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! Anticipating the cascade of end-of-the-decade reflections by a couple of months, filmmaker Robert Greene, writing for Hyperallergic, takes a dive into the zeitgeist that fueled the last ten years of energetic expansion of the documentary form. "The cultural consciousness and literacy around images have changed a
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Los Angeles, CA (October 7, 2019) - The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 35th Annual IDA Documentary Awards honorees. The 2019 Awards will be presented during a ceremony at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 7. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, October 10 and press registration is open now. This year, the IDA will honor: Academy Award® and Primetime Emmy® winning filmmaker (and five time Academy Award® nominee) Freida Lee Mock ( Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, Anita) with the Career Achievement Award Emmy® nominated filmmaker Rachel Lears (
Los Angeles, C.A. (October 10, 2019) – The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 35th Annual IDA Documentary Awards shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories. The 2019 Awards will be presented during a ceremony at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 7. Tickets are on sale now and press registration is open now. The full features and shorts shortlists, announced today, are below. Up to ten nominees in each of the Feature and Short Documentary categories will be selected from the shortlist. Following the nominees announcement, IDA
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering September 30 on POV, The Silence of Others, the IDA Documentary Award-winning film from Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo, reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, as they organize a groundbreaking international lawsuit and fight a "pact of forgetting" around the crimes they suffered. A cautionary tale about fascism and the dangers of forgetting the past. The Unafraid, from Anayansi Prado and Heather Courtney
International Music Day is on October 1, and it’s the perfect opportunity to explore our world’s multifaceted communities through music! We’ve curated a list of eight documentaries worth your while to not only dive into some great music, but also understand its role as a vehicle for and mirror on social, political and cultural issues around the world. What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus, 2015) Liz Garbus’ Academy Award-nominated film offers an up-close-and-personal look into the life of iconic American singer-songwriter, pianist and vocalist Nina Simone, whose distinctive artistry and
Asif Kapadia’s new documentary about the Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, a player almost as famous for his dubious conduct off the pitch as for his brilliance on it, opens with a POV shot through the windshield of a car. To the beat of a pulsating score, the vehicle dashes over city streets. We are seeing the world, it will become clear, through Maradona’s eyes as he speeds into a soccer stadium in Naples, Italy, to face a raucous press corps after his momentous signing by the local club. POV is critical to Kapadia’s style of documentary filmmaking, a style manifested in Amy (2015)
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! Nearly two years after he published his career-halting confessional essay as the #MeToo movement was gathering force, Morgan Spurlock sat down with Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. to talk about the fallout, the struggles and the long road to recovery. It started off with me thinking I needed to first talk about my
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It’s been a year since 93Queen's theatrical release and subsequent POV broadcast. As the successful chaos of the release quiets, I am developing a new feature as an Artist in Residence at Concordia Studio, thus, making the transition from "first-time filmmaker" to simply "filmmaker." With this new project, I'm also moving from telling a universal story of women's empowerment in one very particular place, to finding a particular story embedded in a large national crisis. As I pause to take inventory of 93Queen's triumphs and trials in preparation for this new journey, I realize that the lessons
Editor’s Note: Filmmaker Lisa Valencia-Svensson was invited to deliver a keynote address at Hot Docs this past spring. What follows is an abbreviated version of that keynote. The "Why" of Diversity Diversity, inclusion, representation—familiar words in public discourse. In this keynote, I explore why the question of "Who is telling whose story to whom, and why?" should be at the center of the making of every documentary film. People often support "diversity initiatives" simply because they "know it’s good to do" or "we've been mandated to do so by those in charge." But our efforts to build a