Under the leadership of Chief Curator Shari Frilot, this year's New Frontier program at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival continued to push the boundaries of film, art, media, technology, music and performance and reaffirmed its stature as one of the world's premier showcases of virtual and augmented reality programming. Having only been a part of Sundance since 2007, New Frontier is still a relative newcomer to the creative goings-on in Park City, but this recent edition leaves no doubt that the program is on par with Sundance's celebrated film programming. With its expansion to
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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 Film Comment, Jeff Reichert considers the aesthetics of Stephen Bannon's documentary films. Regardless of your politics, any reasonable viewer should find much to question in Bannon's analyses of recent historical events, which run the gamut from debatable argumentation to wild truth-spinning to sheer
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 New York Times, Amy Qin profiles Zhao Liang, whose striking new film tackles the human and environmental costs of coal mining. Mr. Zhao relies on imagery and audio captured over a year and a half of shooting to convey the sheer physicality and scale of Inner Mongolia's coal mines. The biggest challenge, Mr
The IDA and Filmmaker-in-Residence Renee Tajima-Peña are proud to announce a new filmmaker mentorship program. Renee will mentor several emerging filmmakers who are actively working on a documentary. These projects range from those in the development phase to those in the latter stages of post-production. Renee will meet with each filmmaker one-on-one on a regular basis, offering information and advice on their individual projects, as well as on their overall career development in the documentary field. By the end of the mentorship, mentees should emerge with a broader perspective on their
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 Media Matters, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting calls reported Trump privatization plan "devastating." "The federal investment in public media is vital seed money — especially for stations located in rural America, and those serving underserved populations where the appropriation counts for 40-50% of
Editor's Note: The following is a keynote address that Marcia Smith of Firelight Media delivered at IDA's Getting Real conference last September. Thank you to Simon Kilmurry, Ken Jacobson and other colleagues at IDA for the chance to talk to the tribe on the last day of what's been an inspiring and illuminating conference that has allowed us to deepen connections with each other—and have some great parties. It's not every day that filmmakers can get together in this kind of atmosphere, so this is a very special opportunity, and there's a real thirst for this kind of gathering. Looking to this
Editor's Note: Following IDA's Getting Real '16 conference, filmmakers Grace Lee and Marcia Smith approached us about publishing their respective keynote addresses in this issue. And then came The Election, which prompted both writers to reassess their speeches in this new dystopian world. But we decided to keep the speeches as they are—as self-contained calls for action that were just as powerful in September as they are now—and reinforce their combined urgency with introductions from each of the authors. In this post-election moment, we need more than ever to "get real" about who tells the
Editor's Note: At the IDA Awards last month, we announced that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation would be supporting a major four-year project that will provide support to documentary makers and journalists through grants, mentorships, training and access to resources. You'll be hearing much more about the particulars and parameters of the initiative over the next few months, and from the editorial department at IDA, we'll be rolling out content every month that addresses specific issues related to the project. To kick things off, filmmaker Brian Knappenberger, whose new film
By Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker and Paul Stekler Since the election of Donald Trump as president and the triumph of conservative Republicanism in Washington, there has been much talk among progressives about living in a "bubble" of their own making, surrounded by like-minded people culturally, and geographically unfamiliar with Americans who hold sharply divergent views. Even President Obama made this one of the themes of his farewell address. As might be expected in the age of social media, there has been some strong pushback to this notion and then, inevitably, a backlash to the backlash. As
Few things are more intellectually pleasurable than a good paradox. Take, for example, documentary film distribution in the digital era. As content providers proliferate, jargon abounds and a new language surfaces based on acronyms for "Video on Demand" service types: "TVOD" (Transactional/pay-as-you-go viewing like iTunes), "SVOD" (Subscription-based like Netflix), "AVOD" (Advertising/free but shows commercials) and "OTT" (Over-the-Top/across the Internet). And let's not forget about a traditional theatrical release and community screenings. So what's the prevailing wisdom about distribution