Editor's Note: Although I did not attend the summit, my colleagues Simon Kilmurry and Claire Aguilar did. This report is based on the very thorough transcription by Abigail Prade of IDFA. I thank her for providing it to us. In an unprecedented convening of documentary advocacy organizations from around the world, IDA, working in concert with Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum and International Documentary FilmFestival Amsterdam (IDFA), spearheaded a summit of 40 leaders to start the conversation about the issues that the global community is grappling with. The summit, entitled Building
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True to its tagline, "America's largest documentary festival," DOC NYC concluded its eight edition last month, having presented more than 250 films and panels throughout New York, with more than 350 filmmakers and special guests among the thousands of attendees. As I was about to head across the pond to attend IDFA in Amsterdam, I was only able to attend two films. The festival kicked off with the New York premiere of Greg Barker's The Final Year. The film presents a unique insiders' account of President Barack Obama's foreign policy team during its last year in office. Barker was afforded
December 9, 2017 (Los Angeles, CA)—The 33rd Annual IDA Documentary Awards, hosted by Iranian-American actor and comedian Maz Jobrani, took place earlier tonight at the Paramount Theatre. The evening’s top honors went to Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini’s “Dina” for Best Feature, and Laura Checkoway’s “Edith+Eddie” for Best Short. "The Best Feature and Best Short award winners both represent unlikely love stories, each one tender, tragic, and ultimately life-affirming,” said IDA Executive Director Simon Kilmurry. “Dina and ‘Edith+Eddie’ are both distinguished by their unforgettable lead
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Newly streaming at Filmstruck is Bill Morrison's Dawson City: Frozen Time, which pieces together the bizarre true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s - 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory. The film won an IDA Documentary Award for Best Editing. Currently streaming on MUBI is Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol. After a vicious attack leaves him brain-damaged and broke
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! At IndieWire, the filmmakers behind Icarus respond to Russia's Olympics ban for "state-sponsored doping system." Fogel and producer Dan Cogan have now issued a statement in regards to today's announcement, which reads: "We applaud today's decision by the International Olympic Committee. As we learned in the making
In the provinces of Central Europe, two of the winning films at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival show the persistence of provincial views of history. In Dmitry Bogolubov's The Wall, voted the Best World Documentary, mourners in a solemn procession under a grey Moscow sky place red carnations at the tomb of Josef Stalin. Fixed long takes without commentary reflect the rigid devotion of the commemorators to the cult of the dictator. In the devotees' reverence of Stalin, they bow before the myth of the great leader despite evidence of his tyranny. In Pavel Křemen's Milda
In recent years, the West has shifted its gaze to Georgian cinema as more and more documentaries from the Caucasian region receive accolades at international film festivals. "Today Georgian films are in fashion," said Georgian filmmaker and producer Zaza Rusadze, in an interview during the 60th anniversary edition of DOK Leipzig last month. "It has become a hot thing to program." Rusadze, who curated the festival's Georgian program, entitled Import/Export: Georgian Cinema Across Borders, noted that the younger Georgian generation had always wanted their work to be seen as an integral part of
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering tonight, Monday, December 4 on HBO is The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee. As one of America's most influential and celebrated newspaper editors, The Washington Post's Ben Bradlee found himself at the center of many of the 20th Century's most seismic storms, including: World War II, John F. Kennedy and, most memorably, Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon. Currently streaming on Netflix is Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's Karl Marx City, in
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! At S undance Institute, Festival Director John Cooper and Director of Programming Trevor Groth break down the just-announced Sundance lineup. "In a year that has rejuvenated the idea of television journalism covering every scandal and every political detail, documentaries are the last bastion of uncovering the
Last week, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans to dismantle the agency's net neutrality regulations. The International Documentary Association stands firmly opposed to any repeal or rollback of network neutrality and urges policymakers and the public to stand up for an open Internet and a level playing field online. The Internet is the primary forum for the free flow of ideas central to democratic discourse. In this digital age, it would be difficult to imagine a truly open society or a well-functioning democracy without an open Internet. The open Internet has been crucial to independent