With Film Independent, IDA hosted a work-in-progress DocuClub screening of New Wave in Los Angeles in December of 2022. While the feedback Ai and her team received from the screening was generally favorable, she nevertheless decided to overhaul the doc’s narrative in order to include intimate details from her family’s relationship with music—and each other—opening old wounds in the process, with particular emphasis on the filmmaker’s estrangement from her mother. The final version of the film premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival, and is still seeking distribution. Documentary spoke with Ai via Zoom to discuss the shift in story subject over the course of seven years of development. This interview has been edited.
Music Documentaries
In the deluge of recent documentaries made by streaming platforms, it appears that production timelines have sped up in an attempt to fuel the
While the Venice film festival is widely treated as an awards platform for starry auteur-driven dramas, its little-known secret is a modest but strong nonfiction selection. Even without counting the Wang Bing film in competition, which screened too late for many critics (including this one) to cover, this year’s crop was remarkable for the breadth and variety of the nonfiction approaches.
World-renowned Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto’s work was deeply entwined with cinema. He was a prolific composer of movie scores, an occasional
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Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Mark Moormann’s documentary
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Haynes has been fascinated with the mythology and idolatry of celebrity, and the space between artist and fan
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is the directorial debut of Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson about the Harlem Cultural
Aldo López-Gavilán and Ilmar Gavilán, the sibling protagonists at the heart of Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider’s Los Hermanos (The Brothers), are two
Alex Winter has worn many hats in his 55 years. As a youth, he acted on Broadway. After college, he headed out to Los Angeles, where he continued to