Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering December 17 on Independent Lens is Joel Fendelman’s Man on Fire, winner of the 2017 David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award. Fendelman travels to Grand Saline, Texas, the site of a horrific event in 2014, in which a 79-year-old white Methodist minister, Charles Moore, set himself on fire in a local parking lot. His suicide note, found on his car windshield, explained that this act was his final protest against the virulent racism in the community and his country
Latest Posts
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! As the world winds down its year-long reflection on 1968, POV Magazine editor Marc Glassman assesses the documentation--both then and 50 years later--of the epochal events of that year. Marshall McLuhan’s famous assertion that “the medium is the message” may predate 1968 by a year, but that’s alright. We can see
Bill Siegel, the Chicago-based filmmaker best known for The Weather Underground and The Trials of Muhammed Ali, died suddenly on December 10. He was 55. Siegel earned two IDA Documentary Award nominations for The Weather Underground, for Best Feature and for the ABCNews VideoSource Award for best use of archival footage. The film, which he made with Sam Green and Carrie Lozano, went on to earn an Academy Award nomination. Ten years later, Siegel won an ABCNews VideoSource Award for The Trials of Muhammed Ali, which he made under the auspices of Kartemquin Films—his de facto home base since his
Bing Liu’s "Minding The Gap" emerged this evening with top honors in the Best Feature category at the 34th Annual IDA Documentary Awards. Floyd Russ’s "Zion" was awarded Best Short. The year’s biggest night in documentary took place at the Paramount Theatre and was hosted by actor, television presenter, and producer Ricki Lake.
My exposure to documentary film was quite limited growing up. Like many, I got my fair share of Ken Burns clips and maybe an episode of PBS FRONTLINE in high school, but for the most part, I knew very little about documentary film. Enter, the IDA Documentary Screening Series—a godsend to a documentary novice like myself trying to grasp the nuances of nonfiction storytelling. Gliding up the escalator of The Landmark to my first screening, Three Identical Strangers, I was greeted by a line of ecstatic filmgoers of all ages. I expected to see many people my own age; free entertainment is a huge
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. In response to President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2017, Americans--from mayors and governors to teen activists--are empowering themselves to demand and develop real solutions at the local, municipal and state levels. Paris to Pittsburgh, from Emmy winners Sidney Beaumont and Michael Bonfiglio, takes viewers around the country, from coastal cities to the heartland, to document the endeavors of US citizens to make a difference as the weather
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! In response to Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday’s controversial essay “ Documentaries Aren’t Journalism, And There’s Nothing Wrong with That,” filmmaker and journalism professor June Cross offers a rebuttal in the Columbia Journalism Review. Whatever their medium, reporters aren’t scribes—they gather and
Julia Reichert, a three-time Academy Award nominee, has spent more than 40 years giving voice to women, children, the working class and the heartland in her acclaimed films. With a background in radio, where she honed her familiar yet distinctive interviewing style, she launched into her first film, Growing Up Female (1971), during her senior year in college. The films that followed— Union Maids (1976), Seeing Red (1983) and A Lion in the House (2006), among others—were her form of activism, a way to build and serve her various communities and push for change. Influenced by communal, anti
The 22nd annual Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic ran October 25 - 30. It took one Lyft, two planes and one festival car for a total of close to 20 hours of travel--but it was well worth it! I’ve traveled to Europe before--to Iceland and Ireland--but this was my first visit to a former Eastern Bloc country. I grew up during the Cold War, so I was eager to experience this part of the world. I am also a classical music fan, and the opportunity to visit Gustav Mahler’s hometown was a bonus. The festival grew out of the Velvet Revolution in 1989, which led to a
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering December 3 on HBO, Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland, from Kate Davis and David Heilbronner, explores the death of Sandra Bland, a politically active 28-year-old African American who, after being arrested for a traffic violation in a small Texas town, was found hanging in her jail cell three days later. Dashcam footage revealing her arrest went viral, leading to national protests. The film team followed the two-year case beginning shortly after Bland