Documentary speaks with director and producer Tim Moriarity about the aims, production and marketing strategy of his film “Jesus Thirsts.” As a film about the church’s official teachings on the Eucharist, it has grossed nearly $3 million at the box office since its release in June making it one of the few doc hits since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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On a warm May evening, the opening ceremony of the 14th edition of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) was teeming with euphoria. Founded in 1998, TIDF takes seriously its motif of “re-encountering reality.” After two pandemic-hit iterations with online Q&As, this was the first time in six years that filmmakers and audiences had gathered in Taipei in person for the biennial festival. It was the second iteration to use the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) beautiful new home in the Xinzhuang District, west of the Tamsui River, for many of the programmed events. The
Documentary spoke with codirectors Suh and Mones about how their film “Sorry/Not Sorry” evolved as they learned the full story of the women wrapped up in Louis C.K.'s destructive orbit.
Charlie Shackleton describes “The Afterlight” as “a film that’s designed to be lost.” It deliberately exists as a single 35mm print that will naturally degrade over time and with every showing. But recently, the film was lost in a different way than intended. Documentary spoke with Shackleton about the logistics of the accidental loss of the film and its subsequent recovery.
To learn about Josh Fox’s multimedia extravaganza,‘The Edge of Nature’, Documentary caught up with the veteran director-playwright-environmental activist the week after The Edge of Nature’s run at NYC’s LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Club, which critic Bernie Sanders succinctly deemed “great work.”
To counter the decentralization of local film production, BAVC Media (Bay Area Video Coalition) has just released the Bay Area Film Production Memo . The memo summarizes the tax incentives, institutions, collaborations, and filmmaker pipeline infrastructure of the San Francisco-Bay Area and, crucially, compares them to structures that exist in other U.S. regions. Authored by BAVC Media’s executive director Paula Smith Arrigoni and research and development manager Kailen Sallander, the Memo is supplemented by findings from a landmark survey of Bay Area filmmakers and “Lessons From the Field,” a
Jemma Desai’s keynote address at Getting Real 2024 delves deeply into the ethical and existential challenges faced by cultural workers, particularly in the realm of documentary filmmaking, against the backdrop of global conflicts, notably the ongoing crisis in Palestine: “I have chosen to speak about integrity and so I cannot speak about anything but Palestine.” Her reflections resonate beyond the specific context of film, challenging all cultural workers to consider their role in shaping narratives that affirm human dignity and confront systemic injustices.
Janay Boulos attended Sheffield DocFest to take meetings and network for the two feature documentaries she's producing. She shares tips for filmmakers looking to make the most of the festival landscape: “Pace yourself! It’s a marathon, not a race.”
An enormous English estate and its extensive gardens near Oxford take center stage for Dutch filmmaker Suzanne Raes’ latest feature documentary, Where Dragons Live , which had its world premiere at the recent Sheffield Docfest. The film is a beautifully haunting and atmospheric evocation of childhood, told through the lens of an upper-class British family in the midst of clearing out their parents’ possessions. Some years ago, Raes met Harriet Impey in the Netherlands, where they both live. They quickly discovered a shared mutual fascination for dragons. Raes had studied them for fun, while
In the space of a twelve-year career forging his way as an independent filmmaker, Duncan Cowles has developed a distinctive style of personal filmmaking characterized by his deadpan voiceover, in soothing Scottish tones, which is halting, funny, and self-effacing. He’s also constantly tinkering with the multiple cameras he brings to any shoot, to the bemusement of those he’s interviewing. More often than not his contributors are his own family members, such as the charming Directed by Tweedie (2014), about his crotchety maternal grandfather, or the meta Outlets (2023), where Cowles explores