In Motherland, award-winning Filipina-American filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz takes us into the heart of the planet's busiest maternity hospital, in one of the world's poorest and most populous countries. The Dr. Jose Fabella Hospital in Manila, Philippines, averages an astonishing 60 deliveries a day. Using an observational approach, Motherland drops its viewers—at times uncomfortably—into the hospital's continuous stream of activity. Set against the backdrop of a country grappling with widespread poverty and a cultural shift in its relationship to the Catholic Church, Diaz paints an intimate
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Los Angeles, CA – October 16, 2017– The International Documentary Association has announced the initial round of nominees for the 2017 IDA Documentary Awards. The 33rd edition of the annual ceremony will take place Saturday, December 9 at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles. Nominees for Best Feature and Best Short, and awards for creative recognition, will be announced on November 1. The IDA will honor director Marcel Mettelsiefen’s Watani: My Homeland with the Pare Lorentz Award. Also receiving a special mention in the category is Joe Berlinger’s Intent to Destroy. In the limited series
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Newly streaming at Netflix is Lucy Cohen's Kingdom of Us, about the effects of a father's suicide on a family of 8 in the West Midlands. Screen International called the film "impressive, deftly edited" and "documentary at its best." Newly streaming at Amazon Prime is Matthew Heineman's City of Ghosts, which follows the journey of "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently" - a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014
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! A Note From the IDA: This week in Essential Doc Reads, we focus on the impact of the disturbing revelations about Harvey Weinstein, and the many testimonials written by women who have suffered sexual misconduct, violence, and abuse of power by men in the entertainment industry. IDA denounces Weinstein's
Filmmaker Mariam Jobrani had a reasonably thriving career in documentary and reality TV. Then in April 2010, everything changed: She received a diagnosis of breast cancer, at age 40. She and her former partner in filmmaking and life, Kenny Krauss, began to document this transformative event, while working on other projects, and three years later, when the cancer progressed to Stage 4, the filmmakers committed full-bore to capturing her life-altering journey—one that takes her to India and Brazil, deepens her bond with her family and with her native Iran, and opens her heart and her mind to the
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has a deserved reputation as one of the best in the world. There had been much criticism in the past few years about the large quantity of films screened, which led to a reduction this year; of course, that resulted in critics pointing out that the box office was lower, which was to be expected, with 60 fewer features being shown. While TIFF's organizers had to deal with people sniping away at the festival at large, the documentary component sailed on with nary a complaint. Thom Powers handled the Doc Conference and the majority of the
Whether or not you grab Arabic booza from your local corner store, the summers in Beirut are still humid. Half a million people are finally out of their homes, not counting the steady flow of refugees crowding the streets, and the city reeks of burning gasoline, over-piling garbage and citrus. The news that I got accepted into NeXt Doc's 2017 Fellowship felt like a relief, to say the least. There is a sudden time in life that no one prepares us for—an eerie, discouraging limbo filled with false hopes, doubt and irrational expectations. We leave film school confident with our vision—or rather
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Currently streaming at MUBI is Tadhg O'Sullivan's The Great Wall, a film that audaciously looks the migration crisis in the eye by considering the resonance of Franz Kafka's universe in today's Europe. The Irish Times called it "extraordinary...a beautiful, puzzling film." Premiering on Starz tonight, October 9, is Natalie Avital's The Three Hikers, telling the story of three Americans who went hiking in Northern Iraqi Kurdistan in July 2009, and were captured and held as
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 Realscreen, Justine Nagan reflects on the state of PBS's "POV," entering its 30th season. "One of the challenges for us is asking how we can continue to serve this growing field and bring top quality films to public television audiences and viewers across America for free, whether they have access to high-speed
By Shaia Araghi and Lauren Wertheimer For nearly a decade, a national coalition led by Film Independent and the International Documentary Association has worked to protect filmmakers' fair use rights by seeking exemptions to the copyright laws that allow filmmakers to "rip" from DVDs, Blu-ray and other technologies for fair use purposes. The current exemption covers documentary filmmakers, but it expires next year. That’s why we're going back to Washington to seek a new exemption that covers not just documentarians, but all filmmakers. But we can't do it without you. Scroll down to find out