Dear Readers, Symptomatic of the digital era is the rapid evolution of new products into must-have commodities. Smart phones and tablets, introduced in 2007 and 2010 respectively, already claim two-thirds of US households. These are tools of communication and community, efficiency and effectiveness, versatility and virtuosity. And over the past four years—after a tentative manifestation in the late 1990s—virtual reality can justifiably proclaim itself as The Next Big Thing to hit the mainstream. First came Facebook's multi-billion-dollar acquisition of Oculus Rift—the brainchild of Palmer
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Editor's Note: This article is adapted from the fourth edition of Sheila Curran Bernard's Documentary Storytelling: Creative Nonfiction on Screen (Focal Press 2016). Audiences often respond to documentary work primarily in terms of its content or issues raised. In some ways, this is a mark of success, in the same way that people binge-watching a television drama may not take the time to notice how carefully the various subplots were constructed over an entire season, or how readers of a terrific mystery novel race through the pages to find out who did it. Done well, craft should feel
I was freaking out about getting married. I had carved out a decade as an indie filmmaker, and I valued my independence in all matters. I wasn't going to be a traditional, self-sacrificing wife and mother like my own mom. I liked my life being all about me. Then, in 1993, I was on the Sundance Documentary Jury and we screened Silverlake Life: The View from Here. Filmmaker Tom Joslin began to shoot the camcorder diary when he and his partner, Mark Massi, were diagnosed with HIV. When Tom got too sick, Mark took up the camera. In the end, one of Tom's former students, Peter Friedman, completed
By Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan We're starting a new documentary project, which means we're having that key early conversation with the people we hope to film. You're asking permission, or inviting them to go on a journey. You don't know yet where you're going or really what you're asking for. Even so, you can guess that their idea of what it means to be filmed is probably way off. The practical, tactical and ethical issues in play can be complex. Our feature documentaries have often involved longitudinal stories filmed over years, during which time we get very close to our subjects and are
A recent flood of impressive, handsomely produced, mostly cinéma vérité Chinese documentaries hint at the versatility and maturity of documentary production inside China, as well as to the strength of international infrastructure to help them find viewers. In the US and Europe, there have been occasional glimpses of this creative flourishing over the last decade. Wang Bing's West of the Tracks (2003), a three-part, nine-hour, cinéma vérité look at life in a Chinese rust bowl city, showed at Western festivals and on European and US television. Chen Weijun's Please Vote for Me, about a Chinese
This year's San Francisco International Film Festival was all about transformation. The festival left its longtime home base at the Sundance Kabuki multiplex in the centrally located Fillmore District and moved to the uber-hip Mission District. The hub of the festival was a newly restored and multiplexed 1920s movie palace, transformed into the latest Alamo Drafthouse, a Texas chain that features beer, cocktails and gourmet snacks served by a wait staff. Three other nearby theaters, the Roxie, the Victoria (also refurbished) and the Castro, rounded out the festival venues. The hope was to
By Marc Glassman and Patrick Mullen Toronto's Hot Docs festival wrapped its 23rd edition on Sunday, May 8, with its usual record-breaking set of stats. This year, the 11-day event presented 462 public screenings of 232 films on 15 screens to a new audience high of 211,000 attendees. Over 300 filmmakers and subjects attended Hot Docs, offering audiences and the media a chance to interact with a significant number of important figures, including filmmakers Steve James and Joe Berlinger, BBC Storyville commissioning editor Nick Fraser, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, former Noma head chef
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 Magazine, William Kremer reports on the story behind Diving into the Unknown, a documentary about four men who risked their lives to retrieve the bodies of two divers. In Diving into the Unknown, we do not see any of the divers collapsing into tears, or talking emotionally about lost friends. Instead, 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 University of Chicago Magazine, Jason Kelly provides an in-depth overview of 50 years of Kartemquin Films. Fifty years and more than 50 films generate a lot of history. In the offices, that history adorns walls, overflows shelves, and infuses conversations even as a new generation of filmmakers, staff, and
The IDA mourns the passing of beloved former board member Nicolas Noxon, one of our original founding members, as well as an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker who wrote, directed and produced more than 40 National Geographic specials. Noxon won the IDA's Strand Program Award in both 1998 and 1999, for his work on America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Goodbye and The Dragons of Galapagos. In 2009, Noxon received the IDA's Pioneer Award, presented to an individual who has made an indelible impression on the evolving art and craft of nonfiction filmmaking. When writer Bob