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
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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
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Dan Covert’s Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life , a SXSW Audience Award-winning biodoc about the prolific artist whose work has been exhibited in museums and blue-chip galleries, and who is a frequent collaborator with brands (Hèrmes, Vans, Patagonia) and filmmakers (title designs for Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze films). Gravitas Ventures is releasing the film in NY theaters on Friday and on VOD on July 2. Regarding the clip, the director writes, “This clip comes a quarter of a way into the film and shows a key turning point in Geoff’s career
In 2018, to an audience of a dozen or so people at the Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, Zia Anger gave a presentation of some of her abandoned work, including her first feature film Always All Ways, Anne Marie . To the clips she presented on her laptop, Anger added her own commentary via TextEdit, examining the complicated ethics and unexpected repercussions of DIY filmmaking. The one-off performance would go on to become a touring work of expanded cinema called My First Film , which took Anger on the road across North America and eventually online when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, therapeutically
The Islamic Scholarship Fund (ISF) has received $500,000 from the Doris Duke Foundation’s Building Bridges Program to provide multi-year support through a collaborative fellowship with the Sundance Institute, attendance at industry events (including April’s Getting Real conference), and unrestricted funding to filmmaker grantees. It’s the largest single grant the ISF has ever received. The ISF Building Bridges Program prize activities started earlier this year. The Sundance collaboration supported six U.S.-based filmmakers focused on telling Muslim-related stories and will continue for the
In 2005, Wu Wenguang, a founding figure of China’s independent documentary movement, joined forces with choreographer Wen Hui to create the Beijing-based Caochangdi Workstation. The collective’s first initiative, the Village Documentary Project, selected ten villagers from nationwide applicants who’d come across newspaper ads about the project. The villagers were trained to use DV cameras over three days and returned to their respective villages with their new tools to gather materials. With no specific instructions on what to capture, they were free to film whatever they saw fit. After a
Rodolfo Castillo-Morales is a Mexican filmmaker and programmer. He has participated in several fiction and documentary short films, video art installations, feature and documentary series, and has photogpraphed documentaries with directors from Mexico, Spain, El Salvador and Serbia. He was the programmer of DocsMX and co-creator of Plataforma MX in Mexico City. Today he’s the Programming Director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG) and the FICG Cinematheque as well as General Coordinator of DocuLab: Documentary Laboratory. Currently, he is preparing two documentary features as director, writer, and Cinematographer.