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 The New York Times, Hannah Beech reports on newly declassified files showing that U.S. officials allowed an anti-Communist bloodbath to take place in 1960s Indonesia. The legacy of the massacre continues to divide Indonesia. For decades, under Suharto's rule, Indonesians dared not call for justice. Even after
Latest Posts
Los Angeles, CA – October 20, 2017– Last night, at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival, the International Documentary Association (IDA) announced that eleven feature-length documentary films have been selected as the inaugural production grantees of the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund. The Fund, with major support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, supports feature-length explorations of original, contemporary stories that integrate journalistic practice into the filmmaking process. The films have been selected to receive a total of $850,000. In addition to
Editor's Note: Lauren Wissot had interviewed Sterlin Harjo for the article she wrote for the Fall 2017 issue, entitled " Whose Story? Five Doc-Makers on (Avoiding) Extractive Filmmaking," but she and I both felt that this interview would work better as a stand-alone complement to that article. “If I had a dollar every time a white guy asked me to b a 'producer' on their standing rock doc I'd be able to fund my own standing rock doc" That quote is a tweet from veteran indie filmmaker (and one of the founders of Native comedy troupe The 1491s) Sterlin Harjo, a member of the Seminole Tribe with
The Belgian-born filmmaker Agnès Varda was the only female director associated with the French New Wave, and for decades she has been referred to as "the grandmother" of the movement. It's a condescending if well-meaning title, and though Varda is universally beloved, she is still more of a adventurer than a traditionalist. The semi-autobiographical documentaries she's made in the past two decades, The Gleaners and I (2000) and The Beaches of Agnes (2008), are works of restless ingenuity that pose consistently intriguing questions about form and process. For her newest film—and potential swan
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
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