Who would've thought that summer camp could lead to a movement that has made a significant impact in the USA and worldwide? In the early 1970s, a group of teenagers with disabilities got off the bus at Camp Jened in upstate New York, not realizing this would be a transformative experience. They were in awe to see so many wheelchairs in one place. At Camp Jened there was music, drugs and sex. It felt like freedom in every sense of the word—freedom from their families, from an oppressive society and from their own self-doubt. Out of this summer utopia, many activists were born, and over the next
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As the updates on COVID-19 take on an uptick in urgency—we at IDA have been working from home for the past week and will continue to do so as long as the Safer at Home decree from California Governor Newsom remains in place (at least another month)—we have been tracking the latest impacts on our community. So this edition of Essential Doc Reads will be, for the most part, an amalgamation of announcements, industry responses, check-ins with filmmakers ( see our interview with Todd Chandler and Danielle Vega) and more. But first, we have all been beaming out positive mantras to Chicago, where
Since AB5 (Assembly Bill 5) took effect in California on January 1, 2020, documentary filmmakers have found themselves facing drastically increased costs, confusing new rules, and unresolved questions about the law's implementation. Documentary asked attorney Leslie S. Klinger, vice president of the Motion Picture and Television Tax Institute, to explain the basics of AB5. "For the typical production of a documentary, most everyone is going to be an employee of the production company. That's the bottom line," Klinger says. This may come as a surprise to filmmakers who have built careers
Dear Documentary Community, Everything has changed over the last several weeks. In just filmmaking terms, hundreds of you have had film premieres canceled, missed vital shoot days, had gigs called off, been laid off, or been brought to a standstill in your work and lives by the urgent reality of COVID-19. Personally, the virus has already touched members of our organization and our community. The broader global implications of the crisis are far greater and are still months away from being known. We have paused in this moment to ask ourselves the original questions that prompted the first
Film festivals are so crucial to launching your film, giving it that initial exposure to key thought leaders in the press, test-driving it in front of audiences, making valuable contacts and finding distribution. Where you premiere your film is just as important as the apparatus you build to fortify your launch. It takes a team beyond your filmmaking team—of publicists, sales agents, advisors and participants in your film. And it takes money: travel and accommodations, marketing and promotional materials, etc. This winter, the coronavirus pandemic has been devastating in so many ways, and for
It's a crying shame that Cynthia Cooper is not a LeBron-level household name. Having won championships in college, at the Olympics and in the WNBA—where as a Houston Comet she was named MVP in the finals for four straight seasons (still a record) and anointed by fans as one of the Top 15 players in the league's history—does anyone doubt things would have been different had she been born into a non-patriarchal world? Hard to imagine any NBA athlete with that type of track record being exiled to 10 years of overseas play just to earn a talent-commensurate wage. And now with the COVID19 crisis
The arrest of Ugandan filmmaker and journalist Bwayo Moses on charges of “unlawful assembly” and “singing [a] song subverting or promoting subversion of the government of Uganda” represents an unwarranted and unjustifiable attack on artistic expression, and charges against him should immediately be dropped, PEN America, the International Documentary Association (IDA), and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) said today.
In this time of social distancing and sequestration, Screen Time is here with a curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, written and directed by Jacoba Atlas, exposes a new and troubling trend: African American girls are the fastest-growing population in the juvenile justice system and the only group of girls disproportionately experiencing harsh discipline at every educational level. PUSHOUT features heart-wrenching stories from girls ages 7 to 19 across the country as they
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the Internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! In the rapidly evolving world of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed a cavalcade of cancellations and closures this past week—festivals, markets, screenings, workshops, theaters, etc. A number of outlets out there have been busy monitoring and compiling some useful information. IndieWire has been keeping a regular tally of what's happening in the media arts world
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. To commemorate International Women's Day and Women's History Month, Women Make Movies is hosting a virtual film festival that highlights the new releases in the organization's Transnational Feminist Film collection. Throughout March, festival attendees will receive free access to select films about women from around the globe. Now streaming on American Masters, UNLADYLIKE2020 showcases 26 short films and one feature-length films profiling diverse and little-known American