Dear Readers, This month, we’ve been hard at work putting together the next print issue of Documentary Magazine , which will be in the mailboxes of IDA members starting December 11. Some of those pieces are print versions of some of the most impactful pieces from the 11 months print hiatus of the magazine, such as Jane Mote’s clarion call for a code of ethics at documentary labs and training programs, which includes three anonymized first-person accounts of gendered abuse. But most of the Fall 2023 print issue is comprised of new essays. Our subscribers will get exclusive access to the pieces
Latest Posts
Launched just under two years ago, L.A. Times Short Docs has quickly established itself as a presence in the industry landscape. Now in its second season, Short Docs is an evolving platform for short-form nonfiction “with a West Coast perspective.” Films selected for the strand stream online on the Los Angeles Times website in conjunction with festival screenings and special events. Highlights from 2023 include Sterling Hampton’s Merman , which debuted at Tribeca, and Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers’s The Last Repair Shop , which premiered at Telluride. Nani Sahra Walker, senior commissioning
Directed and produced by Toronto-based filmmaker Nisha Pahuja along with producers David Oppenheim, Anita Lee, Cornelia Principe, Andy Cohen, and executive produced by a group including Mindy Kaling, Dev Patel, and Rupi Kaur, To Kill a Tiger enumerates an electrifying true story of a father–daughter duo from the Indian state of Jharkhand, and their battle to seek justice in the aftermath of a brutal sexual assault. The story also brings forth complex ideas of masculinity in India, entrenched village life, and more. Lauded for its universal yet subtle storytelling, the film recently had a
Victoria is a town in Southern Texas, thirty miles from the Gulf of Mexico, with a population of roughly 70,000. Victoria’s thriving Muslim community, built up over more than thirty years, is centered in the Victoria Islamic Center and the local mosque. Early in the morning after a newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump announced his “Muslim ban” prohibiting travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Omar Rachid, a former mayoral candidate and pillar of Victoria’s Muslim community, received a distraught call from Imam Osama Salah Hassan—the mosque, where they had fostered such a
Amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza, one of the IDFA’s most high-profile Palestinian films, Mohamed Jabaly’s Life Is Beautiful documents roughly seven years of the director’s life via a diaristic structure. The film covers his forced separation from his family in Gaza; the support from his second family in Gaza’s sister city, Tromsø, Norway; and the making of his first feature documentary, Ambulance, about his time volunteering in an ambulance unit during the 2014 war on Gaza. The film won the Best Director jury prize in the international competition. After pro-Palestinian demonstrators
This year’s Flaherty NYC Series, MAKA: Many Eyed Vessel , will mark the 25th edition of the Flaherty Seminar’s annual fall program in New York City. Featuring films and multi-media works from artists that include Miko Revereza, João Vieira Torres, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, the creative nonfiction “offerings” examine recalling memories and histories, enduring colonized societies, and developing identities. MAKA: Many Eyed Vessel is curated by filmmakers Ha’aheo Auwae-Dekker and Raven Two Feathers and programmers Emily Abi-Kheirs and Isabel Rojas. For the series, the
Documentary director and producer Nicole Newnham still remembers finding, as a young teenager, a copy in her mother’s bedside table of taboo-breaking The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976). Authored by feminist sex researcher Shere Hite, the book was based on thousands of anonymous survey responses from American women about their experiences of sex and pleasure that radically challenged conventional stereotypes. “It was the singular portal for me into the world of female sexuality,” Newnham recalls, “that I carried with me throughout my whole life.” But it wasn’t until several decades
In the north of mainland Japan, Yamagata City sits in a low valley flanked by mountain ranges and farmland. Since 1989, it has been home to the oldest documentary festival in Asia, welcoming filmmakers from around the world to this naturally isolated basin. Held every two years in October, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival has not only accelerated the careers of auteurs like KAWASE Naomi and HAMAGUCHI Ryusuke, but has also become an important hub for the circulation of world cinema in Japan. The festival is known to prioritize creative and experimental films, a curatorial “bias”
Kokomo City opens with a bang. Liyah is lying on her bed, a giant stuffed teddy bear in the background, as she recounts a past meeting with a man. Just as things were getting sensual, she noticed a gun next to him. “This was one of the most scariest moments of my life doing sex work…it’s either his life, or mine,” she says. As she narrates her shock and the ensuing tussle, playful, bombastic music intersperses with her speech. This scenario ended amicably, but Liyah reminds the audience that’s not always the case. “In this game, either you get out of it, or you end up dead, you end up popped
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Li Lu’s documentary series A Town Called Victoria , which will debut on Independent Lens as a co-presentation with Reel South on November 13 and 14, with streaming on PBS’s Youtube channel to follow. This observational documentary series follows the fallout from an act of arson against a mosque in small-town Texas, the community leaders’ work to rebuild the community, and the trial that follows. On the clip, Lu writes, “this clip is from the beginning of Episode 3, ‘The Trial.’ The federal trial for suspected mosque arsonist Marq Vincent