If you're a tabloid-reading New Yorker, you may already be familiar with the strange and sad tale of Darius McCollum, a guy from Queens whose transportation obsession has led to 32 convictions for impersonating MTA employees and taking over their bus and subway routes (and providing first-rate service, by all accounts). The transit fanatic also suffers from Asperger's syndrome and has spent over two decades in maximum security prisons as a result of his victimless—as he's never hurt anyone, nor so much as even damaged any equipment—crime sprees. And now Darius is getting the big-screen
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Dear Sirs: On behalf of the International Documentary Association, I am writing to urge Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors to lift the ban on the documentary Among the Believers. The documentary follows Maulana Aziz, chief cleric of the Red Mosque, as he wages a war against the Pakistani government with the aim of imposing Shariah law throughout the country. It also chronicles the lives of two teenage students who are pawns in his ideological war, and showcases the brave Pakistani activists fighting to stop the spread of extremism. We at IDA have watched the film and we feel that it is a
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 Guardian, documentary-maker Molly Dineen gets candid about her reasons for shooting a corporate promo film. The film clearly does an excellent job of showcasing the handful of Serco employees who appear as humane and thoughtful people; it made the audience laugh and was unexpectedly moving. Less clear is
The May 2nd deadline for Primetime Emmy submissions is coming up fast, so if you have a project that will have been presented within the primetime hours (6:00 p.m.- 2:00 a.m.) and within the eligibility period window (June 1 2015 to May 31, 2016), the clock is ticking. For any who may have left things to the last minute, ITVS and the Television Academy recently presented a webinar to help guide you in what may sometimes feel like an overwhelming process. For those who may have questions about where to submit their project, representatives from the Board of Governors for Documentary Programming
At the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, enormous creativity was on display, from many angles. Perhaps most interesting was a critical mass of journalistic work on systemic problems, often expressed in ways that vigorously exercised the flexibility of the form. The fest was of course rich in performance, glamour and celebrity. Contemporary Color captures an extraordinary spectacle of grassroots performance art—David Byrne orchestrating displays by color guards from across the US—in the combination of magical realism and cinéma vérité that the brothers Bill and Turner Ross ( 45365, Tchoupitoulas
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! New York Business Journal talks to filmmaker Gary Hustwit about his new VR content studio, Scenic. "The seed funding was put in by myself and the partners who started the company. We bootstrapped the seed capital. We're in the initial stage of exploring a Series A round. We have been doing major work for HBO
Now nearly two decades old, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is perhaps the closest thing America has to a European doc fest in terms of engagement, both from its prestigious attending filmmakers and its rabid audiences. And for the past six years this finely tuned fest has been hosting its laidback A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy conversations. Free and open to the public, the most recent series of panels was held in the 21c Museum Hotel (which, intertwined with a contemporary art gallery, is definitely the most unique hotel this traveling journalist has ever stayed at), and boasted a wide
Colleges and universities, often at the foreground of providing creative incubation for the research and development of new technologies, are beginning to explore the boundaries of virtual reality (VR). A few of them have funded incubators with agendas that differ in both practice and theory. Graduates and undergraduates are creating prototypes that include everything from documentaries to mapping systems, and off-campus collaborators—be they media giants or government agencies—are exploring a myriad of possibilities with a technology that's still in its infancy. "I'd say when you ask where we
April 18, 2016 Dear Sir, On behalf of the International Documentary Association, I am writing to express our deep alarm and concern at the recent rejection of a visa application for documentary filmmaker Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami by Immigration New Zealand. Ghaemmaghami was scheduled to attend the prestigious Documentary Edge International Film Festival in May 2016. Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami is an award-winning Iranian filmmaker who regularly shows her work at festivals all around the world – including throughout Europe and the US. Her recent film, Sonita, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2016
Following a brief test run in the 1990s, virtual reality has rapidly taken hold over the past few years as a potent tool for exploring the possibilities of storytelling—first among the gaming community, then among such early adaptors as Nonny de la Pena, who started in journalism. The Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and SXSW have all incorporated VR programming into their respective new media mixes, and the medium hit the mainstream in Fall 2015 when The New York Times distributed Google Cardboard viewers to 1.5 million subscribers to experience what The Old Gray Lady has to