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With the roll-out of one political doc after another this fall, it's easy to forget that documentarians can start out in art school as well as journalism school. In the early days of documentary filmmaking there was a great deal of crossover between photography and filmmaking. Henri Cartier-Bresson made documentaries; Paul Strand, his mentor in filmmaking, also was a photographer. The Film and Photo Leagues, formed in the 1930s in response to Fox Corporation's suppression of newsreels that documented Depression-era realities, included Strand , as well as Willard Van Dyke, Ralph Steiner and Leo
The 26th Independent Feature Project's (IFP) Film Market, held in New York in September, aimed to "bring together the business and creative communities to foster American independent talent." What the market really feels like is a combination book fair, industry film festival and back-to-school session. It is a field report from the frontlines on the pros and cons of documentary commissioning, programming and distribution, as well as technical promises, philosophical musings and the creative products themselves. Legendary documentarian Al Maysles asserted at one of the panels that if Tolstoy
There are few places where a first-time filmmaker can receive the same warm welcome as, say, Richard Leacock, a pioneer of cinema vérité. There are also few places where an emerging documentary filmmaker can screen a work-in-progress alongside that of an award-winning established director. In its 13th year, the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, held in October in Arkansas, offered both of these opportunities and a whole lot more: 93 docs, 54 filmmakers, six workshops, a new works-in-progress screening program and a timely celebration of some of the most influential filmmakers in the
Grant to IDA one of 817 NEA Art Works grants totaling $26.3 million in funding nationwide.
Dear IDA Community, Our lead times for Documentary magazine are long. As I write this, the nation is still trying to come to grips with the unspeakable massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It's hard to watch, all this suffering. Harder still is the sharp reminder that we've lived through all this senseless violence before. Yet it feels important that we continue watching—and perhaps this time begin to comprehend how it came to pass. I am reminded, too, of the responsibility and obligation of documentary filmmakers to bear witness to some of the most painful aspects of humanity. When most
When Ondi Timoner premiered her 2009 film We Live in Public at the Sundance Film Festival, she hadn't quite mastered the social media tools that would create the mass community to see the film beyond the festival circuit. But she learned fast, and the eventual Grand Jury Prize winner became the juggernaut onto which Timoner and her team hitched their Tweets, posts, blogs and blasts. We Live in Public profiles the rise and fall of Internet pioneer/conceptual artist Josh Harris, who in the 1990s saw the possibilities of an open culture (or counter-culture), connected online; he foresaw the
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival , held in Durham, North Carolina, just concluded its 16th edition this past Sunday, April 7. With Deirdre Haj in her fourth year as executive director, the festival's organization has never been better. The partnership with Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies remains solid and mutually beneficial. The festival's recent designation as an Academy Award-qualifying festival for short-form documentary was a feather in Full Frame's cap. And its year-round educational programs—"Teach the Teachers," "School of Doc," "Full Frame Fellows" and the
'Manhunt' airs May 1 on HBO.