritchie reports on the ways that Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time charts a new course for "natural history."
"As far as your typical, blue-chip natural history documentary goes, that time is over," says Sophokles Tasioulis of Berlin-based Sophisticated Films. "We've filmed every river and every mountain. The audience wants to see more. Either you introduce a bit of scripted drama or you bring in a filmmaker like Terrence Malick who takes a very different approach to documentary."
At Little White Lies, Vadim Rizov surveys the unsavoury "documentary" cinema of right-wing firebrand Dinesh D'Souza.
Wholly lacking in charisma as he is and possessing the proverbial punchable face, D'Souza's appeal to his target audience is nonetheless understandable: as an Indian-American, he can emit racist dog whistles while escaping charges of racism. Admittedly, this idea doesn’t speak to a very sophisticated understanding of how racism works, but it’s a persona that D'Souza's been playing since his 1991 non-fiction breakthrough, 'Illiberal Education'. Though he's now derided by all but the deepest faithful as a peddler of conspiracy theories and racism, the initial phases of D’Souza’s public career were in the guise of a putative "public intellectual," a conservative whose voice provided a necessary corrective to the potential setting in of doctrinaire liberal cant.
At Film Kommentaren, Tue Steen Muller asks whether there are too many documentary film festivals in the fall.
But are there too many documentary film festivals at this time of the year? Do they cannibalise each other, when it comes to getting the films. In terms of getting the best of the best it is no secret that festivals for publicity reasons want premieres and that might mean that one festival blocks films for another festival. There is a competition and filmmakers have to make choices.
At The Japan Times, Philip Brasor reports from a newly resurgent Busan International Film Festival
If you had been to the festival in the past and then attended this year’s without knowing about the "crisis," as it's being called, you probably wouldn't have noticed much that was different. Sure, there were fewer big-name stars on the opening-night red carpet, some prominent directors didn't show up (the Directors Association boycott was still in effect, but individual members could decide for themselves if they wanted to attend), and there weren’t as many parties. But more than 300 films were still screened and, perhaps more importantly, a full complement of foreign journalists and film bizzers were in attendance. As a result, the 21st edition was more of an international film festival than it's probably ever been, even if only because the South Korean component was slightly in eclipse due to the controversy.
At Medium, @Xenocrypt takes stock of some factual issues with Ava DuVernay's 13th.
Unfortunately, despite a lot of compelling primary source videos and some more original topics after the usual litany, I noticed a few statistics that are misleading, unclear, or incorrect. Some of these mistakes happen to hide things that would complicate the story 13th is trying to tell. Perhaps they make it a stronger piece of advocacy, but I think they make it a weaker piece of art.
"After the collapse of the military regime in the early 1990s, many independent documentary film producers abandoned their interest in protecting laborers and promoting the democratization movement. Instead, their attention shifted towards the weak in society-women and children and their rights, and the social phenomenon known as "comfort women," those captured by invading armies to serve as prostitutes for the military. These films focused on social imbalances that occurred during the democratization process, along with various socio-cultural conditions that spread among the younger generations. By 1995, changes within Korean media and related events suggested new avenues for documentaries."
Documentary Filmmaker Could Spend 45 Years in Prison for Pipeline Protest Coverage
read more
U.S. Dept. of Justice Responds to IDA Letter in Support of #RightToRecord
read more