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
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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
In recognition of World AIDS Day on December 1, we've curated a list of documentaries that tell harrowing, honest and triumphant stories of individuals fighting for their lives against AIDS and the prejudice surrounding the disease. Watch these documentaries and find a way to get involved with your community to fight against the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS and honor those who have died from the disease. How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012) David France’s directorial debut for Independent Lens takes you on an all-encompassing journey through the history of the HIV/AIDS in the United
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! IndieWire’s Steve Greene ponders the future of YouTube as an SVOD player. In this way, YouTube is a kindred spirit with Facebook, which is also trying to figure out how to capitalize on eyeballs by directing them towards the Facebook Watch element of the site. In either case, they’re working against expectations
Since IDA's DocuClub was relaunched in 2016 as a forum for sharing and soliciting feedback about works-in-progress, many DocuClub alums have since premiered their works on the festival circuit and beyond. In an effort to both monitor and celebrate the evolution of these films to premiere-ready status, we reached out to the filmmakers as they were either winding their way through the festival circuit, or gearing up for it. In this edition of "The Feedback," we spotlight Andrés Caballero and Sofian Khan’s The Interpreters. We caught up with Caballero and Khan via email as they were touring the
The new era for the International Documentary Festival at Amsterdam (IDFA) has begun, and its theme is inclusion. New IDFA director Orwa Nyrabia, who first became inspired by the power of documentary in his home country of Syria, has structured the fest as an annual gathering place for a movement that aims to inspire and act toward inclusion. You could see it in the opening night film, Kabul, City in the Wind, by Aboozar Amini, which won a Special Jury Prize for First Appearance. Like some other festival choices, it didn’t fit a three-act, high-production-values, emotionally cathartic model of
Mixed reality, artificial intelligence and other innovations are rapidly shifting the landscape of media and society. As storytellers, we have a central role to play in envisioning and catalyzing what the future holds. The Getting Real conference addressed emerging media technologies and creative praxis at a number of different sessions. These presentations showcased exciting applications of new media in documentary and other creative domains, but also shared an emphasis on the sweeping social impact—both positive and negative—of new technologies. What are the creative potentials and the