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, Steve Greene considers why Richard Linklater, Robert Downey Jr. and documentarian Penny Lane were fascinated by the same historical charlatan. "There's something about this story that speaks to our current moment in ways that I couldn't have anticipated when I started the film," [Lane] said. "I could
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Editor's note: Over the past few weeks, we at IDA have been introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see Watani: My Homeland on Saturday, February 25 at 7:50 p.m. at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of IDA's DocuDay. As a physician, photojournalist and now filmmaker, the German-born, Barcelona-based director Marcel Mettelsiefen has made over 25 trips to Syria, piecing together an ongoing chronicle of tragedy and resistance in that war-torn country
Editor's note: Over the next few weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see 4.1 Miles on Saturday, February 25 at 7:50 p.m. at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of IDA's DocuDay. Daphne Matziaraki's 4.1 Miles, completed as a thesis project for the Documentary Program at UC Berkeley's School of Journalism, premiered last year as part of The New York Times' Op-Docs short film series; it feels as stirring and newsworthy as
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 The Hollywood Reporter, Simon Kilmurry argues that "documentary film is essential to a healthy and democratic society." If cinema is our most powerful art form, I would argue that documentary is both its beating heart and its conscience. It holds a mirror to our society and it holds our conscience to account
Editor's note: Over the next few weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see The White Helmets on Saturday, February 25 at 7:50 p.m. at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of IDA's DocuDay. Over the past year, we have seen a spate of films that address the continually unfolding tragedy that is Syria. From the refugee crisis to the horrific grip of ISIS to the unrelenting and indiscriminate destruction at the hands of the
Editor's note: Over the next few weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see Joe’s Violin on Saturday, February 25 at 3:55 at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of IDA's DocuDay. Following the journey of a donated violin that links nonagenarian Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold to 12-year-old Bronx schoolgirl Brianna Perez, Joe’s Violin is easily the most heartwarming of the documentary shorts nominated for this year’s Oscar
Editor's note: Over the next few weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see Extremis on Saturday, February 25 at 3:55 at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of IDA's DocuDay. Filmmaker Dan Krauss followed up his 2013 documentary The Kill Team, about war crimes committed by a US Army platoon in Afghanistan and the impact they had on one whistle-blowing soldier, with a strikingly different film: a short and emotionally
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 BBC, Stephen Mulvey asks whether Otto Bell's The Eagle Huntress should be considered a documentary. Early publicity for the film did little to inspire confidence, by stating that Aisholpan had fought "an ingrained culture of misogyny to become the first female eagle hunter in 2,000 years of male-dominated
When director Justin Schein began making a film about the aging political activist and colorful Greenwich Village mainstay Mayer Vishner, he was primarily hoping to bring attention to an underappreciated Zelig of the left. In the late 1960s, Vishner had served on the front lines of the theatrical, anti-authoritarian Yippie movement, collaborating closely with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin without ever grabbing the spotlight. But after visiting Vishner's filthy, cluttered apartment, Schein recognizes that he's dealing with a lonely, clinically depressed, alcoholic shell of a man. In his
Ken Jacobson recently departed IDA, having served just over three years as its inaugural director of educational programs and strategic partnerships. In that short tenure, he added significant value and visibility to the organization, expanding its programming to include intensive master classes and enhancing the profile of the "Conversations with…" series by securing TCM host Ben Mankiewicz to commandeer the evenings. And then there was Getting Real, the groundbreaking filmmaker-to-filmmaker event--developed and produced by Jacobson, Execeutive Directors Michael Lumpkin and Simon Kilmurry and