Dear IDA Community: I recently had the opportunity to lead a seminar on documentary film with high school students at the California State Summer School for the Arts. I don’t teach often and I was a little daunted about how I could engage high schoolers, albeit ones who have already engaged deeply in the arts. I wanted to get a sense of who was in the room and what films that they had seen that had resonated with them, so I asked them to tell me about those films. Frankly, I was blown away both by their choices. They cited films such as Elizabeth Lo's Hotel 22 and Yance Ford's Strong Island
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The First Amendment forbids laws that abridge freedom of the press. For this reason, federal, state and local law in the US can't compel a journalist to obtain permission from someone involved in the subject matter of a news story before including them in the story. Documentary filmmakers reporting on newsworthy matters are members of the press. Then why, you ask, does any documentary filmmaker or other journalist bother to obtain permission in the form of an appearance release from anyone if the First Amendment would save them the trouble? Actually, not all journalists obtain appearance
Don't let these photos of gear fool you. Over the course of my nearly three-decade-long career, I have almost never brought the same gear on a shoot twice. And I have almost always forgotten something crucial. People, mainly soundpeople, have been saving my day for years! Let me advocate here for how strongly I believe in developing ongoing relationships with soundpeople and working with the same ones as consistently as possible. Over the course of my career, I have mainly worked with the great Wellington Bowler, Judy Karp and Sean O'Neil. The better your relationship with a soundperson, the
Dear Readers, At some point, following the tentative steps we take out of college, with our degrees and diplomas at hand and a daunting mountain of debt to deal with, we find ourselves on a career path—beginning with our first jobs and the first time we fill in the "Occupation" box on our tax returns. If we're lucky, our career/occupation/line of work morphs into something deeper—a livelihood, a calling, a passion, a purpose. The documentary career—well, purpose—is a daunting one that can take you to thrilling and dangerous places, that can open your mind to a trove of ideas, that can expand
Filmmaker Steve James earned the first Best Documentary Oscar nomination of his distinguished career earlier this year for Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, a film that took him far from his home turf of Chicago to New York's Chinatown. But he's back on more familiar ground with his latest project, the Starz documentary series America to Me. Across 10 episodes, James weaves the stories of a group of mostly minority students navigating life at racially-diverse OPRF—Oak Park and River Forest High School—a stone's throw from where he lives in suburban Chicago. "The location is three blocks from my
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering August 27 on POV is Zaradasht Ahmed's Nowhere to Hide, which follows nurse Nori Sharif through five years of dramatic change in one of the world’s most dangerous and inaccessible areas—the "triangle of death" in central Iraq. Initially filming stories of survivors and the hope of a better future as US and Coalition troops retreat from Iraq in 2011, conflicts continue with Iraqi militias and the simultaneous rise of ISIS. Among the American Masters episodes
Though heroic activists have been pushing for change in policing across the country in recent years, they've mostly sprung from those communities suffering disproportionately under unjust law enforcement policies—not from the institution tasked with enforcing those policies. Which is what makes the NYPD 12, a dozen of NYC's finest who are truly living up to the moniker, so unique. Comprised of minority officers fed up with carrying out racially discriminatory practices and meeting quotas (outlawed, but nevertheless expected), these whistleblowers spent years putting both career and life on the
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering August 20 on Mubi, Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself examines the way Los Angeles is represented and misrepresented in film and television throughout history. Detailing the numerous depictions of the city throughout history, Andersen critiques the popularized vision of Los Angeles and the adverse effects it has had on communities—unraveling dark truths and conspiracy’s just beneath the glitzy surface of the city. Premiering August 23 on Logo, Vavani Vérité's
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! Paige Wyant, Associate Chronic Illness Editor for The Mighty, has some things to say about the Netflix docuseries Afflicted. I originally thought Afflicted was going to shed light on less-known illnesses and elevate the stories and voices of those who struggle with them, but the docuseries did the opposite
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering August 17 on Hulu after a wildly successful festival run, Bing Liu's Minding the Gap began as a skateboarding video that he shot among his friends in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois. But over 12 years, the story deepens and darkens from a coming-of-age tale to a full-on reckoning with the daunting transition to adulthood. All three characters in the film, including Bing himself, reveal their troubled upbringings and their shaky struggles to find their grownup