Click Here For Full Report The State of the Documentary Field initiative was shaped by the Center for Media & Social Impact, in collaboration with Simon Kilmurry, executive director of the International Documentary Association, with review also provided by Patricia Aufderheide, CMSI founder. CMSI affiliate researcher Bill Harder consulted on survey programming and also served as an additional data analyst. CMSI communications and program manager Varsha Ramani served as communication director and publication editor. Olivia Klaus, documentary filmmaker and graphic designer, created the report
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Getting Real ‘18 is almost here! Whether you’ll be joining us in LA or in spirit, you might want to study up on the stellar slate of filmmakers who will be discussing both their work and the issues that matter most to the community. Here are some docs to get real to: American Promise Directed by Getting Real ‘18 keynote Michèle Stephenson, American Promise provides a rare look into black middle-class life while exploring the common hopes and hurdles of parents navigating their children's educational journey. Watch It: Vudu (free with ads), iTunes, YouTube Movies, Google Play, Amazon Call Her
"Arthur Pratt. Everybody was telling me, if I was looking for a filmmaker in Sierra Leone, go meet with Arthur Pratt," says Banker White from his office in San Francisco. Across thousands of miles, speaking from his home in Freetown, Pratt tells the exact same story from his point of view. "People were telling [Banker White] about me because people know me as one of the first filmmakers in Sierra Leone." This was the start of what has become over a decade-long professional collaboration between the two filmmakers, one that resulted in their new documentary, Survivors. White spent a great deal
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 revisits Freida Lee Mock's 2014 film Anita as the US Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh take on a familiar tone. Next week, it’s expected that both Supreme Court appointee Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexual assault during their high school
Note: Augmented reality (AR) generally refers to digital content overlaid on the physical world. Mixed reality (MR) represents a more comprehensive integration of virtual and physical, in which virtual objects map onto, and are responsive to, features of the physical environment. Meanwhile, the term XR, or extended reality, is gaining traction as an umbrella term for a wide range of experiences that combine physical and virtual worlds, including AR, MR and VR. (X acts as a variable that can stand for any letter.) These related terms and concepts remain fluid; while this article focuses on AR
Just a few scrolls through the Ford Foundation's JustFilms initiative's collection of funded films since its founding in 2011 reveals some of the most interesting social-justice documentaries of the past decade: Laura Poitras' Citizenfour, Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, Connie Field's series Have You Heard From Johannesburg?, Yance Ford's Strong Island, David France's How to Survive a Plague, and the films of Frederick Wiseman and Stanley Nelson, to name only a few. This year's Getting Real conference features JustFilms' program officer Chi-hui Yang as one of its
One of the costs of living in the US is that you have to pay income tax to enjoy all the services of the government. This year, paying taxes just got a lot more complicated for independent and emerging filmmakers. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to many; the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed by President Trump on December 22, 2017, was designed to ease the federal income tax burden on corporations in order to spur job creation. The bill wasn’t necessarily written with the independent filmmaker in mind. It was also the result of many last-minute, handwritten changes, was subject to little
The majority of American documentary filmmakers do not live in New York or Los Angeles. That may seem difficult to believe, given the large communities in those film centers. However, documentaries can be made anywhere, and there are thriving communities outside of the coastal film capitals. One is right here in our nation's capital, Washington, DC. As a near lifelong Washingtonian and executive director of Docs In Progress—a nonprofit dedicated to supporting documentary filmmakers in the region—I have a special interest in this community, but I also see it in the context of regional film
In 2018, the world needs documentaries more than ever, yet doc-makers frequently find themselves under-resourced and isolated. Space for the larger documentary community to convene is scarce, but its community members need a place to connect, investigate, learn, brainstorm, problem-solve and recharge. Getting Real is that place. A unique three-day conference on documentary media, and one of the premiere documentary gatherings in the world, Getting Real 2018 features four inspiring keynote speakers (IDFA Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia; filmmaker Michèle Stephenson; A&E IndieFilms Senior Vice
Conversations about power, ownership and representation in the documentary field are as old as the documentary tradition itself. Ours is a history rooted in a patriarchal society defined by cultural, racial and class-based colonialism. Recently, these conversations have left the confines of the classroom or the backroom of a festival cocktail party and are now taking place under a spotlight at festivals and conferences. And most importantly, they are beginning to have a real impact on who tells what stories and how. New Day Films, a distribution co-op created by and for independent documentary