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Dear Readers, We are galvanized by the gains for writers (and the precious few documentarians) who are members of WGA made from the new tentative agreement with the AMPTP. However, we should not let down our guard: yesterday, over a dozen streaming services, including the behemoths of Netflix, Amazon, and Disney, announced that they formed a “Streaming Innovation Alliance” to lobby for US government policy that favors streamers. It is time that independent documentary filmmakers, film advocacy organizations, financiers, and those who are invested in a diverse media ecosystem band together to

Featuring a strong relationship to essayistic, nonfiction filmmaking and artists’ moving images, the Open City Documentary Festival has carved a unique place for itself in the United Kingdom. Thematically, the festival shares the creator-focused community spirit that makes the Courtisane Festival and Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival engaging, and sits quite differently from Sheffield DocFest, which has a much more standardized industry feel. As opposed to larger festivals, where Open City’s style of programming might only exist in a tucked-away “experimental” strand, the festival champions

Last week, BRIC announced the 2023–2024 BRIClab artists-in-residence in film and tv, video art, and contemporary art. The film and tv year-long residency incubates innovative and ambitious documentary filmmakers working on short-form, episodic, and feature-length non-fiction films. The video art year-long residency provides support through free courses, video and audio equipment, 80 hours of access to BRIC’s community media studios, editing suites and laptops, and mentorship. Both of those residences include a capstone public screening of the work in 2024. The film and tv documentary project

Full of archival footage and interviews with players from then and now, ‘Copa 71’ is a historical addition to the legacy of women's soccer. Documentary talked to Ramsay Erskine about the making of the documentary and what might never be resolved.

Described as “performative research into the court archive of the 'Kunarac et al.' case known as the ‘Foca Rape Camp Trial’” before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Kumjana Novakova’s 'Silence of Reason' took this critic’s prize for the most powerful nonfiction film at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival (August 11–18).

Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Leslie Buchbinder’s 3D documentary Westermann: Memorial to the Idea of Man If He Was an Idea ahead of its premiere at Art21 at the Movies this weekend. The film profiles H.C. “Cliff” Westermann, a marine veteran whose anti-war stance and social commentary are humorously transformed in his art practice, and who influenced a generation of renowned artists. The film features interviews with Westermann’s friends, including Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry, William T. Wiley, and Billy Al Bengston, along with his sister Martha Westermann Renner. Commenting

The two-night event, “ Documentary Presents Claire Simon in Conversation,” relaunches IDA’s longstanding Conversation Series with the most acclaimed documentary filmmakers of our times. On August 1, 2023, French filmmaker Claire Simon sat down with me in a free-wheeling discussion of her extensive body of work, its formal fluidity between documentary and fiction, and her belief in the capacity of every person to be the center of the story. The masterclass was followed by a sneak preview screening of her latest documentary, Our Body , before it opened in theaters in NY and LA. Both events were

Breakwater Studios is the first spotlight of Making a Production, our new strand of in-depth profiles featuring production companies that make critically-acclaimed nonfiction film and media in innovative ways. Mark Jonathan Harris digs into the company's history from its founding by Ben Proudfoot to its recent support of other directors, its branded content division, and the key creative characteristics of their award-winning short films.

In Hello Dankness, the opening scenes of Joe Dante’s 1989 film The ’Burbs play out as usual—except Tom Hanks’s character has a “Bernie 2016” sign in his yard, while his neighbor has GOP elephant stickers on his windows. Annette Bening’s character from American Beauty (1999) drives by, an “I’m With Her” bumper sticker on her van. Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World (1992) are now Donald Trump supporters rather than harmless, rock-loving goofballs. Trump’s election hits this world as a literal cataclysm, rendered via apocalyptic scenes from the apocalypse comedy This Is the End. These characters and many more from myriad film and television sources—ranging from Napoleon Dynamite to Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) sometimes crossing over with his character from Zombieland (2009)—collectively experience the 2016 election, Trump’s presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the chaotic 2020 election.

María Luisa Santos is a Costa Rican director, editor and writer. She’s interested in stories about place, memory, and personal loss. Her latest short documentary, Direcciones, won Best Short Documentary at SFFILM 23’. She produced and edited the feature film Stay Here Awhile , which PBS acquired as part of the ReelSouth 2023 Series. Her work has been shown in The New Yorker , SXSW, PBS, Slamdance, New Orleans FF, SFFILM, and others. Read and see more of María Luisa’s work at www.marialuisasantos.com IDA: Please tell us a little about yourself and your profession or passion. María Luisa Santos