When the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates to money in political campaigns, New Jersey-based director Kimberly Reed felt frustrated but didn’t know what to do. Two years later, it turned out, an old high school classmate of hers from Montana—Steve Bullock, then the state’s attorney general—was preparing to come to Washington, DC, to wage the only state challenge to the decision before the Supreme Court. "Initially, I thought this was going to be a 'Mr. Bullock Goes to Washington' story about how Montana resists Citizens United," Reed admits. "I wanted to be on
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On July 1, Mexicans hit the polls to decide the country's new president amidst widespread violence, including violence against political candidates. In a landslide victory, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or AMLO), who ran on a platform of tackling corruption, prioritizing the poor and reducing violence, was elected president of Mexico. He will take the oath of office on December 1. The question on the minds of many in the country is what AMLO and his new government will be able to do to tackle the seemingly intractable violence that has engulfed much of the country. Last year, Mexico
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Streaming on POV through July 15 are two films that take a ground-level view of border culture and politics between the US and Mexico. IDA Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award honoree Natalia Almada's Al Otro Lado (2006) follows Magdiel, an aspiring corrido composer from the drug capital of Mexico, as he faces two difficult choices to better his life: to traffic drugs or to cross the border illegally into the United States. Almada artfully deploys the tradition of corrida
The IDA mourns the passing of Claude Lanzmann, who died yesterday at 92. Lanzmann was celebrated for his monumental Shoah, a ten-hour opus on the Holocaust that transformed the global conversation on that epochal catastrophe. A 2012 Sight and Sound poll of preeminent thought leaders in the media arts ranked the film at number two of the greatest documentaries of all time. Eschewing archival footage and narration, Lanzmann brings the horror alive by taking us to the scenes of the crime and, most palpably, eliciting some of the most wrenching accounts from survivors and perpetrators alike, from
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering tonight on POV, Viktor Jakovleski's Brimstone & Glory captures the days leading up to the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico—the preparation, the revelry and, of course, the dazzling explosions. Plunging headlong into the fire, Brimstone & Glory, which earned an IDA Creative Recognition Award for Best Music for composer Benh Zeitlin, honors the spirit of Tultepec's community and celebrates celebration itself. Also premiering tonight, on Starz
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! From The Daily Beast, Natalia Winkelan interviews filmmaker Rachel Lears, whose doc-in-progress, Knock Down the House, includes among her protagonists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose stunning upset this week in the Democratic primary in New York City made national headlines. Herein lies the mission behind Knock
Getting Real ‘18, a three-day conference presented by the International Documentary Association (IDA) in partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is the largest gathering of its kind in North America. The 2018 edition will take place September 25-27, 2018, in Los Angeles, California.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering tonight on HBO, HBO Go and HBO Now, Don Argott's Believer follows Mormon Dan Reynolds, frontman for the Grammy Award-winning band Imagine Dragons, as he takes on a new mission to explore how the Mormon Church treats its LGBTQ members. With the rising suicide rate among teens in the state of Utah, Reynolds' concern with the church's policies sends him on an unexpected path of acceptance and change. Also premiering tonight, on PBS' POV, Hyewon Lee's Singing with
Some of you may know me as the Enterprise Documentary Fund’s Project Coordinator. Beginning this funding cycle, I am thrilled to assume the position of Program Officer. In this role, I will be managing both of IDA’s major grant programs - the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund and IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund. On June 11, IDA launched the open call for the Pare Lorentz Doc Fund. I revisited the life and work of Pare Lorentz to help better explain the fund to applicants. I quickly learned Lorentz was not afraid to piss people off, especially people in power. As a journalist and film critic in the
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! From IndieWire, David Ehrlich talks to filmmaker Michael Moore about Bowling for Columbine and his struggles to make an impact with his documentaries. “For almost 30 years, I’ve been trying to sound a warning siren that the wealthy in this country are on a rampage to take whatever they can from the middle class. I