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 Michael Schneider assesses the Time Warner/AT&T merger. At one level, US District Court Judge Richard Leon's ruling on Tuesday didn't tell us anything we didn't know: Bigger is better. The AT&T and Time Warner merger only reflects digital-behemoth disruptors like Netflix, Apple, Google and Amazon
Latest Posts
Just in time for Father's Day, we at IDA have scoured the archives for a quintet of docs about dads, both in our lives, and in our hearts and minds; about docmakers and their dads; about fatherhood; and in general, about the complications, challenges, joys and mysteries of what it takes to raise a child. Enjoy! Quest (Jonathan Olshefski, 2017) Opening the 2018 POV season this Monday, June 18, Jonathan Olshefski's Quest is a longitudinal tale of a Philadelphia-based working-class African-American family that grapples with the challenges of their hardscrabble North Philly neighborhood. Over the
Pride Month is here and queer, which means it's the perfect time to watch these LGBTQ+ documentaries! These films represent just a taste of our vibrant community and the intersectional stories we have to share. Political Animals (Jonah Markowitz and Tracy Wares, 2016) Four California lesbian legislators lead the charge for gay rights through their unwavering commitment, passion, grit and perseverance. Directed by Jonah Markowitz ( Shelter) and Tracy Wares ( Bomb It), Political Animals won the Audience and Jury Awards for Best Documentary at the 2016 LA Film Festival. Watch it: Amazon Prime
Following the 2016 presidential election, there was a lot of hand-wringing across several industries about “what we missed.” Journalists in particular were among the guiltiest of parties (at least in our own minds). How, we wondered, did we miss what is clearly the biggest story of our time, a surge of disillusionment and discontent across the country? I was immediately of the opinion that we didn’t overlook the stories, we overlooked the storytellers. That’s why when we talk about diversity at IDA, we’re not only talking about ethnicity, but also about geography (among other demographics)
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Streaming on Kanopy is Deborah S. Esquenazi's Southwest of Salem, which excavates the nightmarish persecution of four Latina lesbians wrongfully convicted of raping two little girls in San Antonio, Texas. The film earned a Peabody Award, a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Documentary and a Critics' Choice Award for Best First Feature. Synopsis courtesy of Kanopy In Lars von Trier's 2005 documentary, The Five Obstructions, currently streaming on FilmStruck, he challenges his mentor
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! Editor's Note: Not just a foodie, and not just a globetrotter, Anthony Bourdain, who died this morning of an apparent suicide, was a cultural carnivore, with an appetite for cuisine that was subsumed by his deep interest in people. He parlayed his training at the Culinary Institute of America into a media career
Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Eugene Jarecki is known for his journalistic political documentaries. A public intellectual on domestic and international affairs, Jarecki has been named a Soros Justice Fellow at the Open Society Institute and a Senior Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. In advance of our June 19 th Conversation Series, here is where you can catch his notable feature documentaries. The King (2018) Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, two-time Sundance Grand Jury winner Eugene Jarecki’s new film takes the King’s 1963 Rolls
The term "the fourth estate" was coined by long-time New York Times columnist William Safire, "to put the press on an equal footing with the greatest power in a nation." In a watchdog era of investigative reporting on a presidency that attacks democratic institutions daily, the exigency of a free press has never been so apparent. In her current Showtime series, The Fourth Estate, veteran documentarian Liz Garbus showcases the inner workings of The New York Times during a year when the "paper of record" is simultaneously at the forefront of multiple explosive investigations and under attack
"For somebody who went on television 50 years ago, and who's been dead for 15 years, I feel like it's the most contemporary subject I've ever worked on, which is very surprising," says producer/director Morgan Neville about American children's television celebrity Fred Rogers, the subject of his new documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?. The legend of how Fred Rogers became Mister Rogers began in 1951, when the young man just graduated with a college degree in music composition, and who was considering entering the seminary, caught sight of a pie fight on this new-fangled technology called
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering June 5 on Amazon, iTunes and Google Play is Jeffrey Schwartz's The Fabulous Allan Carr, a project of IDA's Fiscal Sponsorship Program. The film tells the story of dynamo Hollywood impresario Allan Carr—producer, marketing genius, and host of the wildest, most Babylonian parties LA has ever seen. Premiering June 11 on World Channel's Local, USA series is Dan Habib's IDA Award-nominated short, Mr. Connolly Has ALS. As a life-long educator, high school principal Gene