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! At long last, the documentary about the making of the late Aretha Franklin’s epochal gospel album Amazing Grace, will come to theaters this month for a qualifying run, following the world premiere on November 12 at DOC NYC. Brooks Barnes reports from The New York Times. “Her fans need to see this film, which is so
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The nominees for Best Audio Documentary include 30 for 30 Podcasts: Bikram, ESPN’s deep dive into the complicated world of Bikram yoga; Caliphate, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi’s quest to understand ISIS; Heavyweight—Episode: Jesse, which follows a man’s attempt to find and thank the driver that hit and nearly killed him; Latino USA—Episode: The Quevedos, producer Sayre Quevedo’s journey to understand what happened to his grandmother, the secrets that his mother kept from him, and the family that he never knew;
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering November 8 on HBO, We Are Not Done Yet, from Sareen Hairabedian, profiles a group of veterans and active-duty service members as they come together to combat past and current traumas through the written word, sharing their experiences in a United Service Organizations (USO) writing workshop at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Airing this week on Al Jazeera English: WITNESS and streaming on YouTube, Halima, from Mike Shum, Arthur Nazaryan and Eugene Yi
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! The New Yorker’s Richard Brody speculates on the shutting-down in FilmStruck: Consumers have been weaned off disks with the promise of convenience, of weightlessness, spacelessness, infinite portability, and a large (but unstable) library of offerings. In exchange, they’re tethered to the mothership for good. In
With the 2018 midterms on the horizon, we've curated a list of campaign documentaries to get you in the spirit before casting your ballot on Election Day. And if you already voted early or absentee, feel free to wear your "I Voted" sticker with pride as you watch these classic election docs. How to Win An Election (Sarah Klein and Tom Mason, 2016) From The New York Times Op-Docs , How to Win an Election takes us deep into the world of campaigning through the eyes of Mark McKinnon, one of America's most influential political strategists. In a candid conversation, McKinnon pulls back the curtain
As a documentary filmmaker with one project in distribution, one in post and one in development, it felt like a perfect moment to attend IDA’s Getting Real 2018. Having more than one project to lean on, I was able to seek out industry wisdom from a variety of angles thanks to a professional development grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council in Portland, OR, where I’ve lived since 2010. I’ve been to film festivals before and admit that I enjoy looking at massive schedules, circling too many films, and trying to get to them all. What I always forget is that ideally one does this while
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The announcement last week that WarnerMedia would shut down FilmStruck at the end of November has sent shock waves of dismay throughout the community of cinephiles. In its all-too-brief existence--it was launched in November 2016-- FilmStruck has hosted both The Criterion Channel and TCM, the former of which is a treasure trove of some of the greatest docs of all time-- Chronicle of a Summer, Dont Look Back, Harlan County USA, and so many more! So, while we’re confident that
Reenactments have been a part of documentary since the very beginning of the form: Robert Flaherty's seminal 1922 film Nanook of the North, arguably the first feature documentary, was largely staged. Since then, directors including Errol Morris, Shirley Clarke, Werner Herzog, Sarah Polley and Joshua Oppenheimer have utilized documentary reenactments to great effect. While traditional, literal-minded reenactments are often dismissed as uninspired, inauthentic and generally in poor taste—"the bane and the curse of the modern documentary film," in the words of New Yorker critic Richard Brody—more
IDA has unveiled the nominees for the 2018 IDA Documentary Awards. The annual event is the world's most prestigious event dedicated to the documentary genre. Winners of the 34th edition will be announced at the ceremony on Saturday, December 8, 2018 at Paramount Studios, Los Angeles.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. In 2014, 276 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, Northern Nigeria and hidden in the vast Sambisa Forest for three years by Boko Haram, a violent Islamic insurgent movement. A year ago, 82 were released. Gemma Atwal's Stolen Daughters: Kidnapped by Boko Haram, which premieres October 22 on HBO and streams on HBO Go and HBO Now through October, tells the story of the girls’ time in captivity and follows their lives over the past year. Native America, a