Editor's Note: Aman and Zeshawn Ali were among five film teams selected to participate in the second annual filmmaker Camden/TFI (Tribeca Film Institute) Retreat in partnership with CNN Films. The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF), Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) and CNN Films held this five-day intensive seminar in Camden and Rockport, Maine, to provide five US-based filmmaking teams with professional guidance, master classes and mentorship, led by a cross-section of industry experts to help the emerging talent advance their documentary filmmaking careers. The projects selected for the
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Cinephiles the world over are just beginning to come to terms with the loss of the restlessly inventive Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who died of cancer last week in Paris. Working within the religious and political constraints imposed by the post-1979 Iranian government, Kiarostami eluded all generic categories, using each new project to express a new challenge to film form. In his art, he brushed aside censorship in order to set up a series of self-imposed limitations, creating a recognizable sensibility that wed postmodern skepticism to neorealist humanism. It risks cheapening the
Most Americans know about the "War on Drugs," but fewer people are aware of the "War on Sex Crimes." Over the last 25 years, the punishments for these transgressions have gotten harsher, especially for crimes against children, and once individuals are convicted, the crime stays with them for the rest of their lives. In many places sex offenders are prohibited from living near, or even having contact with, children. One Florida-based woman, who struggled to find a place for her son to live after he got out of jail, established a motor-home community to help offenders transition back to society
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! In advance of the IDA's Getting Real conference, Realscreen presents a special report on documentary financing and the economic pressures on filmmakers. The democratization of technology and abundance of distribution platforms allows most anyone to make docs, but with so many opportunities and a saturated market
The annual AFI DOCS Filmmaker Forum, presented in association with IDA and Women Make Movies, was held this year from June 23-26 at the AFI DOCS Festival Hub in downtown Washington, DC. Diversity and inclusion were the central themes of the first two days, which was sponsored by the Center for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In her introduction, Jennifer MacArthur, CPB Filmmaker Forum Producer, acknowledged her initial reluctance to take on the topic. "I felt like the conversation around this area had been stalled," she admitted. "But what's exciting to me is to see the conversations happening out
Docaviv, based in Tel Aviv, is one of the most animated and serious documentary film events of the year, as well as the most important annual showcase for Israeli documentaries. This year's edition, which ran May 19 through 28, showcased over 100 international and Israeli films, alongside events, platforms, workshops and master classes, and attracted over 50,000 attendees, and 30 national and international print and media journalists. In October and December, Docaviv will tour with smaller curated programs to Ma'alot Tarshiha at the center of a mixed Muslim/Jewish/Christian population in the
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 Washington Post, Ann Hornaday reports on the shifting nature of the contract between documentary filmmakers, their sources, and their viewers. Participants’ remorse is surely nothing new in documentaries, wherein directors routinely take the raw material of talking-head interviews and trim, shape and
When a young filmmaker named Diego Echeverria brought a small production crew to Brooklyn's South Williamsburg neighborhood in the early 1980s, he wasn't intending to create a time capsule. Echeverria, who was born in Chile but grew up in Puerto Rico, visited the largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community to document the spirit and creativity that thrived among the abandoned buildings and run-down streets. At the time, South Williamsburg—then informally referred to in Spanish as "Los Sures" — was one of the poorest areas in New York City. "When I was doing [the film] 33 years ago, I wasn't
The first time I met Oscar-winning documentary director Roger Ross Williams was in the lobby of the W Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. It was 2014 and we were both attending the inaugural IDA Getting Real Conference. He was standing next to prolific documentary producer and founder of Motto Pictures, Julie Goldman. They were both dressed head to toe in black and were in no mood to chit-chat. They had an important meeting to get to. It was with Disney executives, and the outcome would dictate the fate of their latest producer-director collaboration, Life, Animated. "That was the second meeting
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! In the continuing wake of the devastating massacre in Orlando, Casey de la Rosa of Sundance.org offers a selection of docs for required viewing. Despite this tragedy, there’s a lot for us to be proud of this LGBT Pride month — including the fact that this is a community of fighters. We’ve had to fight for every