Dear Readers,
The pieces published this month celebrate Disability Pride Month and Immersive July, comprising a series of events, convenings, and articles centering on the potential of immersive technologies like AR, VR, and haptics to push forward the nonfiction form.
To be clear, Immersive July isn’t just about the new—audio, music, and even “flat” documentaries are also immersive technologies, of course. To this end, Lauren Wissot summarized an insightful panel packed full of details on pitching audio documentaries to the team at Wondery, podcasting’s great new commercial hope, from Hot Doc’s Podcast Festival Showcase. This article is bolstered by activities at IDA, including a special three-day convening of creative technologists, artists, and experimental film curators called Experimental Realities and “Embodied Infrastructures: Disabled Immersive Nonfiction,” a public virtual panel presented by the Nonfiction Access Initiative (NAI). Connecting our two themes of the month, Julie Fukunaga sharply drew out the main themes from “Embodied Infrastructures,” which was organized and facilitated by NAI’s Cielo Saucedo. We also published a list of staff recommendations of documentaries on disability justice for Disability Pride Month. Non-thematically, Carol Nahra interviewed Emma Hindley, whose post leading BBC’s Storyville was made official earlier this year, on her plans to continue the storied strand into an uncertain future.
Looking forward towards our own future, Documentary will relaunch as a print magazine for Winter 2023 in November/December. This relaunch will introduce a heftier look and feel to the magazine, compile the most influential articles we published digitally through this past year, and include new strands and sections. The magazine will still be included in all IDA membership levels. After the relaunch issue, Documentary will resume a regular printing schedule.
Drop us a line at magazine@documentary.org if you have suggestions, notes, pitches, questions, jokes, feedback, or kind words. Everything is appreciated.
Thanks for your continued readership and support.
Until the next newsletter,
Abby Sun
Editor, Documentary