(T)ERROR is a jaw-dropping film. From the first frame, it is hard to believe what you are seeing on the screen. That feeling does not diminish as the film continues; it intensifies. I was first introduced to (T)ERROR as a work-in-progress when it was awarded the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Documentary programmer Thom Powers, one of the administrators of the grant, introduced the sample. After it played, he said, "I'm going to ask the first, obvious, question: WTF?" This euphemistic acronym is perhaps the only reasonable response
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Flood of Images: Media, Memory, and Hurricane KatrinaBy Bernie CookPublished by University of Texas Press, 2015 So much was lost in the rising floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, but perhaps the greatest sacrifice made by the residents of that afflicted arena was their human dignity. Their nobility as a people was slowly and painfully stolen, not only by the vagaries of nature but by the twists and turns and convoluted interpretations of events as reported on television to the outside world. What do we, those of us who were not directly affected, actually remember of this catastrophic event? How
Dear IDA Community, As this edition of Documentary magazine is reaching all of you, we at IDA are excited to be revving up for the next leg of the organization's evolution under the leadership of our new executive director, Simon Kilmurry. From the beginning, we knew that we were looking for someone with impressive knowledge and passion for documentary, as well as proven expertise in running a nonprofit organization. In Simon, we found our dream hire. Simon joins IDA after an illustrious 16-year tenure at POV—the long-running PBS showcase of independent documentaries—where he served as
Dear Readers, Over the past 15 years or so, our community has witnessed an extraordinary growth in utilizing the documentary as a vital tool for social justice, change and impact. The documentary form has always proved its mettle in doing this, and we can thank such analog-era players as New Day Films, Barbara Trent and Arthur Dong for finding ways to get their work to the right audiences. Spurred by the digital revolution, key stakeholders—filmmakers, funders, nonprofit managers, critics, educators—have developed more sophisticated ways to create an evolving outreach infrastructure. Nowadays
Recently, a student in my production class at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism wielded the term "talking heads" to dismiss an interview-driven documentary. My initial response was physiological: a tightening of the muscles in my jaw and chest area, a certain twitching of the eye, and a notable increase in respiration, not unlike heavy sighing—in fact, exactly like heavy sighing. My next response was to screen for my class a scene from Rob Epstein's The Times of Harvey Milk. The first time I saw The Times of Harvey Milk—it must have been in a high school class—I was swept away by its
Every film tells a story. Bottom line. But some films have a double bottom line, a two-fold mission: to tell a story, and to propel social change. To make an impact. In the past decade, the means of measuring a film's social effect have grown increasingly sophisticated, inspiring numerous studies that measure impact—among them, Participant Media's 2014 study Storytelling Matters: Measuring the Social Impact of Entertainment on Audiences; the Media Impact Project, based at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center; and, from the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University, Assessing
The Millennial and Gen Z generations who are native digital users will be the largest segment of the population worldwide within the next decade. It's a demographic shift that will have a significant, continual impact on the way we communicate across media, including how we incorporate a technologically advanced visual dialogue into our everyday lives. While Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers may feel everything from dismissive to perplexed or even paralyzed by the shift to digital storytelling, the upcoming generations fear none of that. To get information delivered via virtual reality, gaming
"Numbers don’t lie" is the adage of business. This also applies to the film industry, with box office figures—posted on websites such as BoxOfficeMojo, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB—often used as a gauge of a film’s success or failure. But the landscape of film distribution has changed dramatically in the past five years, and as audiences increasingly watch films on other platforms from the comfort of their own homes, box office figures no longer reflect an accurate, let alone complete, picture. Yet, surprisingly, in this age of information and readily available statistics, there’s a paucity of
Simon Kilmurry takes the helm this summer as IDA's new executive director, following 16 years at the venerable PBS series POV—the last nine years as executive producer, and seven years before that as chief operating officer of POV's parent company, American Documentary. During Kilmurry's tenure, POV has received numerous accolades and has helped further the careers of such filmmakers as Marshall Curry, Laura Poitras, Natalia Almada, Jennifer Fox and a host of others. Kilmurry has also overseen a significant expansion in the digital space, not only with its dynamic website, but with such
A few years ago I directed If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, a documentary about the rise and fall of a radical environmental group that committed dozens of acts of arson against timber companies, developers, polluters and others. The film included conversations with former ELF members, mainstream environmental activists, arson victims and the law enforcement team that sent the ELF members to prison. After screenings of the film, I would often get comments about how "balanced" it was. But that word always made me wince. I didn't intend the film to be balanced; I intended